Cait’s Abyss @apothe-roses - Tumblr Blog

May 9

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen x handmaid!reader

Summary:

Mistress Rylene did not strike her. That was the first mercy, though Sweetling was not certain then whether mercy was the proper name for it. A blow would have been simpler. A slap to the cheek, a cuff to the ear, a ‘hissed fool, fool girl,’ and then pain enough to stand between her and the memory of Prince Aemond’s mouth. Pain was plain. Pain asked nothing clever of a girl. It came, it bloomed, it faded. Rylene only looked at her. That was worse.

Warnings: Oral sex towards the end.

WC: 8.2k

Notes: This chapter was originally posted on AO3. I highly suggest following the story there. Finals are over! I am returning to my usual Saturday postings. Time for romance to really begin blossoming.

his handmaid's tales (old) | his handmaid's tales (rewritten)

dividers: #enchanthings

Mistress Rylene did not strike her.

That was the first mercy, though Sweetling was not certain then whether mercy was the proper name for it. A blow would have been simpler. A slap to the cheek, a cuff to the ear, a ‘hissed fool, fool girl,’ and then pain enough to stand between her and the memory of Prince Aemond’s mouth. Pain was plain. Pain asked nothing clever of a girl. It came, it bloomed, it faded.

Rylene only looked at her.

That was worse.

The linen room was close and yellow with lamplight, smelling of cedar chests, stale lavender, old wool, and the faint damp that crept into every lower chamber of the Red Keep when rain came off the bay. The tray Sweetling had carried stood crooked upon the folding table. A little oil had spilled where the cruet rocked, spreading dark over the wood like a slow stain. The clean cloths lay half-tumbled beside it, white, accusing, useless.

Rylene’s fingers still held Sweetling by the chin.

Not hard. Not now.

Her thumb rested near the corner of Sweetling’s mouth, where Aemond had first brushed his lips before deciding mercy did not suit him after all. The skin there felt tender. Ruined. Marked not in any way that would last by morning, perhaps, but long enough for the old woman’s eyes to know.

“What happened to your mouth?” Rylene had asked.

Nothing, Sweetling had said.

A foolish answer. A child’s answer. A lie so poor it deserved the whipping it tried to escape.

Rylene’s gaze moved over her face, from swollen lower lip to fevered cheeks, from the too-bright eyes to the throat that betrayed every breath. Sweetling tried to make herself small beneath it and could not. The body, such a wicked thing, remembered what pride wished to deny. Her lips still stung, and her neck still knew the shape of his hand at the nape. Her fingers, clenched in her skirt, still remembered catching in the black wool of his sleeve.

Rylene let her go.

“Oh, child,” she said.

The words struck lower than any blow.

Sweetling looked away first. “It was nothing.”

“Say that once more,” Rylene said softly, “and I shall know you have less sense than a candle flame.”

Sweetling shut her mouth.

The older woman crossed to the door and set the bolt; the sound of it sliding home made Sweetling’s stomach clench. In the Keep, a shut door was never only a shut door. It was privacy, and privacy was where truth took off its gloves.

Rylene turned back. Her keys hung at her hip, dull bronze in lamplight. She wore no jewels. She needed none. Authority sat on her like a cloak thick enough to turn a knife.

“Who saw?”

“No one.”

Rylene stared.

Sweetling swallowed. “No one close. I heard men down the passage. He heard them too. He—” Her voice caught on the next word, because shoved me away was false, and spared me was worse, and commanded me to leave sounded too much like salvation. “He told me to go.”

Rylene’s mouth tightened. “Before or after?”

Heat crawled up Sweetling’s face. “Mistress.”

“Before or after he put his mouth on you?”

The words were not shouted. They did not need to be. They landed bare upon the room, stripped of velvet and courtesy and all the little lies noble households used to pretend bodies were not bodies.

Sweetling looked down at her hands.

“After,” she whispered.

Rylene closed her eyes.

For one breath, two, she looked older than she ever had. Not stern. Not sharp. Only weary, as if she had once been young enough to make mistakes of her own and hated the girl before her for reminding her.

“Did he force you?”

Sweetling’s head came up at once. “No.”

The answer was too quick. Too fierce.

Rylene heard that, too.

“No,” Sweetling said again, quieter, shame and certainty tangling together until she could hardly tell one thread from another. “He did not.”

“Did you bid him stop?”

She had not.

That truth opened beneath her like a stair with no rail.

“No.”

Rylene drew a long breath through her nose. “Did you wish to?”

Sweetling could not answer.

There were questions a girl was not raised to understand. Not truly. She had known fear, hunger, labor, and obedience, though her mother, Mother bless her, did her best to shield her from the woes of early womanhood. She had known the rough jokes of boys in yard corners and the way men’s eyes could crawl beneath cloth. She had known how to step aside before a hand became a grasp and a seed became a babe.

She had not known this.

She had not known a prince could touch her mouth with one thumb and make her body feel less like a thing she inhabited than a door he had found unlatched. She had not known fear could run beside wanting so closely that the two became one dark river. She had not known a name could change when spoken without a title. Aemond. Aemond. The second time, it had scarcely sounded like speech at all.

Rylene’s expression hardened, though not against her.

“There it is,” the older woman said. “Gods help us.”

Sweetling hugged herself without meaning to. “I did not mean for it to happen.”

“No girl ever does, when the happening ruins her and pleases someone else.”

“It did not please him.”

Rylene’s eyes sharpened. “Do not be certain of what pleases princes.”

“He was angry.”

“That may be how he shows it.”

“No,” Sweetling said, and then stopped, because defending him was the second foolishness, and perhaps the greater one.

Rylene saw that too. Nothing escaped Rylene. She had the sort of eyes that had been made old by other people’s sins.

“At whom was he angry?” she asked.

Sweetling’s mouth tingled again, memory treacherous as wine. She heard his voice in the passage, low and cold. What do you want of me? she had asked him.

That, he had answered, is precisely the trouble.

“I do not know,” she said.

“That is a lie.”

Sweetling folded in on herself a little. “At the queen. At the talk. At me. At himself.” Her voice thinned. “At wanting.”

The word hung there, warm and terrible.

Rylene looked toward the bolted door, as if she expected the very wood to repeat it down the hall.

“Wanting,” she said. “A small word for a thing that has drowned kingdoms.”

Sweetling gave a miserable little laugh before she could stop it. It was gone almost as soon as it came. “I am not a kingdom.”

“No.” Rylene came closer. “You are easier to drown.”

That silenced her.

Outside the room, the castle went on with itself. Rain tapped at some high unseen window. A servant passed in the corridor beyond, feet soft, then gone. From farther below came the faint clangor of pots being scoured after supper, that endless, ordinary music of labor. The Red Keep did not pause because one handmaid had been kissed against cold stone by a prince who should have known better.

Perhaps that was the cruelty of it.

Perhaps that was the mercy.

Rylene took the tray and set it properly on the table. Her movements were exact, almost calm. Cloths folded. Cruet righted. Spill wiped. Order restored where it could be restored.

“Listen to me,” she said. “You will wash your face.”

Sweetling’s hand rose to her mouth.

Rylene caught her wrist. “Not like that. Not rubbing at it as though guilt can be scrubbed out. Cool water. Press, do not drag. Then you will sit. You will drink what I give you. And when you can speak without looking as if someone set a candle inside your skin, you will tell me every step from the moment you left this room.”

Sweetling nodded.

“And you will not leave anything out because it shames you.”

A beat.

“Yes, mistress.”

Rylene released her. “Good. Shame is useful only when it keeps a girl from doing the same stupid thing twice.”

Sweetling crossed to the basin near the wall. Her reflection in the darkened water was a blur: pale face, bright eyes, mouth fuller than it ought to be. She pressed a damp cloth to her lips and hissed softly when the cold touched the tender place.

Aemond had tasted of nothing sweet. No wine, no honey, none of the warmed spice that clung to many noble mouths after supper. He had tasted of rain-cold air and restraint breaking. He had kissed like a man angry at a locked door and angrier still to find it opened beneath his hand.

The cloth trembled.

“Sweetling,” Rylene said.

She looked over.

The older woman’s face had gone stern again. That steadied her more than pity had. “You are not the first girl to be kissed where she should not. You will not be the last. This need not be the end of you.”

Need not.

Not will not.

Sweetling lowered the cloth.

“What must I do?”

Rylene’s gaze held hers. “Survive the morning.”

Aemond did not sleep.

He had tried.

That was the insult of it. He had undressed properly, set his boots where they belonged, removed the clasp at his throat and laid it beside the candle stand, closed the book he had not read a word of, and put himself in bed as if discipline might command the body into obedience the way it commanded a sword arm.

It did not.

The rain rattled at the shutters, the brazier glowed low, and the room smelled faintly of smoke, beeswax, and the oil Sweetling had carried before he took the tray from her hands and turned the whole evening into something that now lived under his skin like a thorn.

Aemond lay still until stillness became its own kind of violence.

Then he rose.

Barefoot, in shirt and breeches, hair loose down his back, he crossed to the window and unlatched the shutter. Wet night breathed in at once. The air tasted of the bay—salt, rot, rain, the stink of King’s Landing made cleaner only by being cold. Below, torches guttered in the yards. The city beyond the walls crouched in darkness, a thousand lesser lights wavering like embers beneath a boot.

He should have gone to Vhagar.

That would have been sensible. The great she-dragon did not chatter. She did not stare at his mouth or speak his name in a voice made soft by fear. She did not turn him into a boy in a corridor with his hand at a girl’s throat and want climbing him like flame up dry thatch.

No.

Not throat.

He had touched her chin. Her neck. Her mouth. Not her throat, though, and that distinction mattered only because he wished it to. Aemond’s fingers tightened on the stone sill until the old chill of it bit his palm. Sweetling had said his name. Not my prince. Not with that careful distance she wore like a servant’s apron.

Aemond.

The first time had been an error. Surprise. A slip of footing on wet stone.

The second had been a choice.

That was why he had told her to say it again. Cruel, perhaps. Selfish, certainly. He had wanted to know whether it had been a chance. He had wanted to hear the shape of it without title or fear trimming around the edges. And she had given it to him. His mouth still remembered the result.

Aemond shut his eye.

Folly.

A prince did not kiss a handmaid in a corridor used by septas, servants, guards, and half the ghosts in the Red Keep. A man did not put a girl in danger for the pleasure of discovering how softly she opened under his thumb. A dragon did not lower his head to a lamb merely because the lamb had looked at him as though the fire in his mouth was not the only thing worth fearing.

He opened his eye again.

The sapphire did not blink in the window’s faint reflection. It stared back from the ruined side of his face, blue and dead and bright. A pretty stone for an ugly absence. A courtly correction for what that bastard Lucerys Velaryon had taken.

People liked corrections when they could see them. A patch. A jewel. A scar turned into a story fit for frightened ladies and boys too stupid not to whisper. What correction was there for this, though?

He had dismissed her. That was good.

He had dismissed her after kissing her. Less good.

He had nearly called her back.

There lay the rot of it.

Aemond turned from the window.

His chambers were too ordered to suit his thoughts. The books were aligned. The chair was set in place. His sword belt lay across the chest, black leather oiled that morning. The mended tunic hung where she had left it, shoulder seam neat as a healed wound.

He crossed to it before he could decide not to.

The stitch was small. Clean. Better than the work of many royal seamstresses, though she would never say so and would likely look stricken if he did. That was part of what angered him. Her refusals were not coy. Her obedience was not mindless. When she was afraid, she knew it. When she did not know something, she had the sense to say so only after exhausting every means of hiding it.

Do you know nothing? He had asked her.

No, she had said.

And there, by every god men had ever invented to excuse themselves, he had nearly touched her again.

Aemond took the tunic from its peg and examined the seam with unnecessary care. The first mistake had not been the kiss. The first mistake was making it difficult for others to touch her without thinking of him. The salve. The bandages. The ribbon. Sweetling.

A name was a dangerous thing. He had known that when he gave it. Perhaps that was why he had done it.

In the hall beyond his chamber door, armor shifted. A guard coughed once. The sound returned him to himself.

Aemond set the tunic down.

Tomorrow there would be talk. If Rylene had seen the girl’s mouth—and of course she had, that leathery old hawk saw everything—then by morning the queen would know, if she did not already. Alicent would not rage. That was not her way when fear gripped her by the throat. She would fold her hands, speak softly, and use guilt with the precision of a septon using a blade he pretended was a prayer book.

She would say, Sweetling must be sent away.

No.

The word came so quickly to him that it left no room for argument.

No.

Aemond went to the table, took up a quill, and stopped.

What would he write? To whom? Rylene? His mother? The girl herself, the daughter of a nameless milk cow, who held no significance in a court of dragons, yet continued to ensnare his attention and attraction? Some order in black ink to contain what his own mouth had made disorderly?

He almost laughed.

The sound did not come.

Instead, he took the dark ribbon from the book lying open near the lamp. It slid free between his fingers, limp and ordinary. A scrap. A tool. A test. He had told her as much.

He had lied, though not wholly.

It was a tool. It marked his place.

It marked hers, too.

Aemond closed his fist around it.

Morning came grey and sour.

The rain had stopped, but its leavings clung to the Keep: slick steps, smoky hearths, damp wool steaming near fires, servants with red noses and worse tempers than usual. In the lower passages, gossip moved with the warmth from the kitchens. Sweetling felt it before she heard it. A turning of heads. A sudden quiet. A laugh cut short as she entered a room.

Rylene had done what she could.

That, Sweetling knew, was not the same as safety.

Her mouth looked almost normal by dawn. Cool water and time had taken down the worst of it. If one did not know what to seek, one might see nothing but a young handmaid overtired by service. But women like Jeyne knew what to seek. So did boys who wanted to become men by repeating what men said in corners. So did old laundresses whose lives had left them little pleasure but other girls’ humiliation.

Sweetling kept her eyes lowered and her steps even.

No shrinking, Aemond had told her once. Shame invites pursuit.

She hated that his counsel served her even now.

Mistress Rylene sent her first to the queen’s outer rooms with a packet of mended lace. That was punishment or protection; with Rylene, the two often wore the same gown. Sweetling carried it carefully. Her hands had healed enough that she no longer wore bandages, but some faint rawness remained beneath the fingers. She flexed them once before entering.

Queen Alicent sat near the window, where the morning light found every line worry had carved into her face.

She was not alone. Two ladies occupied the hearthside, one embroidering and the other pretending not to whisper. A septa stood near the shelves. Jeyne was there too, setting fresh rushes beneath the table with unnecessary care. Of course.

Sweetling curtsied low. “Your Grace.”

Alicent’s gaze rested upon her. Not on the lace. Not on the hands. On the mouth. There was no anger there, and, for a mere breath, Sweetling almost wished there were.

“Come closer,” Alicent said.

She obeyed.

The queen dismissed the room with a single glance. The ladies rose, the septa gathered her book, and Jeyne lingered half a heartbeat too long and earned from Alicent a look so mild it might have been mistaken for nothing by anyone who had not lived under women’s authority.

“Jeyne,” the queen said. “Now.”

The girl curtsied and went.

When the door shut, Alicent took the packet from Sweetling’s hands and set it aside without looking.

“How old are you again?” the queen asked.

The question seemed so far from the danger that Sweetling nearly faltered. It was near the fourth or so time that Queen Alicent inquired about her age. “Eight-and-ten, Your Grace.”

“Yes. I remember.” Alicent looked toward the window. Beyond it, the city steamed after rain. “I was younger than that when I learned how little my wishes mattered.”

Sweetling said nothing.

Alicent’s hands folded in her lap, all ten fingers fine and pale, nails clean, rings modest for a woman of her station, with glistening cuts of Emerald that caught the light at certain angles. They did not look like hands that had known lye . . . yet Sweetling had seen the little raw places near the cuticles where Alicent worried them when she thought herself unwatched.

“Has my son harmed you?”

“No, Your Grace.”

The answer came quickly. Too quickly again. Sweetling cursed herself for it.

Alicent’s mouth pressed thin. “That is not always a question girls know how to answer.”

“He has not harmed me.”

“And yet something has happened.”

The room seemed to cool.

Sweetling looked down. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“Did he command it?”

“No.”

“Did you invite it?”

The shame of that one was much sharper because Alicent did not ask it cruelly. Cruel questions could be hated. This one had only fear in it.

“I . . . do not know, Your Grace. Truly.”

Alicent closed her eyes for a moment; Sweetling stood very still. When the queen opened them, they were wet-bright but hard. “That is the answer I feared most, I must admit.”

“I am sorry.”

“Do not.” Alicent’s voice cracked like a small whip, then softened at once, as if she had startled herself. “Do not apologize because a prince put you in a position no handmaid should be made to parse, sweetling.”

Sweetling’s throat tightened.

Alicent rose, her green gown whispering against the rushes as she crossed the room slowly, each step measured . . . queenly . . . until she stood before Sweetling. Something in her expression that belonged neither to crown nor Hightower pride. Only woman. Only mother.

“I chose you for him,” Alicent said quietly. “Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“No.” The queen’s eyes searched hers. “You cannot. Not yet.”

Sweetling did not know what to say.

Alicent looked away first, toward the closed door. “My son has been lonely in ways he would rather bleed than name. I thought—” She stopped. Her hands tightened. “I thought service might give shape to his days. I thought a steady presence might soothe him.”

Sweetling thought of Aemond in the passage, furious with wanting. Soothe was not the word.

“I did not send you to be devoured,” Alicent said.

The tenderness of it hurt.

“I know, Your Grace.”

“Do you?”

Sweetling wanted to say yes. Wanted to be obedient, reassuring, and simple . . . bsome remnant of Aemond’s hard lessons rose in her. “No,” she admitted. “Not wholly.”

Alicent looked at her for a long moment.

Then, unexpectedly, the queen laughed. Once. Soft and bitter. “Good. There may be hope for you.”

Sweetling blinked.

Alicent returned to her chair but did not sit. “You are not to attend him alone after dark.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“If he calls for you, another servant will accompany you.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“If he objects, he may object to me.”

That made Sweetling look up.

Alicent noticed. “You think I cannot withstand my son’s temper?”

“I think he does not enjoy being gainsaid.”

“No man does.” Alicent’s mouth twisted. “Princes, least of all. Targaryen princes most of all.”

Sweetling lowered her gaze again, but not before she saw the queen’s face change at the word Targaryen, as if she had tasted both bitterness and old longing.

“You will not be dismissed,” Alicent said.

The relief was so sudden that Sweetling nearly swayed.

The queen saw that too.

“Do not thank me,” Alicent added. “This is not a favor. Favor is dangerous.” A pause. “You will remain because sending you away now would sharpen every rumor into certainty. You will remain because my son would take it as theft. And you will remain because, for reasons I am not yet pleased to understand, he listens when you speak more than he ought.”

Sweetling’s heart gave one foolish beat.

Alicent’s eyes narrowed. “Do not smile.”

“I was not—”

“You were near enough.”

Heat touched Sweetling’s cheeks.

The queen sighed, suddenly tired. “There is the danger. Not only his wanting. Yours.”

Sweetling’s shame returned, but this time anger came with it, small and hot. “I have done as I was told.”

“Mostly,” Alicent said.

The word stung because it was fair.

Alicent’s voice gentled. “Sweetling.”

It sounded strange from the queen. Softer than from Aemond. Less claim, more warning, like a mother that loves her daughter, but prefers to raise her than coddle her. “There are men who will make a cage feel like shelter if they gild it brightly enough. My son does not gild. That may make him seem honest. It does not make him safe.”

Sweetling held the queen’s gaze.

“No,” she said. “But I do not think he means to be cruel.”

Alicent’s face went still.

For a moment, Sweetling feared she had gone too far. Then the queen looked away, and something in her expression broke quietly before being mended again.

“No,” Alicent said. “He never means to begin there.”

Prince Aemond was waiting in the sept.

Not kneeling. Never that. He stood in the shadow of the Warrior with his hands clasped behind his back, and his head slightly bowed, as if he had come not to pray but to consider whether the gods might answer properly if questioned hard enough.

Sweetling saw him from the entrance and stopped.

Rylene had sent her with fresh tapers. That had seemed ordinary enough. The sept needed candles as much as any room needed sweeping, and after the queen’s interview, Sweetling was glad of labor that asked no words of her.

Then Aemond turned his head.

Of course, he had heard her. Perhaps dragons heard footsteps through stone.

The sept was empty save for them and one novice sleeping upright near the Stranger’s alcove. Morning light came colored through narrow glass, falling in thin bars of red, blue, and gold. The candles beneath the Mother had burned low. Wax had gathered like milk upon the iron stand.

Sweetling curtsied. “My prince.”

“Sweetling.”

Her name in his mouth changed the air.

She hated that.

She loved it too, perhaps, and that was the uglier truth.

“I was sent to replace the candles,” she said.

“I can see that.”

He did not move aside.

Sweetling crossed to the altar of the Mother first, because Alicent favored it and because beginning anywhere else felt like inviting judgment. She removed the spent tapers, set fresh ones in their places, and kept her attention on the work.

Aemond watched.

At last, he said, “My mother spoke with you.”

“Yes, my prince.”

“And Rylene.”

“Yes.”

“Did either frighten you?”

Sweetling almost laughed. “Both.”

Aemond’s mouth shifted faintly. “Good.”

She looked up despite herself.

His face was calm. Too calm. Only the tightness at the jaw betrayed him.

“That is not kind,” she said.

“No.”

The honesty of it startled her.

Aemond came closer, stopping on the other side of the candle stand. Flames stood between them, small and trembling.

“I am told kindness is a virtue,” he said. “I have never found it especially useful.”

“Perhaps you have not been shown enough of it.”

His eye sharpened.

Sweetling realized what she had said only after she said it. The sept seemed suddenly very large around them.

Aemond looked at her as if she had drawn a dagger from her sleeve, and he could not yet decide whether to admire the nerve or cut off the hand holding it.

“Careful,” he said.

“Yes, my prince.”

“No.” He leaned slightly nearer. Candlelight warmed the hard lines of his face, caught in the pale fall of his hair. “Do not retreat now. I dislike half-courage.”

Sweetling’s fingers tightened on the taper box.

“I meant only that kindness may be useful to those who have received it.”

“And have you?”

The question was soft enough to be dangerous.

She thought of her mother at Harrenhal, hands red from work, pressing the heel of bread into Sweetling’s palm when there had not been enough. She thought of Rylene’s Oh, child. She thought of Aemond binding her hands and pretending it was about linen.

“Sometimes,” she said.

Aemond looked at her mouth. Not as he had in the passage. Not openly. But enough. Enough that the memory rose between them with the candle smoke, warm and impossible to wave away.

Sweetling lowered her voice. “You should not look at me so.”

His gaze returned to her eyes. “No.”

But he did not apologize.

For a moment, the only sound was the soft gutter of flame.

Then he said, “Did I hurt you?”

The question was so plain that it stole the breath from her.

“No.”

“Do not answer like a servant.”

Sweetling swallowed.

The novice near the Stranger snored softly, a frail little sound, absurd in the heavy silence.

“No,” she said again. “You frightened me.”

Aemond’s face gave nothing away. “I know.”

“And then you dismissed me as if I had done wrong.”

His eye flashed.

There. A strike landed.

“You should have gone sooner,” he said.

“So should you.”

The words left her before fear could kill them.

Aemond went very still.

Sweetling felt the old instinct rise—apologize, bend, soften the edge. She did none of it. Perhaps she was tired. Perhaps the queen’s warning had stirred something stubborn in her. Perhaps being kissed once by a dragon made a fool think fire could be answered with warmth.

Aemond’s voice, when it came, was low. “Yes.”

She blinked.

He looked away first, toward the Warrior. “I should have.”

It was not enough. It was everything.

Sweetling set another candle in place with hands that wanted to tremble. “Why did you not?”

Aemond laughed under his breath. “You ask questions in a sept you would not dare ask in my chambers.”

“In your chambers, there are doors.”

“In the sept, there are gods.”

“Gods hear less gossip.”

That earned her a look.

And then, to her astonishment, something near amusement touched his mouth. It was gone quickly, but she saw it. He knew she saw it. That made it both worse and better. “You are not as meek as you pretend. You know that?”

“I pretend because I am told it keeps me alive.”

“Does it?”

“Usually.”

“And with me?”

Sweetling looked at the flames.

With him, meekness did not feel like safety. It felt like a lie he would peel from her one layer at a time because he preferred truth even when it displeased him. “With you,” she said, “I do not know what keeps me safe.”

Aemond’s expression changed.

Not softened. She would not have called it that. But something in him drew inward, as if her words had reached a place behind armor not often struck.

“I will not force you,” he said. “I am not cruel like my brother.”

The words were quiet, and because they were quiet, she believed he had meant them before he decided whether meaning them made him weak.

Sweetling’s throat tightened. “I know.”

His eye narrowed. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you look as though I might?”

Because she was untouched. Because she spent her girlhood in her mother’s shadow, buried half away in her gauzy, black gowns. Because dragons never hesitated to take whatever they felt belonged to them. “Because wanting can become a force before a man notices.”

Aemond inhaled slowly.

For a heartbeat, she thought he would leave. Or rebuke her. Or turn cold enough to make her wish she had been born without a tongue.

Instead, he said, “My mother has been teaching you, indeed.”

“Well, yes. She warned me.”

“Against me.”

“For me, I think.”

That struck him harder than against me would have. The candles trembled between them. Aemond looked down at the small flames. “She fears what I am.”

Sweetling thought of Alicent’s face when she said, He never means to begin there.

“She fears what the world has taught you to be.”

His mouth tightened. “And what is that?”

“A prince.”

The word landed like a stone dropped into deep water.

Aemond looked up.

For one strange moment, Sweetling saw the boy under the prince—not soft, not innocent, nothing so simple. But younger. Wounded. Furious that the world had given him power where he had wanted justice, fear where he had wanted awe, solitude where he had wanted to be seen and not pitied for the seeing.

Then it vanished.

“You speak boldly for a handmaid.”

Sweetling lowered her eyes. “I speak foolishly, perhaps.”

“Perhaps.”

She finished setting the last candle. Her task was done. She should have curtsied and left. She did not.

Aemond reached into his sleeve and withdrew something dark: the ribbon.

Sweetling’s breath caught.

He laid it across the candle stand, not between her fingers, not as a gift. A strip of plain cloth, frayed at one end, black against the wax-spotted iron. “I told you once it was a tool,” he murmured, tilting his head.

“Yes, my prince.”

“It is.” His gaze held hers. “It may serve again.”

She stared at it, uncertain.

“If I summon you after dark, you will not come alone,” he said. “If I send this with the page, you will know the matter is not urgent. You may refuse until morning.”

Sweetling’s fingers went cold.

Refuse.

Aemond Targaryen had placed the word between them as if it did not cost him pride to speak it.

“And if the matter is urgent?” she asked.

“Then I will send my seal.”

The seal could not be refused. That went unsaid.

But the ribbon could.

Sweetling looked from the cloth to his face. “Why?”

Aemond’s jaw tightened. “Because last night I did not stop when I should have.”

“You did stop.”

“Late.”

The word was clipped, displeased.

With himself.

Something inside Sweetling, guarded and frightened and far too tender for such a room, shifted toward him.

“My prince—”

“Aemond,” he said.

Her heart betrayed her.

He saw.

Of course, he saw.

But he did not move closer. That was the astonishing thing. He stood with candlelight between them, the ribbon lying where either of them might take it, and made no use of the way her breath changed when he gave her leave to say his name.

“Aemond,” she said.

His eye darkened.

Sweetling thought, wildly, that restraint had its own kind of hunger.

“I am not sorry you kissed me,” she said.

The words were out. Living. Irrevocable.

The sept seemed to listen.

Aemond’s face went very still.

Sweetling’s courage nearly died there, but pride dragged it onward by the hair.

“I am frightened of what it means,” she said. “I am frightened of what others will make of it. I am frightened of you, sometimes. And of myself, perhaps more.” Her voice lowered. “But I am not sorry.”

Aemond did not answer.

For a long moment, he only looked at her, and the look was worse than a touch. It moved over her with such intensity that she felt stripped without a single ribbon loosened. Her mouth warmed under the memory of his. Her body remembered the wall behind her, his hand at her nape, the low rough sound that had broken from him when she opened beneath his thumb.

Then he stepped back. One step only, yes, but it was enough. “You should be.”

The words hurt. They were meant to.

Sweetling drew in a breath.

Aemond’s voice changed, lower now. “You should be sorry enough to remain careful. Sorry enough to keep your eyes open. Sorry enough not to confuse danger with devotion because one kiss made you foolish.”

Her face burned.

“And you?” she asked before she could stop herself.

His mouth curved without warmth. “I have been foolish longer than you.”

It was such an Aemond answer—proud, bitter, almost funny if one did not mind the blood beneath it—that Sweetling almost smiled. This time, he did not tell her not to. He reached for the ribbon, folded it once, and held it out.

Sweetling stared at his hand.

“Take it,” he said.

The same words as before.

Not the same command.

Slowly, she took the ribbon. Their fingers did not touch. Somehow, that made the restraint sharper.

Aemond watched her tuck it into her sleeve.

“Sweetling.”

“Yes?”

“No title?”

Her eyes flew to his face.

The faintest edge of satisfaction touched his mouth. Not mockery. Not quite. A dangerous little thing, alive and gone.

“Yes,” she said softly. “Aemond?”

His name trembled less this time.

The candle flames shivered.

“If you come to me again,” he said, “come because you choose the risk. Not because you do not understand it.”

Sweetling held his gaze.

“I understand more than I did yesterday.”

“Not enough.”

“No,” she agreed. “Not enough.”

That pleased him, somehow. Or settled him.

Footsteps sounded beyond the sept doors. A septa’s voice, thin and querulous, scolded some novice for leaving ashes beneath the Smith. The world returned all at once: stone, vows, watchful gods, the Red Keep waiting beyond with its thousand hungry mouths.

Sweetling stepped back and curtsied.

This time, when she rose, Aemond was still watching her.

Not like a prince watching a servant.

Not like a boy watching a pretty mouth.

Like a man watching the first line of a war he had no intention of losing, and no certainty he wished to win.

Sweetling gathered the empty taper box and turned toward the doors.

“Sweetling,” he said once more.

She stopped.

His voice was calm again, almost cold, but the words were not.

“Your mouth,” he said. “Does it still hurt?”

Her fingers tightened around the box.

A terrible warmth climbed her throat.

“No,” she lied.

Aemond’s eye narrowed.

Then his gaze dropped, briefly, to her lips.

“Liar,” he said.

And because he did not sound angry, because he did not move toward her, because the ribbon lay hidden in her sleeve like a promise and a warning both, Sweetling did the most dangerous thing she had yet done in the Red Keep.

She smiled.

Only a little.

Only for him.

Then she left him standing among the candles, with the gods watching and the dragon leashed by nothing but his own will.

By the time the Hour of the Bat arrived, rain had silvered the black windows of Prince Aemond’s solar, streaking the glass in crooked veins. Beyond them, King’s Landing lay half-drowned beneath the storm, its gutters choking on mud and rot, its alleys steaming where cookfires had died horribly in the wet. The Red Keep groaned softly in the wind. Old stone remembered old murders.

Aemond sat alone at his desk with a lone candle burning down beside his elbow.

The flame painted one side of his face in gold and left the other to shadow. His long white hair had been tied back with a strip of black leather, though several pale strands had escaped to brush the hard line of his cheek. The sapphire beneath his eyepatch seemed to ache in the dark, a cold glitter hidden behind leather and pride. Before him lay maps, ravens’ scraps, ledgers of grain and steel, and a half-finished letter whose words had been bitten into the parchment by too much pressure.

He had read the same line thrice.

At last, he heard the door.

Not the guarded knock of a Kingsguard. Not the brisk rap of a maester bearing poison in the shape of counsel. A softer sound came first: the whisper of wool against oak, the pause of a girl remembering she had been told never to disturb a prince after council, then three careful taps.

“Enter,” Aemond said.

The door opened just wide enough to admit Sweetling.

She slipped through carrying a copper basin of warmed water and a folded cloth over one arm. Her servant’s robe was plain, undyed wool, belted at the waist with a cord, rain-dark at the hem from some errand across a courtyard. Hair, thick and loosely braided, had come undone around her temples. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold, and she smelled of rainwater, hearth smoke, and the faint lavender soap used belowstairs when the steward’s wife was feeling generous.

“My prince,” she said, dipping her head in an attempt to hide the rather . . . coy smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

Aemond watched her set the basin on the side table. “You understood the risks, I assume. You are late as well.”

Her fingers tightened on the folded cloth. “The lower passage flooded. They sent me round by the armory.”

“They?”

“The steward. His men. Everyone belowstairs is mending leaks tonight.” She glanced toward the window as thunder rolled over the city. “Even castles drown, it seems.”

His mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. “Careful. That sounds near to wit.”

Sweetling lowered her gaze, but not quickly enough to hide the spark in it. “Forgive me, my prince. I shall try to be duller.”

The room held its silence for a heartbeat. Then Aemond pushed back from the desk. The chair’s legs scraped over stone. “Come here.”

She obeyed, and . . . dare he notice that her steps were a bit faster than the first two. Even after their conversation earlier, he liked that she was beginning to shed that shyness and fear that had clung to her like a scent; he liked it more that the feeling of comfort was not all he saw. When she stood before him, the candlelight shone along the damp wisps of hair at her neck. Aemond reached out and caught one between two fingers.

“You went through the yard uncovered?”

“I had a hood.”

“It failed you.”

“It was only rain.”

“Only rain,” he repeated, as if weighing the phrase for insult. His fingers brushed the side of her throat. Beneath her skin, her pulse leaped. “You are cold.”

“Yes.”

“You tremble.”

“The basin is heavy.”

“It is empty now.”

Her lips parted, then closed.

Aemond rose. He was tall enough that she had to tilt her chin back, and lean enough that every movement seemed made of blade and discipline. He stepped close, crowding her without touching except for the fingers still at her throat. “You should not answer me so boldly.”

“No, my prince.”

“And yet you do.”

“Sometimes.”

“Why?”

Sweetling swallowed. His thumb felt it. “Because you listen.”

That pleased him more than flattery would have. Flattery was coin; every courtier carried a purse of it. This was something rawer, foolish perhaps, and therefore more costly.

Aemond bent his head. He did not kiss her at once. He let his breath warm her cheek. He let her feel the decision gathering in him like stormlight over Blackwater Bay.

“Say you wish to leave,” he murmured, “and I will send you back to the kitchens. Understand the risks again.”

Sweetling’s lashes lifted. In the candlelight, her eyes were dark as wet earth, and twice as pretty. “I do not wish to leave.”

Aemond’s hand slid from her throat to the nape of her neck. He kissed her then, hard enough to steal the breath she had been saving. Sweetling made a small sound against his mouth, startled and low, and clutched at the front of his black tunic. Her fingers found the silver fastenings there. For a moment, she only held on, as though the room had tilted.

Then she kissed him back.

That was the thing that undid his patience.

He caught her by the waist and turned her, pressing her back against the edge of the desk. Parchment crumpled under one hand. A wax seal cracked beneath her hip. Sweetling gasped into his mouth as he lifted her onto the desk among maps and letters and all the brittle little schemes of men. Ink shivered in its pot. The candle flame bowed.

“My prince—”

“Aemond,” he said against her jaw.

Her breath hitched. “Aemond.”

He liked his name in her mouth. It sounded less like a title there, less like a weapon drawn in a hall. He kissed the side of her neck, felt her pulse flutter against his lips, and pulled the cord at her waist loose with one sharp tug. The robe opened by inches. Beneath it, she wore a thin shift, linen gone soft from washing, clinging where rain had reached her. Her nipples showed through the fabric, small and tight from cold and want.

Aemond went still.

Sweetling tried to draw the robe closed.

He caught her wrist. “No.”

Her face colored. “It is not silk.”

“I have seen silk.”

The words came colder than he meant them. Silk belonged to ladies who perfumed themselves for tournaments and whispered treasons behind jeweled hands. Silk had no place here, where rain beat the windows, and a handmaid’s breath came uneven under his gaze.

He touched her through the linen. Lightly at first. The pad of his thumb circled one stiff peak until her shoulders drew up and a breathy “ah” escaped her. He lowered his mouth and took the same place between his lips through the cloth, dampening it with heat. Sweetling’s hand flew to his hair.

“Aemond—”

He hummed against her, and the sound made her tremble harder. His hands moved with deliberate care, gathering her robe up over her knees. Coarse wool rasped over bare skin. Her legs parted an inch, then another, not because he forced them but because his body had settled between them, and she made room.

The scent of her changed.

Rain and lavender remained, but beneath them rose something warm, intimate, unmistakable. Aemond breathed it in with his mouth near the hollow of her throat, and his cock hardened painfully in his breeches.

He had taken women before, though not like his brother, Aegon. It had been in brothels chosen by other men, in chambers prepared by servants who knew when to look away. Those memories were flesh without consequence, heat without trust. This was different. Sweetling sat on his desk with ink on her fingers and rain in her hair, looking at him as though the dragon prince were a man who might still be touched without burning the hand.

He drew back enough to look at her.

“Tell me to stop,” he said.

She shook her head.

“Words.”

“Do not stop.”

His hands slid beneath her shift, palms rough against the soft outsides of her thighs. He pushed the linen higher, baring her to the candlelight by slow degrees. Her knees tightened against his ribs. Aemond looked down and saw the curls between her legs, the slick shine of her need, the way her body had opened for him despite the nervous bite of her teeth on her lower lip.

“Seven save me,” she whispered, embarrassed by his staring.

“No god is coming here.”

He sank to his knees.

The first touch of his mouth made her cry out too loudly. Aemond’s hand shot up to cover her lips, his eye flashing toward the door. Outside, the guards remained distant. The storm swallowed everything.

“Quiet,” he said.

Sweetling nodded against his palm, eyes wide.

He lowered his head again.

This time, he was slower. He parted her with his fingers and tasted her with the flat of his tongue, drawing a shudder from her that ran all the way down her legs. Her breath broke against his hand in muffled little sounds. Mm. Ahh. Aemond felt them more than heard them, each one trembling against his palm while his mouth worked between her thighs.

She was soft there, hot and wet, her body answering him with a candor court had never possessed. He licked her until her hands twisted in his hair. He teased until her hips began to move despite herself, small helpless lifts against his mouth. When he pressed one long finger inside her, she arched so sharply that the desk creaked.

“Aemond,” she said behind his hand, the name ruined by pleasure.

He looked up at her from between her thighs.

A prince could command armies. A dragon could turn fields to ash. Yet this—this flushed, trembling girl on the edge of ruin because of his mouth—gave him a darker satisfaction than conquest. She had chosen to remain. She had said his name. She had opened beneath him.

He wanted more of it. More of her.

He drew her closer to the edge of the desk and pushed a second finger into her, slow enough to feel her stretch. Sweetling’s head fell back. Her braid slipped over one shoulder, unraveling further with each movement. He curled his fingers and found the place that made her whole body seize.

“A-ah—”

His palm sealed the sound in.

“Again,” he murmured.

He did it again. Her thighs clamped around his shoulders. The candle guttered. Somewhere in the room, loosened parchment slid to the floor with a dry sigh.

Aemond licked her harder, less courtly now, less patient. He had found the little nub there, puffy and slick, took it between his lips, and sucked. Sweetling squeaked, head flinging back, shoulders trembling, breasts heaving. His own breath had grown rough. He could feel the shape of her pleasure gathering, the way her hips lost rhythm, the way her hands pulled at him as though she meant to drag him inside her skin.

Then she came.

It took her like a wave breaking against stone. Her back bowed, her heels dug into the side of the desk, and a muffled cry shook against his palm. Her cunt tightened around his fingers in hot pulses. Aemond kept his mouth on her through it, greedy for every shiver, every broken breath, until she sagged trembling among the maps of the realm.

Only then did he rise.

His lips were coated with her slickness. Sweetling saw, and her blush deepened until it reached her throat. He wiped his mouth with his thumb, watching her watch him.

The silence after was thick with rain and breathing.

“My prince,” she whispered.

“Aemond,” he reminded her.

“Aemond.” Softer this time. Nearly shy.

He leaned over her and kissed her, letting her taste herself on his tongue. She made a small, surprised sound, then opened to him. Her hands found his belt and hesitated there. Aemond caught her fingers. For one cold heartbeat, she looked frightened that she had presumed too much.

He guided her hand lower.

Her palm closed over him through his breeches, and the control he prized so much cracked visibly across his face. His jaw tightened. His eye half-shut. Sweetling watched with wonder as she stroked him once, uncertain but eager, feeling the hard length of him strain under cloth.

“You see?” he said, voice low.

She nodded.

“Make no mistake. I shall bed you . . . but allow it to be on another night. Tonight, though?”

He did not sit her on the desk again, as Sweetling had expected; rather, she was soon strewn across his bed, atop the sheets, before he crawled over her flustered, damp-skin body and sank back between her thighs. One leg lay over his shoulder, and his mouth found her cunt again.

“Tonight, I wish to dine.”

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May 9

Peter Pan Syndrome

Story Summary: Lyonel and Janella have a difficult conversation, one a long time in the making

For the @hotd-bigbang prompt: "Spare me the poetry of your leaving".

Lyonel Baratheon x OC, background Maekar Targaryen x OC

Warnings: Implied cheating and sex, Janella and Lyonel being downright nasty to each other

When Lyonel reaches out, his hand sinks down into still warm sheets instead of touching another human.

He lets out a low grunt of confusion, the noise deeper with grogginess. Lyonel moves his hand out more in the vain hope maybe she's rolled away. He can't feel her or a dip in the bed telling him where she might be.

Carefully, hesitantly, he opens one eye, expecting to see his companion for the night beside him. All he sees is an empty spot beside him, the lingering warmth and wrinkled furs the only indication someone even spent the night here at all. Lyonel grunts, this one a little more awake and intelligent than the first, and rolls onto his back.

His nose wrinkles. Lyonel sniffs once then twice before slowly moving to sit up. Only one person he knows wears gardenia with citron, and Lyonel does distinctly recall Janella coming to his tent and dancing, both in the literal and metaphorical sense.

It's dark, both inside the tent and out. Lyonel hears the crickets and other insects buzzing, the sound of frogs from the nearby river, and even a soft breeze blowing. It takes a minute for his eyes to adjust in the darkness. Even then, he can't see much, merely a shadow moving about his tent. He thinks he recognizes the few features he sees, but he isn't entirely sure, not with how little light he has.

"Going somwhere?" Lyonel manages to croak out. He clears his throat in an attempt to get his voice to match his level of alertness.

The figure stops.

"I didn't expect you to be awake." Janella's voice breaks through the air. It's both a relief and curse at the same time, having his suspicions confirmed. Lyonel sits up slowly.

"Didn't expect or didn't want?" He challenges. His eyes narrow.

Silence stretches for far too long. It lingers for a moment and then two, infusing the very air with its uncomfortability.

Lyonel laughs. It's not a happy or pleased laugh, not a genuine sound of joy, but one motivated entirely by bitterness.

"Of course. Of course. I should have expected no less." He murmurs. Lyonel let's out another noise, a laugh only in name. He sighs.

"You know I can't stay." Janella moves about the tent again. A surprising tinge of bitterness creeps into her voice. This time, Lyonel hears the rustle of fabric, presumably her pulling her shift back on.

"No, please. By all means. Slink," a sudden yawn interrupts him and while he didn't plan to do so, he rather likes the theatricality of it, "Slink out of here like a rat." Lyonel falls back onto the bed, his hand gesturing limply for a moment before letting it drop as well.

"Lyonel..."

"Fucking... spare me the poetry of your leaving. Go." He waves his hand. "Fuck off."

Much to his surprise, when he cracks his eyes open to see if she listened to him, Janella stands at the bottom of his bed. A small beam of moonlight illuminates her.

"Lyonel. That's not fair."

Lyonel props himself up onto his elbows, moving a little more quickly than he wants, and stares at her. The darkness makes him more comfortable in letting his incredulous expression creep onto his face.

"Is it? If anything, I'd say I'm being too generous."

"You know as well as I do I can't stay." Janella hisses. "If anything, I should have left already. Maekar mi-"

Lyonel tunes her out then, mimicking arguing with her as he stares at the canvas ceiling. He makes sure to lift his hand and mime her chattering before letting it fall limply to the side. He closes his eyes.

Silence greets him again.

It's too quiet.

Lyonel sits up slowly, and oh, if he weren't furious, the look on Janella's face might break his heart. She looks as if he slapped her, open palm and rings on, instead of merely making fun of her. As it is, his chest hurts when he notes the slight bit of sadness in her eyes.

(It will break his heart later, he knows this. Lyonel will be in a snit for the next several days and ignore her, and then he'll kick his own ass the entire way back to Storm's End, unable to get her expression out of his head. He'll hate himself and wish he talked to her before he left.

He'll also be pissed he didn't get this reaction from being clever. If Lyonel is going to make an absolutely cunt of himself, he might as well be a witty and petty cunt.)

"What the fuck are you still doing here?" Lyonel hates the way he bristles at the sheer disappointment rolling off of her without Janella even saying a word. Fucking... she doesn't deserve this, doesn't deserve his time or attention, doesn't deserve a fucking thing from him.

He doesn't even know why he lets her keep coming back. Janella makes a choice ever single time, and Lyonel is never the one she picks. She picks the fucking Anvil every single time. A laugh bubbles up inside of Lyonel's throat.

"Don't you have a newborn to take care of?" Lyonel clicks his tongue. "Shame to give a child a complex so earlier in their life."

That gets the reaction he wants. Lyonel can't handle disappointment, the slight undertone of either wanting better for or expecting better of him. He can, however, handle rage. Lyonel knows how to handle it and wield it even better than the person who tries him.

Lyonel stares evenly at her. Janella's nostrils flare. His stomach tightens as he steels himself, readying himself as if she plans to throw a punch as opposed to veiled barbs.

"Fine." Janella turns on her heel, searching for her dress. She yanks it on rather violently when she finds it. Her hands shake. It makes a savage part of Lyonel glow with pride to see her reaction.

"Fine?" Lyonel echoes. "No biting words or threats? Did they defang you or are you just so used to simp-"

She laughs. The suddenness nearly makes Lyonel flinch, and he stares at her. Janella never laughs during an argument. In general? She laughs when genuinely amused (or during sex, which Lyonel finds strangely endearing).

(Does she laugh when Maekar touches her? Does she let out that shy, almost high-pitch giggle when Maekar says or does something that blatantly turns her on? Does she cackle when Maekar brushes his fingers over the particular sensitive spot on her ribs, the one Lyonel knows make her squirm from both laughter and arousal?

The thought Maekar hears those sounds sours Lyonel's mood even more than he thought possible, bitterness building on his tongue with alarming speed. They're wasted on the Anvil. Cunt probably thinks she's making fun of him instead of understanding what they mean, unable to appreciate the intimacy of such sounds. His insecurities get in the way of him understanding regular laughter; there is no way in the Seven Hells he gets the intimacy during sex.)

"You do realize I do not do this for fun?" Janella spits. She stalks over towards one of the tables where her hair net sits, having been discarded so Lyonel could get his fingers fully into her hair.

"Your past would suggest otherwise." Lyonel pauses and then tilts his head. He should consider his next words, but his mouth is often faster than his brain. "Leo did a number on you, didn't he?"

Janella stops. Lyonel's lips twitch despite himself. It's a low blow, he knows, but he's not in a particularly generous mood at the moment. Rage and betrayal swirl around his chest like a tempest, battering against his ribcage with so much force he fears it may crack him open.

(Perhaps it already has. Lyonel can never tell where he ends and his anger begins when he gets like this. Oh, he'll play unaffected, but it's obvious he's furious.

Besides, it isn't as if this is a surprise. A storm like the one raging inside of him right now never creep up on people. They're not sneaky fuckers; all one need do is watch the horizon to see what will happen. The power behind a storm like this, an emotion like this, is not in its stealth. No. What people measure these by is the destruction left in their wake.

Lyonel doubts much of anything will be left once this particular one dissipates.)

"I would not go there if I were you." Janella speaks each word with enormous control. She doesn't so much grind them from between her teeth as carefully enunciate. Lyonel laughs, low and cruel. His opponent trying to cling to control like this means he's already won, they just can't see it yet.

(Why is he like this? Why must he see every interaction like a game? And why is he wondering about this now? This is a question to keep him up in the middle of the night, not wonder about during a fucking fight.

Because she doesn't haunt him only at night. Janella may as well still be at Storm's End with the way she lingers in every facet of his life. He can't even lay in his own fucking bed without thinking of her, rolling over in the mornings expecting to smell florals and citrus and getting... not that.)

"Aawww, still seeking father's approval?" Lyonel goads, clicking his tongue for extra measure. "Explains your taste."

Without thinking, Janella takes two steps forward. Her jaw twitches. It's slight, and if she weren't currently in a patch of moonlight, Lyonel would have missed it entirely. She sets her jaw and clenches her teeth.

Lyonel can't help his loud bark of laughter, he really can't. Of course. Of fucking course she picks up mannerisms from Maekar. The man isn't even in the tent with them yet Lyonel cannot escape him. It makes him want to scream. He can't, though. All he can do is laugh.

Much to his surprise, Janella stays silent. She stares at him, hurt and reproach all over her expression. Lyonel raises an eyebrow.

(Come on, fight back, give me a sign this means something, anything. Show me you care in some way. This isn't pretty, isn't ever going to be a fucking fairy tale, but it could be the stuff for a ballad. Give me a reason to stay.)

Watching all of the sadness and hurt slide off of Janella's face to be replaced by careful, curated neutrality hurts Lyonel more than any barb she could hurl at him. He handles insults, some genuine and some friendly fire, on the daily. This is different in a way he can't quite articulate. It's not like watching a door slam, the change isn't violent enough, yet it's the closest analogy he has.

"If you had no interest in this anymore, you could have told me." Janella tilts her head to the side and gives him a cold, almost calculating look. Lyonel rolls his eyes.

"Fuck you." He spits. "This isn't about that, and you know it."

She stares at him. It's eerie, the sudden blankness, the impasivity. Janella regards him in a detached way, and it makes his skin crawl and vision flicker. Lyonel does emotions and actions, not whatever the hell this is.

Suddenly, she exhales. The sound nearly echoes in the tent. It seems to come from deep within her, perhaps her soul. She must have been wrestling with whatever it was for quite some time.

"You're right. It's not about that." Janella pauses. Lyonel doesn't fill the silence for once. It doesn't seem right. Her tongue flicks out to wet her lips. "Thank you. You've given me clarity tonight."

Well. Fuck. Yeah, Lyonel wants a reaction, any kind, but this isn't exactly what he hoped to get. He could do a screaming match, especially if it turns into another round of rather intense sex, but this? A pit forms in his stomach.

He could make a joke, should make a joke. Yet every time Lyonel reaches for one, it falls from his grasp. Instead, he sits up again.

"That's it? That's fucking it?" Lyonel nearly scrambles to his feet. The sheets fall away from him and pool on the floor. "You're just going to walk away?" He pauses and then lets out an almost hysterical giggle. "Of course it is. Because that's all you fucking do, isn't it? Run away from your problems." Janella turns away from him and starts walking away, and oh, he can't have that. He starts following her, his nudity be damned. "Tell me, how'd it work last time? Oh, wait. You ended up exactly where you would have before, the only difference is you traded which dragon you'd be chained to for the rest of your life."

Janella ignores him, even as he follows her. She pauses at the tent flap. Finally, she turns back to him.

"It's time for me to grow up, Lyonel. I suggest you do the same."

apothe-roses

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