zai✨❤️

A week after I saw my husband I quietly move through the moon lit hallways of the Tumbleton keep. I peek into the different rooms I come across, but Daeron is in none of them, causing my irritation to spike. The longer I spend in here, the bigger the risk that I get caught.

I softly push open another door and scan the dimly lit room. A relieved sigh leaves my lips as I spot Daeron fast asleep in the bed. I watch him sleep for a bit, smiling at how much I see Gwayne in him. I kneel next to the bed and softly tread my fingers through his hair. Daeron stirs softly before he startles awake. He looks scared as he sees a hooded figure next to his bed and lunges for his dagger, holding it in front of him protectively. 

“Daeron it’s alright, it’s me,” I quickly shush him before he draws too much attention. “Muña?” his voice shakes slightly. “Hello my little dragon,” I smile, cupping his face in my hands. Daeron relaxes for a second before his body tenses again. “Muña, you can’t be here, Ormund will hurt you if he finds you.” “I know little dragon, I talked to Gwayne and we decided that we’re going to leave, just the three of us.”

Daeron’s eyes widen, hope shining in them, “you talked to Kepa? Is he coming here?” I shake my head, “we haven’t gotten that far in the plan yet, our first priority was to get you out.” The boy moves up from the bed and wraps his arms around me, burying his head in the crook of my neck. “I missed you Muña.” His words are muffled as I hug him back tightly. “I missed you too sweetheart.” I pull back, cupping his face once more, “gather everything you need, I’m getting you out of here.”

“Tessie as well?” He darts around the room to stuff some trinkets into his bag.” “Tessie as well,” I confirm. He lets out a sigh of relief, but hesitates after. “Ormund will claim that you kidnapped me to use me as leverage.” Shit, I hadn’t thought of that. “Writing a note to say that you left willingly won’t work, he’ll either claim that there was no note or that you were forced to write it,” I muse, “we can’t do it publicly, but we need witnesses.” Daeron shifts nervously on his feet, then his eyes light up. “Lord and Lady Footly, we can go to them, tell them that I’m leaving willingly. They both support Rhaenyra. Lord Footly might be terrified, but his wife has much more spine than he does, she’ll tell the truth.” I nod thoughtfully, “that might work.”

I move quietly through the hallway again as Daeron clutches the back of my jacket. “Which way?” I whisper to him. We duck behind a wall as a patrol of Hightower soldiers passes by. “This way,” Daeron whispers, leading the way, “Ormund kicked them out of their chambers, they really don’t like him.” He knocks on a large door, which is opened by a stern looking lady. “What in the Seven Hells are you doing here at this hour, young prince?” Her eyes fall to me with suspicion. “And who are you?”

I push the door further open and lead Daeron into the room. “You don’t mind if we come in, do you Lady Footly?” I tell her as I close the door behind us. The room we are in is definitely not fitting for a Lord and Lady of a noble house. My eyes sweep the room and land on Lord Footly. The man looks scrawny and for some reason his face reminds me of the mythical dwarves of the stories I was told as a child.

“What is the meaning of this,” Lady Footly hisses from behind me. Daeron looks at me and I gesture for him to lead the conversation. “Lord Footly, Lady Footly, I apologize for interrupting your evening, but this cannot wait.” He gestures to me. “This is my mother and she-” Lady Footly interrupts him, “I thought the queen dowager was your mother.” The woman looks more and more suspicious with each passing second. “Well yes, she is my birthmother,” Daeron stammers slightly. “But I was sent to Oldtown to live with my uncle and his wife as a babe, they raised me, she raised me.” He gestures to me. “Therefore this is my mother, not queen Alicent.”

Lady Footly’s eyes soften slightly, but she still looks suspicious. I sigh and lower my hood, showing my silver hair. “You’re a Targaryen,” Lord Footly realizes and I nod. “Yes, Daeron tells me that you support the rightful queen. My sister, Rhaenyra Targaryen.” Lord Footly scrambles to his feet and bows clumsily in his haste. “Daeron is my son in all but blood and I wish to take him with me to safety.” “Of course,” Lady Footly says, much more gentle this time, “young boys don’t belong in war, no matter what everyone thinks of it.”

“But why have you come here?” Lord Footly asks. “Lord Ormund will twist the truth when he finds out I’m gone, he’ll claim that I was forcefully taken by Rhaenyra. I’m here to tell you that I’m willingly leaving with my mother.” I nod sharply when Daeron looks at me questioningly, asking if he did it right. “You are the witnesses that Daeron was not forced to leave with me.” I look at Lord Footly. “Do your Maesters have access to ravens?” The small man nods. “Send out ravens to the other Lords, tell them that Daeron willingly left the Hightower army.”

“Lord Ormund will not let this go unpunished,” Lady Footly says. “Then send word to Hugh and Ulf as well, they are guarding the city outside on their dragons. Tell them that they are to interfere if Ormund tries to harm you, or any of the citizens in Tumbleton, by the order of queen Rhaenyra’s sister.” Lady Footly narrows her eyes at me, “You are not the queen, so why would they obey your order.” “Because my family is the reason they were allowed to bond with a dragon.” Lord Footly nods, bows clumsily again and hurries out of the room.

I pull Daeron closer. “Go get Tessie, then we’ll find a way out.” “There is a hidden doorway that leads outside,” Lady Footly informs us. “I’ll take you there.” She turns to Daeron, “you remember the large tree next to the fountain in the gardens?” Daeron nods. “Get your dragon and meet us there.” I pull Daeron into a firm hug before he makes his way to wherever Tessie is. Then I follow Lady Footly.

“Why are you helping us?” I ask the woman. “Like I said, little boys don’t belong in war.” She looks at me with a dark look. “And I’ve seen the way Lord Ormund treats your son. He might care for him in some way, but it’s not normal for a boy to know the signs when a grown man is about to throw a tantrum like a young child.” My jaw clenches as we hurry into the cold night air. We dodge the Hightower guards and make our way to the tree Lady Footly told Daeron about.

Luckily it doesn’t take long for Daeron to show up, an agitated Tessie behind him. Her growls and hisses echo softly through the night, followed by Daeron’s desperate shushing. The blue dragon chirps in greeting as she sees me and bumps her head into Daeron’s chest, almost like she is relieved. Behind me Lady Footly moves away the plants that cover the wall to reveal a door. It’s just large enough to fit Tessie.

“Go now, before the guards find you,” Lady Footly ushers us through the door. I let Daeron manoeuvre Tessie through first and give the Lady of Tumbleton a grateful nod. “Thank you, Lady Footly. She nods once, then closes the door behind us. Daeron looks at me expectantly, “What do we do now?” I let out a low whistle to call Mirrax to me. “We go to King’s landing.” His eyes widen and he looks almost scared. “I can’t go there, they’ll kill me Muña.” I shush him gently. “I know that you’re scared my little dragon, but if we want to get out, we have to do this the right way.”

Mirrax lands next to me, cheerfully greeting Daeron and Tessie. I gesture for Daeron to climb onto the saddle, making sure he has fastened the straps. He swats my hands away with a smile, “Muña I know how to do it.” I climb into my own saddle, “sōvēs,” I tell her. With that, she takes off into the night sky, Daeron and Tessie following close behind. I hear Daeron laugh freely and look back to see him spread his arms as he enjoys being in the air again.

-

It takes us half a day before we reach King’s landing. We land outside the city, making sure our dragons aren’t noticed and make our way into the Red Keep. I ask a member of the queensguard where my sister is and make my way to the small council’s meeting chamber. Daeron looks at the hallways with amazement and I smile. He was so young when he went with me and Gwayne to Oldtown, it doesn’t surprise me that he doesn’t remember the Red Keep. I pull his attention to me when I put my hand on his shoulder, “when we enter the meeting chamber you stay behind me, alright? Let me do the talking, I’m sure it’ll all be alright.”

Two guards spot me approaching and open the doors, allowing us to pass while sharing suspicious looks when they don’t recognize Daeron. I quickly move up the steps, Daeron staying a distance behind me like I told him. By the table Rhaenyra looks up, smiling as she spots me. Next to her Daemon, Mysaria, Alyn and two others look as well.

I bow quickly, greeting my sister and queen. “Sister,” Rhaenyra smiles, “I couldn’t find you, where have you been?” I take a deep breath. “I was at Tumbleton,” I tell her. She frowns, “Why? Hugh and Ulf have the situation under control there.” “I know,” I hesitate. Rhaenyra would hear me out, but Daemon is a loose cannon and my sister’s control over him isn’t what it was.

“I went to find someone,” I announce. The members of the small council frown in confusion. “Do you mean Gwayne?” Rhaenyra questions and I shake my head, gesturing for Daeron to join me. “Sister, this is Daeron Targaryen.” I wrap my arm around Daeron’s shoulder as Daemon jumps up from his chair, drawing his sword. “You dare bring him here, you dare betray your sister?” he hisses angrily. I quickly move Daeron behind me, shielding him with my body. “If you lay a hand on my son I swear I will kill you, uncle.” 

Rhaenyra stands from her chair, betrayal in her eyes. “You would betray me,” she whispers. I shake my head desperately, “no sister, I would never, I promise.” “Then why would you bring the boy here,” Daemon snaps. “Because he is my son Nyra, I need him safe.” I ignore Daemon, pleading with my sister instead. “I couldn’t take the risk that he would get hurt or worse, killed.”

Daemon turns to Rhaenyra, “the boy is a challenge to your rule, Rhaenyra, you need to kill him.” My blood runs cold, my mind screaming at me to get Daeron out, but I stay still, shielding Daeron with my body. I knew that this part would be hard. Rhaenyra holds up her hand, shushing her husband. She sits back down in her chair, a wary hesitance in her eyes as she looks at me. “Why did you bring him here?”

“I support your claim to the throne Rhaenyra. There hasn’t been a single day that I haven’t supported you after our father made you his heir. But this war has torn apart my family. I still love Gwayne and Daeron with all my heart and we don’t want this life. Gwayne and I talked at Harrenhall and we want Daeron to grow up somewhere safe, somewhere he can be whoever and whatever he wants to be.” Daeron squeezes my arm, offering silent support.

“You talked at Harrenhal?" Daemon echoes, seemingly intent to prove my betrayal. “Yes, we talked at Harrenhal." I glare at him before turning back to my sister. “I went there to kill Gwayne. I was prepared to kill my own husband for you Nyra, that is how loyal I am to you.” Behind me Daeron’s body tenses and I see him look at me with a shocked expression. “And did you kill him?” Rhaenyra questions. I shake my head, ignoring Daemon’s scoff. “I couldn’t do it and I’m not sorry, Rhaenyra. Would you be able to kill your husband?” Rhaenyra looks at Daemon and shakes her head.

“We ended up on opposite ends of this damned war because we both wanted to honor the vows we made to our Houses, but ignored the vows we made to each other in the process. So when I went to kill him, we talked. About how we mean everything to each other. How Daeron is our son even though we did not conceive him. And in the end, we came to the conclusion that we need to leave, no matter how hard it would be.”

Rhaenyra looks taken aback. “You want to leave me?” she questions. I shake my head. “Want? No, of course not. But I need to.” I raise my head higher. “Your Grace, I hereby ask for permission to leave this court. Gwayne, Daeron and I will leave Westeros to live out our lives somewhere else, never coming back.” “Rhaenyra, the boy is a threat to your rule,” Daemon argues, “you can’t let them leave. What is to stop them from raising an army to challenge you?”

Before I can answer Daeron steps in front of me, ignoring me as I hiss for him to get back behind me. He walks up to Rhaenyra’s chair, foolishly paying no mind to Daemon, who points his sword at my son’s chest. I draw my own sword and hurry after him. Once he stands next to her, he kneels on the floor while he looks at her with a challenge in his eyes. 

“Rhaenyra, you might remember me from when I was a baby, but I don’t, so in my eyes this is the first time we meet. I was raised by your sister with stories about her loving and fierce sister, my aunt Rhaenyra. Throughout my youth I was told both sides of the story. One side where you are the rightful heir and the other side where Aegon ascends the throne.”

My son looks at me, an apology in his eyes. “I am sorry, but I can’t swear my loyalty to you.” I step closer to Daeron, keeping my eyes locked onto Daemon. “But I can’t swear my loyalty to Aegon either,” Daeron continues, making the room pause. “However, what I can do is swear my loyalty to my Muña and Kepa, to the people who raised me. I have no desire to be king and I am prepared to renounce any claim to the Iron Throne if you let me and my Muña and Kepa leave like she told you.”

The room is utterly silent. Rhaenyra stands from her chair and Daeron follows. “You remind me of my son, Jace,” my sister smiles softly. “Should things have gone differently I think that you and him would have been good friends.” She looks at me. “Your parents have raised you beautifully. Therefore I accept your offer. You renounce the throne and the three of you will be allowed to leave Westeros.” Daeron gives Rhaenyra a polite nod and returns to my side, hugging me tightly. “Thank you,” I mouth to my sister as I tread my hand through his hair.

-

Two days later Daeron and I arrive at Gulltown, a harbor town in the Vale, where Gwayne is waiting for us. Daeron beams with excitement as he spots Gwayne from a distance. “Gwayne!” he calls out joyfully as we close in on him. Gwayne looks up and smiles. Daeron reaches him first and Gwayne wraps him tightly in his arms. “You made it,” he breathes, “I was getting worried.” He pulls me into him and kisses me. I briefly let myself relax in his hold before pulling back.

“I have arranged for a ship to take us to Pentos,” Gwayne tells us, “from there we’ll make our way to Norvos.” “We’ll go that far?” Daeron questions. “We have to, little dragon, we have to go somewhere they won’t recognize us and somewhere remote so that the dragons will be free to roam.” I nod in agreement to the plan, “and the Hills of Norvos are the perfect place for that.” Daeron hesitates, folding his hands behind his back. “But if we go by boat, will Tessie and Mirrax be able to find us?”

I nod, “they’ll find us near Pentos, from there we’ll fly to the Hills.” “Are you sure?” Daeron questions. I move closer to him, cupping his face in my hands. “I’m sure of it. We’re Targaryen, you and I, our dragons will always be able to find us wherever we go.” “Alright then,” Daeron agrees. Gwayne smiles at the both of us and we make our way to the harbor.

“What happened with your sister?” Gwayne asks as he walks next to me, holding my hand in his. I give him a brief rundown of the events. He looks concerned when I tell him of Daemon’s reaction and proud when I mention what Daeron told Rhaenyra. “So he officially renounced any claim to the Iron Throne?” I nod, “he went through the ceremony yesterday, I’ve never seen him so nervous, but he endured it like a true warrior.” I smile and watch as Daeron walks ahead of us, looking with curious eyes at everything there is to see. Gwayne nods proudly, “our son is a warrior.”

-

In the end we find a cozy house in the Hills of Norvos. It’s very different from what any of us are used to, but it’s perfect. There are many caves nearby where Tessie and Mirrax can make a home and it’s remote enough that Daeron and I will be able to fly freely without worry that anyone will see us.

I step out onto the front porch where Gwayne sits in one of the chairs, a book on the Valyrian language in his lap. “Are you really trying to learn High Valyrian?” I ask him. Gwayne nods without looking up and he holds out a hand for me to take. He pulls me into his lap, resting the book on my thigh. “Both my son and wife speak High Valyrian, so I figured that I should know it as well.” I hum, combing my fingers through his hair. “That sounds fair to me.” I look at the mountains stretching around us. “Do you think that we’ll ever find out who will win the war?” 

His hand stills on the page. “Honestly? I hope not, I’m done with that mess.” He admits. “Me too,” I lay my head on his shoulder. “We’re going to need animals if we want to be self-sufficient,” I tell him. “I’ll see if I can buy some in the village tomorrow.” “We’ll at least need horses and chickens.” “Of course, my love,” he agrees, sounding distracted. “And I want a dog and a cat.” “If that’s what you want.” I roll my eyes, leaning back to look at him.

“I’m pregnant.” Gwayne hums in response, then he seems to choke on air and he looks at me with wide eyes. “What?!” I smile, stroking his cheek, “I’m pregnant,” I repeat. “You are?!” His voice goes up a few octaves. “Gods Gwayne,” I laugh, “I thought a knight could never be caught off guard.” I tap him on his cheek to snap him out of his shock. He smiles, love and adoration in his eyes. “You’re pregnant,” he smiles. “That’s what I just told you. Twice.”

“Oh shush woman.” He kisses me deeply. “We’re having a baby,” he mutters against my lips. Behind us the door opens and Daeron steps out. The boy lowers himself in the other chair and stretches out his legs. “Why are you so happy Kepa?” he asks. “Hang on,” Gwayne mutters, grabbing his High Valyrian book again. He flips eagerly through the pages, trying to find the right words as Daeron and I exchange amused looks.

When your previous rooms on the other side of the castle had been deemed unsafe due to its proximity to a crumbling brick tower, you had been moved to the ones you currently resided in about nine moons ago. The view was rather magnificent, overlooking Blackwater Bay and its fleet of ships, and the wardrobe was larger than the one in your old rooms. The only complaint that you had was with the occupant of the rooms adjacent.

You had never had any issues with your cousin Jacaerys, aside from a few spats during your childhood. He was always cordial to you at feasts, made you laugh occasionally during dinner, and would dance with you every so often at balls. But ever since you moved in next to him, you have grown to hate Jacaerys.

Tonight was a particularly bad one; sleep was rather impossible due to the sheer amount of noise coming from Jacaerys’ chambers. You tossed and turned in your sheets, trying to position a pillow over your head in an attempt to block out the sound of repeated moaning. Lady Stokeworth had entered his rooms nearly two hours ago, and you had hoped that their dalliance would have been completed by now. She was one of the louder ones; rather than just the sound of the bed banging against the wall or skin slapping against skin, you also had to endure a rather vivid image of what was taking place.

Once upon a time, it had made you flush, hearing Jace’s affairs in bed and imagining what such a thing was like. Although you would never admit it, you had even slipped your hand between your legs on occasion and pretended it was you sharing your handsome cousin’s bed. But now that this pattern of disturbance had increased in frequency to every single night, your sleep was being affected and you had grown rather angry. 

After a few minutes of particularly loud moaning, swearing, and even screams, the noise finally subdued. You waited until you heard Jacaerys’ door open with a creak, then waited several more moments before you could be certain that his companion had departed. You pulled on your dressing gown, stormed out of your room, and banged your fists against his door.

“Did you forget something?” Jacaerys mumbles as he opens the door, mistaking you for Lady Stokeworth. Once he realizes his mistake, his head cocks to the side and he raises a brow. “Oh. Cousin. How may I be of service to you at this late hour?” He has had the decency to re-dress, although sweat still beads along his forehead and his cheeks are reddened from the physical exertions he was just engaging in. 

“Yes Jace, it is rather late. How many more sleepless nights will I be forced to endure due to you entertaining guests?”  He should be embarrassed, ashamed even to be called out on his behavior in this fashion. But the prince shrugs his shoulders coyly as he glances over you to examine the empty corridor.

“As I told you the last time you pounded against my door, and the time before that, you are more than welcome to find new rooms if you are so inconvenienced by my recreational activities,” Jace tells you smoothly, as if you are simply discussing something benign such as tax records. His eyes are cold against your skin, noticing that your dressing gown was haphazardly thrown on in a way that leaves your left shoulder bare. Feeling his gaze, you quickly yank it over your exposed skin and cross your arms across your chest.

“I do not want to request new chambers, Jacaerys! The only other ones available are either crumbling or currently flooded! Why don’t you move into one of those?” You snap at him. 

“I was here first,” he tells you plainly, to which you reply with a loud groan and a stamp of your foot.

“Why can’t you just go visit a brothel? Why must you subject me to your promiscuity, night after night? It is improper to expose a princess such as myself to acts of depravity and lust!” You hiss at him. Peeking out from his collar is a bright red mark, blooming into what will certainly be a purple bruise come morning time. 

“Gods, do not act the part of an innocent maiden now! Have you forgotten it was I who discovered upon your dalliance with Lord Darklyn three moons ago?” His smug smile has faded away, revealing a frown as he recalls the memory. He had in fact seen you with Lord Darklyn that time in the library, but it had been the first and only incident of such occasion. “Oh please My Lord! Take me now, fuck me with your big cock and make me scream your name! Hurry, before someone notices we are missing!” His imitation of your voice is rather poor, but it irks you all the same. 

“Fuck you, Jace! You’re such a prick!” You raise your voice slightly, but are careful not to shout loud enough to alert any guards that might be patrolling nearby. “That was one time, not a nightly performance! I have not slept properly in weeks because of you and the excess of noise being produced in your chambers!” This is all true, but it seems to make no difference to your stupid, smug cousin. He takes a step forward, closing the distance between the two of you and making you all too aware of the way he currently smells, strong and musky and dizzying.

“Is it truly the noise that brings you to my door?” He questions, his eyes meeting yours with a new intensity.

“What other reason could I possibly have for disrupting my evening? I have gotten so little sleep this week that I can barely make it through the morning meals without collapsing from exhaustion!” 

“Mmm,” he hums, unconvinced. “I do not think that is the reason.” Jace holds your gaze, luring you into speaking once again.

“Enlighten me, then, since I am apparently too stupid to know my own motives.”

“I think—” He pauses, shifting his hand slightly so that his fingertips lightly brush against your arm. “—my dear cousin, that you wish it was you in my bed receiving my attentions.”

Quickly, almost too quickly, you scowl and step away from him. Yet, you are unable to conceal the flush that is creeping across your face.

“You think much too highly of yourself, Jacaerys,” You tell him with as much restraint as you can muster.

“Perhaps I do. But that does not change the fact that you are here, speaking to me during the hour of the owl, wearing your sheer little nightdress.” He glances down at said nightgown, which you had not realized had been revealed by your dressing gown having slipped to the floor when you pulled away from him. “You know, if you are curious about what causes all of these noises you hear, all you need do is ask me nicely.”

One of his dark curls has fallen out of place, draping over his forehead and sticking to his skin. He is right; it is the hour of the owl, and therefore it is much too late for you to have a reasonable conversation without being overcome with strange emotions. You bend down to retrieve your dressing gown, balling it up in between your fists before rising.

“Fine. You wish to taunt me, cousin? You underestimate my determination in getting what I want,” you tell him. 

“And remind me what exactly it is that you want?” His brow is raised and the corners of his lips have turned upwards into a testing smirk.

“Sleep.” You tell him as you turn on your heel and stomp back into your room, slamming the door loudly behind you. 

Although you cannot see his face, you know exactly what it looks like as you hear him laugh, before the sound of his own door closing follows. 

As you try to sleep, your mind races with the examination of past moments that you previously thought had gone unnoticed by Jace. The way your eyes lingered on him a beat longer than was proper, how you instructed your maids to lace your gown tighter for events that you knew he would be in attendance, and how you had once bribed a visiting lady to switch seats with you during a feast. Surely Jacaerys would have said something earlier, right? 

Moments before you finally drifted into sleep, a sudden idea struck you. What if the increase of visitors to his chambers was because he had noticed? What if he was trying to make you jealous? Clearly, he believed you to be. Jace was a Prince of the Realm who always seemed to get his way, but you were a Princess of the very same Realm, and you would not allow him to think that his tricks had worked.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next morning, you awoke determined. Although you did not have a restful night, it had certainly been a revealing one. Your eyes were heavy and your limbs stiff, but you instructed your maids to dress you in one of your more extravagant red gowns and braid a portion of your hair into a thick circlet. You chose a short necklace to accentuate the low neckline of your dress, and applied rouge to your cheeks and lips.

“Has a new suitor come to court, Princess?” One of the maids asked as she placed pins into your hair. Lucy was her name, she had beautiful auburn hair and was rather sharp of wit. You laughed at her remark, but shared a knowing smile.

“No, I simply mean to catch the attention of one I may have overlooked in the past,” you admitted to her. 

“Did the Prince’s visitors keep you up again last night, Princess?” She lowered her voice so as to not be overheard, but you were certain most of the staff also knew about Jacaerys’ activities. 

“Oh, this has nothing to do with him,” you tell her quickly, a partial lie. “I have simply decided that I need to reconsider some of the lords at court.” 

Lucy nods but says nothing else, straightening out your necklace before finishing with your hair. You hope that her inclination about Jacaerys is not due to a disheveled appearance on your part. But nonetheless, you are sure that you will be able to achieve your means even if you do appear to be slightly under-rested.

The morning is a rather dull one, seeing as everyone is busy preparing for the feast tonight. A host from Highgarden and the Eyrie have both arrived, a marriage between the heir of the latter to a daughter of the former that hopes to receive the Queen’s blessing before the wedding in a fortnight. You have always found the young Lady Tyrell to be dull and uninteresting, but you have heard some interesting tales about her older brother, who you had met a handful of times throughout your life. Knighted at five and ten, winner of countless tourneys, and the heir to Highgarden, Laurence Tyrell was your target for the evening. 

You could only hope that he was not so honourable that he would refuse a visit to your private chambers. If Jacaerys would not listen to reason, then he would be forced to endure a fraction of what he had put you through as of late. If he could have loud guests in his room at strange hours of the night, then what was preventing you from doing the same?

When the sun finally dimmed and members of court gathered in the Great Hall, you remained behind in hopes of making a grand entrance once the cups were heavy and the dancing had begun. You paced around your chambers for nearly two hours before you finally decided that enough time had surely passed. But to your great disappointment, the feast was so lively that no one noticed your arrival. Over a hundred casks of wine were scattered among the hall, likely a gift from the Tyrells. The music was loud and the sound of roaring laughter flooded your head. 

The first person who caught your attention was Jacaerys. He was dressed in black and red, wearing a sword on his hip and a charming smile on his face. Standing next to him was a Vale girl with thick blonde hair and plump lips, laughing as your cousin leaned down to whisper something in her ear. You scowled, and to your great disappointment Jacaerys’ line of sight was in the perfect position to notice this. He smiled boldly at you, his eyes staring into yours as he said something to the girl that made her shriek and playfully swat at his arm.

You forced yourself to turn away, remembering the plan that you wished to set in motion. You moved through the hall quickly, finding a glass of rich Arbor wine that you drained as you scanned each table and the Lords surrounding them. When you finally noticed a young man with chestnut colored hair and green eyes wearing a golden rose at the fastening of his cloak, you smiled and continued in the direction of where he stood, speaking to a group of knights. 

Right as you stepped in front of him, you purposefully kicked your foot against the leg of a chair, faking a stumble to the ground and allowing the empty wine glass to loudly drop. As any chivalrous young lord would, Lord Tyrell immediately rushes to your aid, stooping down to offer you assistance.

“My lady, are you alright?” You take his arm and rise slowly, trying your very best not to grin. Once he sees the dragon insignia on your dress and recognizes your face, he awkwardly clears his throat. “Apologies, Princess. Have you been hurt?” 

“No need for that, my lord,” you tell him as you straighten out your dress, pretending to examine it for any rips or tears. “I believe I am quite fine, but I thank you nonetheless. It is a pleasure to see you again. Please tell your mother that I congratulate her on making such a fine match for your sister, for I do hope to be invited to the wedding.” You smile at him sweetly and bat your eyelashes. 

“Well, it is to be a lavish affair. I am sure my sister would be honored to have a Princess in attendance on such a special day.” You are unsure if he is aware of how much said sister dislikes you, but nod your head nonetheless. “Your gown is quite beautiful, but I am sorry to say that this is the first time all evening I have noticed it.” 

He continues to flatter you with compliments and you receive each one gracefully. Laurence is quite handsome, with his emerald color eyes, broad shoulders, and deep laughter. But what is most attractive to you is the fact that he seems to be enamored with you, unaware that the ridiculous fall was a ploy to catch his attention.

You spend the next few hours on his arm, accepting every dance and cup of wine and joke that is offered by Laurence. He tells you stories of Highgarden and tourneys as you glide along the dance floor, charming him further with every bite of your lip or bat of your lashes. Although you try your very best to keep all distractions to a minimum, you are unable to stop yourself from noticing that your cousin seems to also be succeeding in his pursuit of the opposite sex.

Every time you glance across the hall, you spot Jacaerys with his fingers brushing against a Lady’s arm, standing closer than he should, tucking hair behind her ear, or running his fingers through his own as he tosses his head back in laughter. He does not stay with any one girl for long, he seems to have made it a mission to speak to every young woman in attendance.

But worst of all, is the fact that he always catches you staring. Even when it is only for a moment, his dark eyes capture yours and force you to look away. It is maddening, but you cannot stop yourself from repeatedly searching for his head of dark curls amongst the crowd. You grow furious at his noticing, becoming even more determined to ensure that Laurence Tyrell leaves with you.

When the night has grown late and guests begin to depart, he is still at your side. He is telling you something about his sister’s intended’s prowess with lance, your hands pressed into his as you giggle. 

“Oh! It almost slipped my mind, but you must see my new map of the Reach. I had it commissioned by the finest painter in all of the Seven Kingdoms,” you tell him as you squeeze his hands. No such map exists, but you need some excuse to lure him back to your rooms. 

“I will most certainly call upon you tomorrow, Princess. I would be delighted to see it,” he assures you. Your smile falters for a moment as you pout your lips. Hours of plotting will not be ruined by a falsehood of chivalry. 

“Come tomorrow, I may have lost all interest in maps. Allow me to show you now,” you insist, squeezing his hands and pushing your bosom forward. “My chambers are in a well-secluded branch of the Keep. No prying eyes would disturb us.” 

Laurence immediately catches your line of reasoning, his eyes widening as he gulps rather awkwardly. He nods, and allows you to lead him out of the ballroom and into the darkened corridor. Your heart is beating as you race through the Keep, breath catching in your throat as you ascend the two staircases leading to your chambers. 

When you enter, you see that Lucy is scrubbing down your windows. She turns to look at you, noticing Laurence in the doorframe. Grinning at you with excitement, she quickly excuses herself and exits the room. You lock the door behind her. 

“Your chambers are lovely, Princess,” Laurence tells you as you approach him. He is unfastening his cloak as your hands reach around his neck. 

“Yes, and the walls are completely soundproof,” you lie before bringing your lips to his in a hasty kiss. He tastes like perfume and his tongue presses against yours too firmly, but you moan loudly as his fingers tangle in your hair. 

You are rather impressed by how little time he wastes, quickly reaching around your midsection to begin unlacing your dress. Your own fingers tug at the hem of his shirt and start to lift it upwards.

But both of your movements come to a sudden halt when a fist begins to bang against the door.

“Cousin! I need to speak with you!” Jacaerys’ voice is immediately recognizable. Laurence attempts to pull away from you, but you grip his shoulders tightly. 

“Go away Jace! I am pre-occupied,” you shout back at him. The man in front of you has turned a shade of deep red, and you can feel your own pulse racing. You had not expected Jace to confront you until after your time with Laurence was finished. 

“Open this door at once!” The handle of the door rattles wildly, giving you almost no time to decide your next move. Within seconds, Jace has pried open the door and you have pushed Laurence away from you. 

“There is a matter of importance that we need to discuss,” he tells you rather gleefully, completely unbothered by the fact that there is a man in your chambers in a state of undress. “How dare you barge into my rooms like this? Have you no decency?” You snarl at him. “Decency?” He chimes snidely, eyes narrowing on the part of your gown that has been unlaced. Jace reaches for Laurence’s discarded cloak, folding it up neatly as he meets your gaze.“Save me the performance, cousin. Surely you are not so naive to think that no one would notice your sudden departure? An unmarried Targaryen Princess leading a young Lord into her chambers is certainly quite the scandal.” You wish more than anything that you had some sort of smart remark to snap back at him, but silence lingers its place. Jace knows that he has you beaten, an air of smugness surrounding him. You notice the reddish mark peeking out from his collarbone, a reminder that these sort of rules do not apply to him.

“Lord Laurence, I suggest that you leave now. I require a private word with my cousin,” he tells him as he hands him back the cloak. Laurence glances at you pitifully, to which you sigh in frustration. 

“Apologies, my prince. Princess,” he excuses himself with a quick nod, and practically sprints out of your room. The door creaks as he exits, and the sound of his racing footsteps can be heard for a mere moment afterwards. Furious, you turn to face Jacaerys. 

“Where do you get the nerve to act as if you do?” You approach him angrily, making no effort to conceal how distraught he has made you.

“Dear cousin, what were you expecting? That your pursuits would go unnoticed?” Jace has taken off his cloak, draping it across the back of your chair as if it was his own. 

“I expected that you would be too preoccupied with luring that Vale girl into your rooms to be concerned with whom I chose to invite into mine,” you snap back at him. There is a slight chill in the air, seeing as you forgot to close your window earlier in your haste to arrive at the feast. 

“It seems as if you spend far too much time worrying about who I keep company with. Are you jealous, Princess?” He is staring you down now, his deep brown eyes piercing into yours, his smug grin setting you aflame. 

“Is it unfair for me to wish for peace and quiet during the deepest hours of the night? I have not had a full sleep in months because of you!” You shout at him, throwing your hands up in frustration. Jace laughs, brushing a stray curl off of his forehead as he straightens his shoulders.

“I have needs, cousin, ones that I will not begrudge me of because you have put up a facade of being a prude,” he tells you rather dismissively as his fingers trace over the back of your chair. The shift of his posture has once again revealed the red mark on his neck, a reminder of the start of your quarrel. 

“Have you never considered the idea that I also have needs?” You take a step closer to him, and you immediately notice the heat that is radiating from him. “Wants and desires that I have been forced to push aside due to the nature of your nighttime activities! Do you imagine how difficult it is for me to entertain suitors, when they must be subject to the sounds of a Prince having his way with half the women in the castle on a nightly basis?”

 Jace’s gaze becomes steadfast as his demeanor shifts entirely. Rather than smirking at you, he stares with curiosity. 

“You should have come to me. If it was truly desire motivating your actions, why not cross the hall and ask for my assistance?” 

You are speechless for a moment— he has brought to surface a feeling that has long been nestled deep inside of you. Jace is the handsome Prince of Dragonstone, of course you had desired him, just like all the other ladies of court did. You had always believed him to be taunting you with his thinly-veiled offers and crude jokes. But what if he truly wanted you as you wanted him?

“Such a thing would scandalize all of King’s Landing, Jacaerys. You are the heir, and I your cousin. We will both be betrothed to others sooner rather than later,” you tell him, an attempt to re-direct. 

“But dragging Lord Tyrell into your bed is not a scandal? Do not lie to me, cousin.” He steps closer to you, pressing his palms into the table as he lowers his face to meet yours. “Will you finally admit that you desire me? Or will you allow petty grievances and little embarrassments to get in the way of taking what you want?” 

He has posed a challenge, one that he knows you are unable to back down from. Jace’s jaw clenches as he gazes upon you, his face sculpted by the gods of Valyria themselves. You glance downwards as his hands, thick and hardened by hours in the training yard. Imagining the way that his fingers would feel against your waist, around your neck, and in between your thighs makes your mouth water. Why does it feel so wrong to want him so badly?

Before you can stop yourself, you close the gap between the two of you and press your lips to his. Immediately, he kisses you back with the maddening hunger of a starving man. You latch your fingers onto his dark strands of hair, closing your eyes as he claims you with his mouth. 

The kiss is sloppy and desperate, his spit mixing with yours as his hands find your waist and pull your torso flush against his. As expected, he is quite skilled with his mouth. A few minutes of kissing leaves you practically dripping, your fingers stumbling for the buttons of his doublet. 

Rather than allowing you to undress him, Jacaerys breaks from the kiss and swivels you around, positioning your back to face him. He begins tugging at your laces, removing your gown with ease and allowing it to puddle at your feet. His intentions are clear in the way that his hands now trace against your skin and lips nip against your ear.

“Tell me, how many unassuming lords have you let have you? Was Darklyn the only one?” His breath is hot against your neck, sending shivers down your spine. You should lie— tell him that there have been dozens, if only to provoke him. But he has seen through your earlier fib, and you are certain that he would know if you were to do so again.

“He has been the only one,” you tell him truthfully. Jacaerys brushes your hair over your left shoulder, giving him full access to the bare skin of your neck. A soft caress of his fingers against the divot of your neck causes your breath to catch.

“How many times?” His other hand remains steady against your waist, the ruby ring on his index finger pressed against the fabric of your petticoat. 

“Once. If you do not count the time in the library.” Jace hums in response, blowing hot air against your neck. You feel incredibly vulnerable in this moment as he holds you, your usual sharp wit seeming to have vanquished completely. 

“Was he good?” His voice seems to drop a full octave as he raises this question, and you pray that he stays positioned behind you, not wishing for him to see how deeply your face has flushed. 

“I suppose so,” you tell him quickly, thinking back to the night that you had given your maidenhead to the young lord. In truth, it had been rather painful, the affair only lasting a few minutes and leaving you rather disappointed. 

“You suppose so?” Jace’s grip on your waist tightens, his fingers firmly pressing your midsection backwards so as to rest against his chest. His other hand leaves your shoulder and begins to trail down the front of your undergarments. You nod your head slightly, biting your lip as he begins to bunch up the fabric of your skirts, exposing your legs to the breeze that sweeps through the room.

“Well, that means you have much to learn.” His lips finally press against the skin of your neck as his hand slips between your thighs. When he feels you stiffen, he gives you a softer peck. “Do not fret, cousin. I promise I will take good care of you.” 

You open your mouth to respond, but all that leaves your lips is a gasp. Jace drags the pad of his finger across your entrance, tracing your outline before firmly pressing against your bundle of nerves. You feel his teeth scape against your ear, nibbling it in a way that practically makes your spine twist. 

“Jacaerys— “ You start, but are silenced by the sudden sensation of his finger drawing circles against you. Your body instinctively presses deeper against his chest, and you can feel his growing erection prodding at your lower back. The air has become thick with the smell of Jace, a mix of smoke and pine that lingers whenever he is near.

His mouth begins to trace your neck as two of his thick fingers enter you swiftly. The whimper that leaves you is pathetic, and you practically mewl once he begins thrusting them in and out of you. Wanting to preserve a bit of your dignity, you bite down on your lip in an attempt to stifle the sounds leaving you.

“Poor little Princess, all alone in her room at night. How many times have you wished for me to slip into your bed during the hour of the wolf?” His voice is deep and raspy, yet it feels like honey against your ear. Jace’s fingers continue to stroke your insides, making you twitch and mewl against him.

You suddenly feel an overwhelming urge to kiss him again, turning your head over your shoulder so quickly that it pains your neck. His eyes have darkened greatly since you last looked upon his face, and one of his brows raises as your hips pull away from him. 

“You don’t like what I’m doing?” He asks, a curiosity taking control of his sharp features. His fingers now drum against the inside of your thigh, and you have begun to clench at the loss of sensation.

“No, I just wish to kiss you as well,” you admit. Without missing a beat, Jacaerys  brings his lips to yours and kisses you hungrily. Both of his hands abandon their posts to grab the edges of your hips, and he guides you several paces backwards so that you are pressed to the wall, kissing you all the while. 

Jace uses his body to re-direct yours, pushing against your inner thigh with his knee to raise your left leg. His fingers are inside of you in an instant, causing you to cry out as he begins to pump them once again. Your noises are swallowed by his wet mouth and strong tongue. Instinctively, your hands steady themselves onto his shoulders as he begins to nibble at your bottom lip.

The pleasure is unlike anything you have ever felt before. The Daklynn boy certainly had not made you feel this way, nor had your own fingers. Jacaerys seemed determined to make you explode beneath his touch. When his thumb starts rubbing circles in tandem with his other fingers stroking the inside of your walls, you cry out his name.

“Gods, I have wanted to fuck you for so long,” Jace mutters in between kisses. “Saw you watching me all night, Princess.” He bites down on your lip and you whimper at the sensation. “Couldn’t keep your eyes off me, could you?”

Unable to form a coherent sentence, you whimper in response and desperately try to kiss him once again. Your mouth lands just below his ear, and you quickly begin kissing and sucking the spot fervently. Jace seems to like this, a low growl forming in his throat that causes every hair on your arm to stand up straight.

 The pleasure has begun to build rapidly, a burning in your stomach that makes your thighs shake. You are so close to rolling over the edge when Jacaerys suddenly ceases his movements, drawing his fingers away from you slowly.

You pout at him, tears threatening to spill from your eyes at the sudden loss of content. Jace presses a kiss to the side of your jaw as one of his hands gropes at your backside.

“It’ll feel even better if you have to wait a bit,” he assures you. “Go lie on the bed,” he instructs as he begins to unlace his trousers. You quickly obey, wanting to have his fingers inside of you again as soon as possible. Jace peels off his shirt and tosses it to the floor as he approaches you. Expecting him to lay down next to you, it comes as a shock when he instead kneels at the foot of the bed. 

You sit up, giving him a rather puzzled look. Does he wish to take you on the floor? You go to plant your feet on the ground, but Jace quickly presses a hand to your lower belly. 

“Stay on the bed. But take this off,” he tells you as he tugs at what little clothing remains on your body. You quickly pull the layer up and over your head, exposing yourself completely to him. His hands trace your bare skin, fingers running against the curve of your breasts and your hips. Although it is a chilly night, you are overwhelmed by the heat of his touch.

“Please, Jace. I need to feel you inside of me,” you plead with him, lips pouting as you do so. The corners of his lips turn upwards, his hands find your thighs once again.

“Patience, Princess. It would be rather unfair if I do not taste you first.” His eyes burn into yours as he suddenly lowers his mouth to your center, planting a kiss against your bundle of nerves. 

The sensation causes you to jolt, and Jacaerys chuckles. Fingers squeezing your thighs, he pries them further apart and brings them to rest on his shoulders. He drags his tongue against your folds, the wet muscle eliciting an entirely new type of pleasure. Your left hand grips the sheets tightly, your right one gripping Jace’s curls in the same fashion. His tongue continues to flick against your most sensitive area, making you cry out his name as your legs tremble. Jace’s eyes remain fixed on yours for a moment longer, before he slips a finger inside of your cunt. 

It is sinful, the way that your cousin is bringing you a type of pleasure that you had only ever imagined. When you glance down at him, you see that Jace’s thick hair has become quite disheveled, dark ringlets cascading down his forehead and over his ears. A second finger joins the first, causing your back to arch as you begin to moan his name. 

You are desperately kicking at his shoulders, the sensation becoming too much to bear. Expertly, Jacaerys remains steady as his free hand presses down on your lower stomach, pinning you to the feather mattress. His tongue continues to circle your core as his fingers fuck you steadily, the low grumbles he is making sending shivers through your entire body. The pleasure coiling in your stomach threatens to bust as tears begin to leak from your eyes.

You finally are struck with an intense wave of pleasure that causes your toes to curl and your cunt to clench around Jace’s fingers. The moans you make are certainly loud enough to be heard across the hall, if not the entire Keep. Dutifully, Jacaerys continues to lick at you until you roughly yank his head away, the aftershocks of your peak becoming maddening. He nibbles at your thigh for a moment before finally raising his head to address you.

“I gather that Darklyn did not manage to please you in such a way?” He is smiling again, like a child on their name-day who has just received a grand present. His lips are wet with a mixture of your slick and his spit, puffy and pink. The sight of him is rather addictive, and you cannot bear to imagine that this will be the only time you get to see him in this way.

“I grow tired of speaking of him,” you whine as you tug at his arms, attempting to direct him off the floor and into the bed with you. Jace obliges, stripping off his final article of clothing before climbing on top of you. He immediately nudges your thighs open with his knee, eyes trailing up and down your body as he does so.

“How do you want it?” He asks you sweetly, fingers tracing the divot of your hips. Now that he is fully naked, you take note of two additional marks that have been placed on his collarbone and chest. Just last night, another woman had her lips against his skin and her hands all over his body. The idea of such a thing would fill you with rage, if not for your distraction at the sight of his large and leaking cock.

“How do you usually fuck the girls that you bring to your bed?’ You dare to ask him, ensuring not to look away from his ember-rimmed irises. 

“Mmm, that is a question meant to trick me,” he tells you with a chuckle. “I have yet to fuck you, Princess— or any, for that matter.” Wisely, Jace re-directs by lowering his mouth to yours, kissing you deep and slow. You can taste on his lips and tongue, and he hums in delight as you press your fingers into his shoulders. One of his hands reaches between your bodies, grasping his cock and guiding it towards your entrance. But just as his tip begins to press against your folds, you break away from the kiss.

“No. I wish to be on top.” 

Jace raises a brow, but releases his manhood and shifts his hips away from yours. He lays on his back and releases the tension in his legs, allowing you to notice the V-shaped outline that runs between his pelvis and stomach. 

You position yourself on top of his lower half, straddling his pelvic bone and steadying yourself by gripping his hips. Jacaerys lets out a noise that reminds you of a dragon’s growl as you finally lower yourself onto his cock. The intrusion is sharp, causing you to wince as you attempt to take him. You remain still for a moment, then begin rocking your hips in order to slide down his length.

Jace watches without movement, although a smirk tugs at his face when he realizes how you are struggling. Leaning forward and placing your hands on his hardened chest, you are able to feel him fully inside of you. 

You set a slow pace, bouncing up and down on his cock and grinding your hips against his. The stretch is a considerable one, but any discomfort is quickly forgotten by the sound of your skin slapping against his. Carefully, Jace places his hands against your hips.

“Fuck, you are irresistable,” he mutters as you ride him. His face is tinged pink and the veins in his neck are pulsing. 

The tip of his cock enters you at an angle, stroking at a particularly sensitive spot inside of you that causes your entire lower half to quiver. You desperately try to seek out that same sensation, but struggle to do so. Jace immediately picks up on this, and begins to thrust into you. His pace is much faster than yours, and you find yourself quickly unable to keep up. Rather than allowing you to fall behind, Jace pushes himself forward and flips your positioning in one fluid movement. 

Your breath is caught in your throat for a moment as your head dangles from the bed. Jacaerys yanks your hips down lower, doing so without allowing his cock to slip from you. 

“Please, Jace!” You moan, and he responds by taking hold of your legs once more and lifting them into the air, pounding into you with a newfound fervor.

“Yeah? You love taking my cock, don’t you?” He teases, his voice gravely and thick. The only response you are able to give him is yet another whimper. He begins to suck viciously at your neck, surely leaving a mark that will begin to bloom and bruise come morning time.

Quickly, you reach your second peak of the night. Even more intense than the first had been, you scream Jace’s name and claw at his biceps as your core pulses and clenches. The smell of him has become even stronger, his sweat dripping onto your skin as he ravishes you.

Soon, his thrusts become sloppy and his breath comes in pants. Jace grips your thighs so hard that finger-tip shaped bruises begin to appear. He closes his eyes before cursing once and allowing his hips to stutter against yours.

Immediately, you feel the warmth of his seed inside of you. This takes you aback, as you had assumed that he would spill onto your stomach or sheets. You wait a moment, taking in the view of him enjoying his bliss before raising a rather important question.

“How is it that you have not sired a hundred bastards, if you do that?” You ask, as he withdraws his cock from you and his spend begins to trickle down your thighs. 

Jacaerys smiles at you, running a finger down your thigh and through the mess that he has created. Then, he takes your hand in his and gives it a squeeze.

“None of the others have ever taken my seed. You are family though, so why shouldn’t you?” 

“I will need to drink Moon Tea on the morrow,” you tell him, and he shrugs.

“If you wish, cousin.” He pauses for a moment, as if the thing he wishes to say next rests somewhere on the tip of his tongue. 

“In the meantime, want me to lick it out of you?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He caught the packet without looking up, showing off his reflexes, and let out a frustrated sigh. "I don’t need 'em," he mumbled, his voice dripping with that stubborn british charm. "The font is just microscopic today. Seriously, who the hell printed this?"

You leaned forward and rested your chin in your hands. "you’ve been squinting at that same paragraph for ten minutes. We have a massive emotional scene to shoot in twenty, and you're going to walk onto the set looking like you just stared directly into the sun"

He finally looked up, his dark eyes blinking rapidly as he tried to adjust his focus to you. A slow, sheepish grin broke across his face, the sharp, serious angles of his character instantly melting into the boy you had fallen completely head over heels for. "you're a menace, you know that? I’m trying to focus. Jace is supposed to be focused."

"Jace is also supposed to be able to see his love interest without tripping over a camera track" you teased, raising an eyebrow. "Seriously, where are they? In your trailer?"

"Yeah, safe in their case where they belong."

"You are actively messing your own vision, and for what? It’s not cute”

He protested, throwing a gummy back at you. "The glasses make me look like a schoolboy. I’m trying to give adult not 'please sir, I forgot my homework’”

You let out a soft laugh, the sound echoing in the high rafters of the soundstage. "Trust me" you said, dropping your voice as a crew member walked past carrying a massive C-stand. "The glasses are a massive bonus point. You're just denying the world greatness."

"We'll see about that," he murmured, his eyes lingering on yours with a warmth that had absolutely nothing to do with Jace and everything to do with Harry.

"Hey, we are ready for Harry and y/n on set" the first AD's voice boomed through the megaphone, cutting your moment short.

Harry stood up, brushing imaginary dust off his leather tunic, and offered you his hand with a reverence. You took it, letting him pull you up from the low chair, for a second, he didn't let go, his thumb rubbing a reassuring circle against the back of your hand.

"Ready to pretend you tolerate me for the cameras?" he whispered, a cheeky spark in his eyes.

"Always my prince” you smiled. "Just try not to squint at me during my close-up. It ruins the romantic tension" You tease him while caressing his cheek.

He let out a quiet laugh, letting your hand slip away as you both walked toward the brightly lit reconstructed courtyard.

The transition from the hectic, stressful environment of the set to your shared London flat was always a breath of fresh air. After months of living out of suitcases and hotel rooms, now having a space that was entirely yours, and his, was the ultimate comfort. It was a cozy, slightly chaotic apartment in North London, filled with mismatched furniture, piles of scripts, a growing collection of vinyl records and a kitchen that was currently being neglected in favor of takeout.

It was a rainy Sunday afternoon, the classic British weather beating a steady rhythm against the glass windows of your living room. You were curled up on the oversized sofa, buried under a mountain of knit blankets and reading a book but not paying much attention to it. Harry was sitting on the floor, his back rested against the front of the sofa, right between your knees. He was wearing a pair of faded gray sweatpants and a vintage band tee that you had definitely stolen from his closet more than once. Spread out on the coffee table in front of him were three different scripts for upcoming films his agent had sent over.

And once again, he was squinting.

"I am actually going to confiscate your eyes if you don't stop doing that" you said, reaching down to gently ruffle his messy brown curls.

"I'm not squinting" he lied instantly, his head tilting back to look up at you. From this angle, his face was framed perfectly by your knees, his dark eyes looking wide and innocent. "I'm digesting the text. It's a very advanced acting technique, you wouldn't understand" He said teasingly.

"Oh, is that what they call it now? 'digesting the text'? Because to me, it looks like you're trying to read a license plate from three kilometres away" You reached over to the side table, where his transparent-framed glasses were resting on top of a stack of books "put them on Harry, literally, what is the issue with them?”

"They're uncomfortable," he grumbled, though he didn't move away as you held them out to him.

"They are literally lightweight plastic, they weigh less than a single wig pin, stop being a baby"

Harry sighed, a dramatic suffering sound, and snatched them from your hand. "Fine, if my nose gets bruised, you're paying for the medical bills."

He unfolded the arms and slid them onto his face, adjusting the bridge with his index finger. He turned his head to look at you, his eyes a little magnified behind the clean lenses.

Your heart did a sudden, violent flip.

It was supposed to be a joke. You had spent weeks teasing him about the glasses, telling him he looked "cute”, like some niche movie boy next door. And he did, he looked incredibly adorable, the frames cutting through his usual sharp features and giving him this soft, boyish charm that made you want to squish his cheeks.

But as you looked at him right now, sitting in the dim, gray light of the rainy afternoon, something shifted.

The frames sat perfectly on his nose, highlighting the sharp, masculine line of his jaw and the dark, thick curve of his eyebrows. Through the glass, his eyes didn't look soft, instead they looked incredibly focused, dark, intense. It wasn't the look of a boy, no, it was the look of a man who knew exactly what he was doing.

A sudden, unexpected wave of heat rushed straight to your chest, settling low in your stomach. Your breath hitched, your fingers freezing in his hair. 

Oh, you thought, a sudden panic rising in your throat. Oh, fuck.

"What?" Harry asked, his voice dropping a register as he noticed the sudden change in your demeanor. He tilted his head, his eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that made your pulse skyrocket. "Why are you looking at me like that? Do I have something on my face?"

"No, no uhm..." you said, your voice sounding a little too breathy, a little too strained, you tried to pull your hand back from his hair, but your fingers felt heavy. "You're... you're fine."

Harry’s eyebrows pulled together behind the lenses. He didn't look away. Instead, he slowly rotated his body, shifting so he was kneeling on the floor between your legs, his hands resting on the cushions of the sofa on either side of your hips. The change in posture was sudden, his physical presence suddenly filling your entire field of vision.

"You've gone completely quiet, do you know how hard it is to shut you up?" he murmured, his dark eyes searching yours. The glasses slid down his nose just a fraction, and he looked at you over the top of the  frames "Are you alright, love?"

"Yeah," you whispered, swallowing hard. "Just-just… tired."

"Liar" he said softly. A slow, knowing smirk began to pull at the corner of his lips. He was too damn observant. Years of studying each other's micro-expressions on set meant he could read you like an open book. He saw the slight flush on your cheeks, the way your chest was rising and falling just a bit too fast, the way your eyes kept darting to his lips and then back to the frames of his glasses.

He leaned in a fraction closer, a faint, comforting scent of his clean skin and woody cologne wrapping around you. "You're acting weird. Is it the glasses?"

“No, no I told you, I think they're cute," you said, trying desperately to play it cool, to cling to the safe, playful dynamic you had spent the last two days establishing. "It's a wholesome look?" You said in a unppropriately unsure tone, your mouth working faster than your brain.

"Wholesome huh?" Harry repeated, his voice dropping into a low, raspy purr that sent a literal shiver down your spine. He leaned forward even more, his chest almost pressing against your knees, his face inches from yours. "Is that really what you're thinking right now love?"

"Harry-"

"Because you don't look like you're thinking about how 'wholesome' I am..." he whispered, his eyes dropping to your mouth before rising back to yours. He reached up, his long fingers wrapping around the side of his glasses, but instead of taking them off, he just adjusted them, pushing them firmly back up the bridge of his nose. The movement was incredibly deliberate, his eyes never leaving yours. "In fact, I may say you look a bit flustered"

Your mouth went completely dry. The agonizingly beautiful tension that had defined your entire relationship, was suddenly back, but this time it wasn't on a drafty soundstage with fifty crew members watching. It was in the quiet intimacy of your living room, completely unchecked.

You realized that you had made a massive tactical error. You had spent weeks begging him to wear them, thinking it would be a cute, domestic aesthetic. But seeing him like this, looking at you through those glasses was doing things to your sanity that you were completely unprepared for.

"I'm not flustered" you managed to say, moving your gaze and finding your ceiling to be the most interesting thing in the world, the squeak at the end of your sentence completely betrayed you tho.

Harry let out a low, breathy chuckle, the sound vibrating through the small space between you. He shifted his weight, his hands sliding from the sofa cushions to your waist, his fingers gripping your hips gently through the fabric of your sweatpants. The touch was warm and solid, grounding you even as your head spun.

"You are...” he murmured, his gaze dropping to your lips again. "your heart is beating incredibly fast I can see it."

"You can't see my heart Harry, it is biologically impossible"

"I can see your pulse in your neck" he countered, his voice incredibly soft, almost a tease. He leaned in, his lips brushing against the shell of your ear, his breath hot against your skin "and I can feel you shivering, so...tell me, do you still think they're just 'cute'?" His lips left a trace of kisses from the spot under your ear to your where your shoulder meets your neck.

You swallowed, your hands instinctively coming up to rest on his shoulders, holding onto him for support. The fabric of his t-shirt was soft under your palms, but the muscle beneath was tense and solid, you looked at him, taking in the sharp contrast of the glasses against his messy hair, the dark intensity of his eyes behind the lenses, the absolute confidence radiating off him.

"No..." you admitted, your voice barely a whisper. "I do not think they're cute."

Harry pulled back just enough to look you in the eyes, a slow grin spreading across his face, though his eyes remained heavy with a heat that made your knees weak. "No huh? what do you think they are, then?"

"I..." You took a shaky breath, your fingers tightening on his shoulders. "I think you look handsome" a small giggle escaped your lips "…and I think you know exactly what you're doing to me"

His grin widened, a soft, triumphant laugh escaping his lips. “Oh, maybe I do" he whispered, one of his hands sliding up your waist to cup your face, his thumb gently wiping across your cheekbone. The plastic of his glasses brushed lightly against your forehead as he leaned in, his focus entirely and completely consumed by you. 

"Maybe I like seeing you like this."

"Like what?"

"completely speechless" he murmured, his lips hovering mere millimeters from yours, "you're always so quick with your comebacks I quite like having the upper hand for once"

"Don't get cocky, Collett" you breathed, though you couldn't help but lean into his touch, your eyes partially closing as the anticipation reached a fever pitch.

"wouldn't dream of it" he whispered.

And then, he closed the distance.

The kiss was nothing like the gentle, sweet ones you shared when you were just waking up, or the playful ones you swapped between takes on set. It was deep, slow, and incredibly possessive, his lips moving against yours with a confident, lazy rhythm that left you completely undone. His hands slid into your hair, holding you close as he deepened the kiss, the slight edge of his glasses pressing against your cheek, a constant, electrifying reminder of exactly what had started this.

You gasped into his mouth, your hands moving from his shoulders to tangle in the soft curls at the back of his neck, pulling him closer, wanting to erase every single millimeter of distance between you. The rain continued to beat against the window, the world outside completely fading away until it was just the two of you, the warmth of the flat, and the electric fire that had finally, beautifully, consumed you both.

When he finally pulled back, both of you were breathless, your lips flushed and your chests rising and falling in sync. Harry rested his forehead against yours, his eyes closed as he took a deep, shaky breath. His glasses were slightly askew from the intensity of the kiss, but he didn't make any move to take them off.

"So" he whispered, a breathless, happy laugh in his voice. "I should... definitely wear them more often? yeah?”

"Yeah... I agree," you breathed, your hands resting against his chest, feeling the rapid, heavy beat of his heart. "but only in the house. If you wear them outside, I might actually have to fight off half of London"

Harry laughed, the sound warm and bright, and kissed your forehead gently, "deal" 

Harry’s chest rose and fell against yours, his hands still loosely draped around your waist, his thumbs lightly tracing comforting patterns over the soft cotton of your sweatpants. He didn't pull away, and honestly, you didn't want him to.

"You’re still staring love," he murmured, his voice a low, gravelly vibration against your forehead. He opened his eyes, those dark brown depths looking incredibly clear behind the transparent frames.

"I am not" you whispered, though your eyes instantly locked onto the way his dark eyelashes brushed against the top of the lenses.

"You literally are, your eyes are practically drilling holes into the plastic" He reached up, his long fingers catching the temple of his glasses to straighten them properly on his face. The casual, effortless motion made your stomach do another completely unwarranted backflip, "seriously, what is the vibe here? A minute ago you were laughing at me, and now you’re looking at me like I’m a three course meal"

"Well," you teased, sliding your hands down his shoulders to tap his chest, "I guess digesting the text takes a lot of physical energy"

"I’m starving actually" he admitted, his cheeks flushing pink, "we've been ignoring those scripts for hours, what are we thinking? Thai? Or should we risk the sketchy noodle place down the street?"

"Definitely the sketchy noodle place. I’ve been craving those greasy spring rolls all week"

"Unreal" Harry said, finally pushing himself up from the floor. 

As he walked over to the kitchen counter to grab his phone, you stayed sitting on the edge of the cushions, wrapped in your blanket cocoon, watching him.

He stood in the warm light of the kitchen, leaning against the counter with his phone in hand, scrolling through the delivery app, he was completely unaware of the effect he was having, his curls messy, his shoulders broad under the vintage tee, and those glasses resting perfectly on his face. He chewed slightly on his lower lip as he searched the menu, his eyes moving rapidly behind the lenses. It was a completely mundane, domestic scene. But right now to you, it was pure torture.

"Do you want the spicy beef noodles or the pad thai?" Harry called out, not looking up from his screen, "and don't say both, because I know you won't finish either of them and I'll end up eating your leftovers for breakfast"

"Spicy beef," you managed to say, your voice slightly tight, "and... maybe some extra spring rolls."

"Standard" he murmured. He finalized the order, tossing his phone onto the counter. Instead of coming straight back, he poured two glasses of water, grabbing them and turning around.

He caught you staring. Again (ups).

A slow, dangerous smirk spread across his face. He walked back to the living room, his steps slow and deliberate, the ice clinking softly in the glasses. He set the water down on the coffee table and then stood right in front of you, towering over you slightly as you sat on the low couch.

"Alright, out with it" he said, folding his arms across his chest, the action pulled his t-shirt tight against his shoulders. 

You pulled your eyes back from his chest just enough to glare up at him, though the effect was completely ruined by the breathless smile tugging at your lips, "you’re literally so smug, it’s actually painful, I created a fucking monster"

"You did" he agreed easily, his eyes crinkling at the corners, he tilted his head, looking down at you through those transparent frames, "but you’ve gotta admit, the monster is kind of eating this look up"

"Honestly, the glasses need to go back in their case, your head is getting too big for this flat"

"Oh, is it?" Harry’s smirk softened into something much more dangerous, he slid his hands from your cheek down to the side of your neck, his thumbs resting right under your jaw, tilting your head up, "I don't think you actually want me to take them off, In fact, I think you're holding onto my shirt like your life depends on it"

You looked down and realized your fingers were indeed tightly fisted in the worn fabric of his vintage tee, when you looked back up, he already moved to lay in front of you in the couch as his eyes were locked onto your mouth, the playful banter died in an instant, replaced by that magnetic pull that always made the rest of the world completely fade to black.

"Harry..." you breathed.

"Yeah?" he murmured, his voice dropping into a low, raspy register that made your stomach do gymnastics.

"less talking"

He let out a soft, pleased hum, and then he closed the tiny distance between you, this time, there was no hesitation, the moment his lips met yours a quiet gasp escaped you, which he immediately drank in. He shifted his weight, pulling you fully onto his lap so you were straddling his thighs, his hands gripping your waist to secure you against him as you tangled your fingers in his soft curls, pulling him closer, completely drunk on the warmth of him and the intoxicating scent of his cologne.

The kiss was deep and slow, a perfect lazy Sunday kind of heat. He tasted like the sweet tea he'd been drinking earlier, his lips soft but demanding as they moved against yours in a rhythm that made your head spin, every time you thought you’d caught your breath, he’d tilt his head, deepening the kiss and sending a fresh wave of electricity straight down your spine.

As you pulled him closer, the edge of his transparent frames pressed gently against your temple, the physical sensation, the cool plastic against your skin while his lips were so incredibly warm.

If the previous kiss had been a lazy Sunday drift, this one was a category 5 hurricane. It was pure, unadulterated passion, the kind of heavy, desperate kissing that made your head spin and your knees instantly give out. You let out a soft sigh into the kiss, your hands sliding down his neck to grip his shoulders, Harry groaned quietly, his hands sliding up under the hem of your oversized t-shirt, his palms warm and slightly calloused against the bare skin of your waist and lower back, his thumbs traced slow, dizzying circles there, pulling you so flush against his chest that you could feel the rapid, heavy thudding of his heart matching yours beat for beat.

He pulled back for a fraction of a second, just enough to catch his breath, his lips brushing against yours as he spoke "still think it's... just a cute look?" he whispered, his voice incredibly thick and breathless.

"I think you need to shut up" you murmured, pulling him right back down.

He complied instantly, his mouth catching yours with a sudden, possessive hunger that made your toes curl, he nipped gently at your lower lip, making a soft shiver run through you, before soothing the spot with his tongue, It was the perfect, dizzying blur of comfort and desire.

You were so lost in the feeling of his hands on your waist and his mouth on yours that you almost didn't hear the sharp, rhythmic buzz of his phone on the kitchen counter.

Harry ignored it at first, his lips sliding down your jawline to press a string of warm, lingering kisses right under your ear, making you gasp and cling to his shoulders. But then, the intercom by the front door let out a loud, buzzing ring, completely shattering the silence of the flat.

Both of you froze.

Harry rested his forehead against the side of your neck, his chest heaving as he let out a long, frustrated sigh. His glasses were completely askew now, sitting crookedly on the bridge of his nose.

"the sketchy noodles" you whispered, your voice sounding incredibly raspy and dazed.

“Fuck…” he groaned “literally the worst timing in human history" as a breathless laugh escaped his lips. He reached up, finally taking the glasses off to rub his eyes, before sliding them back on and straightening them. He looked down at you, his eyes still dark and heavy, a soft, fond smile playing on his lips, "you look completely wrecked love, It's a very good look on you."

"Oh shut up," you laughed, burying your face in his neck to hide your flushed cheeks, "go get the food before the delivery guy leaves"

"Only if you promise not to move an inch from this exact spot" he said, giving your waist a gentle squeeze before you slid off his lap.

"I couldn't move even if I wanted to" you admitted honestly, "my knees are literal jelly"

Harry’s grin was absolutely triumphant as he stood up, adjusting his shirt. "That's what I like to hear", he turned and headed toward the door, throwing one last wink over his shoulder, the transparent frames catching the dim light of the hallway, "don't go anywhere”

“He’s my son.” Maekar says rubbing looking down at the cooing babe in his arms, the little boy holding his father’s finger in his little hand.

“He’s mine too.” You laugh, not minding that he’s stolen your baby from you. Happy he loves his children so much, him not always able to show it.

“You got to carry him for nine moons, let me hold him now.” Maekar say turning away from you as if you were going to steal the babe of him. You just wanting to kiss him.

“But-.”

“I’m sure the older boys would love some time with their mother.” He tells you, him having been working all day and unable to be with your sons.

“Would they now?” You ask raising an eyebrow at your husband. Daeron and Aerion both sleeping as it’s late. You having just read Daeron back to sleep. You giving your husband a look. “Stop sniffing him.”

“I’ve missed having a newborn.” Maekar muses swaying slightly with the boy, while kissing his forehead. “You’re already more well behaved than your brothers.”

“Maekar.” You say sternly giving him a look. “It’s time for bed.”

“Wife.” He teases a smirk apart in his face, him at his happiest with you and the children, a newborn babe in his arms.

“You get so mushy when we have a baby.” You say rolling your eyes while you get ready for bed. Letting him cuddle Aemon for a while longer, the babe needing to actually sleep in his crib for a change.

“I love you.” Maekar whispers to you later while you cuddle in bed, your head resting on his chest while he holds you close to him. All the children sleeping in their beds.

“I love you too.” You say kissing his chest softly. Tired but also wanting to spent time with just Maekar.

“Can we have more?” He asks quietly as if saying it any louder would scare the idea away.

“Isn’t three enough?” You ask, happy with any amount of children you have.

“Just a few more?” He whispers kissing the top of your head, already picturing a future with more children.

“We’ll see.”

“Thank you.” He says softly, loving you and the children more than anything in the world.

“What for?” You ask in genuine confusion, not knowing what you’ve done to warrant being thanked.

He does not startle. He just turns his head, a slow, lazy smile breaking across his handsome face. It is the kind of smile he reserves only for you, one that completely erases the hard, serious line of his jaw and makes him look like the boy he is when the weight of a massive ranching empire is not resting on his shoulders.

"Is that right? mhm?" Jace tosses the halter onto a nearby peg and steps toward you, his boots clicking softly against the concrete floor of the barn. He is wearing his favorite faded flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows to reveal forearms corded with muscle from years of hard labor. "Maybe I am just waiting for someone to come drag me away from my chores."

"I highly doubt your mother would approve of me enabling your laziness, property heir" you tease, stepping into his space.

Jace reaches out, his large, calloused hands finding your waist with practiced ease. He pulls you gently against him, the scent of leather, cedarwood, and clean sweat wrapping around you like a familiar blanket. "My mother knows I work harder than anyone else on this property. Besides, Aegon is probably passed out in a ditch somewhere near the county line and Aemond is busy playing corporate soldier. I think I have earned a break".

The rivalry between the two halves of the family has been suffocating lately. Since Viserys passed away, the corporate board meetings for the family conglomerate had devolved into a war of words. The Hightower faction was doing everything they could to delegitimize Rhaenyra’s claim to the presidency, and by extension, Jace’s own future. They whispered in the town diners, in the livestock auction houses, and in the boardrooms in Houston, spitting that ugly, old rumor that Jace and his brothers did not have a drop of true Velaryon blood in them, pointing instead to the late Harwin Strong, the family’s former head of security.

But looking into Jace’s dark brown eyes, none of those boardroom battles matter. He leans down, taking off his hat and resting his forehead against yours, his breath warm against your lips. "Tell me you brought the horses, please" he murmurs in a pleading tone, his thumb tracing a slow circle against your hip.

"They are already saddled," you whisper back, leaning up to press a quick, sweet kiss to his lips. "Though I had to convince luke not to follow us. He wanted to show you some new rope trick he learned"

Jace chuckles, a low, rumbling sound in his chest. "I will deal with luke later. Right now, I just want you."

You lead the way out to the hitching post where your horse, a gentle buckskin mare, and Vermax (my poor baby) Jace’s spirited dun gelding, are waiting patiently. Jace checks the cinches with a practiced eye, his movements smooth and confident. He has lived on horseback since he could walk a true product of the rugged town his grandfather built from the ground up.

"You look exceptionally beautiful today by the way," Jace says casually as he adjusts your stirrup leather. He looks up at you through his dark eyelashes, a playful glint in his eyes. "just thought you should know before we head out."

"Are you trying to use your sweet talk with me, Jacaerys?" you ask, climbing into the saddle.

"Always" he says, vaulting onto Vermax with effortless grace. He settles into the leather saddle, checking his reins. "but it also happens to be the harsh truth."

You shake your head, trying to hide the blush warming your cheeks, and urge your horse forward. Jace falls in beside you, his horse stepping out with a proud trot.

You ride past the primary paddocks and out toward the open range. The air is warm and thick with the scent of dry prairie grass and wild sage. The sky above is a vast, uninterrupted canopy of brilliant blue, typical of a summer afternoon.

"How are things really going with the family?" you ask quietly, keeping your eyes on the trail ahead. You know how much the pressure has been eating at him, even if he tries to hide it behind quick grins and sweet talk.

Jace sighs, his shoulders dropping a fraction. "Otto is trying to freeze our assets. He is claiming there is an ambiguity in my grandfather’s will regarding the distribution of the northern acreage, the high country pastures. He wants to hand them over to aegon, even though he could not tell the difference between a Hereford and an Angus if his life depended on it."

"And your mom? How is she?" Rhaenyra had been like a second mother to you and watching the situation slowly consume them tore you apart.

"She is fighting..." Jace says, his voice hardening with a quiet pride. "...she will not let them steal her birthright. And neither will I. I spent all yesterday morning going over the land deeds from thirty years ago. There is no ambiguity dear. My grandfather wanted this ranch to remain whole, under her management. But Alicent is whispering in the ears of the local sheriff and the county commissioners. It is an absolute mess."

You reach across the space between your horses, offering him your hand. Jace takes it immediately, his grip strong and reassuring.

"They are also starting up the rumors again" he adds, his voice dropping to a low, bitter register as he murmured against your interlaced fingers. "they told me that Aemond had the nerve to make a comment at the livestock auction last tuesday. Said something about how strong the calves were looking this year, looking right at me while he said it. I almost jumped the fence to tear his head off."

Your heart aches for him. You know how deeply those whispers cut, even if he carries himself with the dignity of a king. "he is just trying to get under your skin jace. He knows you are twice the man, he will ever be. You dont need to prove your blood to anyone"

Jace looks at you, his expression softening dramatically. The tension leaves his jaw, replaced by a quiet gratitude. He raises your hand to his lips, kissing the back of your knuckles gently. "what did I do to deserve you?"

"You got very lucky," you tease, though your eyes are shining.

"The luckiest man alive," he agrees, letting go of your hand only to urge Vermax into a light lope. "Come on, last to reach the pond (? idk the word) pays dinner!"

"Not fair cheater!" you yell, squeezing your calves against your mare’s sides urging him to speed up.

The wind whips through your hair as the horses kick up dust behind them. The rhythm of the hooves beating against the earth is a comforting, steady song. You watch Jace ahead of you, his body moving in perfect synchronization with Vermax. He looks completely free out here, away from the corporate lawyers, the whispering townspeople, and the heavy mantle of his family name. He turns back to look at you, his laughter carrying over the rush of the wind, pure and untroubled.

You round the bend where the trail narrows, descending into a lush, shaded valley. The temperature drops instantly as you enter the canopy of ancient cypress and pecan trees. In here the dry heat of the open range is replaced by the cool, damp breath of the river.

The horses slow to a walk, their breathing heavy but relaxed. Ahead, the river gleams like a ribbon of silver. It is like a private oasis, tucked away in a deep bend of the property that few people ever visit. The water is deep, fed by a natural spring, and bordered by smooth, flat limestone rocks.

Jace dismounts first, tossing Vermax’s reins over a low branch. He walks over to your horse, offering you his hands to help you down.

"Need some assistance, ma'am?" he asks, his voice dropping into a playful drawl.

"I think I can manage," you say, but you slide down into his arms anyway.

He catches you easily, holding you suspended against his chest for a second longer than necessary. His dark eyes trace the features of your face, full of a quiet intensity that always makes your breath hitch. "You could manage, mhm sure," he murmurs, his lips hovering just inches from yours. "but where is the fun in that?"

"You are incredibly distracting, you know that?"

"That is entirely the point my love" He kisses you then, a slow, deep, bruising kiss that tastes of sweet sun and wild air. His hands slide up your back, anchoring you to him as if he is trying to memorize the very shape of you. When he finally pulls back, his eyes are dark and heavy-lidded.

"Come on" Jace says, his voice a little husky. "lets get in the water before the sun starts to set"

He leads the horses down to a shaded spot where they can graze on the lush river grass, untacking them quickly. You watch him as he works, admiring the broad expanse of his shoulders and the easy confidence in his movements. Jace has always carried himself with a quiet authority, a trait he inherited from both his mother and the man who raised him, laenor. No matter what the Hightowers say, Jace is a Velaryon through and through, loyal to a fault, fiercely protective, and deeply tied to his land.

By the time he walks back to the water’s edge, he has already kicked off his boots and shed his socks. He starts unbuttoning his shirt, his eyes never leaving yours.

"Are you just going to stand there and watch, or are you going to join me?" he asks, a slow, devastating smirk spreading across his lips as he tosses his shirt onto a flat rock.

"I am observing the local wildlife," you reply, crossing your arms with a grin.

Jace laughs, a bright, genuine sound. "Oh is that so? And what is your analysis of the local wildlife?"

"Highly unpredictable, mmm extremely cocky..." you say, kicking off your own boots. "...but overall, quite handsome."

"I'll take it" Jace says. He unbuckles his belt and steps out of his jeans, leaving him in just his dark boxer briefs. He wades into the cool water, his sun-bronzed skin contrasting beautifully with the clear green of the river. He shivers slightly as the water reaches his waist. "Damn, it is cold today."

"Man up, Velaryon" you tease, shedding your own outer layers and stepping onto the smooth stones at the water’s edge. The cool water lapping at your ankles sends a pleasant shiver up your spine.

"Oh, is that a challenge?" Jace asks, his eyes flashing with mischief.

Before you can answer, he lunges forward, grabbing you around the waist and pulling you into the deep water with him. You scream with laughter as you plunge beneath the surface, the shocking cold of the river enveloping you both.

You surface gasping for air, shaking the water from your hair. "Jace! You jerk!" you scream slapping his chest playfully.

He rises up beside you, his dark hair slicked back from his face, water droplets clinging to his eyelashes and collarbones. He is laughing hysterically, his arms wrapping around you to pull you close against his chest. "I had to make sure you got the full experience"

"You are terrible" you say, though you are smiling so hard your cheeks hurt. You wrap your arms around his neck, letting your body float against his. The feeling of the water makes you feel weightless, and the cold is quickly forgotten as Jace’s warmth radiates into you.

"I am the best thing that ever happened to you, and you know it" he whispers, his hands settling on your lower back. He guides you toward a shallower section of the pool, where a flat, submerged ledge allows you both to sit comfortably with the water reaching your chests.

The river is quiet, except for the gentle babble of the current and the occasional call of a mockingbird in the trees above. The dappled sunlight filters through the leaves, creating moving patterns of gold and shadow across Jace’s face.

He reaches up, his thumb gently wiping away a stray droplet of water from your cheek. His playful demeanor softens into something incredibly tender. "but being completely serious now, I do not know what I would do out here without you. Lately, it feels like everyone is waiting for me to slip up. Aegon is just waiting to call me a fraud. Aemond wants to start a physical fight every time we cross paths, and the board... fucks sake, they look at me like I am some kind of charity case."

"Jace" you say softly as you took his face in your hands. His skin is cool from the water, but his eyes are burning with a quiet vulnerability. "you are not a fraud and you have worked this land since you were a boy. You know every acre, every cow, every stream....you belong here more than any of them."

He closes his eyes for a moment, leaning into the touch of your hands. "Sometimes I feel like I am fighting a losing battle. They have the banks on their side, god they even have the corporate lawyers"

"And you have the truth, You have the legacy, and you have me..." you say firmly. "we are going to fight them, Jace, If they want a war for this ranch, we will give them one, but they will not take what is yours"

Jace opens his eyes, a soft, beautiful smile gracing his lips. The heavy shadow of his doubts seems to lift, replaced by the fierce determination that makes him who he is. "You are too good for me" he whispers.

"I know" you say, a playful spark returning to your voice. "But I decided to keep you anyway"

He laughs, a low, contented sound and leans forward to press his lips to yours. This kiss is different, it is slow, lingering, and filled with a deep promise. His hands slide up your ribs, his touch sending a different kind of warmth through your veins. You part your lips letting him taste you fully, the gentle current of the river swirling around your bodies.

You shift closer, draping your legs over his lap as you sit on the submerged ledge. Jace groans softly against your mouth, his hands tightening on your waist, pulling you flush against his chest. The contrast between the cool water and the heat of his skin is intoxicating.

"I love you..." he murmurs against your neck, his lips tracing a path down to your collarbone. "...so much more than this ranch"

"I love you too Jace," you whisper, closing your eyes and losing yourself in the sensation of his hands, his lips, and the quiet security of his embrace.

For a long time, you stay like that, suspended in your own private world. The troubles of the Targaryen and Velaryon succession, the threats from the Hightowers, and the whispers of the town feel a million miles away. Here, in the shelter of the cypress trees and the cool embrace of the river, there is only Jace and you. As the sun begins to slide lower in the western sky, painting the clouds in shades of soft apricot and bruised purple. The light hitting the water turns the river into a shimmering sheet of amber, casting long, dramatic shadows across the limestone banks. You lean your head against Jace’s shoulder, listening to the steady, reassuring beat of his heart. His arm is draped over your shoulders, keeping you anchored against him as the cool evening breeze begins to stir the leaves above.

"We should probably get back," Jace says softly, though he does not make any move to stand up. Instead, he pulls you a fraction closer, pressing a warm kiss into your wet hair. "If we are not back by dark, my mother is going to send a search party, and Daemon will never let me live down the fact that I got lost on our own land"

"daemon would probably join us just to drink a beer and complain about the weather" you laugh, tilting your head up to look at him.

"True enough" Jace admits, a genuine smile lighting up his face. He reluctantly shifts, helping you stand up from the submerged ledge. The cool air hits your wet skin, making you shiver instantly. Jace notices immediately and quickly guides you out of the water and back onto the smooth, warm limestone rocks.

He grabs his discarded flannel shirt and wraps it around your shoulders, the thick fabric still retaining his warmth. "There, better?"

"Much better" you say, pulling the collar tight around yourself, inhaling the rich scent of cedarwood, leather and him. "What about you?"

Jace just shrugs, his chest and shoulders gleaming in the fading sunlight. "I am fine. A little cold never hurt a real cowboy."

"Oh, please," you roll your eyes playfully, though your heart swells at the sight of him. He is so utterly handsome, so completely comfortable in his own skin when it is just the two of you.

Together, you gather your clothes, dressing quickly but lazily. Jace helps you pull on your boots, kneeling in the grass before you with a focused, gentle expression that makes you want to melt. When he finishes, he stands up and offers his hand, pulling you to your feet and right into his chest once more for a lingering, sweet kiss.

"Thank you," he whispers against your lips. "for today. I really needed this, needed you."

"Anytime cowboy" you reply, squeezing his hands.

He smiles, then turns to lead the horses over. Vermax nudges Jace’s shoulder with his nose, demanding attention, and Jace obliges with a soft chuckle, scratching the horse behind the ears. He helps you mount your mare before swinging himself easily into his own saddle.

As you guide the horses back up the winding trail, leaving the river behind, the first stars begin to blink into existence in the darkening blue sky. The world is quiet, peaceful, and solid beneath your horses’ hooves. Jace rides close beside you, his stirrup occasionally brushing against yours.

You look over at him, his profile silhouetted against the dying light of the sunset. He looks calm now, the heavy burden of his family’s legacy finally resting easier on his young shoulders. He looks like a man ready to face whatever storms the Hightowers might bring to their borders. And as long as you are riding beside him, you know there is nothing you cannot face together.

The road ahead is long, filled with corporate disputes and family battles, but you both ride onward in silence, letting the quiet strength of the land wash over you. The cool air of the evening begins to take hold, carrying the scent of pine and damp earth from the valley behind. Every step your horses take brings you closer to the ranch house, where the bright porch lights are already twinkling in the distance like welcoming beacons.

Jace looks over at you, reaching out to clasp your hand one last time before you reach the main gates. His hand is warm, his grip firm and steady. "We are gonna make it" he says, more to himself than to you, but the conviction in his voice is undeniable. You nod, squeezing his hand in return, knowing that whatever tomorrow brings you will meet it side by side.

Luke was the first to spot you. He was perched on the top rail of the corral fence, lazily spinning a loop of lariat rope. When he saw the two of you ride in, his face lit up, and he hopped down jogging over to meet you.

"You guys took forever" Luke said, though there was no real heat in it. He looked up at Jace, a mischievous grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Mom was about to send daemon out on the ATV. He was already complaining about having to turn off the game"

"Tell him I saved him the trouble" Jace replied, his voice slipping effortlessly back into his protective, older brother tone, though his hand lingered on your thigh for a brief, reassuring second before he dismounted. He swung down from Vermax, his boots hitting the gravel with a solid thud. "And what about that new rope trick? Mhm? You better not have been practicing on the barn cats again."

Until that moment, everything had been going exactly according to your publicist’s carefully curated, perfectly sanitized plan. You had already gracefully pulled out your favorite luxury lip balm (accompanied by a brief storytime about how it was the only thing that saved your lips during night shoots in Scotland), a heavily annotated copy of 'The Song of Achilles' (sorry I couldn't help it) you claimed to be re-reading for "inspiration," and a thrifted pair of vintage sunglasses. You explained the backstory of each item with a practiced, media-trained charm, navigating the interview with the precise level of warmth that kept audiences feeling included while keeping your actual private life firmly behind locked doors. You were doing a flawless performance of yourself. Then, your fingers brushed against something small and metallic resting at the very bottom of the bag’s silk lining, hidden beneath a stray pack of gum and a handful of loose hair ties.

Without entirely thinking about the consequences, your muscle memory took over. Your fingers closed around the familiar, cool contours of the object, and you fished it out before your internal censor could flag the risk.

You placed it gently onto the marble coffee table, the metallic clink echoing slightly in the quiet studio as the close-up B-roll lens immediately adjusted its focus to capture the detail. It was a crafted, vintage-style silver cardholder. The sterling silver was slightly tarnished around the hinges from daily use, giving it a beautifully lived-in character that contrasted sharply with the rest of the items currently in the table. A highly detailed, custom floral engraving entirely covered the front, swirling in delicate patterns that caught the studio lights. If one looked closely enough, the vines spiraled around two subtly interlocking, abstract initials integrated into the woodwork.

“And then I have this,” you said, a soft, incredibly fond smile slipping past your carefully constructed media guard before you could consciously catch and suppress it. You traced the cool lines of the engraving with your thumb, your eyes softening in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with standard brand promotion or the professional charisma you had deployed seconds earlier. “It’s a custom silver cardholder. A very dear friend gave it to me about a year ago, right before we started filming the new season, and it’s just become my little lucky charm. I never leave the house without it. It holds my life together, basically.”

The off-camera interviewer, tracking the palpable shift in your demeanor, cooed appreciatively. “It’s absolutely stunning. Is there a specific story behind that beautiful gift?”

You blinked, a sudden prickle of heat hitting the back of your neck as your media training kicked back into gear. You realized you were lingering a bit too long on the sentimentality of the object, and that the publicist in the shadows was likely checking her watch. Quickly pulling your hand back from the table, you offered a smooth and practiced deflective laugh. “Oh, it's just a local artisan in London, I believe,” you lied smoothly, your voice regaining its bright, professional cadence. “It was just a lovely bit of craftsmanship. I’m quite a sucker for small business” You quickly pivoted, reaching back into the bag for item number seven, a travel-sized bottle of perfume and finished the remaining ten minutes of the shoot without another hitch. When you left the studio that afternoon, you felt entirely confident that you had kept the details perfectly vague, safely wrapped in the anonymous, completely unassailable blanket of "a dear friend."

Exactly three weeks later, the sequel to your video dropped on British Vogue’s YouTube channel. Because the magazine’s digital marketing team loved capitalizing on the cast's onscreen chemistry to drive engagement, Harry had been booked to shoot his own “In The Bag” segment in the exact same East London studio, sitting on the exact same plush velvet sofa, staring into the exact same cameras.

You happened to watch the video from your own couch on a quiet Thursday afternoon, nothing like supporting your coworker (no one believes you girl). It was a rainy day, and you were wrapped in a blanket with a hot cup of tea in hand, entirely unprepared for the absolute, spectacular demolition of your privacy that was about to occur on screen. Harry was effortlessly charming from the opening frame. He joked easily with the audio technicians and began pulling out an assortment of thoroughly uncurated items, a tangled pair of old wired headphones you wouldn't catch him with a pair of big headphones outside a dj table, a heavily wrinkled shooting script with coffee stains on the cover, and a massive ring of keys.

But at the exact five minute mark, the casual trajectory of the interview broke. Harry reached deep into the small front pocket of his bag, his hand searching for something specific. He pulled out a small, pal-sized object and set it down onto the marble table with the exact same definitive clink your cardholder had made twenty one days prior. Your breath caught completely in your throat. Your tea was instantly forgotten, the mug resting precariously on your knee as you leaned closer to the screen "Oh fuck" you murmured.

It was a custom leather wallet, beautifully crafted from a rich, deep mahogany hide that had darkened and patinated with age. But it wasn’t just a standard piece of leather goods, no. Stitched seamlessly into the bottom right corner of the wallet was a sterling-silver accent piece. It featured the exact same intricate, swirling floral engraving as your cardholder.

The pattern was identical, same delicate baroque vine work, clearly done by the exact same hand. Even through a laptop screen, it was blindingly obvious that if the two pieces were placed side-by-side, the abstract metal initials on his wallet would flawlessly mirror and complete the interlocking pattern on your silver case. It was, without a single shadow of a doubt, the matching half of a highly specific, custom set.

“This is my wallet,” Harry said to the camera. His tone was entirely casual, but you noticed the subtle tell, his index finger was nervously tapping against the edge of the table in a rapid, rhythmic pattern you knew meant he was holding back a secret or trying to steady his nerves. “I actually got it about a year ago. It’s custom made by this brilliant little boutique in Soho. I’m quite sentimental about it, actually. It just... keeps me grounded, I suppose, when we're traveling so much for press and I miss home...”

The interviewer, possessing a razor-sharp memory and clearly recalling your video from prior, paused the momentum of the interview entirely. The off-camera voice returned, sharp with immediate recognition. “That engraving looks incredibly familiar, Harry. In fact, it looks almost identical to a piece we saw on this very table recently. Does it match y/n cardholder by chance?”

On screen, Harry froze for a fraction of a second, he knew he messed up. It was a micro-expression, clenching his jaw, a sudden stillness in his shoulders, before his eyes darted instinctively off-camera toward his publicist in a sudden, visible wave of absolute panic.

His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed hard, trying to process how a routine fashion segment had suddenly turned into an interrogation. Then, he forced a loud defensive laugh that fooled absolutely no one who had watched him act for four years. “Oh, really? Wow. Small world, isn't it?” he said, his voice a pitch higher than normal as he rubbed the back of his neck. “London’s a massive city, but I suppose good design travels fast. Must just be a popular place around here maybe?.” There was no way he was getting out of this one.

He might as well have confessed to a secret relationship on national television. The internet didn’t just notice the glaring similarity between the two items, they launched a full-scale, digital investigation within minutes of the video going live on YouTube. The fandom, armed with high-definition screenshots treated the two Vogue videos like pieces of classified evidence of a murder.

By Friday morning, only twenty four hours after the video dropped, the speculation had completely bypassed the boundaries of standard celebrity shipping. It had become a masterclass in digital forensics.

A viral thread on twitter analysed both videos in a matter of hours. The opening post contained side-by-side, high definition screenshots of your silver cardholder and Harry’s leather wallet, zoomed in to the maximum resolution. Further down the thread, an online graphic designer had taken the two images, isolated the metal engravings, stripped away the background textures of tthe leather and silver, and digitally aligned them on screen in a looping clip.

The animation demonstrated how the abstract, swirling lines of the floral borders easily interlocked, and how the negative space between the two patterns formed your first initial and his. It was undeniable proof that the two pieces were made together from a single piece of silver.

But the final blow, the absolute, undeniable gun that made any future PR denials completely useless came from a dumb TikTok. A fan who happened to collect independent British heritage goods managed to identify the highly specific style of the floral engraving. They recognized it as a signature technique of a tiny, fiercely private silversmith and leather boutique hidden away in the labyrinth of cobblestone back alleys in Soho. It was a shop with no website and a reputation for working strictly by appointment for local clientele.

Three days after Harry’s video aired, the elderly artisan himself, thoroughly bewildered by a sudden influx of thousands of digital notifications, emails, and direct messages, posted a video on his boutique’s official TikTok account. The video was unedited and raw, filmed by his apprentice. The old artisan stood in his workshop, surrounded by the rich scents of tanned leather, polishing oil, and old wood. Heavy magnification glasses were pushed up onto his wrinkled forehead, and he addressed the camera with a warm grandfatherly smile, entirely unaware of the internet culture storm he was about to seal shut.

“Hello to the lovely internet community that has been messaging my shop over the weekend,” the old artisan said, gesturing to his cluttered workbench behind him. “Yes, I can confirm that I hand-engraved those two specific pieces. About a year ago, a lovely man actor came into my shop entirely by himself. He spent nearly three hours with me right here at this bench, sketching out a blueprint for interlocking initials because he told me he wanted a specific, deeply private gift for his costar before they went away to film on location for months. He was very particular about the silver matching perfectly. I had no idea they would end up on Vogue!”

The artisan’s video gained five million views overnight, acting as the definitive confirmation the internet had been waiting for. Your personal phone became an unreadable, lagging blur of haptic vibrations. The group chat with your fellow castmates was a chaotic stream of capital letters, inside jokes, and screenshots of the viral metrics.

Simultaneously, your inbox was filling up with frantic, flagged emails from your management team and publicists, who were currently trying to draft a strategy for a situation that had completely evolved past their control.

The narrative was no longer owned by the studio or the PR firm. It belonged entirely to the internet.

The top comment on the official British Vogue YouTube video, pinned by the channel’s editors to maximize their engagement, captured the exposed reality of the situation perfectly.

You rose from the bed and went to him. You wrapped your arms around him from behind, pressing your cheek against the warm skin of his back. "She is trying to protect you. You nearly died, Jace. Everyone saw it. Everyone knows it."

"I know." His voice was tight. "I know, and I understand, but that does not make it easier. I am her heir. I should be at her side. I should be helping her rule, helping her plan, helping her win this war. Instead, I am stuck here, with no dragon, no army, no way to..."

He stopped. You felt the tension in his muscles shift, his body going still.

"Jace?"

"I need a dragon," he muttered. "Without Vermax, I am…diminished. Less than I was. Less than I need to be. My mother has six dragons at her command now, but none of them are mine. I cannot lead armies on horseback. I cannot inspire fear in our enemies or loyalty in our allies. I am a dragonrider without a dragon, and it is driving me mad."

You tightened your arms around him. "I know. I know what it is to lose a dragon. I feel it every day. I miss the sky. I miss the wind. I miss the weight of her beneath me, the sound of her heartbeat, the way she would turn her head to look at me with those great golden eyes." Your voice caught. "She died for me. She carried me all the way from Rook's Rest with Vhagar's flesh still in her claws, and she died on the beach because she would not stop until she got me to safety."

Jace turned in your arms, his hands coming up to cup your face. "I know," he said softly. "I know, my love. And I swear to you, when this war is over, we will avenge her. We will avenge Vermax. We will make Aemond Targaryen pay for every dragon he has killed, every life he has taken, every tear you have shed."

He kissed you fiercely, tenderly, and when he pulled back, there was a new light in his eyes. A familiar light. The same fire that had burned there since the night you brought him back.

"Do you remember what I told you about the Gullet?" he asked. "After I woke? I told my mother about Rhaena. About how she claimed Sheepstealer."

You nodded slowly. Rhaenyra had been furious when she heard, she had proclaimed it a disastrous mistake and sent a search party after her stepdaughter. But Jace had been different. Jace had been impressed.

"She claimed a wild dragon," Jace said. "A dragon that had never been ridden, never been tamed, never bent to human will. And she did it alone. If Rhaena can do it, why can't I?"

Your heart began to beat faster. "What are you saying?"

Jace's hands dropped from your face to your shoulders, gripping you. "There are wild dragons on Dragonstone. Unclaimed dragons, living right here on this island, while we sit in this castle and lament our wingless state. Cannibal. Greyghost. They've been here for decades, centuries in Cannibal's case. And no one has ever claimed them."

"Because they're wild," your voice rose. "Because Cannibal eats other dragons. Because Greyghost is so elusive that most people have never even seen him. Because every fool who has ever tried to tame them has ended up dead, their bones littering the Dragonmont."

"Then they were the wrong kind of fool." Jace's eyes were blazing now, the fire in them so bright it was almost blinding. "I am a Targaryen. I am the heir to the Iron Throne. I have died and come back, and I am not afraid of a dragon, no matter how wild or ancient or deadly. I will claim one of them. I will have a dragon again, or I will die trying."

"Jace..."

"I cannot sit here and do nothing," he cut in frustrated. "I cannot spend the rest of this war waiting and hoping and praying that my mother will summon me. I need to act. I need to fly. I need to be able to fight for what is mine. Do you understand? Do you understand what it feels like to be grounded while your enemies soar?"

You understood. You understood better than anyone. Every day since your dragon had died, you had felt the absence like a missing limb. The sky called to you, and you could not answer. The wind sang, and you could not join the chorus. You were a Targaryen without a dragon, and it was a half-life, a shadow-existence, a constant, gnawing ache that nothing could ease.

But that did not mean you were willing to watch your husband get himself killed.

"Even if you could claim one of them," you said, trying to keep your voice calm, "how would you do it? Cannibal's lair is halfway up the Dragonmont. Greyghost is never seen in the same place twice. The terrain is treacherous, the dragons are dangerous, and if anyone finds out what you're planning, they'll lock you in your chambers and throw away the key."

Jace smiled, and it was a sharp, reckless, beautiful thing. "Then we won't tell anyone."

"We?"

"I'm not leaving you behind." His hands slid down your arms, his fingers intertwining with yours. "You want to fly again as much as I do. You want to feel the wind beneath you and the fire above you. And if I'm going to be fool enough to try to claim a wild dragon, I want you with me. I need you with me. You're my luck. My magic. My heart."

You stared at him, torn between terror and exhilaration. "This is madness."

"Probably," he agreed. "Will you come with me anyway?"

You should have said no. You should have argued, pleaded, threatened. You should have written to Daemon, though Daemon, you suspected, would only be amused by the whole endeavor. But looking into Jace's eyes, seeing the fire there, the desperate, burning need, you found that you could not deny him. You could never deny him. Not when he looked at you like that. Not when he needed you.

"Yes," you said. "I'll come with you."

The preparations took two days. Two days of secret planning, stolen supplies, whispered conversations in the dead of night. Jace threw himself into the task, researching the wild dragons thoroughly.

Greyghost, according to the old records, was a pale grey-white dragon, the color of morning mist over the sea. He was shy and elusive, rarely seen by the inhabitants of Dragonstone, and he had never been known to attack humans unless provoked. He fed primarily on fish, hunting in the waters around the island, and he avoided the other dragons whenever possible. He was, by all accounts, the safer of the two wild dragons, if any dragon could be called safe.

Cannibal was another matter entirely. He was coal-black, with scales so dark they seemed to swallow light, and his eyes were a menacing green that glowed in the darkness of his lair. He was the largest and oldest of the wild dragons, so ancient that some legends claimed he had lived on Dragonstone even before the Targaryens arrived. He had earned his name because he fed on dead dragons, hatchlings, and eggs. His lair was littered with the bones of the fools who had tried to tame him. He had never been ridden. He had never been claimed. He was, by all accounts, untameable.

"We'll start with Greyghost," Jace decided, spreading a map of the Dragonmont across your bed. "He's less likely to kill us on sight. We'll bring fish, fresh fish, still flopping if we can manage it. The records say he's more likely to approach if he's offered food."

"What of Cannibal?"

Jace's expression flickered. "Cannibal will be more difficult. He eats dragons, not fish. But I have an idea." He looked at you. "Your dragon. Her body is still on the beach, isn't it?"

You nodded slowly. "No one has had time to move her. She's too large for a crypt, and a funeral pyre for a dragon…" You trailed off, understanding dawning. "You want to use her flesh."

"Not her flesh," Jace said quickly, seeing the distress in your eyes. "The flesh she took from Vhagar. You said she clawed Vhagar during the battle. You said she carried a strip of Vhagar's flesh back to Dragonstone on her claws. If we can extract it, if we can preserve it somehow… Cannibal eats dragons. He's never tasted Vhagar before. It might be enough to get his attention."

You thought about it. The idea of approaching your dragon's corpse, of cutting into her claws to retrieve the flesh of the beast that had killed her, was deeply unsettling. But it was also fitting, in a way. Your dragon had died fighting Vhagar. Perhaps her last act could help you and Jace claim new dragons and continue the fight she had given her life for.

"There's more," Jace said. "Cannibal might not go for Vhagar's flesh right away. He's ancient and cunning, and he'll be suspicious. So I'm bringing other food too. Chicken. Crabs. The old texts say that's the closest taste to dragon meat that isn't actually dragon. If he won't take Vhagar's flesh, maybe he'll take that."

"You've thought of everything," you said with a note of reluctant admiration in your voice.

"I've had nothing but time to think," Jace replied. "Time, and a burning need to be in the sky again."

The following day, you dressed in riding leathers: practical, warm, easy to move in, and met Jace in the stables, where he had already hitched a pair of horses to a covered wagon. The wagon was laden with supplies: buckets of fresh fish, their scales still gleaming; a covered basket of raw chicken and crabs; and a separate, carefully wrapped package that you knew contained Vhagar's flesh, extracted from your dragon's claws the night before under cover of darkness.

"You're sure about this?" you asked, mounting your horse.

Jace swung into the saddle beside you, his expression set with determination. "I've never been more sure of anything."

The ride to the Dragonmont was long and treacherous. The volcano loomed in the distance, its peak wreathed in smoke and ash, and the road grew steeper and rockier the closer you got. The horses began to grow uneasy as you approached the mountain's base, their ears flattening, their eyes rolling. By the time you reached the lower slopes, they were trembling and snorting, refusing to take another step.

"Damn," Jace muttered, dismounting. "We'll have to go on foot from here."

You tied the horses to a sturdy tree, well away from the mountain, and began to unload the supplies. The fish went into a large sack that Jace slung over his shoulder. The chicken and crabs went into another. The package of Vhagar's flesh, still cold from the ice you'd packed it in, went into a leather satchel that Jace kept close to his body. Then you began to climb.

The Dragonmont was a harsh, unforgiving place. The ground was loose and rocky, treacherous underfoot, and the air grew hotter and thicker the higher you climbed. Steam vented from cracks in the earth, carrying the sulfurous stench of the volcano's heart. You could feel the mountain's presence, ancient and watchful, as if the stone itself was aware of your intrusion.

"We're looking for Greyghost first," Jace said, his voice low. "The records say he favors the eastern slopes, near the sea cliffs. He likes to hunt fish in the waters below."

You climbed for another hour, picking your way carefully across the jagged terrain. The sun rose higher, burning off the morning mist, and the day grew warm despite the overcast sky. Your legs ached. So did your spine. You were beginning to think you would never find the dragon when Jace suddenly stopped, his hand shooting out to grip your arm.

"There," he breathed.

You followed his gaze. Ahead, perched on a rocky outcropping overlooking the sea, was a dragon. He was beautiful, pale grey-white, exactly as the records had described, his scales shimmering like mother-of-pearl in the filtered sunlight. He was smaller than the Targaryen dragons you had known, lean and graceful, with a long neck and a delicate head that was currently turned toward the sea, watching the waves below.

Greyghost.

"Stay behind me," Jace murmured, but you shook your head.

"No. Let me approach him first."

Jace frowned. "Why you?"

"He's shy. The records say he avoids humans. But he might be more willing to approach a woman. And I…" You hesitated, then pressed on. "I've been without a dragon for so long. Let me try."

Jace looked at you for a long moment, and then he nodded. "Be careful."

You took the sack of fish from him and began to walk slowly toward the dragon. Greyghost's head turned at the sound of your footsteps, his pale eyes fixing on you with wary curiosity. He did not flee, but he did not approach either. He simply watched, his body tense, ready to take flight at any moment.

"Rytsas, gevie," you said softly, your voice barely above a whisper. "Hello, beautiful one. I'm not going to hurt you. I've brought you something."

You reached into the sack and pulled out a fish, still fresh and gleaming. You held it out toward the dragon, your arm extended, your body language as non-threatening as you could make it. Greyghost's nostrils flared, scenting the fish, and his head tilted slightly. But he did not move.

"Lykirī," you crooned, taking a step closer. "It's all right. I know you're frightened. I know you've been alone for a long time. So have I. I lost my dragon. She died saving my life. And I've been empty ever since. I think you might understand that."

Greyghost made a soft sound, a low, throaty warble that was not quite a growl and not quite a purr. He took a tentative step toward you, his claws scraping against the rock.

"That's it," you said. "Naejot māzīs. Come on. It's just fish. You like fish, don't you?"

Another step. Then another. Greyghost was close enough now that you could see the individual scales on his snout, the faint steam that curled from his nostrils. He was beautiful.

You tossed the fish toward him. He caught it in mid-air, his jaws snapping shut with a crunch, and swallowed it in a single gulp. His eyes fixed on you again, and this time there was less wariness in them. More curiosity.

"Good boy," you said, and threw another fish.

You spent the next hour feeding Greyghost, tossing fish after fish toward the pale dragon and murmuring soft words of encouragement. He never came close enough to touch, but he stopped flinching when you moved, stopped tensing when you spoke. He even allowed Jace to come closer, though he eyed the prince with obvious suspicion, a low rumble building in his chest whenever Jace moved too quickly.

"He doesn't like me," Jace observed, his voice carefully neutral.

"Give him time." you replied.

But time was something you did not have in abundance. The sun was beginning its descent toward the horizon, and you had not yet attempted to find Cannibal. Jace's frustration was palpable, a tension in his shoulders that grew more pronounced with every passing hour.

"He's not going to come down the mountain," Jace sighed finally. "He's too afraid. Of me, maybe. Or of Cannibal. Greyghost has survived this long by being cautious. He's not going to risk getting close to a human when Cannibal might be lurking nearby."

"So what do we do?"

Jace's jaw tightened. "We split up. You stay here with Greyghost. Keep feeding him. Keep building his trust. I'll go find Cannibal."

Your heart lurched. "No. Absolutely not. Cannibal is too dangerous. You said it yourself, his lair is littered with the bones of the men who tried to tame him. I won't let you go alone."

"You can't stop me." Jace's voice was gentle but firm. "This is something I have to do. I have to try. If I don't, I'll spend the rest of my life wondering what might have been. I won't live with that regret. Not when I've already been given a second chance at life."

"Jace..."

"I'll be careful," he promised, taking your face in his hands. "I'll be careful, and I'll come back. I swear it. I didn't survive the Gullet and your blood magic just to get eaten by a wild dragon on Dragonstone. That would be a very stupid way to die, and I refuse to be that stupid."

He kissed you, hard and quick, and before you could argue further, he was gone, descending the rocky slope with the satchel of Vhagar's flesh and the basket of chicken and crabs slung over his shoulder.

You watched him go, your heart in your throat. Then you turned back to Greyghost and threw another fish.

The hours that followed were among the longest of your life. You stayed with Greyghost, feeding him the last of the fish and speaking to him in a low, soothing voice, but your mind was elsewhere. Every gust of wind, every rumble of the volcano, every distant cry of a seabird made you flinch, your eyes scanning the slopes for any sign of Jace.

Greyghost seemed to sense your unease. He grew restless, his pale eyes darting toward the mountain's interior, his wings twitching as if he wanted to flee. You realized, with a sinking heart, that he was afraid of Cannibal. Even here, on the far side of the Dragonmont, he could sense the older dragon's presence.

"Lykirī," you told him, though your voice shook. "It's all right. He won't hurt you. I won't let him."

But you didn't know if that was a promise you could keep.

The sun sank lower, painting the sky in shades of gold and crimson. The shadows lengthened, and the temperature began to drop, and still Jace did not return. You were beginning to panic, your mind conjuring images of Jace lying broken on the rocks, Jace consumed by black fire, Jace's bones joining the others in Cannibal's lair...

A roar split the air.

It was unlike anything you had ever heard. Deep, ancient, terrible, a sound that seemed to shake the very foundations of the mountain. Greyghost shrieked in response, his wings spreading, his body tensing to flee. You threw yourself at him, grabbing on, holding on with all your strength.

"Daor!" you shouted. "Lykirī! No, don't go! Please, don't go!"

Greyghost thrashed, his head swinging toward you, his jaws open. For one heart-stopping moment, you thought he was going to incinerate you. But then his eyes met yours, and something shifted in them. Recognition. Understanding. He did not burn you. He did not flee. But he trembled beneath your touch, his whole body quivering with fear.

The roar faded, echoing across the mountain. And then, silence.

You waited, your heart pounding, your hands still gripping Greyghost's spine. The silence stretched on for what felt like hours. The sun sank below the horizon, and the stars began to emerge, cold and distant overhead. And then, finally, you heard footsteps on the rocks below.

Jace emerged from the darkness, and the sight of him made your breath catch. His hair was matted with sweat and ash, his skin was covered in soot, and his eyes were wild, blazing with a fire that seemed almost supernatural. But he was unharmed. No burns, no bites, no broken bones. He was whole, and he was alive, and he was walking toward you with a strange, fierce smile on his face.

"I found him," he said, his voice rough and raw. "I found Cannibal."

You released Greyghost and ran to him, throwing your arms around his neck. He caught you, his soot-stained hands gripping your waist, and buried his face in your hair.

"Don't ever do that to me again," you gasped. "Don't ever leave me like that again. I thought you were dead. I thought..."

"I'm not dead." He pulled back, cupping your face in his hands. "I'm not dead. I found him. His lair is deep in the mountain, a cavern full of bones and ash. He's massive, larger than any dragon I've ever seen except Vhagar. And he was hungry."

"What happened?"

Jace's smile widened into a feral one. "I gave him Vhagar's flesh first. He ate it in a single bite. Then I offered him the chicken and the crabs, but he refused them. He just…watched me. For hours. Waiting. I thought he was going to kill me. But I stayed. I didn't run. I didn't flinch. And eventually, he got hungry enough to eat what I offered. He hasn't had much to feed on."

"He let you near him?"

"No." Jace shook his head. "Not yet. He took the food, but he wouldn't let me get close. He's not like Greyghost. He's not shy or curious or gentle. He's a predator. He's death with wings. But he knows me now. He knows my scent. And I will go back tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, until he lets me ride him."

Greyghost shrieked again, a high, piercing sound. Jace turned toward the pale dragon, and Greyghost backed away, his wings spreading, his eyes fixed on Jace with obvious fear.

"He smells Cannibal on me," Jace said. "He wants to be away from me."

"Then let him be away." You stepped toward Greyghost, your hand extended. "kostilus, gevie. I'll take you somewhere safe. Away from the big, scary man who smells like death."

Greyghost's pale eyes fixed on you. He was still trembling, still poised to flee, but his gaze that gave you hope. Trust. He trusted you.

You walked toward him slowly, your hand still extended, and this time, he did not back away. He let you touch his snout, his scales warm and smooth beneath your palm. He let you run your hand along his neck, feeling the powerful muscles beneath the pale hide. And when you swung yourself onto his back, he did not throw you off.

"Sōves," you whispered to him. "Kostilus. Just for a little while. I've been grounded for so long."

Greyghost's wings spread. He launched himself from the cliff with a single powerful leap, and then you were flying, the wind screaming past your ears, the sea glittering far below, the stars wheeling overhead. You laughed, a wild, exultant sound, and tears streamed from your eyes, torn away by the wind.

It was not the same as flying your own dragon. It would never be the same. But it was flight. It was the sky. It was freedom. For the first time since Rook's Rest, you felt whole.

Greyghost carried you over the sea, over the black sand beaches, over the smoking peak of the Dragonmont. He flew until his fear of Cannibal's scent faded, until the joy of the flight overtook his caution. But eventually, he descended, landing on sand on the far side of the island. You slid from his back, and he looked at you for a long moment. Then he spread his wings and flew away, vanishing into the night.

"He'll come back," Jace said when you told him, his voice certain. "You've bonded with him. He knows you now. He'll come back."

He was right.

Each morning, before the sun rose, you and Jace would slip out of the castle and make your way to the Dragonmont. You would find Greyghost on the eastern slopes, waiting for you with his pale eyes and his gentle warble, and you would feed him fish, stroke his snout and whisper to him in High Valyrian. And each day, he let you mount him, let you fly with him, let you become more and more a part of his world.

Jace went to Cannibal. Every day, he climbed into the heart of the mountain, carrying offerings of meat. Every day, he sat in the darkness of Cannibal's lair, surrounded by bones, and waited. The coal-black dragon did not trust him, did not let him approach, but he stopped growling when Jace entered. He stopped baring his teeth. He began to watch Jace with something that was not quite curiosity and not quite recognition, but was closer to both than it had been before.

"He's testing me," Jace said one night, his body still streaked with soot, his eyes still blazing with that wild light. "He wants to see if I'm worthy. If I'm strong enough. If I'll break."

"Will you?"

"No." Jace's voice was iron. "I won't break. I can't break. I've already died once. What does a dragon's temper matter after that?"

The days became a week. The week became two. You and Jace grew stronger, your bodies hardened by the daily climbs up the Dragonmont, your bond with each other deepened by the shared secret. You learned Greyghost's moods, his preferences. You learned the sound of his approach, the rhythm of his wingbeats, the meaning of his various warbles and growls.

You learned about Cannibal, too. Jace told you everything, the size of him, the color of his scales, the way his green eyes glowed in the darkness of his lair. He told you about the bones that littered the cavern floor, the skulls of men and dragons alike, the evidence of centuries of predation. He told you about the way Cannibal would sometimes stretch his massive jaws in a yawn that revealed rows of teeth as long as swords. He told you about the heat of the dragon's breath, the sulfurous stench of his lair, the way the ground trembled when he shifted his weight.

"He's magnificent," Jace said with genuine awe in his voice. "He's terrible and beautiful and utterly, completely wild. He has never bent to anyone. Never. In all the centuries he's lived, no one has ever ridden him. No one has ever even tried and lived to tell about it."

"Except you."

"Except me." Jace smiled, and it was that same unsettling smile that you had come to love and fear in equal measure. "I think he's starting to respect me. Just a little but enough."

He brought a whip, at first, as was tradition for those who sought to tame a dragon. But Cannibal was so large, his scales so thick and tough, that you doubted the whip registered as anything more than a firm pat. The dragon barely seemed to notice when Jace cracked it against his hide. He only turned his great head and fixed Jace with those terrible green eyes, as if to say, Is that all you have, little man?

But Jace did not give up. He brought meat every day. He spoke to Cannibal in High Valyrian, tried to teach him, using the same commands that the dragonlords of old had used to bind their mounts. Dohaerās. Serve. Māzīs. Come. Lykirī. Calm.

At first, Cannibal ignored him. Then he began to tolerate him. He would eat the food Jace brought, snapping it out of the air with his massive jaws, but he would not let Jace touch him. He would not let him approach.

Jace was different with Cannibal than he was with you. You watched him during those long days on the mountain, and you saw a side of him you had never seen before. He was firm. Assertive. Unyielding. He did not plead with the dragon or cajole him or try to win him over with gentleness. He commanded. He demanded. He stood his ground even when Cannibal roared and snapped and breathed plumes of smoke that could have cooked him alive.

"I am your rider," Jacaerys would tell the dragon, his voice ringing with absolute certainty.

The difficulty, you soon discovered, was not in bonding with your respective dragons. It was in getting them to tolerate each other.

Greyghost was terrified of Cannibal. Every time Jace returned from the inner mountain carrying the older dragon's scent, Greyghost would shriek and flee, and it would take you hours to coax him back. And Cannibal, for his part, viewed Greyghost as prey. More than once, Jace reported that Cannibal had stirred and growled when Greyghost's scent drifted into his lair, his green eyes fixing on the distant presence of the smaller dragon with predatory interest.

"This isn't going to work," you said one evening, frustrated and exhausted. "If they can't be near each other, we can't fly together. We can't fight together. We'll be two dragonriders who can never be in the same place at the same time."

Jace was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, "We need to introduce them slowly. Carefully. In a way that makes Cannibal understand that Greyghost is not prey."

"And how do we do that?"

"I don't know yet." Jace's brow furrowed. "But I'll think of something."

The breakthrough came from an unexpected direction.

Jace had always been affectionate with you, that was nothing new. But as the days on the Dragonmont wore on, his affection became more demonstrative. He would find a sheltered spot on the mountainside, a nook of warm rock protected from the wind, and he would make a nest for you there. He would gather soft moss and dry grass, arrange it carefully, and then guide you to sit, wrapping his cloak around your shoulders and pressing food into your hands. He would feed you with his own fingers, brushing crumbs from your lips, his eyes soft and warm. He would pull you into his lap and hold you, his chin resting on your shoulder, his arms wrapped around your waist.

It was during one of these moments that you noticed Cannibal watching.

The coal-black dragon had crept closer to the edge of his territory, drawn perhaps by the scent of the food or the sound of Jace's voice. His green eyes were fixed on the two of you, unblinking. But he was not growling. He was not baring his teeth. He was simply watching.

"Cannibal sees how I treat you," Jace murmured in your ear, his voice low and thoughtful. "He sees that you are important to me. He sees that I protect you, feed you, care for you. He's never seen that before. He's only ever seen humans as threats or prey."

You looked up at the black dragon, your heart pounding. "Do you think he understands?"

"I think he's starting to." Jace pressed a kiss to your temple. "And if he understands that you are an extension of me, that you are part of my...territory, my pack, whatever he thinks we are…then maybe he can understand that Greyghost is an extension of you."

It was a wild theory, a desperate hope. But it was the only one you had.

The next day, you brought Greyghost closer to Cannibal's territory. Not all the way in because that would have been suicide, but close enough that the pale dragon's scent would carry. Greyghost was nervous, his wings twitching, his eyes darting toward the mountain's interior, but you soothed him with fish and soft words and gentle touches.

Jace went to Cannibal as usual, carrying his offerings of meat. But this time, instead of simply feeding the black dragon, he made a point of being affectionate with you in Cannibal's line of sight. He brought you into the outer edges of Cannibal's territory, sat you down on a warm rock, and proceeded to feed you dried fruit and bread from his satchel. He wrapped his arms around you, kissed your hair, murmured endearments in High Valyrian. And all the while, Cannibal watched.

The black dragon's green eyes moved from Jace to you to the distant, pale shape of Greyghost on the ridge above. He did not growl. He did not attack. He simply observed.

"It's working," Jace breathed. "Look at him. He's trying to understand. He's never had to think about these things before. He's never had to consider that another creature might be important to someone he's starting to…tolerate."

"Tolerate?" You couldn't help the laugh that escaped you. "Is that what you call it?"

"It's progress." Jace grinned. "A week ago, he was trying to eat me. Now he just glares. That's practically an invitation."

The days passed, and the progress continued. Cannibal stopped growling when Greyghost's scent reached him. Greyghost stopped fleeing whenever Jace approached. The two dragons never came face to face, that would have been too much, too fast, but they learned to exist in proximity to each other, separated by ridges and cliffs and the careful management of their riders.

You were sitting in Jace's nest, your back against his chest, Greyghost dozing on a ledge above you. Jace had just fed Cannibal his daily offering, and the black dragon was lying at the entrance to his lair, his massive head resting on his foreclaws, his green eyes half-lidded. The sun was setting, painting the sky in shades of fire and blood.

"Cannibal has accepted me," Jace said quietly. "I think he accepted me days ago, and I just didn't realize it. He lets me touch him now. Just barely. Just a hand on his snout, for a moment. But he lets me."

"Are you ready to ride him?"

Jace was silent for a long moment. "Almost. He's still wild. He still doesn't fully trust me. But he will. I know he will."

"And then what?"

"Then we fly." Jace's arms tightened around you. "We fly, and we fight, and we win. All four of us together."

Part 4: coming soon... Sneak peak/Chapter 4 summary: Rhaenyra and Daemon are beside themselves once they learn what Jace and his wife have done. Since Greyghost is smaller and can blend into clouds and cliffs like a chameleon, he and his rider are sent to scout the Riverlands, check on Daemon's remaining forces and scour for Aemond and Vhagar, since no one had seen them in days. Aemond, recovered from the stab wound thanks to Alys, now under her influence, mounts Vhagar and burns Riverlands, trying to draw out Daemon. He encounters Greyghost instead, the rider being the girl he had loved as a boy and fought as a man. Having intended to take her as a trophy and make her his wife at Rook's Rest, he is not too pleased to find her riding a new dragon. Or to learn that she brought her betrothed back to life and married him.

a/n: Comment if you'd like to be added to this series' taglist.

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You were currently hiding behind camera two, crouched next to a stack of extra mayonnaise tubs. Sarah, your lead publicist was standing right beside you, tapping her foot with a rhythm that suggested she was on the verge of a cardiac event. "Keep him on script," she had whispered before the cameras rolled. "This is a comedy show. Do not let him turn it into a soft-launch"

Amelia slowly reached into the box, picked up a single chip, dipped it into a tiny tub of sweet chili sauce, and chewed with agonizing slowness.

"So," Amelia finally said, her deadpan British monotone cutting through the hum of the takeaway. "Harry."

"Amelia," Harry replied, offering his most award winning smile. "Lovely to be here."

"Don't do that," Amelia said flatly.

Harry blinked, his smile faltering slightly. "Do what?"

"The...thing with your face. The dimples. It’s a lot." Amelia shifted her gaze down to her notes. "So you’re an actor, you play Jacaerys Velaryon in HBO, right?."

"I do, yeah."

“So you ride dragons."

"Yes."

"Do you find that riding a dragon gives you a sense of power that you lack in your everyday life? For example... when you’re being managed by women."

Behind the camera, you snorted softly. Harry’s ears instantly turned a spectacular, unmistakable shade of deep pink. He let out a nervous chuckle, adjusting his collar. “I- uh…well, I wouldn't say I'm managed by women" he let an awkward laugh escape. "I just have a very...efficient support system."

"You do a lot of romantic scenes."

"A fair few, I suppose."

"Do you find that pretending to be in love with people is easy, or are you just incredibly deceptive as a person?"

Harry let out a nervous, high-pitched chuckle, adjusting his collar as his ears instantly turned a faint shade of pink. "I wouldn't say deceptive It’s just... you kind of build a connection with your scene partner. It’s about trust honestly.”

"Trust mhm," Amelia repeated, her voice dripping with profound skepticism. "I've seen the bts footage from the official page"

"Oh, sweet mother of Jesus" Harry muttered, burying his face in his hands for a brief second before recovering. "Which footage?"

"The ones where you look like a Victorian orphan who has just been handed a warm bowl of soup whenever y/n enters the room." Amelia leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand. "The internet says you’re obsessed. Are you obsessed Collett?”

"I’m not obsessed?" Harry protested, his voice cracking slightly as a massive, helpless grin broke through his defenses. He glanced instinctively toward your corner behind the camera, his eyes locking onto yours for a fraction of a second before he caught himself and looked back at Amelia. "We're just... we have a very close working relationship. We're the best of friends”

“Mhm friends, yeah… Im gonna act like a believe that” Amelia said. She picked up a chicken nugget and pointed it at him like a weapon. "I’ve seen how you look at her in interviews. If a man doesn't look at me like he’s trying to memorize my facial structure for a marble bust, then I don't want him" Harry completely disintegrated in his chair, he threw his head back, letting out a mortified laugh. The crimson flush traveled all the way down his neck. “Oh come on” He groaned “I’m just a very expressive person, thats all, I literally act with my face”

"You're an expressive person for one specific individual," Amelia noted, entirely unfazed by his panic. She took a bite of the nugget, chewed, and slowly swallowed. "If in whatever circumstance you had to choose between y/n and a lifetime supply of free chicken, who are you choosing?"

Harry didn't even hesitate. A brilliant, incredibly wicked smirk took over his face, the exact look that usually signaled he was about to drive his PR team completely insane.

"The chicken is great, you know..." Harry murmured, his voice dropping into a low, completely sincere, and entirely unguarded register as he looked directly into the lens. "But…well, who am I gonna film the romantic scenes with then” Behind the camera, your publicist let out a low, physical groan and covered her face with her hands. You bit your lip, your heart doing a strange, fluttering flip in your chest as Harry’s smile softened, entirely giving up on the media-trained lie.

Amelia stared at him for three agonizing seconds of silence. Then, she looked directly into the main camera with an expression of utter, clinical disappointment.

"Well," Amelia said flatly. "That was incredibly sickening. This date is over."

"Can I keep the chips?" Harry asked hopefully.

"No," Amelia said, sliding the box away from him. "Go find your co-star Collett”

-------------------

The heavy oak door of your flat clicked shut, sealing out the damp London evening and the lingering static of the studio lot. In your kitchen, the atmosphere was thick with the comforting, smell of garlic bread and cherry tomatoes bubbling away on the stove. You stood by the counter, quietly adding the rich sauce over a bowl of fresh pasta, finally relaxed. As Harry appeared into the warm light of the kitchen, having already shed his tailored jacket in the hallway. He was just in his soft white t-shirt, his dark curls slightly damp and uncombed. He closed the distance between you with slow, quiet steps, sliding his arms gently around your waist from behind.

He then leaned down, burying his face into the crook of your neck with a long, heavy sigh, releasing all the lingering tension of the media circus right out of him.

"I thought we’d never get back here," Harry murmured, his voice a low, muffled rumble against your skin. His hands rested flat against your stomach, his thumbs tracing slow, familiar circles through the fabric of your (his) shirt.

“I must ask... is pretending to be in love with me easy, or are you just an incredibly deceptive person?"

Harry buried his face in your neck, a helpless chuckle escaping him as his ears flared up to that brilliant shade of crimson all over again. "Oh dear god, please tell me you’re not going to quote the entire interview while we eat."

You leaned back into his chest giggling, letting the wooden spoon rest against the edge of the pot. A small, affectionate smile tugged at your lips. "You did great,” you said softly, giggling as you tilted your head slightly. "Even if you did completely terrify our publicist."

Harry let out a soft, boyish chuckle, his grip tightening just a fraction as he held you closer against him. "She was staring dead into my soul. I forgot the script within thirty seconds." He paused, his chin resting comfortably on your shoulder as he watched the steam rise from the pasta. "Did I really sound that unhinged when she asked about the chicken?"

"Well," you murmured, turning around in his embrace so you were facing him, completely forgetting the pasta behind you, your hands coming to rest flat against his chest. You looked up at him, a tiny, playful glint in your eyes. "You did basically tell millions of people that a lifetime supply of free food wasn't worth losing your favorite scene partner.” You said making air quotes with your fingers. “I think Sarah was praying for a sudden power outage, I literally saw her soul leave her body.”

Harry’s ears instantly flared with a faint, familiar shade of pink, but a soft, dimpled smile broke through his mock offense. "I was under immense pressure. The woman didn't blink love, not a single time in four minutes” He sounded genuinely shocked.

"Mhm," you teased gently, your thumb brushing against the fabric of his shirt. "So it had nothing to do with the fact that you look like a Victorian orphan every time I walk on set?" Harry let out a quiet, breathless laugh, his head dropping into your neck for a second before he looked back down at you, his eyes incredibly soft, filled with a domestic warmth that belonged only to this flat and you two. He lifted one hand, his thumb gently smoothing over your cheekbone, his touch light and reverent.

"Alright, maybe a little bit" he whispered, his voice dropping into that private register he reserved just for you, entirely giving up the joke. "They can edit the interview however they want to make it funny. But there isn't a single situation in which I wouldn't choose this, cooking dinner with you... it’s literally only part of the day that does not feel scripted”

Your heart did a quiet, steady flip, the last bits of playfulness melting away into pure domesticity. You reached up, cupping the side of his jaw and caressing his freckled his cheek with your thumb. "I know," you murmured softly. "I would choose this too.” Harry’s smile softened into something breathtakingly sweet. He leaned down, closing the remaining inch between you to press a slow, deep kiss to your lips, one that tasted faintly of the sweet tomato sauce long forgotten in the stove and felt entirely like home. When he pulled back, his forehead lingered against yours for a quiet beat, his breathing synchronized with your own, a glint in his eyes showing all he didn’t say.

"Right then..." Harry whispered, a tiny smirk returning to his lips as his hands slid down to rest on your hips. He leaned back just enough to look at you, his eyes softening with a playful shine. "Before the pasta gets completely cold... we” kiss “should” kiss “devour it” another kiss  “...damn, almost revealing to the whole internet that we've been dating for over a year has me starving." You couldn’t help but left a loud laugh escape your mouth. “Idiot” you murmured.

I honestly did not know how to turn Amelias interview into something related to a reader but this is the best I could do, hope y'all enjoy it!!

The bathroom mirror is still fogged at the edges from the shower you took an hour ago, the whole apartment smells like the vanilla body oil you dabbed into your collarbones and the burnt-sugar candle Jace keeps on his dresser because he thinks it makes the place feel less like some dungeon and more like home. Rain taps against the window in that soft, uneven rhythm, and somewhere down on the street a taxi lays on its horn for three long seconds before giving up. The bass from the apartment below thumps faintly through the floorboards, someone's pregame already in full swing.

You're in front of the floor length mirror leaned against his closet door, tilting your chin, checking your lipstick, rolling a strand of hair between two fingers because you can't decide if you want to leave it down or twist it up. The dress. God, the dress. From the front it's demure, a soft slate satin that skims your front and drapes clean at the thigh, the neckline looked innocent and modest. It looked like something you'd wear to your aunt's wedding but that's the trick of it though. That's why you spent forty-seven dollars on it during a two AM TikTok haze last Tuesday.

Behind you, Jace is sprawled across his unmade bed in gray sweatpants and a white tee that's been through the wash so many times it's practically translucent at the hem. His phone is angled above his face, the blue glow catching on the sharp bridge of his nose and the messy dark curls that fall across his forehead. His feet are crossed at the ankles and he’s laughing at something, a low huff of a sound, you can hear the tiny audio of some Reels compilation.

"Sof said she's already at the bar," you tell him, thumbing through your phone in the mirror's reflection. "She got the corner booth."

"Mm." He doesn't look up. "Which bar?"

"That new one downtown. The one with the disco ball in the bathroom."

"Sounds like a fire hazard."

"You sound like your mom."

"Rude." He scrolls. "My mom's cool."

You laugh, sweeping bronzer along the high point of your cheek, and shift your weight from one side to the other. The satin whispers against your thighs. You've been waiting, actually, for him to look up. You've been arranging yourself in his peripheral vision for the last ten minutes and he's been oblivious in that specifically annoying boyfriend way, and it's starting to feel almost insulting. You bought this dress to tease him. You'd like the courtesy of being noticed back.

You set the bronzer down and pivot on your heel. Turning your back to the mirror to check the drape of the fabric across your ass, one hand smoothing over your hip.

You hear it before you see it. A sharp inhale. Then, a choked half sound that dies in his throat followed by the soft slap of a phone hitting a chest.

You glance over your shoulder into the mirror. Jace has propped himself up on his elbows, mouth open, eyes so wide you can see the whites all the way around his brown irises. His curls are sticking up in six directions from where he'd been running his hand through them. His phone is face down on his sternum, forgotten.

"What?" you ask, and you can't keep the grin out of it.

"What the fuck."

"What?"

"Turn around."

"I am turned around."

"No, turn, come here, turn all the way." He sits up so fast the mattress creaks. "Have you seen the back of that dress?"

You laugh, pressing your tongue to the inside of your cheek, and rotate slowly on the ball of your foot until you're facing him. "Well, yeah. I bought it."

"Sweets." His voice cracks on the second syllable. He looks genuinely aggrieved, like you've handed him bad news at a hospital. "Love, no."

The back of the dress is the joke. From nape to just above the swell of your ass there is nothing. No fabric. No zipper. A few delicate strap knots and chains at the small of your back and that's the entire architectural principle keeping the front on your body. The dip of your spine is on full display, the two soft dimples at the base, the smooth stretch of skin from your shoulder blades down. You spent twenty minutes with a jade roller earlier making sure the whole canvas of your back looked like glass.

Jace swings his legs off the bed and stands abruptly. He crosses the room in three strides and stops just behind you, close enough that you can feel the heat of him but not touching, and his reflection in the mirror looks stricken.

"No," he says again, quieter.

"Yes."

"You cannot leave this apartment."

"I can and I will."

"I wouldn't mind if I was there." His fingertips ghost the small of your back, not landing, just hovering, like the skin might burn him. "Like, if I was going with you, sure, whatever, wear it, look like this, be a menace, I'll fight everyone in the bar. But alone?" His voice pitches up. "You want to go alone? Downtown? In this?"

"Sof will be there. And Jessie. And probably Serena if her flight lands."

"None of them have upper body strength."

"Jace."

"I'm being serious."

You reach up and gather your hair, twisting it into a loose knot at the crown of your head. The motion pulls the dress tighter across your ribs and you watch him watch it in the mirror. His throat bobs. You slide a claw clip out from between your teeth and snap it into place, and then you tilt your head, satisfied, and reach for your mascara.

"Change," he says. Weakly.

"Nope."

He's still standing behind you. You catch his reflection and the way his mouth has gone tight, the way his eyes are doing that flicker thing where he's thinking, calculating, cooking something up. His hands are loose at his sides. His shoulders are set and he's got the same look on his face he gets when he's playing chess against his brother Luke and he's about to do something petty.

You're about to ask him what he's thinking when he drops.

Just, drops, straight to his knees behind you with a soft thud on the hardwood, hands coming up to cup the sides of your waist like he's steadying a vase.

"Jace- what are you-" you start, twisting to look at him, but he's already leaning in, and the first press of his mouth to the base of your spine punches every word right out of your lungs.

The sound you make is embarrassing. A short, high thing, half gasp, half whimper. His lips are warm and slightly parted, and he presses them just above the little dimple on the left, and then he kisses the one on the right, slower, deliberate, and you feel the heat of his breath fan across your skin in the split second between each kiss.

"Jace." You try to swivel out of his grip and his hands tighten, thumbs pressing into the divots of your hip bones through the satin. Not enough to bruise. Just enough that you're going nowhere.

"Mhm." A kiss to the base of your spine, wetter this time, a hint of tongue.

"You're being…" another kiss, "so annoying…" another, higher, right at the small of your back, "oh my god."

He kisses his way up, patient, like he's got a list. Every vertebra. He works up your spine one bone at a time and you can feel your knees getting weak. Your hands come up on instinct and brace against the mirror. Your palm leaves a fog print on the glass. In the reflection you can see the crown of his dark curls between your shoulder blades, the shell of his ear, one of his eyes closed in concentration.

At the middle of your back he opens his mouth properly and drags his teeth. You feel it in your stomach.

"Ah-" you hiss, and his answering laugh vibrates against your skin.

"You're the one who wanted attention."

"I didn't."

"You so did."

"I was doing my makeup."

"Sure." He kisses higher, right between your shoulder blades. "Doing your makeup." Higher. "In a dress with no back." Higher. "Facing away from me." His voice drops. "In the mirror where I could see you."

His mouth reaches the nape of your neck and he stands as he does it, unfolding himself up the length of your body, and now his front is flush against your back, his chest broad and warm through the thin cotton of his tee. One arm loops around your waist, splaying wide, his palm pressing flat against your stomach. The other hand comes up and slides around the side of your throat, thumb hooking under your jaw, and he tilts your head to the left with the gentlest pressure, exposing the long tendon of your neck.

You watch it happen in the mirror. Your own face, lips parted, eyes gone dark and glassy. Him behind you, curls falling forward, jaw set. His mouth against the hinge of your jaw. His mouth on the soft spot beneath your ear. His mouth sucking hard just above your collarbone, and this time you feel the sting of teeth and the deliberate pull of suction and you know, you know, he's leaving a mark on purpose. He shifts an inch and does it again. And again. Slower. Right along the ridge of your clavicle where no makeup can hide it and no scarf could reasonably cover it.

Your eyes close and your hand slips off the mirror and finds the back of his neck instead, fingers threading into the curls at his nape, and you feel him hum against your skin, pleased, when your nails scrape.

He works you over for what feels like a long time. Your pulse point. The soft under-shelf of your jaw. The curve where your neck meets your shoulder. He alternates, kissing and sucking and dragging his tongue in slow, wet stripes. You are absolutely, comprehensively lost. The room smells like him now, and the last ghost of your perfume, and everything is very quiet except for the wet sounds of his mouth and your uneven breathing and the rain and the distant bass from downstairs. You were losing your mind.

He pulls back.

You open your eyes slowly. In the mirror, he's grinning with full teeth. Smug in a way that would be genuinely insufferable if you had any blood left in your brain. His hair is even worse than it was before. His lips are pink and wet.

Your neck and shoulder look like a paint pallet. There are three, maybe four, blooming red marks already darkening toward purple, one high enough that the collar of a jacket wouldn't touch it.

"What…" you manage, "is that face."

"I marked up my territory." He is so pleased with himself. He tilts his head, considering his work like a curator. "Certifiably mine. Notarized. Do you still want to go outside?"

You feel your jaw set. The brat in you rises like a bubble. "Yes. I do."

Something flickers across his face. His grin sharpens.

"Who…" he says, dropping his voice to a register you feel in the base of your spine, "said we're finished."

The world tilts.

He turns you by the hips, walks you backward to the mattress, and the back of your knees hit the edge of it and you go down. Your claw clip snaps loose. Your hair spills out over his navy duvet. Before you've even registered horizontal, he's peeling his tee off over his head, and then it's off and on the floor and you get the full view.

You have seen him shirtless approximately nine hundred times and it still does something stupid to you. He's lean, always has been, but two years of a serious gym habit have carved him. The flat plane of his chest with the faint scatter of dark hair between his pecs, the ridged shape of his stomach, the sharp cuts of his obliques disappearing into the low waistband of his sweats. His mouth is still red from your neck. There's a flush high on his cheekbones.

You prop yourself up on your elbows. "Very funny. My friend is waiting, actually."

He plants a hand on your sternum and pushes you back down, gently and leans over you with a knee braced on the mattress between your thighs.

"Didn't I tell you…" he says, close to your mouth, "we aren't finished yet."

You open your mouth to give him something witty. You had something. You had a whole line but it evaporated because his mouth is on yours and it is NOT gentle. It's the kind of kiss that has been building for the whole ten minutes he's been leaving hickeys on your neck, hot and open and you feel it right down to the bottoms of your feet. Your thighs squeeze together on reflex and there is already so much heat between them it's almost embarrassing. Slick. You've been slick since he hit his knees.

His tongue drags across your bottom lip, a question, and you part for him and he groans into your mouth, low and needy. Your hands find his curls and you fist them lightly, tugging, and he makes another sound, muffled, his hand slides up the outside of your thigh, catching the satin of your dress, dragging it up with him. His palm is hot as his thumb traces the crease of your hip.

He pulls back. A thin thread of spit connects your lower lip to his and breaks and lands on your chin. His eyes are half-lidded and completely blown. Your chest is heaving along with his and somewhere in the back of your head you register that your friends are absolutely getting stood up.

"Turn over," he says.

You blink. "What."

"Turn over." His hand slides under your ribs and he's already helping, guiding you onto your stomach on his duvet. Your hair fans out. Your cheek presses into the pillow that smells like his shampoo. "The dress." He tugs at it and it comes loose in one soft slither. He works the satin up over the swell of your ass and bunches it at your waist. You're not wearing underwear. You couldn't have worn underwear with this dress and you know he registered that ten seconds ago because he makes a soft strangled sound behind you.

"Sweet mother of Gods."

"Jace."

"You're going to kill me. Like, physically. I'm going to have a stroke."

"You're being dramatic."

"You're not wearing underwear," he informs you, in case you had somehow forgotten, and his hands come down on the backs of your thighs and squeeze, and the mattress dips as he lowers himself.

The first thing you feel is his warm breath. Then his mouth on the back of your left thigh, high up, sucking. Another mark. He drags his mouth two inches over and does it again. Another two inches. You are going to be a leopard. You are going to have to wear pants in July. You feel the wet swirl of his tongue over the bruise he just made, soothing it, before he moves to the crease where your thigh meets your ass and bites, softly, and you jerk.

"Oh my god."

"Mm."

He kisses across the swell of your ass, teeth grazing, and then up, up to your lower back where he sucks another mark right above the dip of your spine, and you can feel the heat of it blooming into your skin. He is being so thorough. His hands slide up the backs of your thighs and part them, gently, and you let them fall open because at this point your bones have turned to warm honey.

And then his mouth is on you.

The first stripe of his tongue is long and flat and slow and it goes from your clit all the way to your entrance and back, and the sound you make is not a sound a human should make. It's ragged. Your fingers fist in the duvet and your hips buck up on instinct and he lets you, hands sliding under to cradle the fronts of your hips, and then he pulls you back and up onto your knees so your face is still on the pillow but your ass is in the air.

"Better," he murmurs against you, and then he goes to work.

He was so good at this. You have told him he's good at this, once, when you were both drunk on cheap red wine, and he has taken that compliment and internalized it like a religion. His tongue circles your clit in slow, deliberate patterns, and then flicks, and then flattens, and then he closes his lips around it and sucks and you make a noise into the pillow that would have neighbors calling the cops if the building had thinner walls. He drags his mouth lower and pushes his tongue into you and you feel one of his hands leave your hip and then two of his fingers replace his tongue, curling up, finding that spot as his mouth returns to your clit.

Your knuckles are white in the duvet. You reach back blindly with one hand and find his hair and just hold, twisting the curls between your fingers. Your other hand fumbles for a pillow to pull under your face, to muffle yourself, because you cannot stop the sounds coming out of you. Little whimpers. A long, broken "oh." A stuttered "please" you didn't mean to say out loud.

"Yeah?" His voice is muffled against you, wet. "Yeah, sweets?"

"Jace."

"Come on."

He crooks his fingers again and sucks and you fall apart. Your thighs clamp together but that doesn't stop him as he works you through it with slow steady pressure until you're twitching and pushing his head away with a whimper of oversensitivity, and only then does he pull off with a wet, obscene sound and press a kiss to the inside of your thigh.

You felt boneless. Your face smashed into the pillow and you feel drops of sweat sliding down between your shoulder blades, your hair is stuck to your temple. You crack one eye open and the room is soft and blurry in your vision.

Behind you, you hear the rustle of him shoving his sweats off. The clink of his belt buckle- no wait- he wasn't wearing a belt, that's the sound of his phone hitting the floor. The soft crumple of fabric. And then his hand is on your hip again, warm and steady, and the other is grabbing a pillow from the head of the bed and sliding it under your hips, lifting you.

You feel him line up. The blunt hot press of him against you. Your breath hitches.

"Ready?" His voice is wrecked.

"Mhm." You say in agreement.

He pushes in slow. Inch by inch. The stretch of it makes your eyes flutter closed. He was not small by any means. He's got a slight curve to him that hits you in a way you have written frankly embarrassing journal entries about, and by the time he bottoms out you can feel him everywhere. His hips settle flush against your ass as his hand smooths up your spine and back down.

"Fuck," he breathes.

"Move," you whisper.

He moves without question. The first thrust is slow, testing, and then the second is a little harder, and by the fourth he's found a rhythm and the sound of it fills the room. The wet slap of skin on skin. The soft creak of his mattress. His breath, ragged, right above you. Your own broken little "ah, ah, ah" every time he snaps his hips forward.

He folds himself over your back, his chest to your spine, and one of his arms braces beside your head and the other slides under your ribs and pulls you back against him. His mouth finds your shoulder and he bites, then sucks and then bites again. A hickey blooms in the crook where your neck meets your shoulder. Then higher. Then the back of your shoulder blade. Then he pulls back just enough to see and drives forward hard and you cry out into the pillow.

You turn your head, cheek smashed against the duvet, and he sees it, sees you looking for him, and he leans down and catches your mouth from the side, angle awkward and messy, and it's all tongue and spit and neither of you can breathe right but he tastes like you making you moan into his mouth. Then his hips stutter.

"You're so-" he says against your mouth, and doesn't finish, just kisses you harder, "fuck, you're so-“

Your hand fists in his curls again and holds him there.

He straightens up eventually to get better leverage, hands gripping your hips, thumbs digging into the meat of your ass, and he watches himself move in and out of you and makes a low groan that you feel in your sternum. His hand comes down in a light slap on your right cheek and you jerk forward with a whimper and he does it again, harder, and then soothes it with his palm.

"You were really gonna go out?" he asks, panting. "Like this? Looking like this?" Another sharp thrust. "For other guys?"

"Not for-" you gasp, "other guys."

"Sure looked like it."

"Jace."

"Mhm?"

"Please-"

He shifts his angle just barely. And it hits something behind your navel and you see white at the edges of your vision, his hand slides around and finds your clit, and it takes maybe forty seconds before you're coming again, harder than the first time but this one you can't muffle at all. It rips right out of your throat. Your whole body clenches around him and he makes a broken sound holding still, jaw tight, riding it out with you.

When you come down enough to breathe he pulls out gently, and before you can protest the sudden emptiness he's flipping you onto your back.

You blink up at him, dazed, hair a wreck, dress still bunched around your waist. He grabs the hem and drags it up and off over your head and it lands somewhere around his room. Your body is flushed, chest heaving, a sheen of sweat on your covering you and hickeys blooming everywhere. His eyes are still dark and his curls are damp at the temples.

He grabs your ankles and hooks them up over his shoulders, one and then the other, folding you nearly in half. Your knees graze your own chest then he slides back in in one long push and you both groan.

"Oh-" you gasp, "oh- fuck- Jace."

"Yeah," he breathes, and it comes out shaky as his hands slide from your ankles down the backs of your calves to grip behind your knees, pinning them wider and higher, the angle of him inside you shifts so deep you swear you can feel him under your ribs. "Yeah, there you go. There's my girl."

The rain has picked up outside. It's not soft anymore, it's a steady drumming against the window, the bass from downstairs has kicked over into something with a heavier beat, a low pulse that syncs almost obscenely with the rhythm of his hips. The candle on the dresser is guttering low, the wick swimming in a pool of melted wax, throwing amber shadows across the ceiling. The whole room smells like sex now.

You can barely keep your eyes open but thrust continues to knock a soft high sound out of you and suddenly an almost pornographic sound leaves your mouth along with Jace’s name as you scratch his skin.

"Fuck, do that again."

You do it again. Four red lines blooming down the tan of his forearm, and he groans in response, low and long, and drops his head so his forehead presses against your shin where it's hooked over his shoulder. There's beads of sweat sliding down the side of his throat, and you watch it disappear into the hollow of his clavicle.

He lifts his head. His eyes are almost black, pupils blown so wide there's barely any brown left, and his mouth is swollen. He looks feral as if he's been possessed by something old and hungry, it's a look you are well aware of over the course of your relationship.

"Come here." He unhooks one of your ankles, then the other, and lets your legs drop to wrap around his waist instead, as he leans down over you, chest to chest, and you feel the flat wet heat of his skin against yours and it makes you shiver. His weight is heavy in the best way, almost grounding. He braces himself on one elbow beside your head and his other hand slides up your rips, thumb dragging along the underside of your left breast.

"Jace."

"Mm."

"Kiss me."

He does, openmouthed and messy and you moan out. He swallows the sound while his hips are moving in slow deep grinds now instead of thrusts, working himself against that spot inside your belly, every roll of him drags the base of his cock against your clit and you feel another orgasm building, low and slow like heat rising in a kettle.

He pulls back from your mouth and trails his lips down your jaw, down the side of your neck, over one of the hickeys he already made, sucking gently, marking it again, and then down, further, to the flushed skin above your breast. His mouth wraps around your nipple and he laps. Slow, flat strokes of his tongue, then he closes his lips around it and sucks, and your back arches off the mattress hard enough that your front presses up against his mouth.

"Oh god-“

"Mhm" he moans at your reaction before switching sides, giving your other boob the same treatment. His tongue circling and his teeth grazing. Once he’s done, he nuzzles into the soft valley between your breasts and presses a kiss there, almost sweet, before he mouths back up to the other side and does it all over again, longer this time, until your nipples are stiff and shiny while you tremble under him.

"Jace- Jace- please, I'm-"

"I know." His voice is thick. "I know, Love, come on, one more."

"I can't."

"You can."

He shifts. Puts his weight on his forearms on either side of your head and drops his forehead to yours, so all you can see is him, dark curls falling forward, freckle on the bridge of his nose you've kissed a thousand times, and his hips pick up a faster and harder pace. The mattress is squeaking now, in earnest, and somewhere in a distant part of your brain you register that the downstairs neighbors' bass has gone quite and you don't care, you don't care about anything except the fact that Jace’s eyes are open and locked on yours and he is looking at you like you're the only thing in the world worth looking at.

"Come on," he pants. "Come on, come on, come on."

Your hand slides down between your bodies. He shifts up a little to give you room as your fingers find your clit, slick with both of your juices combined, you rub tight fast circles and almost immediately your over the edge and coming before you're gone.

You cry out loud, right against his mouth, and he kisses you through it, you clench around him is what does him in. He finally goes still as his whole body tenses. His forehead presses harder into yours and his eyes squeeze shut. He makes the most wrecked sound you have ever heard from him, a broken little "oh, fuck, oh fuck, sweet girl-" and you feel him pulse inside you, hot and thick, he shudders through it with his cock buried as deep as he can get.

The two of you hold there. Both breathing hard. His curls tickling your forehead. Your legs still locked around his hips. Your fingers still tangled in the damp hair at the nape of his neck. Someone in the hall outside is laughing at something on their phone as they pass by, and it's such a mundane sound compared to what just happened that it startles a wet laugh out of you.

He lifts his head. His eyes are soft again. Brown and warm and a little glazed.

"Hi." His voice is a rasp.

"Hi."

"You okay?"

"Mhm." You say nodding.

He pulls out slowly, careful about it, you both wince at the loss. He looks down between your bodies and makes a low, satisfied sound in his throat, and you tilt your chin up to see what he's seeing. His cum is leaking out of you, sliding down onto the pillow he shoved under your hips earlier. He drags two fingers through it and pushes it back into you, slowly and deliberately, the aftershock makes you twitch and gasp.

"Sorry, sorry." He's grinning. He's not sorry. "Couldn't help it."

"You are so-"

"So what."

"So much."

"Mm." He kisses the tip of your nose, and then your cheek, and then your mouth, soft this time, no tongue, just the press of him. "Stay right there. Don't move."

He rolls off you and stands. You watch him walk to the bathroom, naked, the long line of his back, the two dimples at the base of his own spine, the muscled slope of his ass, the back of his thighs. He flicks the bathroom light on and you hear the tap run. You let your head loll to the side. Your body feels like it's melted into the mattress.

He comes back with a warm washcloth folded in his palm, and the softness on his face as he crawls back onto the bed does something painful and specific to your heart. He kneels between your knees and cleans you up with the kind of careful tenderness that used to fluster you back when you were still figuring out how to receive it. Now you just close your eyes and let him. He wipes down the insides of your thighs, and then between your legs, slow and gentle, and then he tosses the washcloth toward the laundry hamper and misses but doesn't care at the moment.

"C'mere." He flops down beside you and drags you into his chest, and you go willingly and he arranges you the way he likes, one of your thighs hooked over his hip, your cheek on his chest, his arm heavy around your back. His hand starts a slow drift up and down your spine.

The candle finally burs out. The room dims to the blue of the streetlight through the rain-streaked window. His heartbeat is a steady, slowing thump under your ear.

"Sofia…" he says, after a long moment.

"Mm?"

"You should text her."

"Oh." You laugh, small and hoarse. "Right."

You reach blindly for your phone on the nightstand. It's got three unread texts and a missed FaceTime. You squint at the screen.

Sof (9:04 PM): where are u

Sof (9:11 PM): hello???

Sof (9:19 PM): girl is jace holding you hostage

You show Jace the screen and he snorts reading it.

"Accurate."

"I hate you."

"Mm hm."

You type back one-handed, thumb clumsy. so sorry babe. wildly detained. love u. tomorrow brunch on me. You add a red heart. You put the phone face down.

Jace's fingers are tracing something on your back and you realize after a second that he's tracing the edges of one of the hickeys he left, thumb rubbing gentle little circles over the sore skin.

"You are absolutely covered," he says, and there's something almost awed in his voice. "Head to toe."

"Whose fault is that."

"Yours." His hand slides up into your hair and cradles the back of your head. "You're the one who bought that dress."

"I bought that dress for girls night.”

"You bought that dress to torture me."

"Same thing."

He huffs a laugh into the top of your head, presses a kiss there. His mouth stays for a second, warm through your hair. You can smell his skin, the clean cedar of his deodorant almost sweated off, the sharper note of his sweat underneath, the faintest ghost of your body oil transferred onto him. You feel very, extremely, unreasonably fond of him. It rises up in your chest like a slow warm tide.

"Hey," you say.

"Hm?"

"I'm keeping the dress."

"I know."

"I'm gonna wear it out. Eventually."

"I know." His hand smooths down your back and comes to rest at the very base of your spine, right where he started. His palm is broad and warm and his fingers spread over both dimples, claiming. "Just, with me."

"Deal."

He hums, low and content, and shifts to pull the duvet up over both of you, tucking it around your shoulder with his free hand, and then he settles back, holding you closer against the long warm line of his body while the rain keeps drumming steady on the window.

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Fire danced with a horrific, erratic grace across the blackened waters of the Gullet, transforming the vital shipping lane into a sprawling, floating graveyard. Flames leapt from ship to ship in hungry arcs, feeding on timber and pitch and the desperate prayers of drowning men. Beneath the merciless onslaught of Team Black’s dragons, mighty Triarchy war-galleys splintered like kindling, their hulls cracking open to swallow their crews whole. Great masts toppled into the waves with the slow, theatrical finality of falling monuments. And yet, this was no easy victory. No clean triumph etched into the history books with golden ink. Below, Lord Corlys Velaryon’s fleet fought with everything it had, attempting to trap the armada in the narrow, choking passage, buying time in blood and smoke and screaming iron.

The atmosphere was a living thing, a suffocating shroud woven from the sharp salt tang of brine, the acrid bite of billowing smoke, the unmistakable iron-sweetness of fresh blood, and the sickening, almost honeyed stench of burning pitch. It coated the throat and burned the eyes.

High above the carnage, roaring through the roiling tempest of fire and ash, rode Prince Jacaerys Velaryon.

He sat astride Vermax like a man born to the sky because he was. The great emerald dragon cut through the smoke-choked air like a gleaming blade, his scales catching the hellish firelight below, wings spread wide. Jace’s riding leathers were already dark with spray and soot. His dark curls whipped against his face. He did not notice. His eyes were fixed on the battle, calculating and measuring, feeling the terrible weight of command settle across his shoulders with the intimacy of something he had worn all his life.

He had locked his mother in her chambers at Dragonstone before leaving. Had stood outside the door and listened to her pound against it, her voice cracking on his name. The sound had nearly unmade him entirely. But she was the queen. She was the cause. She could not be lost, and Jacaerys Velaryon had long since made peace with the arithmetic of that.

She lives. Therefore, I go.

Beside him, Baela streaked across the smoke on Moondancer fierce and brilliant, her silver hair streaming behind her like a war banner. And then, piercing through the mist like something half-imagined, a new silhouette emerged. Jace’s eyes snapped to it. His stomach lurched with shock before his heart swelled with a pride so fierce it nearly hurt.

Rhaena. Flying the wild dragon Sheepstealer.

Of course she was.

Together they were three dragons raining hell from the heavens, and for one blazing, exhilarating moment, Jace believed they might actually win this despite Sheepstealer almost knocking him out. He watched their collective fire devastate Admiral Lohar’s vanguard below, great tongues of flame consuming the armada’s leading ships, sending men screaming into the sea. He felt the savage triumph of it. The rightness.

Then the heavy, rhythmic thrum of scorpions began.

Massive iron bolts tore through the clouds around them. The Triarchy fleet was enormous, he had known this, had known it academically the way one knows a thing from maps and reports but knowing it and watching it materialize below him in all its terrible scale were entirely different experiences.

He pressed Vermax into a steep, dangerously low dive.

Below, through the roiling chaos, Jace had spotted Lord Corlys’s flagship being violently rammed by Lohar’s vessel. The silver-haired sea snake, his grandfather by every measure that mattered, surrounded and struggling. Jace made his decision in the space of half a breath. He would break the enemy lines. He would fly low. He would end this.

He flew too close to the water.

His focus had narrowed to a single burning point, the ships, the threat, the duty and so he did not hear the volley until it was already too late.

A heavy iron shaft sliced violently through the membrane of Vermax’s right wing with a sound like tearing cloth and screaming metal fused together. Another slammed directly into the dragon’s chest with a concussive, world-shaking force that Jace felt through every bone in his body.

Vermax screamed.

The sound ripped through Jace like a physical blade. Not a roar, not the magnificent, terrible declaration of a dragon in battle. A scream. Raw and agonizing and so deeply personal that Jace felt his own lungs seize in sympathy, as though the bolt had pierced him too. The great emerald body shuddered beneath him. The massive wings faltered, losing the steady rhythm that held them aloft. The world tilted.

They were falling.

“No-”

Jace yanked desperately on the reins, his boots straining hard against the stirrups, body thrown forward as the sea rushed upward to meet them with terrifying speed. Wind screamed past his ears. The fire and the smoke and the battle became a chaotic blur of sensation.

“Vermax, fly!”

The dragon fought. Even now, even broken and burning, Vermax fought. A beast born of fire, refusing absolutely to yield to the water. One wing beat heavily, then another. The torn membrane fluttered uselessly, a tattered rag of what it had been, but still Vermax tried, and something in Jace’s chest shattered at the sight of it.

“Soves!” His voice broke on the word, all royal dignity stripped away, reduced to something raw and helpless and very young. “Soves, Vermax! Please-”

One final, agonizing beat of the wings.

It was not enough.

Freezing, brine-heavy water swallowed Jacaerys Velaryon whole. It was not like diving, it was like being struck by the earth itself, like the sea had become solid in the last instant before collision, and he felt the shock travel up through his ankles, his knees, his spine, rattling his teeth in his skull. The sheer velocity of the crash tore his fingers from the saddle. The weight of his armor dragged at him immediately, a slow, patient, lethal pull downward into the dark.

Primal instinct flared.

He unhooked himself and practically clawed upward. His lungs burned. The cold was absolute, the kind that doesn’t feel cold at all but rather feels like being unmade, like the sea was simply erasing him a layer at a time. He could see nothing, only dark water and distant fire and the enormous bulk of Vermax somewhere below him, a shadow become a nightmare. He burst through the surface with a gasp so violent it tore his throat.

“Vermax!”

He spun in the churning water, hair plastered to his face, salt burning his eyes. The battle raged on around him, ships groaning and splitting, men screaming, iron raining from all directions. The world had not paused for him.

“Vermax!”

Through the haze of cresting waves, he found him. His dragon, his Vermax, who had carried him since boyhood, who had grown as he had grown, who had been as much a part of him as his own heartbeat was desperately trying to swim. The damaged wings beat uselessly to try to swim up. His great neck was straining upward. His eyes, when they met Jace’s from below the water, held something that a person with less grief in them might have dismissed as imagination. They did not look like the eyes of an animal.

They looked like the eyes of someone saying goodbye. A massive anchor, or debris, Jace could not tell which, tangled around Vermax’s exhausted body. The sea accepted its offering. With a final, sorrowful look that Jacaerys Velaryon would carry with him for the rest of his life.

He never resurfaced.

Something inside Jace broke. Not cracked. Not bent. Broke, the way an old bone breaks, the kind that doesn’t ever quite knit back the same way. He hauled his upper body onto a large piece of floating wreckage with the determination of a body that had not yet received the message from his mind that none of this mattered anymore. His chest heaved in ragged, desperate gasps. He was shaking. He was exhausted in a way that reached all the way down into whatever part of him had believed, until this moment, that he might survive this.

He had not brought enough of that belief. He saw that now.

He thought of his mother.

The image of her face, proud and terrified and trying not to show either rose unbidden. He had done this for her. Had done all of it for her. He hoped she would understand, someday, that locking her in her chambers had been the most love he had ever offered anyone.

He thought of Baela. Of Rhaena.

He thought of-

A sharp, dull impact struck his upper back.

Jace lurched forward with a sound that was almost nothing, barely a breath. Confused, of all things, not yet understanding, he glanced over his shoulder. A heavy crossbow bolt protruded from his shoulder blade at an angle that his mind catalogued with strange, distant calm, the way one notices a detail in a painting.

Slowly, numbly, he turned his head toward the source. A Triarchy war-galley drifted just yards away. Lined along the wooden railing stood a row of Admiral Lohar’s soldiers, unhurried, methodical, their crossbows leveled at the figure in the water.

They knew exactly who he was. There was no urgency in their posture, no battlefield fever. This was an execution.

The heir to the Iron Throne, stranded and defenseless. A second bolt flew. It slammed into his chest. He heard it before he felt it.

Then a third...straight to the neck.

A strange, sudden calm washed over him.

The deafening roar of the battle receded, becoming muffled, distant, the way sounds narrow when one goes underwater. The sea rocked him gently now, almost tenderly, as if it had been waiting all along to offer this small mercy at the end. He had not expected kindness. He was grateful for it.

He thought of his mother, safe on Dragonstone.

He thought of Baela’s laughter.

He thought of his brothers.

And he thought with a softness that surprised him, with something that might have been the very last warmth his body could generate, of you. Of a future that would not be built. Of a promise he was not sure, now, that he had ever been given the chance to make.

The last image to imprint itself on the fading mind of Jacaerys Velaryon was that reflection.

A burning sky, mirrored in the water.

Beautiful.

Tragic.

Then everything went black.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

Jacaerys bolted upright with a gasp that felt like surfacing.

His eyes flew open. His hand flew to his chest and then to his neck, pressing hard against his sternum, feeling for something, a wound, an absence, a bolt buried in bone and found nothing but the soft cotton of his t-shirt and the solid, living rhythm of his own heart. He sat there for a long moment, chest heaving, and simply stared at the ceiling.

White plaster. Crown moulding. A small water stain shaped vaguely like a continent.

No smoke.

No dragon.

No sea.

No battle.

Just a bedroom. His bedroom.

Morning sunlight filtered through floor-to-ceiling windows in long, clean shafts, illuminating the warm disorder of his life: the desk buried under business textbooks and notebooks with pages dog-eared and margins crowded with his handwriting, his laptop open from the night before with a lecture slide still visible on the screen, a hoodie slung over the back of his desk chair. Outside the windows, King’s Landing stretched endlessly in the early light, the city already stirring, glass towers catching the sun.

His alarm clock flashed 7:00 AM.

No swords or the banners of House Targaryen. Jace pressed the heels of both palms against his eyes and breathed.

The memories were still there. That was the wrong word for them, memories. They did not feel like the soft, dissolving stuff of ordinary dreams that faded on the edges as soon as you tried to examine them. They felt like the other kind of remembering, the kind that lives in the body rather than the mind. He could still feel the cold of the Gullet in his fingers. He could still smell the smoke. He could still feel the weight of dragon-riding leathers across his shoulders, the particular pull of Vermax’s movement through the air, the way the saddle had sat against the backs of his thighs.

He could still feel the bolts.

Just a dream, he told himself. The words felt inadequate in his own mouth, like trying to describe a storm with the word weather. He muttered them anyway, pressing his face harder into his palms.

“Just a dream.”

A dream where he had been a prince.

A prince who had died.

His stomach dropped with a physical lurch. The alarm was still beeping. He silenced it with a slap and sat on the edge of the bed for one more moment, just one, breathing in the ordinary scent of his ordinary room.. Then his brain supplied the information he had been avoiding.

Classes.

Shit.

He was already late.

He moved through his morning routine with the efficiency of someone running on instinct rather than thought, shower, clothes, a cursory battle with his curls that ended, as it always did, in a draw. He emerged from the bathroom in jeans and sneakers and his favorite dark hoodie, his hair doing exactly what it wanted. There wasn’t time to argue with it. There was rarely ever time.

The smell of coffee reached him in the hallway. It pulled at something in his chest and he followed it through the penthouse to the kitchen.

His steps halted in the doorway.

Rhaenyra stood at the island counter, reading something on her tablet with the focused, slightly stern expression she wore when she was processing information she found annoying. A coffee mug steamed beside her elbow, forgotten. She was already dressed soft grey, elegant, effortlessly so in the way that had always seemed to come naturally to her and she looked exactly as she always looked in the morning, tired by all the corporate bullshit.

CEO of Targaryen Corporation. One of the most influential women in King’s Landing. The most formidable person he had ever known.

His mother.

The word hit him somewhere unsteady. Something twisted painfully in his chest, relief so acute it nearly hurt, threaded through with the dreaming grief of a boy who had watched her face in his mind as the water closed over him, who had spent his last conscious moment believing she was safe, needing her to be safe, and had been right without ever knowing he was right. He crossed the room before he had consciously decided to.

He wrapped his arms around her.

Rhaenyra nearly dropped her coffee.

“Jacaerys-”

She caught herself, setting the mug down with a firm clink on the marble countertop, and then without hesitation, because she had always been this, whatever else she was, she wrapped her arms around him and held him back.

“Sweet boy.” Her voice was softer now. Her fingers found their way into his curls the way they had when he was very small. “What’s the matter?”

Jace swallowed against the tightness in his throat. The dream came rushing back through him like a tide, the war, the weight of a crown his mother should have inherited without blood, the desperate, bone-deep need to protect her. The image of her face as he had walked away from Dragonstone, toward the dragon, toward the battle, toward the Gullet. The way he had looked back.

He shook his head against her shoulder.

“I’m fine.”

“You are clearly not fine.”

Her hand moved in slow, soothing circles against his back. Despite himself, despite everything, Jace felt something in him begin to loosen.

He laughed. A weak, slightly broken sound, but genuine. “I just…” His voice cracked on the nothing he was trying to say.

Rhaenyra pulled back slightly to look at him. Not the way she looked at her board of directors, or at rivals across conference tables, or at the city from thirty floors up. The other way. The private way, that only he and his brothers ever saw.

“What happened?”

He wiped his eyes quickly, hoping she wouldn’t comment on it and took a breath.

“I had the most vivid dream.”

“What kind of dream?”

He hesitated. There was something strange about saying it. As though speaking about it aloud would make it either more real or less, and he wasn’t sure which outcome he wanted.

“I was a prince,” he said.

Rhaenyra blinked. Whatever she had been expecting, it was not that.

“A prince?”

“Yeah.” A small smile found its way onto his face, unwilling, almost involuntary. “You were a queen.” Something passed across her expression something soft, something she would never have allowed in a meeting room. “Oh?”

“I died fighting a battle for you.”

Silence.

She looked at him for a long moment. Then she reached up and brushed a curl from his forehead with the gentleness that had no performance in it, something she reserved for the three of them and no one else.

“Well,” she said finally, her smile warming to something that was almost, almost teasing. “That sounds exhausting.”

Jace stared. “That’s all you’ve got?”

“You are standing in my kitchen wearing yesterday’s hoodie and telling me about dragon wars, Jacaerys.”

He opened his mouth to protest then closed it. “Fair.” She squeezed his shoulder. “It was only a dream.”

“You know,” said a new voice from the doorway, “some families start their mornings with good morning.”

Luke wandered in carrying a cereal box like a trophy, nineteen years old and permanently, professionally smug. He surveyed the scene with the cheerful heartlessness of a younger brother who had found ammunition and intended to use it.

“Did Jace finally lose his mind?”

Behind him, Joffrey, fourteen and grinning with the particular delight of someone who had been waiting for this squeezed past into the kitchen. “About time.” Jace rolled his eyes so hard it was almost an athletic achievement. “There he is.”

“Dreaming about being a prince?” Luke plucked a bowl from the cupboard with casual ease. “That’s because you’re already treated like one.”

The napkin Jace threw hit him square in the face. Luke threw it back. Rhaenyra sighed with the air of a woman who had calculated exactly how many more years of this lay before her and found the number disheartening.

“My sons,” she said, picking up her coffee. “Truly intellectual giants.”

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

Breakfast passed with the comfortable velocity of mornings that had been rehearsed through repetition until they ran themselves. Luke complaining about something, Joffrey eating cereal in quantities that defied his size, Rhaenyra reading from her tablet while simultaneously tracking all three of them with the peripheral attention of someone who had never once been entirely off duty.

Jace was reaching for his coffee when Rhaenyra glanced up.

“Are you still picking up your girlfriend?”

He froze.

The coffee cup remained halfway to his face, arrested in mid-air.

“…My what?”

Luke’s head snapped up. The expression that crossed his face was one of pure, unalloyed joy. He looked like he had been handed a gift.

Rhaenyra stared at her eldest with the patient, faintly incredulous expression of a woman who had not expected to be performing this particular reality check on a Tuesday morning.

“Your girlfriend.”

“Oh.” Jace set the cup down carefully. “Right.”

You.

He had a girlfriend.

A beautiful girlfriend, and she was his girlfriend, and she had been his girlfriend for- he was briefly lost in the arithmetic of it, which was itself a kind of answer and she was wonderful, she was brilliant, she made him laugh, and somehow in the space between waking up with the sea in his lungs and standing in his mother’s kitchen in yesterday’s hoodie, he had momentarily forgotten she existed.

And then, because his brain was apparently in full catastrophic mode this morning: betrothed. Not yet. Not technically. But the word had been sitting in the back of his mind ever since he woke up from his dream.

Heat flooded his face with spectacular completeness. Luke nearly choked on his cereal.

“Oh my God.”

“Shut up.”

“You forgot your girlfriend.”

“Only briefly.”

“Only” Luke dissolved entirely, shoulders shaking. Across the table, Joffrey watched with the dignified appreciation of a connoisseur.

Rhaenyra shook her head slowly. “Honestly, Jace.” “It was a very intense dream,” he said, with as much dignity as one can muster while slowly turning the color of a sunset.

“You forgot your girlfriend.”

“The dream had dragons, Mum.”

She gave him the look. The specific look, the one that had been making him feel twelve years old since he was actually twelve years old. “She’s a lovely girl. I wish you’d bring her home more often.”

Jace stood from the table with the decisive energy of a man drawing a conversation to a close. “I was planning to.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Today?”

“…Possibly.”

“Good.” Rhaenyra returned to her tablet, the slight smile at the corner of her mouth saying everything she was too dignified to say aloud.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

The underground parking garage was cool and dim, smelling of concrete and oil and the expensive quiet of a building where people took the lift rather than the stairs. Jace’s Porsche sat in its usual spot, Oak Green Metallic, catching the fluorescent light.

Vermax.

He had named the car Vermax which now sounded so ironic to him.

He stood beside the driver’s door for a moment, hand on the handle, the thought arriving fully formed and then sitting there in his chest with an odd weight. He had named his car Vermax years ago. He had thought it was because he liked the sound of it, or because it was the name of a character in a book he’d read, or because of some half-remembered reason that had never quite solidified into anything coherent.

He looked at the car. The deep green of it. The long, low lines of it, built for speed, built for the sky-

Built for the sky.

A strange feeling settled over him, the kind of not-quite-vertigo that comes with recognizing something without being able to name what it is you’re recognizing. Like seeing an old friend across a crowd before you’ve registered their face.

He shook it off. Got in and drove.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

The street outside your house was quiet in the way that Tuesday mornings in King’s Landing occasionally managed to be, with the morning light that made ordinary things seem briefly considered. Jace pulled to the curb and sat for a moment with the engine idling, window down.

Then the front door opened and you stepped out. He got out of the car.

The morning light caught your hair the way it always did, making you look almost angelic in Jace’s eyes in that moment. You were still in the act of adjusting the strap of your bag when you spotted him, and the smile that crossed your face. Happy just to see him.

And for one strange, suspended moment, another image overlapped the morning like a transparency laid over a photograph. A figure standing on the cliffs of Dragonstone. The sea grey below and the wind pulling at dark fabric. Watching him leave. The expression on her face, your face, heartbroken and resolute and trying to be neither.

Waiting for him to come back.

The image dissolved as quickly as it had arrived. The morning reasserted itself. You were walking toward the car, your bag settled on your shoulder now, your smile still in place, and Jace found himself already stepping forward already moving toward with certainty that was less decision than gravity.

Before you could say a word, he took your hand and raised it, and pressed a kiss against your knuckles. Deliberatea and unhurried. Like he’d done it a thousand times before, in other rooms, in other centuries.

“How are you, my beloved?”

You stopped.

Looked at the hand.

Looked at him.

And then, because you were you, you laughed, the bright, surprised sound of someone caught genuinely off guard. “What has gotten into you this morning?” you questioned him.

Jace grinned, and the grin felt more like him than anything else had all morning. “I genuinely have no idea.”

“You’re being sooo weird.” You studied him with the narrowed eyes trying to grasp his words and actions. “How weird is this going to get?”

“I had the wildest dream.”

“Oh?” Already your expression was shifting into the one you wore when you were preparing to be entertained. He leaned forward and kissed you softly quick, warm and certain.

“In it,” he said against your smile, “you were my princess too.”

Your cheeks went pink with entirely gratifying speed. “Oh my God.”

“You asked.”

“I asked what was wrong with you, not-”

“Details.”

“Jacaerys Velaryon, I am going to need you to be normal for the next five minutes-”

“I make no promises.”

He opened the passenger door for you, still grinning, and the morning felt lighter than it had when he’d left the penthouse.

The dream wasn’t entirely terrible, he thought, settling behind the wheel. If nothing else, it had done this, sharpened his vision, made ordinary things brilliant again. Made you more vivid than you’d already been, which was saying something considerable. He found himself smiling the entire drive to university.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

University should have felt normal.

Instead, Jace spent the entire morning convinced he was losing his mind by degrees as new details of his dream would hit him.

The dream lingered with a persistence that ordinary dreams did not have, the kind he usually forgot by the time he reached the kitchen. This one clung. Every corridor he walked reminded him of castle hallways, the echo of footsteps on stone, and the smell of torch smoke. Every crowded lecture hall conjured the geometry of noble courts; the subtle theatre of power performed through proximity. His Strategic Management lecture had an entire section on resource allocation that kept pulling his thoughts sideways, toward councils and war rooms and Dragonstone. He stared at his notebook.

He had written, in the margin: Corlys was right about the Gullet.

He had no idea when.

“You’re disassociating again.”

Jace blinked.

Across the seminar table sat Cregan Stark, regarding him with the expression he used on everything: tall, dark-haired, slow-blinking, fundamentally and constitutionally unimpressed by the world and all its events. He was from Winterfell like genuinely, actually from Winterfell, which Jace had always found slightly funny without ever quite being able to explain why.

They’d been best friends since secondary school, the friendship that had calcified into something so much more. They were like brothers in every sense. Also, he looked almost exactly like the Cregan from the dream.

Same jaw. Same eyes. Same expression, the one that said I am listening to you and I find you exhausting. Same, in other words, as he always looked well except his had slightly shorter hair.

“What?” Jace managed.

Cregan raised one eyebrow. “You’ve been staring at me for ten seconds with an expressionless face.”

“Sorry.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I had a strange dream. I feel like I keep repeating these words over and over again.”

“You texted me at four in the morning.”

Jace went very still.

“I did?”

Cregan reached for his phone with the patience of a man who had long since resigned himself to the chaos of being Jace Velaryon’s closest friend. He scrolled briefly, then began reading aloud in the flat, informational tone of a news anchor delivering a weather report.

“‘Brother, imagine if we were medieval nobles.’”

“Oh, God.”

“‘You would have loved Winterfell.’”

“Cregan-”

“‘You were Lord of the North.’” He glanced up briefly. “I’m from Winterfell, Jace. I grew up in Winterfell. I know what Winterfell is.”

“Please stop-”

‘I miss Vermax.’

Cregan lowered the phone.

“I don’t know what Vermax is, if its not talking about your car.” he said.

Jace buried his face in both hands and made a sound that was less a word than a comprehensive statement. “You were never meant to read those.”

“You sent them to me.”

“I was apparently not fully conscious at four in the morning. I don’t remember doing this at all.”

“That’s concerning.”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay?”

The question arrived without ceremony, Cregan always asked things he actually wanted to know, dropped into a conversation like a stone dropped into water, watching to see what it displaced. Jace hesitated for long enough that the silence became its own answer.

“Yeah,” he said. Then, quietly: “Not entirely.”

Cregan nodded. He didn’t push. This was something Jace had always valued about him, the Stark capacity to hold space without filling it.

“Tell me later,” Cregan said, and turned back to his laptop.

Mostly, Jace thought. He was mostly okay. ┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

You found him outside the business building at noon, materializing from the flow of students and your smile arrived before you did.

Jace felt the thing in his chest that had been clenched since 7 AM ease, slowly, like a hand opening. There was something about you that operated on him this way, had always operated on him this way, since the beginning. A quality of presence that grounded him, that made the world’s coordinates make sense again. He’d never found quite the right words for it. He’d stopped trying.

You slipped your hand into his without ceremony.

“Better than this morning?”

“A little.”

“Still thinking about your prince dream?”

He laughed, the sound freer than he expected. “Unfortunately.”

“You are such a nerd.”

“I was literally fighting a war.”

“You were dreaming about fighting a war.”

“Details.”

“Jacaerys Velaryon, if this dream becomes your entire personality, I want it on the record that I tried to prevent it-”

“Noted and rejected.”

You rolled your eyes with magnificent feeling. “I make no promises about what I tell your mother.”

Together you walked toward the café nearby. A small, overcrowded place called something Jace could never quite remember but it had had excellent coffee and terrible lighting and was perpetually full of students and professors who had clearly rather be somewhere else. The place that existed to absorb the ambient anxiety of a university and convert it, through caffeine, into something marginally more functional.

You had barely settled into your seats when a familiar voice arrived from approximately two tables away, belonging to someone who had apparently been watching for them.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite nephew.”

Aegon Targaryen dropped into the empty chair beside Jace with the comfortable confidence of a man who owned, and this was literally true, approximately half the building they were sitting in. Twenty-six, blond, expensive, reliably catastrophic. His jacket probably cost more than Jace’s car maintenance for the year, and he wore it with the carelessness never once considering the cost of anything.

He was nothing like the monster from the dream. The dream-Aegon had been something Jace couldn’t fully bring himself to examine yet. Jealous and bitter and capable of terrible things. This Aegon was mostly known for throwing parties that became local legend and mysteriously managing to avoid all professional consequences for anything he did, ever. Jacaerys supposed that has something to do with his mother and his uncle Aemond keeping these things contained.

“To what do we owe the honor?” Jace asked.

Aegon’s attention had already moved to you.

“And how are you?”

“Good,” you said politely.

“Still putting up with him?”

You smiled. “Barely.”

“Excellent answer.”

Jace groaned. Aegon looked absolutely delighted. “You’re blushing,” Aegon observed, with the tone of someone reporting a natural phenomenon.

“I’m not.”

“You absolutely are.”

You leaned over the table, and Jace recognized the look on your face immediately. The collaborative look. The look that meant you had identified an ally.

“He was calling me his beloved this morning.”

Aegon’s chair nearly lost him. He grabbed the table.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“In what context?”

“He kissed my hand. In the street. Before nine in the morning.”

Aegon looked at Jace the way someone looks at an archaeological discovery with facination, slightly appalled, deeply pleased. “This is the greatest thing that has ever happened.”

Jace contemplated his options. Leaving. Changing his name and moving to Braavos. Committing entirely to the persona of someone who had never been caught calling his girlfriend my beloved at eight forty-five on a Tuesday.

None of these were practical.

He reached for his coffee and said nothing, which Aegon correctly interpreted as total defeat.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

After Aegon eventually wandered off, ostensibly to a meeting, credibly to cause chaos somewhere else and so the café settled back into its ordinary rhythms. Students came and went. Espresso machines hissed. The ambient noise absorbed itself.

You and Jace remained at your table, and the laughter faded naturally, the way good laughter does, not dying but simply becoming something quieter.

He was staring into his coffee again.

You watched him for a moment.

“You never told me the whole dream, since it has you in a weird mindset today.” you said quietly.

His fingers tightened almost imperceptibly around the cup. He was aware of you looking at him, with your full attention, which had always been more like listening than looking, patient and genuine and without agenda.

“To put it simply, there was a war,” he said.

You didn’t ask him to explain. You waited.

“A civil war.” He looked up briefly, then back at the table. “A war over who would rule over Westeros. My mother was supposed to inherit as was the rightful heir to the throne but there were those who didn’t accept it. Didn’t accept her.”

“And you fought for her.”

“Of course.”

The images came without invitation, Dragonstone’s grey halls, the council table, the maps spreading the whole kingdom out before them like a wound. The feeling of duty that had lived in his chest since childhood, not as a burden but as a definition. This is who you are. This is what you do.

You reached across the table and took his hand. He continued.

“I flew a dragon. I know this sounds no so scary but-” Despite everything, he heard the ghost of wonder in his own voice. “Vermax. He was- he was mine. Since I was a boy. He knew me.” The wonder curdled, softened into something heavier. “He died with me.”

Your thumb moved in a slow arc across his knuckles. “The last thing I remember,” he said quietly, “was dying. Floating in the sea, after everything.” He paused.

“It was strange. It wasn’t- it wasn’t the way I would have imagined. It wasn’t terrifying.”

“What was it?”

He thought about it honestly.

“It was sad,” he said. “But calm.”

You were quiet for a moment. Then you reached up, and the gesture was so unexpected that he went still, your hand cupping his cheek, steady and warm, thumb tracing a line beneath his eye.

He leaned into it without thinking.

“I’m glad it was only a dream,” you said softly trying to calm his anxieties that he didn’t want to confess out loud.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

The tightness in his chest released, not all at once but in stages, like a knot worked loose over time. He turned his head slightly, pressing his lips briefly to your palm, and you let him, and neither of you made anything of it. She’s right, he thought. Whatever that was. Whatever it meant.

He was here. Alive. With his family, with his best friend, with his girl.

Maybe that was enough. Maybe that was, actually, everything.

The afternoon passed.

Classes ended. The university slowly emptied like it did every day at dusk, students and professors releasing themselves back into the city like a pressure valve opening. The parking lot filled briefly with the usual chaos and then thinned.

“My mother wants you over more often,” Jace mentioned, as they walked toward the Porsche.

“Apparently she likes you.”

You brightened immediately. “Really?”

“She said so unprompted. First thing this morning.”

“Good.” You smiled with satisfaction. “I’m charming.”

Jace looked at you sideways. “You are deeply smug about this.”

“I’m charming,” you repeated, pleasantly. He laughed. “Come over tonight?”

You looked at him, with that look you had, the one he’d never found a word for, the one that made him feel simultaneously seen and unsteady in the best possible way. Made him feel a bit giddy.

“I’d love to,” you said.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

The penthouse was unusually quiet when they arrived. Rhaenyra was visible through the glass of her home office, phone tucked between her ear and shoulder, reading from a document with the focused intensity and it was clear that the woman needed a break from everything. Luke had evaporated somewhere. Joffrey was reportedly studying, a claim no one in the household had ever been successfully able to verify.

You and Jace settled at the dining table with laptops and scattered notes and the collective fiction of productivity.

For forty minutes, it was remarkably functional. Jace had his economics module open. You were working through something, he didn’t ask, didn’t need to and the sound of quiet typing and the occasional turn of a page created a kind of companionable silence that he had always thought of as the specific luxury of being comfortable with someone. presence. You could simply be in it.

He was reading about capital allocation.

“Jace.”

He looked up.

“You’re getting lost in your mind again.”

“I’m not what are you talking about?” he said automatically. Then, because honesty was something he’d apparently committed to today: “I was thinking about- uhhh. Economics?”

“That is not better.”

“You look pretty,” he said simply.

The silence that followed had a distinct texture. You looked at him for a long moment. Then you slowly, deliberately, closed your laptop.

“No,” you said.

“What?”

“You don’t get to say things like that when I’m trying to study.”

“I was simply making an observation.”

“You are impossible.”

He was very pleased with himself. He did not bother hiding it.

An hour later, the economics module had not progressed. The textbooks had been consolidated into a single pile and pushed to the far end of the table, a gesture that meant these exist and will eventually be addressed, which was as much as either of you were willing to commit to. A film had been agreed upon via negotiation.

Blankets appeared.

The overhead lights went off.

And somehow, as these things always somehow managed, you ended up curled against his chest on the enormous sectional, his arm around your waist, the film playing distantly while neither of you particularly watched it. Your breathing slowed first. His heartbeat was steady and familiar beneath your ear.

The city moved quietly outside the windows.

You didn’t remember falling asleep.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

The prince stood before you.

The wind came off the sea like a cold hand, whipping through his dark, curling hair, pressing his black riding coat against his frame. Behind him, Dragonstone rose in its glory against a steel-grey sky, all sharp towers and dark stone, magnificent and terrible, built by people who had never believed in half measures. The sea crashed against the rocks far below. Dark clouds gathered on the horizon with the patient, deliberate advance of something inevitable.

“No.”

Your voice came out broken.

“No, please.”

He looked at you the way he always looked at you as if you were the clearest thing in a world that had lately become very unclear, like looking at you was the one thing he could do without effort in a life that had demanded extraordinary effort from him since the moment he was old enough to understand what he was.

“I have to go.”

“You don’t,” you said, even though you knew it wasn’t true. Even though somewhere beneath the desperate present tense of the argument, the truer, older part of you already knew exactly what was coming. Already knew the shape of this farewell.

His hands found yours.

They were warm. Strong and real, so real that makes their loss so much more brutal than the loss of things you never fully believed in.

“You can stay,” you said. Your voice was steadier than you felt. “You can let someone else-”

“I cannot.” His voice was gentle but stern. He was stubborn and so if he made peace with this decisions, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Tears burned behind your eyes. The fear inside you was almost unbearable and burning, it was twisted and layered, because you knew. You already knew. This was not a premonition, not a vague presentiment. It was knowledge, carried somewhere beneath language, beneath memory, in whatever part of you had been this person before.

You knew what awaited him at the Gullet.

Fire.

Water.

“You promised.” The words escaped before you could decide to say them.

His expression shifted. Something moved across it, grief, tenderness, the ache of a man who loves something too well to pretend it isn’t breaking. “And I will keep that promise but this is a battle I must fight for both myself and my mother.”

He stepped closer, and you let him, and he pressed a kiss to your forehead so gently it barely qualified as a touch at all.

Then he rested his brow against yours. His eyes never left yours.

“If I do not return- which I intend to,”

The world seemed to hold its breath.

“I will find you.”

A tear escaped. Traced the line of your cheek. He watched it with eyes that were very dark and very steady.

“In every lifetime if not this one. I promise.”

The words landed somewhere deep in you, somewhere wordless, somewhere older than the language you used to think with. A promise that had the weight of truth rather than intention.

You memorized his face. The curls. The strong jaw. The eyes, brown and earnest and alive, so alive.

He smiled.

Then he stepped away.

He turned toward the waiting dragon.

Toward the dark water below.

Toward a destiny that was also a death.

And all you could do was watch him leave. ┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

You woke with a gasp that tore itself from somewhere past your chest.

For several seconds, you could not find the room. Could not find yourself in it. There was only the dream...the cliffs, the wind, his forehead against yours, the sound of his footsteps retreating and the grief of it, which was specific and devastating and nothing at all like the vague emotional residue of ordinary sleep.

Tears burned behind your eyes. Your heart was pounding.

You pushed yourself upright. A blanket tangled around your legs. The room was dim, the film long since ended, the television showing a menu screen. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, King’s Landing glittered in the full dark of night, the city’s lights reflected upward in a warm wash against the low clouds. Jace must have moved you to his room when you fell asleep.

The bedroom door opened.

Jace stepped in carrying two mugs, steam rising from both. He had apparently, at some point during your sleep, been productive.

The moment he saw your face, he froze.

“Hey.”

The concern in his voice was immediate, the shift from normal to careful happening in the space of a single syllable.

“What’s wrong?”

You didn’t answer. The words were somewhere on the way, but in the meantime your body had already decided what it needed, and what it needed was to close the distance between you and him as quickly as possible.

You stood.

Crossed the room.

The mugs barely survived. He caught them against the edge of the side table with an impressive reflex, setting them down quickly before his arms came around your waist, and you buried your face against the side of his neck, and breathed him in.

“Sweetheart?” Low and careful. His chin came to rest on top of your head.

You stayed there for a moment just letting the reality of him replace the dream of him. The warmth of him. The solidness.

Then you pulled back. Not far. Your forehead came to rest against his, which put you close enough to feel his breath and see the small crease of worry between his brows.

“I had a dream,” you said. It seems it was your turn to utter those words.

Something moved across his face. He went very still in the way that meant he was paying every variety of attention he had.

“What kind of dream?”

“I saw a prince.”

His breath caught. You felt it.

“I saw him leaving for a battle. He was going to fight-”

Your voice faltered, then steadied. “He knew he might not come back. And he said-” You stopped.

Jace’s arms tightened around you, almost involuntarily. “He said he would find me,” you continued. “That if he didn’t return-” Your eyes met his, and something in your chest recognized something in his. “He would find me in every lifetime.”

Silence.

Complete, absolute silence.

Jace stared at you.

Because those were the exact words. Not a version of them, not a paraphrase but the exact promise, the exact phrasing, the exact scene, the stone of Dragonstone under grey skies and wind coming off the sea. He had lived it from one side and you had lived it from the other, and here you both were, in a penthouse above a city that did not have dragons, with the memory of them living in your bones.

His throat moved.

You smiled softly with tears still bright at the corners of your eyes. Your hand lifted, your fingers moving gently through his curls, the same gesture that felt simultaneously new and ancient.

“I don’t know what any of that means,” you said.

“Neither do I.”

“But if it was real-”

His forehead pressed more firmly against yours.

“You kept your promise,” you whispered.

He felt his throat close.

And for the first time since he had woken to the sound of an alarm clock and a bedroom that wasn’t the sea, he stopped wondering whether the dream had been real. He stopped wondering whether he was grieving something imagined or something true. He stopped needing to know.

Because you knew.

You had been there.

You rose onto your toes.

Your lips met his.

It was slow and gentle. He kissed you back like someone returning to something, like a navigator finding a landmark in familiar water.

Like he had been waiting centuries and perhaps his soul had waited for this moment. The moment to return to her. ┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

The knock was soft.

They both startled apart with the excellent reflexes of guilty consciences, then immediately demonstrated the dignity of two people pretending they hadn’t. Jace cleared his throat. Rested his forehead against yours for one final second. His breath was unsteady in the best way.

Another knock.

“Jacaerys?”

Rhaenyra’s voice, measured, carrying through the door with the easy authority of a woman who managed board rooms and board members and the shenanigans of three sons as a single uninterrupted professional skill.

“Dinner is ready.” They heard the muffled voice of his mother.

Jace answered at a volume calibrated for normalcy “We’ll be there in a minute!”

A pause that had weight.

“Five minutes,” his mother’s voice returned, drier than a desert, and entirely aware of everything and perhaps making a wrong assumption of you two being alone in his room.

You laughed, pressing your face briefly against his shoulder to muffle it. He was already smiling.

“Your mother doesn’t trust you.”

“She absolutely does not.”

“And honestly?” You poked his chest. “I don’t blame her.”

“You wound me.”

“Good.” You pulled your hand back, but he caught it, quick and easy, and pressed a kiss to your knuckles again. The same gesture as that morning. The echo of it traveled through both of you clearly.

Your cheeks went pink.

He watched it happen with a feeling in his chest that was too large and too simple to require any examination at all.

There she is, he thought. My girl.

My princess.

He took your hand properly, fingers laced and led you toward the dining room.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈ They heard the argument before they reached the dinner table.

Luke and Joffrey, seated across from each other in the arrangement that the family had collectively accepted as a flaw, were conducting a debate with the commitment of two people who had come to win.

“No, because you’re objectively wrong-”

“I’m objectively right-”

“You don’t even know what objectively means.”

“I literally do.”

“You used it wrong.”

Joffrey groaned with his whole body. “I hate this family.”

“You are this family,” Luke pointed out.

Joffrey considered this. “Exactly.”

Rhaenyra, at the head of the table, was pinching the bridge of her nose with annoyance. This was her normal and yet it was tiring.

The moment she saw you, her face entirely changed.

“There she is.”

You smiled. “Hi.”

She stood and pulled you into a hug with a warmth that was, Jace thought privately, rather more enthusiastic than his own homecoming greeting most mornings. “I was beginning to think my son had invented you.”

“Mum.”

“What? He never brings you over.”

“That’s his fault,” you said.

“Traitor,” Jace said.

“You’re literally my boyfriend.”

“Exactly.”

You smiled sweetly. “I’m allowed.”

Rhaenyra looked delighted in the specific way she allowed herself to look delighted when she was genuinely pleased, a rarity outside this apartment. Luke immediately leaned toward you.

“See? This is why she’s my favorite.”

“I’m sitting right here.”

“Unfortunately.”

Jace threw a bread roll at him.

Luke threw one back.

The war began immediately, and lasted approximately five seconds before Rhaenyra’s single sharp look ended it. She had a look for this. It was very effective.

“Sometimes I wonder,” she said, settling back into her chair and accepting a bread roll from the basket with the serenity of someone who had already mentally exited the building, “if I raised wolves.”

“That’s insulting,” Joffrey said.

Everyone looked at him.

The fourteen-year-old shrugged with the composure of someone who had thought this through. “Wolves are smarter.”

The silence held for two seconds before Luke’s expression cracked. Jace looked at the ceiling. Rhaenyra’s attempt at severity collapsed at its foundations.

You sat beside Jace with your hand warm against his under the table, and you were already laughing, and the sound of it filled the room the way laughter does when a room is already full of people who are glad to be there.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

Dinner found its rhythm.

Conversation moved in the easy, overlapping way it does with people who have logged enough hours together that they no longer need to manage it consciously. Luke complained about a group project with the vivid resentment of having decided the problem was everyone else.

Joffrey explained something about a game or a film or a historical period but the audience could not quite keep up, but that seemed to be part of the experience. Rhaenyra complained, with great economy, about company politics, and then told a story about a colleague that had everyone at the table paying full attention (It was Aemond who everytone is afraid of in their company).

You listened to all of it.

Jace, mostly, watched.

He had not expected this. Had woken this morning in the sea, or the memory of it. Had spent the drive to university with the dream still active in his body, had sat through lectures half-present, had carried the weight of Vermax’s last look in his chest all day like a stone.

And now.

He watched his mother smile at something you said. He watched Luke do the thing he did when he was actually amused, which was different from when he is pretending. Watched Joffrey explain something to you directly, having apparently determined that you were worth the effort, and watched your face do the thing it did when you were genuinely interested in something, slightly forward, slightly bright, entirely present.

You fit here. Not as a guest, not as someone being accommodated. As someone who belonged. He thought of the dream again.

Remembered standing at the dragonpit of Dragonstone with his armor on and the dragon saddled and the sea grey behind him, and looking back at everything he was leaving, his mother, his brothers, you, the stone halls and the cold salt wind and the ordinary miracle of a morning that didn’t require a king’s son to die for it.

He had wondered, in those last seconds at Dragonstone, if he would ever see any of them again. He had his answer now.

The realization settled in his chest quietly, without drama. Not a revelation, something more like a confirmation. A peace he hadn’t known he was looking for, finding him here, at a dinner table with a bread roll dent in the tablecloth and Joffrey currently holding forth on something no one else understood.

No war. No dragons. No succession. No battles. Just family. Just love.

Just this.

Halfway through dessert, Joffrey’s phone lit up. “Oh!” He reached for it with the speed of receiving news they’d been waiting for. “Dad’s calling.”

Jace felt himself smile before the screen even showed Laenor’s face.

It appeared a moment later, that face, familiar and warm and slightly tanned by whatever sun was currently shining on whatever harbor on whatever coast he was sailing toward. Behind him, a bright blue sky suggested somewhere in Essos, probably. The man was perpetually in motion, perpetually somewhere else and yet found time for them. He was not their real father, but he might as well have been. After Harwin passed away, Rhaenyra had remarried Laenor as more of a deal since Laenor wasn’t interested in anything but he cared for Rhaenyra platonically and it seemed to have worked out great and that’s all that mattered.

“There are my favorite children.”

Luke snorted. “We’re your only children.”

“And yet somehow still my favorites.” Laenor’s gaze found you across the table, and his face smiled “There she is.”

You laughed. “Hello.”

“Good. Finally, someone sensible has arrived.”

“Hey!” Three voices, simultaneous.

Laenor continued as though he hadn’t heard. “How are you, darling?”

“I’m well, thank you.”

Jace groaned. “Why does everyone in my family like her more than me?”

“Because,” Laenor said, and the timing was beautiful, “she has manners.”

The table erupted. Even Rhaenyra, which was a significant achievement.

Laenor spent twenty minutes on the call, chatting about his route, trading insults with. He heard both Luke and Joffery’s rambling. He asked Rhaenyra about the board meeting she’d complained about, and listened to her answer. He asked you about your studies, and remembered something you’d mentioned three calls ago, and asked a follow-up question about it.

The man had walked into their lives years ago and simply decided, without announcement or conditions, that these were his sons. No performance of it. No documentation. Just- love, extended to fill the available space.

Dream Laenor had disappeared. The thought arrived gently, without bitterness. The dream-Laenor, who had been present mostly in his absence, who Jace had barely known, who had been lost before Jace could understand what losing someone meant. This version was here. This version showed up.

And Jace was, quietly and completely, grateful for that. The call ended. The dessert finished. The evening moved toward its natural conclusion with the comfortable inevitability of all good evenings. Luke vanished in the direction of his room. Joffrey disappeared with a quantity of snacks that could feed a whole army. Rhaenyra retreated to finish what she’d started, she always had something she was finishing, this was simply who she was and the penthouse settled into quiet

Which left you and Jace, alone on the balcony.

┈┈・ ✦ ・┈┈

King’s Landing stretched below them without end. The city was all light from up here, not the individual lights, not streets and windows and the moving points of cars, but the collective glow of it, the warmth of a few million people living their lives in proximity, translated upward into something that looked, from this height, almost like its own kind of fire.

A cool breeze moved through the dark, carrying the city’s particular nighttime mixture of warm pavement and distant food and the faint, improbable ghost of something floral from a rooftop garden somewhere below. It found its way into Jace’s curls and did what it wanted with them.

You stood beside him. Close enough that your shoulders touched.

Neither of you spoke. Neither of you needed to. The city was enough, for a while.

Then you broke the silence the way you often did when a thought entered your head.

“Do you think it was real?”

He didn’t ask what you meant.

The dreams. The prince and the princess. The battle. The promise made at the edge of the world on the morning of an ending. The specific weight of standing on Dragonstone and knowing.

“I don’t know,” he said.

You slipped your hand into his. Your fingers were cool from the night air. He closed his hand around yours.

“But it felt real,” you said.

“It did.”

Another silence, this one richer. Weighted, but not heavily, weighted the way a good book is heavy, in a way you want.

“If it was real…”

Jace looked toward you. The city’s light caught you from below, softening the angles, turning you luminous in the warm way of a portrait painted with care. The same thing he’d thought this morning returned, effortlessly, as though it had simply been waiting for the right lighting.

Radiant.

The same as the princess from the dream. The same, and also entirely herself.

“If it was real,” you continued, a smile finding the corner of your mouth, “I think she’d be happy.”

“Who?”

“The princess.”

Your fingers squeezed his.

“Because she got her prince back.”

Something moved in his chest and he felt a giddy sensation.

“And he got his princess,” he said quietly.

The smile you gave him in return was the specific, undone kind that he privately thought was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He doubted this would change.

“You know,” he said, after a moment, “I’ve spent all day thinking about the battle.”

“The Gullet?”

“Yeah.” He looked down at the city. “The part where I died.”

You were quiet beside him.

“And?” you said, finally.

He looked back through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the penthouse.

His mother, visible in her office, signing something. The small movement of her hand showing her actions. Luke in the hallway beyond, typing away at his phone aggressively with determinations of someone looking to win an argument even if he may be wrong.

Joffrey somewhere in his room planning a prank on his mother.

And all of it, all of this life, this ordinary, extraordinary life, glowing warm behind glass thirty floors above a city that had never known a dragon. His family.

“I think that prince would’ve liked this,” he said.

You followed his gaze.

You understood immediately. He could see it in the way your face softened, not with sadness but with tenderness that recognizes grief and holds it carefully.

A life without war. Without the weight of a crown.

Without sacrifice, the kind that swaps one beloved thing for another in an endless, devastating ledger.

Just family.

Just love.

Just peace.

You rested your head on his shoulder.

He turned his head and pressed a kiss to your hair, slow and quiet.

Neither of you saw it.

But just for a moment, a breath, almost a blink, the glass of the balcony door held a reflection that was not quite yours.

Two figures. Side by side. Dressed in black and red, the colours of a house that had once held the world.

Standing exactly as you were standing. Looking out at exactly what you were looking at.

Smiling.

At each other, and at this, and at everything that had managed, against all odds, to survive.

Then the image dissolved.

The glass held only the room behind it, warm and lit and full of the sound of Luke losing the argument.

And Jace, and you.

Exactly where you were always meant to be.

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The bathroom mirror is still fogged at the edges from the shower you took an hour ago, the whole apartment smells like the vanilla body oil you dabbed into your collarbones and the burnt-sugar candle Jace keeps on his dresser because he thinks it makes the place feel less like some dungeon and more like home. Rain taps against the window in that soft, uneven rhythm, and somewhere down on the street a taxi lays on its horn for three long seconds before giving up. The bass from the apartment below thumps faintly through the floorboards, someone's pregame already in full swing.

You're in front of the floor length mirror leaned against his closet door, tilting your chin, checking your lipstick, rolling a strand of hair between two fingers because you can't decide if you want to leave it down or twist it up. The dress. God, the dress. From the front it's demure, a soft slate satin that skims your front and drapes clean at the thigh, the neckline looked innocent and modest. It looked like something you'd wear to your aunt's wedding but that's the trick of it though. That's why you spent forty-seven dollars on it during a two AM TikTok haze last Tuesday.

Behind you, Jace is sprawled across his unmade bed in gray sweatpants and a white tee that's been through the wash so many times it's practically translucent at the hem. His phone is angled above his face, the blue glow catching on the sharp bridge of his nose and the messy dark curls that fall across his forehead. His feet are crossed at the ankles and he’s laughing at something, a low huff of a sound, you can hear the tiny audio of some Reels compilation.

"Sof said she's already at the bar," you tell him, thumbing through your phone in the mirror's reflection. "She got the corner booth."

"Mm." He doesn't look up. "Which bar?"

"That new one downtown. The one with the disco ball in the bathroom."

"Sounds like a fire hazard."

"You sound like your mom."

"Rude." He scrolls. "My mom's cool."

You laugh, sweeping bronzer along the high point of your cheek, and shift your weight from one side to the other. The satin whispers against your thighs. You've been waiting, actually, for him to look up. You've been arranging yourself in his peripheral vision for the last ten minutes and he's been oblivious in that specifically annoying boyfriend way, and it's starting to feel almost insulting. You bought this dress to tease him. You'd like the courtesy of being noticed back.

You set the bronzer down and pivot on your heel. Turning your back to the mirror to check the drape of the fabric across your ass, one hand smoothing over your hip.

You hear it before you see it. A sharp inhale. Then, a choked half sound that dies in his throat followed by the soft slap of a phone hitting a chest.

You glance over your shoulder into the mirror. Jace has propped himself up on his elbows, mouth open, eyes so wide you can see the whites all the way around his brown irises. His curls are sticking up in six directions from where he'd been running his hand through them. His phone is face down on his sternum, forgotten.

"What?" you ask, and you can't keep the grin out of it.

"What the fuck."

"What?"

"Turn around."

"I am turned around."

"No, turn, come here, turn all the way." He sits up so fast the mattress creaks. "Have you seen the back of that dress?"

You laugh, pressing your tongue to the inside of your cheek, and rotate slowly on the ball of your foot until you're facing him. "Well, yeah. I bought it."

"Sweets." His voice cracks on the second syllable. He looks genuinely aggrieved, like you've handed him bad news at a hospital. "Love, no."

The back of the dress is the joke. From nape to just above the swell of your ass there is nothing. No fabric. No zipper. A few delicate strap knots and chains at the small of your back and that's the entire architectural principle keeping the front on your body. The dip of your spine is on full display, the two soft dimples at the base, the smooth stretch of skin from your shoulder blades down. You spent twenty minutes with a jade roller earlier making sure the whole canvas of your back looked like glass.

Jace swings his legs off the bed and stands abruptly. He crosses the room in three strides and stops just behind you, close enough that you can feel the heat of him but not touching, and his reflection in the mirror looks stricken.

"No," he says again, quieter.

"Yes."

"You cannot leave this apartment."

"I can and I will."

"I wouldn't mind if I was there." His fingertips ghost the small of your back, not landing, just hovering, like the skin might burn him. "Like, if I was going with you, sure, whatever, wear it, look like this, be a menace, I'll fight everyone in the bar. But alone?" His voice pitches up. "You want to go alone? Downtown? In this?"

"Sof will be there. And Jessie. And probably Serena if her flight lands."

"None of them have upper body strength."

"Jace."

"I'm being serious."

You reach up and gather your hair, twisting it into a loose knot at the crown of your head. The motion pulls the dress tighter across your ribs and you watch him watch it in the mirror. His throat bobs. You slide a claw clip out from between your teeth and snap it into place, and then you tilt your head, satisfied, and reach for your mascara.

"Change," he says. Weakly.

"Nope."

He's still standing behind you. You catch his reflection and the way his mouth has gone tight, the way his eyes are doing that flicker thing where he's thinking, calculating, cooking something up. His hands are loose at his sides. His shoulders are set and he's got the same look on his face he gets when he's playing chess against his brother Luke and he's about to do something petty.

You're about to ask him what he's thinking when he drops.

Just, drops, straight to his knees behind you with a soft thud on the hardwood, hands coming up to cup the sides of your waist like he's steadying a vase.

"Jace- what are you-" you start, twisting to look at him, but he's already leaning in, and the first press of his mouth to the base of your spine punches every word right out of your lungs.

The sound you make is embarrassing. A short, high thing, half gasp, half whimper. His lips are warm and slightly parted, and he presses them just above the little dimple on the left, and then he kisses the one on the right, slower, deliberate, and you feel the heat of his breath fan across your skin in the split second between each kiss.

"Jace." You try to swivel out of his grip and his hands tighten, thumbs pressing into the divots of your hip bones through the satin. Not enough to bruise. Just enough that you're going nowhere.

"Mhm." A kiss to the base of your spine, wetter this time, a hint of tongue.

"You're being…" another kiss, "so annoying…" another, higher, right at the small of your back, "oh my god."

He kisses his way up, patient, like he's got a list. Every vertebra. He works up your spine one bone at a time and you can feel your knees getting weak. Your hands come up on instinct and brace against the mirror. Your palm leaves a fog print on the glass. In the reflection you can see the crown of his dark curls between your shoulder blades, the shell of his ear, one of his eyes closed in concentration.

At the middle of your back he opens his mouth properly and drags his teeth. You feel it in your stomach.

"Ah-" you hiss, and his answering laugh vibrates against your skin.

"You're the one who wanted attention."

"I didn't."

"You so did."

"I was doing my makeup."

"Sure." He kisses higher, right between your shoulder blades. "Doing your makeup." Higher. "In a dress with no back." Higher. "Facing away from me." His voice drops. "In the mirror where I could see you."

His mouth reaches the nape of your neck and he stands as he does it, unfolding himself up the length of your body, and now his front is flush against your back, his chest broad and warm through the thin cotton of his tee. One arm loops around your waist, splaying wide, his palm pressing flat against your stomach. The other hand comes up and slides around the side of your throat, thumb hooking under your jaw, and he tilts your head to the left with the gentlest pressure, exposing the long tendon of your neck.

You watch it happen in the mirror. Your own face, lips parted, eyes gone dark and glassy. Him behind you, curls falling forward, jaw set. His mouth against the hinge of your jaw. His mouth on the soft spot beneath your ear. His mouth sucking hard just above your collarbone, and this time you feel the sting of teeth and the deliberate pull of suction and you know, you know, he's leaving a mark on purpose. He shifts an inch and does it again. And again. Slower. Right along the ridge of your clavicle where no makeup can hide it and no scarf could reasonably cover it.

Your eyes close and your hand slips off the mirror and finds the back of his neck instead, fingers threading into the curls at his nape, and you feel him hum against your skin, pleased, when your nails scrape.

He works you over for what feels like a long time. Your pulse point. The soft under-shelf of your jaw. The curve where your neck meets your shoulder. He alternates, kissing and sucking and dragging his tongue in slow, wet stripes. You are absolutely, comprehensively lost. The room smells like him now, and the last ghost of your perfume, and everything is very quiet except for the wet sounds of his mouth and your uneven breathing and the rain and the distant bass from downstairs. You were losing your mind.

He pulls back.

You open your eyes slowly. In the mirror, he's grinning with full teeth. Smug in a way that would be genuinely insufferable if you had any blood left in your brain. His hair is even worse than it was before. His lips are pink and wet.

Your neck and shoulder look like a paint pallet. There are three, maybe four, blooming red marks already darkening toward purple, one high enough that the collar of a jacket wouldn't touch it.

"What…" you manage, "is that face."

"I marked up my territory." He is so pleased with himself. He tilts his head, considering his work like a curator. "Certifiably mine. Notarized. Do you still want to go outside?"

You feel your jaw set. The brat in you rises like a bubble. "Yes. I do."

Something flickers across his face. His grin sharpens.

"Who…" he says, dropping his voice to a register you feel in the base of your spine, "said we're finished."

The world tilts.

He turns you by the hips, walks you backward to the mattress, and the back of your knees hit the edge of it and you go down. Your claw clip snaps loose. Your hair spills out over his navy duvet. Before you've even registered horizontal, he's peeling his tee off over his head, and then it's off and on the floor and you get the full view.

You have seen him shirtless approximately nine hundred times and it still does something stupid to you. He's lean, always has been, but two years of a serious gym habit have carved him. The flat plane of his chest with the faint scatter of dark hair between his pecs, the ridged shape of his stomach, the sharp cuts of his obliques disappearing into the low waistband of his sweats. His mouth is still red from your neck. There's a flush high on his cheekbones.

You prop yourself up on your elbows. "Very funny. My friend is waiting, actually."

He plants a hand on your sternum and pushes you back down, gently and leans over you with a knee braced on the mattress between your thighs.

"Didn't I tell you…" he says, close to your mouth, "we aren't finished yet."

You open your mouth to give him something witty. You had something. You had a whole line but it evaporated because his mouth is on yours and it is NOT gentle. It's the kind of kiss that has been building for the whole ten minutes he's been leaving hickeys on your neck, hot and open and you feel it right down to the bottoms of your feet. Your thighs squeeze together on reflex and there is already so much heat between them it's almost embarrassing. Slick. You've been slick since he hit his knees.

His tongue drags across your bottom lip, a question, and you part for him and he groans into your mouth, low and needy. Your hands find his curls and you fist them lightly, tugging, and he makes another sound, muffled, his hand slides up the outside of your thigh, catching the satin of your dress, dragging it up with him. His palm is hot as his thumb traces the crease of your hip.

He pulls back. A thin thread of spit connects your lower lip to his and breaks and lands on your chin. His eyes are half-lidded and completely blown. Your chest is heaving along with his and somewhere in the back of your head you register that your friends are absolutely getting stood up.

"Turn over," he says.

You blink. "What."

"Turn over." His hand slides under your ribs and he's already helping, guiding you onto your stomach on his duvet. Your hair fans out. Your cheek presses into the pillow that smells like his shampoo. "The dress." He tugs at it and it comes loose in one soft slither. He works the satin up over the swell of your ass and bunches it at your waist. You're not wearing underwear. You couldn't have worn underwear with this dress and you know he registered that ten seconds ago because he makes a soft strangled sound behind you.

"Sweet mother of Gods."

"Jace."

"You're going to kill me. Like, physically. I'm going to have a stroke."

"You're being dramatic."

"You're not wearing underwear," he informs you, in case you had somehow forgotten, and his hands come down on the backs of your thighs and squeeze, and the mattress dips as he lowers himself.

The first thing you feel is his warm breath. Then his mouth on the back of your left thigh, high up, sucking. Another mark. He drags his mouth two inches over and does it again. Another two inches. You are going to be a leopard. You are going to have to wear pants in July. You feel the wet swirl of his tongue over the bruise he just made, soothing it, before he moves to the crease where your thigh meets your ass and bites, softly, and you jerk.

"Oh my god."

"Mm."

He kisses across the swell of your ass, teeth grazing, and then up, up to your lower back where he sucks another mark right above the dip of your spine, and you can feel the heat of it blooming into your skin. He is being so thorough. His hands slide up the backs of your thighs and part them, gently, and you let them fall open because at this point your bones have turned to warm honey.

And then his mouth is on you.

The first stripe of his tongue is long and flat and slow and it goes from your clit all the way to your entrance and back, and the sound you make is not a sound a human should make. It's ragged. Your fingers fist in the duvet and your hips buck up on instinct and he lets you, hands sliding under to cradle the fronts of your hips, and then he pulls you back and up onto your knees so your face is still on the pillow but your ass is in the air.

"Better," he murmurs against you, and then he goes to work.

He was so good at this. You have told him he's good at this, once, when you were both drunk on cheap red wine, and he has taken that compliment and internalized it like a religion. His tongue circles your clit in slow, deliberate patterns, and then flicks, and then flattens, and then he closes his lips around it and sucks and you make a noise into the pillow that would have neighbors calling the cops if the building had thinner walls. He drags his mouth lower and pushes his tongue into you and you feel one of his hands leave your hip and then two of his fingers replace his tongue, curling up, finding that spot as his mouth returns to your clit.

Your knuckles are white in the duvet. You reach back blindly with one hand and find his hair and just hold, twisting the curls between your fingers. Your other hand fumbles for a pillow to pull under your face, to muffle yourself, because you cannot stop the sounds coming out of you. Little whimpers. A long, broken "oh." A stuttered "please" you didn't mean to say out loud.

"Yeah?" His voice is muffled against you, wet. "Yeah, sweets?"

"Jace."

"Come on."

He crooks his fingers again and sucks and you fall apart. Your thighs clamp together but that doesn't stop him as he works you through it with slow steady pressure until you're twitching and pushing his head away with a whimper of oversensitivity, and only then does he pull off with a wet, obscene sound and press a kiss to the inside of your thigh.

You felt boneless. Your face smashed into the pillow and you feel drops of sweat sliding down between your shoulder blades, your hair is stuck to your temple. You crack one eye open and the room is soft and blurry in your vision.

Behind you, you hear the rustle of him shoving his sweats off. The clink of his belt buckle- no wait- he wasn't wearing a belt, that's the sound of his phone hitting the floor. The soft crumple of fabric. And then his hand is on your hip again, warm and steady, and the other is grabbing a pillow from the head of the bed and sliding it under your hips, lifting you.

You feel him line up. The blunt hot press of him against you. Your breath hitches.

"Ready?" His voice is wrecked.

"Mhm." You say in agreement.

He pushes in slow. Inch by inch. The stretch of it makes your eyes flutter closed. He was not small by any means. He's got a slight curve to him that hits you in a way you have written frankly embarrassing journal entries about, and by the time he bottoms out you can feel him everywhere. His hips settle flush against your ass as his hand smooths up your spine and back down.

"Fuck," he breathes.

"Move," you whisper.

He moves without question. The first thrust is slow, testing, and then the second is a little harder, and by the fourth he's found a rhythm and the sound of it fills the room. The wet slap of skin on skin. The soft creak of his mattress. His breath, ragged, right above you. Your own broken little "ah, ah, ah" every time he snaps his hips forward.

He folds himself over your back, his chest to your spine, and one of his arms braces beside your head and the other slides under your ribs and pulls you back against him. His mouth finds your shoulder and he bites, then sucks and then bites again. A hickey blooms in the crook where your neck meets your shoulder. Then higher. Then the back of your shoulder blade. Then he pulls back just enough to see and drives forward hard and you cry out into the pillow.

You turn your head, cheek smashed against the duvet, and he sees it, sees you looking for him, and he leans down and catches your mouth from the side, angle awkward and messy, and it's all tongue and spit and neither of you can breathe right but he tastes like you making you moan into his mouth. Then his hips stutter.

"You're so-" he says against your mouth, and doesn't finish, just kisses you harder, "fuck, you're so-“

Your hand fists in his curls again and holds him there.

He straightens up eventually to get better leverage, hands gripping your hips, thumbs digging into the meat of your ass, and he watches himself move in and out of you and makes a low groan that you feel in your sternum. His hand comes down in a light slap on your right cheek and you jerk forward with a whimper and he does it again, harder, and then soothes it with his palm.

"You were really gonna go out?" he asks, panting. "Like this? Looking like this?" Another sharp thrust. "For other guys?"

"Not for-" you gasp, "other guys."

"Sure looked like it."

"Jace."

"Mhm?"

"Please-"

He shifts his angle just barely. And it hits something behind your navel and you see white at the edges of your vision, his hand slides around and finds your clit, and it takes maybe forty seconds before you're coming again, harder than the first time but this one you can't muffle at all. It rips right out of your throat. Your whole body clenches around him and he makes a broken sound holding still, jaw tight, riding it out with you.

When you come down enough to breathe he pulls out gently, and before you can protest the sudden emptiness he's flipping you onto your back.

You blink up at him, dazed, hair a wreck, dress still bunched around your waist. He grabs the hem and drags it up and off over your head and it lands somewhere around his room. Your body is flushed, chest heaving, a sheen of sweat on your covering you and hickeys blooming everywhere. His eyes are still dark and his curls are damp at the temples.

He grabs your ankles and hooks them up over his shoulders, one and then the other, folding you nearly in half. Your knees graze your own chest then he slides back in in one long push and you both groan.

"Oh-" you gasp, "oh- fuck- Jace."

"Yeah," he breathes, and it comes out shaky as his hands slide from your ankles down the backs of your calves to grip behind your knees, pinning them wider and higher, the angle of him inside you shifts so deep you swear you can feel him under your ribs. "Yeah, there you go. There's my girl."

The rain has picked up outside. It's not soft anymore, it's a steady drumming against the window, the bass from downstairs has kicked over into something with a heavier beat, a low pulse that syncs almost obscenely with the rhythm of his hips. The candle on the dresser is guttering low, the wick swimming in a pool of melted wax, throwing amber shadows across the ceiling. The whole room smells like sex now.

You can barely keep your eyes open but thrust continues to knock a soft high sound out of you and suddenly an almost pornographic sound leaves your mouth along with Jace’s name as you scratch his skin.

"Fuck, do that again."

You do it again. Four red lines blooming down the tan of his forearm, and he groans in response, low and long, and drops his head so his forehead presses against your shin where it's hooked over his shoulder. There's beads of sweat sliding down the side of his throat, and you watch it disappear into the hollow of his clavicle.

He lifts his head. His eyes are almost black, pupils blown so wide there's barely any brown left, and his mouth is swollen. He looks feral as if he's been possessed by something old and hungry, it's a look you are well aware of over the course of your relationship.

"Come here." He unhooks one of your ankles, then the other, and lets your legs drop to wrap around his waist instead, as he leans down over you, chest to chest, and you feel the flat wet heat of his skin against yours and it makes you shiver. His weight is heavy in the best way, almost grounding. He braces himself on one elbow beside your head and his other hand slides up your rips, thumb dragging along the underside of your left breast.

"Jace."

"Mm."

"Kiss me."

He does, openmouthed and messy and you moan out. He swallows the sound while his hips are moving in slow deep grinds now instead of thrusts, working himself against that spot inside your belly, every roll of him drags the base of his cock against your clit and you feel another orgasm building, low and slow like heat rising in a kettle.

He pulls back from your mouth and trails his lips down your jaw, down the side of your neck, over one of the hickeys he already made, sucking gently, marking it again, and then down, further, to the flushed skin above your breast. His mouth wraps around your nipple and he laps. Slow, flat strokes of his tongue, then he closes his lips around it and sucks, and your back arches off the mattress hard enough that your front presses up against his mouth.

"Oh god-“

"Mhm" he moans at your reaction before switching sides, giving your other boob the same treatment. His tongue circling and his teeth grazing. Once he’s done, he nuzzles into the soft valley between your breasts and presses a kiss there, almost sweet, before he mouths back up to the other side and does it all over again, longer this time, until your nipples are stiff and shiny while you tremble under him.

"Jace- Jace- please, I'm-"

"I know." His voice is thick. "I know, Love, come on, one more."

"I can't."

"You can."

He shifts. Puts his weight on his forearms on either side of your head and drops his forehead to yours, so all you can see is him, dark curls falling forward, freckle on the bridge of his nose you've kissed a thousand times, and his hips pick up a faster and harder pace. The mattress is squeaking now, in earnest, and somewhere in a distant part of your brain you register that the downstairs neighbors' bass has gone quite and you don't care, you don't care about anything except the fact that Jace’s eyes are open and locked on yours and he is looking at you like you're the only thing in the world worth looking at.

"Come on," he pants. "Come on, come on, come on."

Your hand slides down between your bodies. He shifts up a little to give you room as your fingers find your clit, slick with both of your juices combined, you rub tight fast circles and almost immediately your over the edge and coming before you're gone.

You cry out loud, right against his mouth, and he kisses you through it, you clench around him is what does him in. He finally goes still as his whole body tenses. His forehead presses harder into yours and his eyes squeeze shut. He makes the most wrecked sound you have ever heard from him, a broken little "oh, fuck, oh fuck, sweet girl-" and you feel him pulse inside you, hot and thick, he shudders through it with his cock buried as deep as he can get.

The two of you hold there. Both breathing hard. His curls tickling your forehead. Your legs still locked around his hips. Your fingers still tangled in the damp hair at the nape of his neck. Someone in the hall outside is laughing at something on their phone as they pass by, and it's such a mundane sound compared to what just happened that it startles a wet laugh out of you.

He lifts his head. His eyes are soft again. Brown and warm and a little glazed.

"Hi." His voice is a rasp.

"Hi."

"You okay?"

"Mhm." You say nodding.

He pulls out slowly, careful about it, you both wince at the loss. He looks down between your bodies and makes a low, satisfied sound in his throat, and you tilt your chin up to see what he's seeing. His cum is leaking out of you, sliding down onto the pillow he shoved under your hips earlier. He drags two fingers through it and pushes it back into you, slowly and deliberately, the aftershock makes you twitch and gasp.

"Sorry, sorry." He's grinning. He's not sorry. "Couldn't help it."

"You are so-"

"So what."

"So much."

"Mm." He kisses the tip of your nose, and then your cheek, and then your mouth, soft this time, no tongue, just the press of him. "Stay right there. Don't move."

He rolls off you and stands. You watch him walk to the bathroom, naked, the long line of his back, the two dimples at the base of his own spine, the muscled slope of his ass, the back of his thighs. He flicks the bathroom light on and you hear the tap run. You let your head loll to the side. Your body feels like it's melted into the mattress.

He comes back with a warm washcloth folded in his palm, and the softness on his face as he crawls back onto the bed does something painful and specific to your heart. He kneels between your knees and cleans you up with the kind of careful tenderness that used to fluster you back when you were still figuring out how to receive it. Now you just close your eyes and let him. He wipes down the insides of your thighs, and then between your legs, slow and gentle, and then he tosses the washcloth toward the laundry hamper and misses but doesn't care at the moment.

"C'mere." He flops down beside you and drags you into his chest, and you go willingly and he arranges you the way he likes, one of your thighs hooked over his hip, your cheek on his chest, his arm heavy around your back. His hand starts a slow drift up and down your spine.

The candle finally burs out. The room dims to the blue of the streetlight through the rain-streaked window. His heartbeat is a steady, slowing thump under your ear.

"Sofia…" he says, after a long moment.

"Mm?"

"You should text her."

"Oh." You laugh, small and hoarse. "Right."

You reach blindly for your phone on the nightstand. It's got three unread texts and a missed FaceTime. You squint at the screen.

Sof (9:04 PM): where are u

Sof (9:11 PM): hello???

Sof (9:19 PM): girl is jace holding you hostage

You show Jace the screen and he snorts reading it.

"Accurate."

"I hate you."

"Mm hm."

You type back one-handed, thumb clumsy. so sorry babe. wildly detained. love u. tomorrow brunch on me. You add a red heart. You put the phone face down.

Jace's fingers are tracing something on your back and you realize after a second that he's tracing the edges of one of the hickeys he left, thumb rubbing gentle little circles over the sore skin.

"You are absolutely covered," he says, and there's something almost awed in his voice. "Head to toe."

"Whose fault is that."

"Yours." His hand slides up into your hair and cradles the back of your head. "You're the one who bought that dress."

"I bought that dress for girls night.”

"You bought that dress to torture me."

"Same thing."

He huffs a laugh into the top of your head, presses a kiss there. His mouth stays for a second, warm through your hair. You can smell his skin, the clean cedar of his deodorant almost sweated off, the sharper note of his sweat underneath, the faintest ghost of your body oil transferred onto him. You feel very, extremely, unreasonably fond of him. It rises up in your chest like a slow warm tide.

"Hey," you say.

"Hm?"

"I'm keeping the dress."

"I know."

"I'm gonna wear it out. Eventually."

"I know." His hand smooths down your back and comes to rest at the very base of your spine, right where he started. His palm is broad and warm and his fingers spread over both dimples, claiming. "Just, with me."

"Deal."

He hums, low and content, and shifts to pull the duvet up over both of you, tucking it around your shoulder with his free hand, and then he settles back, holding you closer against the long warm line of his body while the rain keeps drumming steady on the window.

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The confirmation hadn’t come from a sterile publicist statement, but from a carousel of photos on Harry’s account. The first slide was a blurry, candid photo of you two laughing at a diner at 3:00 AM, the second was a gorgeous shot of you looking out over the sea and the last was a mirror selfie of the two of you in matching oversized sweaters, his chin resting on your shoulder. His caption had been simple and sweet, undeniably his:

"My favorite part of every day. Finally getting to share it with everyone"

Your phone chirps again. Then twice more in rapid succession. You groaned at the sound.

"If that is your agent telling us we have to do an emergency live stream to address the chaos, I am throwing the phone out the window," Harry mumbles, his voice thick with sleep, his British accent heavier than usual in the mornings.

"Ugh, It's probably just my mom," you murmur, reaching blindly for the nightstand.

It wasn't your mom. It’s a text from Beth in the group chat, consisting entirely of capital letters and a link. Underneath it, a notification from Instagram reads: @houseofthedragon posted a video tagging you.

Intrigued, you sit up, dragging the blanket with you. Harry blinks open his eyes, "huh?" squinting against the morning light as you prop the phone between you both and hit play.

The video opens with the familiar, dramatic House of the Dragon intro music, but it’s quickly replaced by a soft acoustic track. The text across the screen reads: “We knew it before you did.... here’s what we’ve been keeping in the vault. Congratulations to our favorite slowburn.”

The first clip cuts in. It’s shaky, clearly shot on a B-cam during a break on the soundstage in Wales. You are sitting in a folding chair, dressed in your elaborate Targaryen regalia, looking exhausted. Harry is standing over you, still wearing his heavy, ornate armor. He is focusing intently on the intricate silver clasps of your cloak, his long fingers working gently to loosen the heavy fabric from where it’s pinching your shoulder.

You look up at him in the clip, saying something that makes him laugh an honest, crinkly-eyed laugh that he usually hides from the cameras.

From behind the camera, you hear the muffled, recognizable voice of one of the key grips. "Look at them. He’s been standing there for ten minutes fixing that cloak. It’s not even broken." Another crew member giggles off the screen. "He just wanted an excuse to be close to her. Don’t ruin it."

In the bed next to you, Harry lets out a soft groan, covering his face with his hands. "Oh, god. They filmed that? The Betrayal... unbelievable"

"Shh, listen," you laugh, nudging him with your elbow as the video cuts to the next scene.

The second clip cuts in, and this one is from a midnight shoot out in the muddy, torch-lit backlot. It’s freezing cold and a light drizzle is falling. You are standing off to the side of the cameras, holding a script and trying to memorize a last minute dialogue change. You are so focused that you don’t notice Harry walking up behind you with two paper cups.

Without interrupting your focus, he gently presses one of the warm cups against your bare cold cheek. In the video, you jump slightly, then look up and melt when you see it’s him. He hands you the hot tea, and you immediately use both hands to wrap around the warmth of the cup. As you go back to reading your lines aloud, Harry just stands there, holding his own tea, looking down at you with a soft, entirely captivated expression, completely ignoring the rain getting on his costume.

The sound of the boom mic operator echoes clearly over the track, whispering to a nearby camera assistant. "Hey, look at Harry. He’s been standing in the rain for five minutes just watching y/n read lines. He looks like a little puppy. Aww"

The assistant snickers. "Man's got it bad. He literally ran to the catering truck to get that specific tea the second they called the ten minute break."

You look over at Harry sitting beside you. The tips of his ears are bright red, a soft, embarrassed smile playing on his lips. "I was just being a supportive and caring coworker," he protests weakly.

"Mhm, you were so attentive..." you tease, leaning down to kiss his cheek.

The final clip of the montage cuts in, and the lo-fi background music suddenly cuts out, replaced by a comical record scratch sound.

It’s an official, high-definition blooper from a dramatic scene you and Harry were filming together. In the clip, the two of you are standing close, trading an intense, important dialogue. The tension is palpable. Harry delivers a deeply serious, dramatic line, his face a mask of intensity, until a loud, violent rumble echoes through the quiet studio.

It was your stomach. It roars so loudly that it picks up perfectly on the boom mic.

In the video, Harry’s intense expression immediately shatters. He cracks a massive smile, drops his regal posture and reaches into the heavy folds of his costume. With absolute seriousness, he pulls out a half-crushed package of snack crackers he’d been hiding in his pocket and hands them to you without a word.

The audio catches the director laughing over the megaphone. "Cut! Harry, are you smuggling contraband on my set?"

Harry looks directly at the camera, deadpan, while you frantically rip open the crackers in the background. "The talent was starving, sir. I’m a hero."

The video fades to black with the simple logo.

You burst out laughing, locking your phone as the screen goes dark, and turn to look at Harry. The initial embarrassment has faded from his face, replaced by that familiar, warm expression he’s worn since the day you realized you were falling for him.

"Well, well" Harry says softly, reaching out to pull you closer by your waist. "At least your gorgeous face in my Instagram carousel prepared the world for the fact that I am, indeed, a savior of the starved."

You laugh, leaning into his chest as he pulls the blanket back over the both of you. "Lucky me, now the whole world just knows you're a massive softie who carries snacks for me."

"mhm" he murmurs against your hair, kissing the top of your head. "only for you."

You slipped out the back exit, stumbling into a narrow, dimly lit brick alleyway just behind the venue. The cool night air hit your face, making your head spin in the best way possible. You leaned your back against the cold brick wall, letting out a breathless laugh, but before you could even catch your breath, Harry closed the distance between you.

The alcohol had stripped away every ounce of his usual media-trained caution. He crowded into your space, his hands sliding up to cup your jawline, his thumbs smoothing over your cheekbones with a heavy, desperate intensity.

"I've wanted to do that all night," he muttered, his voice thick and raspy, before his lips crashed down onto yours.

It wasn't a sweet, polite press-junket kiss. It was deep, clumsy, and entirely passionate—the culmination of months of hiding and weeks of keeping a safe, professional distance under the scrutiny of the public eye. You wrapped your arms tightly around his neck, pulling him closer as his hands shifted down to grip your waist, anchoring you against him. You were both laughing into the kiss, dizzy and utterly consumed by each other, completely oblivious to the soft, rhythmic clicking of a camera recording from the shadows near the street corner.

The next morning arrived with a brutal vengeance.

Your alarm went off at 8:00 AM for a live, morning-show press junket. With a pounding headache and throat-drying dehydration, you dragged yourself out of bed, barely having the energy to splash water on your face, let alone check your phone notifications. Harry looked equally disheveled when you met him in the lobby, his hair a chaotic mess, hiding his bloodshot eyes behind a pair of dark sunglasses.

"Never letting Tom buy shots again," Harry groaned, blindly reaching out to grab your hand as you both walked into the studio, utterly unaware of the digital hurricane currently flattening the internet.

Ten minutes later, you were sitting on a plush sofa under the blinding studio lights of a live morning broadcast. The host, a notoriously sharp entertainment journalist, smiled warmly at the two of you, though there was a distinctly dangerous, cat-like gleam in her eyes.

"Now, we know the cast had a massive celebration last night for the premiere," the host began, leaning forward on her elbows. "And it seems the festivities spilled out into the streets of London. Did you two have a good time?"

"Brilliant time," Harry said, offering his best hungover, charming smile, completely missing the trap. "Great to celebrate with the crew."

"It certainly looked like a great celebration," the host purred, tapping her tablet. "Because a fan video from about 3:30 AM last night has currently racked up fifteen million views on twitter. Let's take a look at the big screen."

You and Harry turned your heads simultaneously toward the massive monitor on the studio wall.

Your stomach instantly dropped into your shoes.

The video was crystal clear. It was the alleyway. The lighting was moody, but the silhouettes were unmistakable. There you were, pressed flat against the brick wall, with Harry completely draped over you, his hands firmly gripping your waist as the two of you passionately, thoroughly made out in the middle of London. The camera even zoomed in right as Harry pulled back to whisper something against your lips, making you laugh before pulling him back down for more.

The video faded out. The live studio audience erupted into absolute chaos, cheers, gasps, and loud wolf-whistles.

Beside you, Harry froze. His jaw practically hit the floor. He slowly lowered his dark sunglasses, his eyes wide with an expression of pure, unadulterated shock as a spectacular, deep crimson flush crept up his neck and flooded his entire face.

"Oh," Harry stammered, his voice cracking violently on live television. He looked at the screen, then at you, completely defenseless. "Right. Well. That’s... that’s out there now, isn't it?"

You covered your face with both hands, letting out a weak, helpless groan. "We forgot to check our phones this morning."

"Clearly," the host laughed, absolutely delighted. "So, guys... I think the fandom deserves a definitive answer. Is there something you'd like to officially confirm right now?"

Harry looked at you through his blushing panic, and seeing the breathless, amused resignation on your face, his shoulders finally relaxed. The heavy, exhausted tension vanished, replaced by a soft, incredibly relieved smile. He reached across the sofa, his fingers sliding smoothly into yours, locking his knuckles with yours tightly and holding your joint hands up for the camera to see.

"Yeah," Harry said, his voice instantly dropping into that quiet, genuine register that always made your heart flutter. He looked directly at the host, his eyes shining. "Yeah, we’re together. We’ve been together for a while, actually. And clearly, we're not very good at hiding it when tequila is involved."

The studio burst into applause, and for the rest of the interview, the suffocating weight of the secret was completely gone.

A few hours later, back in the safety of his apartment, the hangover had finally faded, replaced by an overwhelming sense of freedom.

Harry was sitting on the edge of the bed, scrolling through his camera roll with a quiet, focused intensity. "If the internet is going to talk about us," he muttered, "they should at least have some proper photos, shouldn't they?"

"What are you doing?" you asked, leaning over his shoulder.

"Making an announcement," he smiled.

Ten minutes later, Harry's official Instagram account updated with a carousel post that completely broke the platform's servers.

The first photo wasn't from a red carpet. It was a blurry, candid Polaroid taken in his kitchen three months ago; you were wearing his oversized grey hoodie, holding a wooden spoon like a microphone, laughing so hard your eyes were closed while he captured the moment. The second photo was a sweet, quiet snap from a location shoot, showing the two of you fast asleep on a single cot in a holding tent, your head tucked perfectly beneath his chin.

The final photo in the slide was a high-definition selfie he’d taken just five minutes ago on his balcony. He was kissing the side of your head, his arm securely wrapped around your shoulders, while you smiled brightly at the lens, your hand resting against his chest.

The caption was short, simple, and perfectly Harry:

“Welcome back to Truth or Dab,” Sean Evans said, his smooth, measured voice contrasting sharply with the chaotic energy vibrating on your side of the table. “I'm sitting here with the costars of the internet's absolute favorite romance, and guys, you've made it halfway through the gauntlet. Your eyes are watering, your faces are noticeably flushed, but against all odds, you've managed to answer every single question so far. Let's see how long that streak lasts.”

Harry wiped a visible bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, letting out a breathless, slightly strained laugh. The capsaicin was clearly beginning to take its toll, making his pulse visibly race against his collarbone. “I'm not going to lie to you, Sean, this is currently dissolving my stomach lining as we speak. But we're a team. We came into this together.”

“Are you?” Sean asked, a terrifyingly calm smile spreading across his face as he reached down to pick up the next prompt card. The crisp sound of the paper unfolding felt like a death knell in the quiet studio. “Let's find out. This next question is for both of you.” You braced yourself, your fingers tightening around your glass of milk like a literal lifeline, your heart doing a sudden, erratic thud against your ribs.

Sean leaned forward, resting his chin on his hands, his eyes locked onto yours. “Six months ago, during a location shoot in a small coastal town in Scotland, multiple locals reported seeing the two of you at a quiet, candlelit corner table in an intimate seafood bistro on a rainy Tuesday night. There were no crew members, no scripts on the table, and one witness claimed you were holding hands across the basket of bread. Romantic." Sean paused, letting the weight of the rumor hang in the air. “The internet has debated this for half a year. So, for the absolute truth, was this an official, off-set date? Or... do you want to take a bite of the Last Dab?”

The studio went completely, agonizingly silent. The casual, polite smile you had practiced in the mirror froze entirely on your face, and your throat went completely dry. Scotland. The tiny bistro with the foggy, condensated windows where you both thought you were entirely safe from the public eye. Panic swirled in your chest as you looked down at the question card, then over at Harry, the back to the card.

Harry’s reaction was instantaneous, and it completely bypassed every shred of pr training, media caution he possessed. His eyes widened in a flash of genuine, frantic panic. He didn't look at the cameras, and he didn't even look at Sean. His gaze snapped entirely to you, observing the slight tremor in your hand as you reached tentatively toward the wing on your plate, clearly prepared to take the hit to save your privacy.

Before your fingers could even brush the food, Harry lunged across the small space separating your chairs. “No, no, no,” he muttered rapidly, his voice cracking with a raw, protective urgency that shattered the polished, lighthearted veneer of the show. “Don't touch it. Don't eat it.”

“Huh? Harry, I can just do it, it's fine...” you started, but he was already moving with a frenetic, desperate speed.

In one swift, reckless motion, Harry snatched the bottle of The Last Dab directly off the table. His hands were shaking slightly from a combination of the heat and sheer adrenaline as he unscrewed the cap and aggressively shook a massive, violent dollop of the thick, mustard-colored sludge directly onto his own wing, far exceeding the standard drop required by the game.

“It's too hot,” Harry insisted, his voice dropping into a frantic, hushed whisper meant entirely for your ears, completely forgetting the six camera setup recording his every move. “Seriously, your spice tolerance is horrendous, you'll actually pass out on the chair. I'll just do it. I'll take the hit for this one.”

"Harry, you really don't have to do this—"

"I'm doing it, its fine" he interrupted, his jaw set in a line of absolute, unyielding determination despite the flush on his cheeks.

Without giving himself another second to overthink the chemical warfare he was about to inflict on his body, Harry picked up his heavily coated wing and took a massive, agonizing bite. He chewed furiously as the liquid fire instantly assaulted his senses. Within seconds, his face turned a spectacular, terrifying shade of deep red. His eyes watered instantly, a stray tear spilling over his eyelashes and tracking down his cheek as he choked down the meat, coughing heavily into the crook of his elbow.

“Oh, wow,” Sean said, looking genuinely impressed, a rare look of pure awe breaking through his usual stoic demeanor as he watched Harry frantically reach for a fresh jug of milk. “Harry went straight for the ultimate sacrifice play, didn't even let you consider answering the question.”

You watched Harry chug the milk, his shoulders shaking as he tried to survive the voluntary poisoning. Your chest tightened with a sudden, overwhelming warmth that had absolutely nothing to do with the hot sauces on the table. It was the most public, loud confession he could have possibly made, choosing intense physical suffering over the slightest risk of you having to publicly deny, or in the worst case, confirm what that rainy night in Scotland had actually meant to both of you.

“Are you alright?” you whispered, entirely ignoring Sean as you placed a comforting, steadying hand on Harry's trembling forearm.

Harry put the milk carton back down onto the table, breathing heavily through his mouth, his eyes bloodshot but fixed entirely on you. “Yeah,” he wheezed out, offering a pathetic yet incredibly soft little smile. “totally fine, completely worth it.” Behind the cameras, the entire production crew was grinning like madmen, undeniable domestic panic of the moment hanging heavy and sweet in the studio air.

When the episode finally aired the following Thursday, the internet completely ignored the hot sauce rankings, poor Sean, and the rest of the interview. The clip of Harry’s frantic, protective meltdown was clipped and microanalyzed within the hour. The fans didn't even need the answer to Sean's question anymore, the sheer vpanic of Harry's refusal to answer was the only confirmation they would ever need. The headlines in the gossip columns and celebrity centered podcasts kept repeating the same conclusion.

“Sean asked if they went on a secret date, and instead of just saying ‘no,’ Harry Collett practically swallowed a spoonful of liquid fire just to protect their private weekend. If that isn't a physical confession of love, I don't know what is.”

The stylist waved politely at the lens, and the live chat began moving at a dizzying speed, a blur of emojis and questions about the upcoming season.

Because the front-facing camera was wide-angled, it didn't just capture Beth's vanity station. It also perfectly framed the narrow walkway of the trailer directly behind her, leading toward the coffee station and the back exit.

Neither you nor Harry had any idea the livestream was happening.

You walked into the background of the frame first, wearing a oversized grey crewneck sweatshirt and carrying a half-empty cardboard tray of pastries from the catering truck. You looked exhausted, your eyes half-closed as you navigated the tight space, clearly still trying to wake up for the early crew call.

A second later, Harry entered the frame right behind you.

For months, the entire production had been playing a high-stakes game of tracking your "gravitational pull," but the spreadsheets had officially been retired three weeks ago. You were finally, completely official—even if the public hadn't been told yet. And away from the red carpets and the promotional junkets, the sheer, effortless domesticity of the reality was entirely instinctive.

Without a single thought about who might be watching, Harry closed the distance between you. He didn't hesitate. He reached out, his arm sliding smoothly and casually around your waist, his fingers hooking comfortably over your hip to gently pull you back into his chest.

You didn't even startle. You simply leaned back into him, your head naturally tilting to rest against his shoulder as you held the pastry tray steady. Harry leaned down, burying his face briefly into the side of your neck before shifting upward to press a soft, incredibly lingering kiss against your temple. He kept his arm securely wrapped around you, his chin resting on your shoulder as he peeked over at the pastries, completely oblivious to the digital trap they were walking into.

In the foreground, Beth was still talking to the camera. "—and the director said we might actually get a lunch break on time today, which would be a literal miracle—"

She glanced down at the bottom of her screen to read the incoming comments, expecting questions about her character's wardrobe.

Instead, the live chat had completely fractured. The text was moving so fast it was a vertical streak of light.

- “OH MY GOD LOOK BEHIND HER”

- “HARRY???? IS THAT HARRY AND—?”

- “THE WAIST GRAB NO WAY NO WAY NO WAY”

- “ARE WE SEEING THIS ALIVE RIGHT NOW???”

- “HE JUST KISSED HER TEMPLE I AM SCREAMING”

Beth blinked, her breath catching as her eyes darted from the frantic chat to the reflection in the vanity mirror directly in front of her.

Through the glass, she saw you casually breaking off a piece of a croissant and feeding it to Harry, while his hand remained firmly, possessively anchored on your hip.

Beth’s eyes went completely wide. A look of sheer, unadulterated panic took over her face. She looked like a woman who had accidentally stumbled onto a state secret on national television.

"Oh," Beth squeaked, her voice cutting off entirely. She didn't say goodbye. She didn't explain. With a frantic, lunging motion, her hand slapped directly over the phone lens, turning the screen pitch black, and she violently hit the End Streambutton.

The trailer went completely quiet, save for the hum of a hair dryer in the corner. You and Harry both blinked, startled by her sudden, dramatic movement. Harry slowly took his arm off your waist, looking confused. "Beth? You alright?"

Beth slowly turned around in her chair, her face a mixture of terror and hysterical amusement. She held up her phone. "You two are dead. The publicists are going to murder me, and then they're going to murder you."

"What did you do?" you asked, a sudden, sinking feeling hitting your stomach.

"I didn't do anything," Beth groaned, dropping her head into her hands. "You two just introduced yourselves to fifty thousand people on my Instagram Live."

By noon, the internet had completely combusted. Because it was a live broadcast, the clip couldn't be deleted. Within three minutes of the stream ending, a dozen screen-recordings had been uploaded to every major social media platform. The fandom didn't just watch it; they analyzed it frame by frame.

It wasn't a nervous interview moment. It wasn't a clumsy PR dodge. It was a completely unscripted, raw glimpse into your actual life, and the sheer comfort of the gesture made it impossible to deny.

That evening, as you and Harry sat on the couch in his trailer during a lighting setup, your phone buzzed with a notification. It was a tweet from a major entertainment account sharing the clip, and it already had millions of views. Harry leaned over your shoulder, looking at the screen. A soft, completely relaxed smile broke across his face as he watched his own reflection wrap his arm around you on the screen.

"Well," Harry murmured, his hand sliding smoothly over yours, his fingers tangling with yours in the exact same comfortable rhythm from the video. "Tom's going to be furious he didn't get to commentate that one."

You laughed, leaning your head back against his chest. "We're never going to hear the end of this, you know."