Synopsis: In golden warmth, his fingers weave her hair, until the quiet shifts to heavy air. She turns the tide and scales his massive frame, to take the lead and fan the breeding flame. With biting wit and deliberate, rolling grace, she claims her warlord in his own embrace.
Warnings: SMUT 18+, Unprotected Vaginal Sex, Power Play, Femdom, Breeding Fixation, Post-Partum Body Imagery, Creampie, Size Difference, Overstimulation, Playful Banter, Breast Play
Word Count: 4k
A/N: this fic is also based on a request & ideas by @fire-joestar 🫶 (part of the „The Lady of the Hightower“ collection)
The solar of the High Tower was a sanctuary of soft, honeyed light, bathed in the deep amber glow of tallow candles and the low, dying embers of a hearth. It was a stark, peaceful departure from the brutal, dust-choked reality of the campaign trail and the endless, clattering noise of the lower wards.
Here, high above the Whispering Sound, the air was warm, smelling faintly of sweet dried lavender, polished oak, and the thick, unmistakable scent of warm skin.
Ormund sat on a high-backed chair carved from deep shadow-oak, his massive frame dwarfing the solid furniture. He was dressed not in steel, but in a loose-fitting, dark green velvet doublet—unbuttoned at the throat—and heavy dark breeches. His broad shoulders, built for the weight of plate armor and the violence of the vanguard, were relaxed, yet his posture retained the immovable gravity of a mountain.
Between his heavy, spread thighs sat his wife, resting on a low, plush stool covered in fox fur.
Their firstborn son—a roaring, remarkably chunky babe who seemed to have inherited every single ounce of his father’s thick-boned constitution and his mother’s fierce, unyielding lungs—was finally asleep in the adjoining nursery. The child was a brute of a babe, heavy and thriving, a living testament to the strength of the Hightower bloodline. The sheer relief of his quietude hung over the solar like a heavy blanket, leaving the room settled into a golden, lazy stillness.
Ormund’s hands, broad and calloused across the palm from decades of sword-play and horse-reins, were moving through the heavy silk of her hair. It was a startling contrast—the warlord of Oldtown, the heir and pride of the late Lord Hobert Hightower, a man capable of breaking a man’s spine with his bare hands; moving his thick fingers with a delicate, practiced dexterity.
He was weaving a small, intricate braid along her temple, a subtle, traditional Reach style meant to keep the hair away from her face. His eyes were narrowed in absolute concentration, his breath coming in slow, steady rhythms against the crown of her head. He was a man made of blood and iron, yet he held her as if she were made of the finest, most delicate Myrish glass—even as she had spent the last two years proving to him that she was as resilient as stone.
She leaned back slightly against his leather-shod knee, her eyes half-closed, enjoying the rhythmic, gentle tug on her scalp. The quiet of the room was intoxicating. After moons of carrying a heavy, demanding child, followed by the grueling, bloody ordeal of the birthing bed, these quiet moments of worship were her sanctuary.
”You are pulling too tightly on the left,“ she murmured lazily, her voice a smooth, low purr that barely carried across the quiet solar.
Ormund paused, his broad hands hovering over her hair. He let out a low, rumbling breath against the crown of her head.
”I am weaving it precisely as the Septas teach the young maidens. It requires tension, my love.“
”I am neither a young maiden nor one of your vanguard knights, Ormund,“ she retorted smoothly, a faint, amused smile playing on her lips without opening her eyes.
”You do not need to braid my hair with the same force you use to tie down a baggage wagon.“
A low, gravelly chuckle rumbled deep in Ormund’s broad chest, vibrating straight through his knee and into her back.
”If I braided it loosely, it would unravel before sunrise, and then you would complain that I lacked the discipline for simple handiwork.“
”I complain because you treat every task like a siege,“ she countered softly, tilting her head back against his thigh to look up at him.
”Even in the quiet of our own solar, Lord Hightower must conquer whatever is before him.“
Ormund’s dark blue eyes softened as he looked down at her flushed face. He smoothed a thumb over her temple, tucking a stray strand behind her ear with unexpected gentleness.
”Conquering implies resistance. You, on the other hand, are sitting willingly between my knees.“
”Only because my feet ache from chasing your son through the courtyards all afternoon,“ she murmured, though her tone held no real bite.
”He moves with the speed of a startled stag and the subtlety of a catapult.“
”He has the blood of Oldtown,“ Ormund declared with quiet pride, his fingers resuming their careful, rhythmic weaving.
”He will be a warlord before he reaches his may of life.“
She let out a dry, sarcastic huff, turning her head slightly to look toward the dark window.
”Hopefully the children do not take after your temper. One man roaring like a wounded dragon in this tower is quite enough for a lifetime.“
”My temper is perfectly measured,“ Ormund growled mildly, though the twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed his amusement.
”I am a man of great restraint.“
”Restraint?“ she let out a soft, genuine laugh that echoed warmly off the stone walls.
”You threatened to execute a tavern keeper in the Reach because the ale was too warm for my liking, and you nearly leveled a war tent because I dared to take a stroll along the Honeywine.“
”The Honeywine was unsafe,“ Ormund grunted, his voice darkening slightly with the faint, lingering memory of the terror that had gripped him that evening.
”The slate was loose. You were carrying my child.“
”I was barely showing, Ormund,“ she reminded him, her tone dropping into a dry, mocking hum.
”A slight swell, and yet you carried on as if I were about to collapse into the river. You made an absolute spectacle of us before half the Reach.“
”I brought you safely back to our pavilion,“ he insisted firmly, his jaw clenching.
”And I ensured you understood the gravity of your carelessness.“
”You restricted me enough during the first child,“ she snapped back, though her eyes danced with a dark, knowing fire as she remembered the exact manner in which he had ensured her understanding beneath that heavy canvas.
”I could barely breathe without your Maester reporting my every step, and when I tried to draw fresh air, you pinned me to the furs and starved me of breath until I was unable to remember my own name.“
Ormund’s hands stilled completely. His eyes flicked down to meet hers, a sudden, heavy warmth igniting in his gaze.
”And yet, if memory serves, you did not complain about the lack of air once my fingers were inside you.“
”That was not compliance, my Lord. That was overstimulation,“ she murmured, a slow, provocative smirk spreading across her lips.
”You took advantage of a woman trapped beneath your ridiculous weight.“
”I took what was mine,“ Ormund growled softly, his voice dropping into that dark, possessive register that always made her pulse hitch.
”And you surrendered every inch of your pride before the night was done.“
”I surrendered nothing,“ she replied coolly, raising a brow.
”I simply granted you the illusion of victory so I might finally get some sleep.“
Ormund leaned down, his broad face inches from hers, his breath hot against her cheek.
”Is that what you call it? An illusion? I seem to recall a dark mark on your delicate skin that remained for three days while we marched through the Reach. Every lord in the vanguard knew exactly whose mark you bore.“
”You are a brute,“ she murmured, though she did not pull away. Instead, she leaned into his heat, her shoulder pressing firmly against his leather-clad knee.
”A possessive, arrogant brute.“
”And you are the Lady of the Hightower,“ he countered softly, his thumb tracing the curve of her jaw.
”And my wife. A woman who knows precisely how to tame the brute when it suits her.“
Before she could offer another sharp retort, the heavy oak door to the solar creaked—a soft, complaining groan of iron hinges that immediately cut through their quiet back-and-forth.
Ormund’s hands stilled instantly, his fingers burying into the thick waves of her hair, his head snapping toward the entrance with the sharp, predatory instinct of a soldier.
Daeron Targaryen stood at the threshold, holding a leather-bound folio of supply reports from the harbor. The young prince took one step into the room and froze dead in his tracks. His violet eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated shock. He had expected to find the Lord of the Hightower reviewing troop movements, barking orders at scribes, or drinking heavy Arbor Red. He had certainly not expected to see the formidable warlord of the Reach sitting in soft candlelight, carefully braiding his wife’s hair with the devotion of a monk at prayer.
Daeron’s face flushed a deep, immediate crimson, the red creeping up to the tips of his pale ears.
She did not move, merely turning her head slightly on Ormund’s knee to offer her nephew a calm, incredibly unbothered smile.
”Daeron, sweetling. If those are the harbor tallies, leave them on the side table by the door. Your uncle is busy.“
Daeron did not utter a word. He practically scrambled backward, setting the folio down with a clumsy thud on the nearest chest, and backed out into the corridor. The heavy oak flap clicked shut with a soundless, hasty efficiency, his footsteps retreating down the stone hallway at a brisk pace.
The silence that reclaimed the solar was no longer lazy or peaceful. It shifted instantly—thickening, warming, and charging with a sudden, localized gravity that made the hairs on her arms stand up.
Ormund did not resume the braid. His hands, still buried in her locks, slowly tightened, his calloused thumbs rubbing small, heavy circles against the sensitive skin behind her ears. He inhaled deeply, leaning his head down until his rough cheek scraped against hers, his nose brushing the shell of her ear.
”He is gone,“ Ormund murmured. His voice was no longer the soft, gentle lecturing tone he used when the boy was near. It had dropped an octave into a low, gravelly rumble that vibrated straight down through her spine, making her core throb with a sudden, heavy pulse.
She shifted on the stool, turning her body to face him, her skirts rustling over the fur rug. Her movements were smooth and entirely unhurried.
She looked up at him, meeting his dark, shadowed gaze. The gentle, domestic tenderness that had filled his eyes moments ago was entirely gone. In its place was a fierce, singular, and terrifyingly possessive intensity—a dark, suffocating heat that she recognized all too well.
His dark eyes dropped, slowly sliding down her throat, past her collarbones, to the lush, lingering fullness of her post-partum body.
She was no longer carrying the child inside her, but her body still bore the glorious, ripe evidence of his birth. Her breasts were heavier, dark and full, stretching the fine silk of her gown. Her waist retained a soft, lush curve, her hips broader and more flared than they had been before the pregnancy—a fertile, mature landscape carved by his seed.
Ormund’s chest rose and fell in a heavy, ragged rhythm as he stared at her body. There was a raw, primal fascination in his gaze, an absolute, worshipful awe at what she had endured, what she had created, and how lush she remained under his hand. He did not just want her; he was entirely obsessed with the fertile reality of her.
The sight of her soft, motherly curves filled him with a ferocious, dark urge—a breeding fixation that consumed every logical thought in his head.
”Ormund...“ she breathed. It was not a protest. It was a smooth, knowing invitation, her voice thick with the same heat that was rapidly filling the room.
”You look...“ Ormund growled, his massive hand reaching out toward her, ”you look ripe. You look like a woman who was made to be filled.“
”Is that your idea of courtly praise, my Lord?“ she asked, a dry, mocking edge returning to her voice even as her breathing shallowly accelerated.
”Or are you simply laying the groundwork for another nine moons of keeping me locked away like a caged bird?“
”I did not cage you,“ Ormund asserted, his fingers twitching against his knees with the effort it took not to haul her onto his lap immediately.
”I preserved you.“
”You suffocated me,“ she corrected smoothly, standing up from the low stool with deliberate, slow grace. Her skirts rustled softly around her ankles as she stood before him, her stature poised and unbothered.
”You restricted me enough during the first child. I spent moons drinking bland broths and taking short, pathetic walks under the watchful eyes of four armed guards while you paced the halls like a caged bear.“
Ormund’s eyes darkened as he tracked her every movement, burning with a fierce, unholy light.
”And those precautions ensured our son arrived strong and roaring. I will make no apologies for protecting what is mine.“
”Protection is one thing, Ormund,“ she replied, reaching up to the laces of her gown. With practiced, unhurried ease, her fingers began to loosen the fine ties.
”Absolute tyranny is quite another. If you think I will allow you to lock me in the High Tower the moment I carry your next child, you are sorely mistaken.“
Ormund let out a dark, low growl deep in his throat, his broad hands gripping the heavy carved arms of his chair so tightly the shadow-oak groaned under the pressure.
”You speak of the next child as if it were a choice, my Lady.“
”It is always my choice,“ she murmured coolly, letting the delicate silk of her dress drop from her shoulders. The fabric pooled around her waist, revealing the lush, pale swell of her breasts, heavy and dark-nippled, faintly veined with the warmth of early motherhood.
Ormund’s jaw clenched so hard the heavy muscles twitched violently. His gaze fixed upon her bare chest, his breath hitching in his throat.
The sight of her—mature, glorious, and completely unbothered by her own exposure—sent a violent surge of heat straight to his groin.
”You test my patience,“ he rasped out, his voice thick with a dark, dangerous desire.
”I am reminding you of your place,“ she replied smoothly, stepping forward until her knees brushed against his spread thighs.
”Sit.“
The Lord of Oldtown, a man who commanded thousands of swords and held the fate of the Reach in his hands, stayed rooted to his chair. His hungry eyes burned up at her, wild with a desperate, fighting restraint.
She straddled his broad, velvet-clad thighs, lowering herself onto his lap with absolute poise. She felt the massive, rock-hard length of him throbbing beneath his heavy breeches, pressing hot and demanding against her core through the thin linen of her chemise.
She reached down, placing her small, warm palms flat against his broad chest. Slowly, deliberately, she began to undo the dark velvet buttons of his doublet, pushing the heavy fabric aside to expose his clean-shaved chest. She trailed her fingers down the center of his sternum, feeling the frantic, thunderous thudding of his heart beneath her palms.
”You want another brute, Ormund?“ she whispered, leaning forward until her lips ghosted over the line of his jaw, her warm breath making him shudder violently.
”You want to make me carry your child again?“
”Yes,“ Ormund growled, his massive hands rising to grip her broad hips like bands of iron.
”Gods, yes. I want you blooming under my hand again. I want my seed buried so deep inside you that you can think of nothing else.“
”Then you will sit still,“ she commanded softly against his cheek, her voice dripping with quiet, absolute dominance, ”and let your lady take what she pleases. You will not rush me, you will not command me, and you will certainly not restrict me.“
Ormund’s fingers dug into her hips, his head dropping back against the carved wood of the chair with a strained groan.
”You are relentless...“
”I learned from the best,“ she murmured, leaning in to claim his mouth.
It was a deep, intoxicating kiss—not a frantic struggle for control, but a rich, deliberate claim.
She parted his lips with her tongue, taking her time, drinking in his rough, heavy gasps as he surrendered the pace to her. She tasted the heat of him, her fingers tangling into the thick, silver-streaked hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him deeper into her rhythm.
Ormund groaned into her mouth, his hands tightening on her waist, but he obeyed, letting her set the speed, letting her master him in the quiet sanctuary of their solar.
While keeping her mouth locked over his, she reached down between their bodies. Her small fingers undid his heavy leather trousers, pushing the fabric aside to free his thick length. He sprang forth, hot, heavily veined, and glistening with pre-come, pulsing violently against her inner thigh.
She broke the kiss, breathless and flushed, looking down at him with a triumphant, smoldering gaze. She braced her hands flat against his broad shoulders, shifting her hips, guiding the dark head of his cock directly to her soaked, scalding entrance.
She was dripping wet, her body completely betraying how much she craved his heavy length despite her cool words.
Ormund’s eyes went black, his chest heaving as he felt her slick heat resting against his tip.
”My love...“ he choked out, his hands trembling slightly on her waist.
”Please...“
”Watch me, Ormund,“ she commanded softly.
Slowly, deliberately, she sank down.
She took him in a single, unhurried motion, taking every inch of his thick length deep inside her passage. A sharp, breathless gasp tore from her throat as his width stretched her reformed walls to their absolute limit. He was huge, filling her so completely that a wave of intense, dizzying heat rushed straight to her core, making her vision blur for a breathless second.
Ormund threw his head back against the carved wood of the chair, a guttural, strained groan ripping from deep within his chest. His fingers dug deeply into her plush hips, his knuckles turning white as he fought the primal, roaring urge to thrust up into her.
”Gods above... you are so slick... so warm...“
She stayed still for a moment, letting her body adjust to his massive presence, her inner muscles clamping down tight and wet around his shaft. She leaned down, pressing her bare, heavy breasts against his broad chest, placing a slow, sweet kiss against his throbbed jawline.
”You see, Ormund?“ she whispered against his skin, her voice shaking slightly with the sheer intensity of being filled by him.
”I do not need to be pinned to the furs to be conquered. I take what I want.“
”You are... unbearable,“ Ormund rasped out, his eyes opening to stare up at her with a mix of raw agony and absolute worship.
”You stretch me... past my endurance...“
”Good,“ she murmured, a dark smirk touching her lips.
”Then suffer a little.“
She began to move.
She lifted her hips smoothly, sliding up his length until only the head remained nestled inside her velvety walls, before pressing firmly back down, riding him with a rhythmic, undulating roll of her hips.
She took full control of the depth and speed. Every time she sank down, she ground her swollen, hyper-sensitive pearl directly against the thick base of his cock and his pubic bone, sending sparks of intense electricity darting through her lower stomach. She set a steady, deliberate pace—rising and falling over him, taking him deep, making the massive warlord beneath her squirm with sheer, unadulterated pleasure.
Ormund’s breathing turned ragged and desperate. His hands gripped her waist, helping to steady her heavy, rhythmic movements, but he stayed still beneath her, letting her ride him, completely mastered by her pace. He stared up at her flushed face, her bare breasts swaying softly with her movements, completely entranced by the sight of his wife taking her pleasure from his body.
”Look at you,“ Ormund rasped out, his hands sliding up her ribs to cup her full, heavy breasts, his thumb rolling over her tight peaks.
”Commanding your Lord... taking every bit of me...“
”I am the Lady of the Hightower,“ she gasped out, her rhythm quickening, her inner walls milking him relentlessly with every downward stroke.
”I dictate... how my nursery... is filled...“
”You are filling it with my seed,“ Ormund growled back, his voice dropping into that dark, possessive purr as his hands squeezed her breasts.
”Say it. Say whose seed you are riding for.“
”Yours...“ she whimpered, her cool composure finally beginning to fracture under the relentless overstimulation of her breasts and her own rolling hips.
”Yours, Ormund... always yours...“
”Yes,“ he grunted, his hips giving a small, involuntary jerk upward, plunging his cock a fraction deeper into her passage.
”And hopefully... hopefully this one takes after my temper... so his mother has to endure not only mine.“
”Gods forbid,“ she gasped out, a breathless laugh escaping her lips before it turned into a sharp moan as she ground her hips heavily against his pubic bone.
”One... one of you is... enough...“
The combination of his rough hands rolling her nipples and the deep, friction-filled strokes of her own riding pushed her toward the edge. Her breathing grew shallow, her hips rolling faster, grinding heavily against him as her core began to flutter with the approach of an overwhelming climax.
Ormund felt the tight, weeping spasms of her walls tightening around his cock. The sheer sensation of her taking him so completely, riding him so fiercely, shattered the last remnants of his self-control.
”Take it,“ Ormund growled, his voice a dark, gravelly rumble.
He reached up, gripping her jaw, pulling her head down to slam his mouth over hers in a bruising, breathless kiss, stealing her gasps as his hands gripped her hips tightly, helping her drive down onto him with maximum force.
She shattered.
A muffled, crying moan vibrated deep inside his mouth as her climax hit her like a crushing wave. Her entire body went rigid in his lap, her inner walls clamping down frantically around his shaft in a series of violent, desperate contractions. She came hard, her hips bucking helplessly against his groin as her core wept hot, slick arousal over his length.
The crushing, wet spasms of her body milking his cock were too much for the warlord to endure.
Ormund’s hips surged upward, driving himself as deep as physically possible into her convulsing warmth. With a low, animalistic roar into her mouth, he came.
He flooded her. Thick spurts of his seed shot deep into the absolute back of her heat, painting her cervix, filling her to the absolute point of overflow. He held her tightly against his chest, pulsing again and again, pumping every drop of his fertile life into her trembling body while she rode out the lingering ripples of her orgasm above him.
The solar fell into a heavy, breathless silence, broken only by their ragged, shared gasps and the soft crackle of the hearth.
She collapsed forward against his broad chest, her head resting in the crook of his neck, her body completely spent, her trembling legs still straddling his lap. Ormund held her securely, his strong arms wrapped around her back, his hand smoothing down her disheveled hair with infinite care.
He remained buried deep inside her, ensuring that every drop of his seed stayed trapped within her warm womb.
Slowly, Ormund turned his head, pressing a soft, lingering kiss against her flushed temple. His large, calloused hand slid down her back, coming to rest reverently over her soft lower belly—where his heavy seed was already settling.
”My Lady,“ Ormund whispered softly, his voice full of a deep, worshipful calm as his thumb traced small, tender circles over her skin.
”I believe the nursery will be full soon enough.“
She let out a faint, exhausted breath against his neck, a soft smirk touching her lips.
”And if this one has your temper, Ormund... I am leaving you to raise it alone.“
Ormund chuckled softly, his arms tightening around her.
”You would not dare leave my side, my love. Who else would keep the brute from burning down the tower?“
”No one,“ she murmured quietly, closing her eyes as she leaned fully into his warmth.
summary: how ormund treats his pregnant wife...and just how insufferably possessive, indulgent, and devoted he becomes.
pairing: ormund hightower x pregnantwife!reader (implied to be targtower!reader)
content/warnings: 18+ (mdni), SMUT, pregnancy sex, breeding kink, reproductive control, controlling behavior, grooming, body worship, oral sex (f recieving), obsessive behavior
word count: 1.2k
A/N: just something short and sweet! sorry if this sucks tbh i wrote half of it stuck in the atlanta airport TGI Friday's on my phone but wanted to get you all something!! technically headcanons for COB universe but can be read separately :)
CUSTODY OF BLOOD MASTERLIST
Ormund Hightower, who has made a habit of fucking his wife’s pretty little cunt every single day since their marriage. He spent so long denying himself, denying you, of the pleasure shared between man and woman that he often feels as though he is making up for lost time. So he takes his husbandly rights whenever he can: first thing in the morning upon waking, after the midday meal between meetings, before attending a feast, after returning from one, in the bath, before bed, and whenever else he can get his hands on you.
Ormund Hightower, who has trained you perfectly in how to take him. Never so greedy or eager that you might behave like some common whore, but never so prudish that you resemble a septa, either. He likes that you still blush whenever he whispers filthy things into your ear, his stiffening cock pressed against your backside in the dead of night. Likes the little gasp you make when the leaking head nudges against your entrance. Likes that you still stutter over the words he commands you to say while his hips grind into you, his cock dragging so sweetly in and out of your fluttering pussy.
“Say it, sweet girl,” he whispered, his lips skimming the shell of your ear. “Tell me how your lord’s cock feels inside you.”
You whimpered at the words and turned your face into the pillow. “P-please, Ormund…”
Ormund tutted, taking your chin in his hand and turning your face back toward him. His lips brush yours as he speaks against them. “You know you mustn’t keep secrets from me. Tell me plainly or I shall stop.”
“It feels– aah–” you whined as the head of him dragged against that spongy place inside you that always makes you feel as though you have been set aflame. “It feels so…so b-big…so good…”
Ormund Hightower, who has also made a habit of keeping careful count of your moon’s blood. He has a private ledger dedicated to recording when it begins and ends, how long it lasts, and every little symptom you present. It is his duty as your husband, after all, to know every part of your life…including the workings of your body. And because he knows you inside and out, he knows when you are most fertile.
It is quite easy to tell, really. You become restless in his arms at night and squirm beneath the covers until your ass is grinding against his stiffening cock. During the day, you follow him from chamber to chamber, finding any excuse to take his hand or press sweet little kisses to his cheek. In truth, it is adorable to Ormund because you do not even understand what your body is trying so desperately to tell him.
Thus, with these two habits combined, it should come as no surprise when, scarcely two months into your marriage, the maester examines you after a week of persistent nausea and confirms that you are with child.
Ormund Hightower, who you believe has never been happier than when he hears the maester utter those words. He pulls you into a tight embrace before the maester has even left the room, peppering kisses all over your face and telling you how proud he is that you took his strong seed so well. He is not surprised, though…he would never question the Seven’s decision to validate the strength of your bond. To Ormund, this is the ultimate proof that what exists between you has been divinely blessed.
Ormund Hightower, who wastes no time beginning any and all preparations. The very day you learn you are with child, he commissions a beautiful, intricately carved wooden cradle for the babe. The Hightower crest at one end, the Seven-Pointed Star at the other. No dragons, of course. By putting his child inside you, Ormund believes he has finally purged you of every lingering trace of the dragon. You are a Hightower, now. You are his.
Little trinkets follow soon after. Embroidered gowns for the babe (all in Hightower green), a golden rattle, a bejeweled prayer book, a tiny silver cup. Ormund often warns against indulgence. Excess is unbecoming, idols should only be the righteous Seven. But...you and your child are the exception.
Ormund Hightower, who immediately insists that any and all responsibilities of yours be canceled. You are carrying his child, and your only duty now is ensuring that you, the beautiful mother blessed with his seed, are rested, comfortable, and cared for. That means no more long walks to the sept with only your women accompanying you. No more riding the beautiful mare he gifted you. No more waking early. No more long feasts with too many guests. No more standing for too long.
But with Ormund’s restrictions, of course, come gifts. Beautiful gowns tailored specifically to accentuate your growing belly. A new feather mattress and mountains of pillows after you complain that your back aches. Whatever little comfort you desire, he gives to you without hesitation. You become spoiled in your gilded cage. If you mention craving something sweet, a dozen honeycakes are delivered to your chambers within the hour. If Ormund hears you humming a tune, musicians are summoned to entertain you while you sit beside him in the solar. If you so much as admire another lady’s necklace, one even more beautiful, more expensive, and dripping with jewels appears soon after to rest against your newly swelling bosom. It is your reward, isn’t it? For fulfilling the Mother’s greatest purpose for you.
Ormund Hightower, who absolutely worships your changing body. Your growing belly, your heavy breasts, the new softness gathering around your hips…it is all completely intoxicating to him. If he could hardly keep his hands off you before, he certainly cannot now. His palm is constantly resting over your belly, almost as if he is proudly displaying his handiwork whenever he introduces you to some lord or lady. “Does Lady Hightower not carry motherhood beautifully?”, he says. Or, even better, said with that unbearably smug little smile of his: “A perfect image of the Mother in her truest form, my wife.”
Ormund Hightower, who, naturally, cannot seem to stop fucking you either. He loves to take your swollen breasts into his mouth and suckle softly at your sensitive nipples, nearly coming undone at the mere thought that soon they will grow heavy with milk meant to nourish his child.
Your cunt has somehow become even more swollen, even wetter…and, best of all, your scent has changed. Ormund knows everything about you, including that. The scent of you– heady, a little musky, with something unmistakably you beneath it– has always been one of his favorite things. But now? Something about it has changed. It is richer now, sweeter. Almost divine.
He becomes addicted to it. He can hardly keep his mouth away from you, his tongue pressing insistently at your entrance while his nose nudges against your clit, and he just cannot stop inhaling, his lungs filling with you as if he would perish without it.
And, of course, he quickly develops a new favorite way of taking you. Curled together on your sides, your back pressed tightly to his chest, a pillow tucked carefully beneath your growing stomach while his cock moves slowly inside you. One arm holds you against him while his other hand spreads possessively across your belly, stroking the unmistakable proof of what he has done.
Ormund Hightower, who already has heirs from his previous marriage– all grown young men now– but knows your child is different. His sons were welcomed into the world with all the pride expected of Lord Hightower. This babe, however, is treated as though the Seven themselves have placed a miracle inside your womb. This is not merely another child to him; his sons were duty. This, though? This is obsession made flesh. Divine intervention. Love. Victory over the sins of every insidious Targaryen forefather who came before you.
And, more importantly than any of that, this child is different because you are its mother.
summary: when King's Landing demands your return, Ormund decides that neither gods, kings, nor dragons will ever take you from him.
pairing: ormund hightower x targtower!reader
content/warnings: 18+ (mdni), SMUT, dubcon, loss of virginity, unprotected p in v, oral sex (f receiving), fingering, forced marriage, blood, breeding kink, semi-public nudity, wax play, pain play, public sex, religious manipulation and trauma, grooming, stockholm syndrome, canon-typical Ormund freakout, choking (noncon), physical intimidation/rough handling, canon-typical incest (cousins), age gap (~20 years), icky guardian/ward relationship, canon-typical misogyny, canon-divergent, no use of y/n
word count: 12.3k
A/N: and here we are!! the finale for Custody of Blood! lowkey i feel like i got stockholm-syndromed by this man too. thank you all for love and support on this entire series, it was SO fun to write and i'm glad you guys like this insane man as much as i do. obviously i'll have more content for him soon during my 1k celebration throughout the month of August, and i'd like to hopefully do some more oneshots for him in the COB universe too!
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MASTERLIST
Beneath the Hightower, deep within the darkness of the earth, there was a cavern.
It was dark and damp. Only the flickering flame of the torch in your hand guided you through the gloom. Stalactites of glittering quartz hung from the cavern’s ceiling like teeth and the trembling firelight illuminated their shadows across the walls. Silence surrounded you, broken only by the soft scuff of your bare feet against the dirt and the occasional drip of water somewhere in the distance.
Then came a breath. Not from a human, no– it was low and heavy, a rumble so deep that the earth trembled beneath you.
Green scales glimmered faintly in the shadows, magnificent and beautiful and terrible beyond belief. You stopped in front of her.
A dragon.
She lay curled tightly into herself, sleeping in the darkness. With every great breath, the tendons beneath her armored hide expanded, lifted, and slowly settled again. Her long, slender neck rested across her clawed, webbed feet. Her face was sharp but beautiful, eyes closed in repose. She was, you understood, at peace.
Without knowing why, you felt a sudden tenderness for the beast.
You inched closer, drawn by some ancient bond, and slowly laid your hand upon her snout. You should have been frightened. You should have felt impossibly small beside her. Instead, you felt only kinship. It was deeper than anything you had known during those rare visits to the Red Keep, surrounded by siblings who shared your blood but had always seemed alien to you. You did not feel alien to this creature. You did not feel above her or beneath her. For the first time in your life, you felt equal.
The dragon’s eyes peeled open. She regarded you with a tranquil, knowing expression, as though the two of you had been long companions, made from the same cosmic dust. She huffed once, still heavy with sleep, then pressed her snout more firmly into your palm like some enormous cat. Only then did you notice the marks upon her.
Scars crossed her scales, old and ugly. They looked as though someone had beaten her. A tremendous sadness swelled within your heart.
Then you saw the gleaming metal encircling her neck.
Pity was quickly replaced with the hot burn of outrage. Someone had dared to chain this beautiful creature? Someone had hidden her beneath the earth so that no one might witness her glory?
You reached instinctively into your pocket. Though you did not know how it had come to be there, your fingers closed around the cool metal of a key. You knew at once that this key belonged to the collar imprisoning the dragon.
When you turned, a great opening had appeared in the cavern wall. Beyond it stretched a brilliant blue sky, flooded with sunlight and filled with the distant chirping of birds. Freedom.
You moved with sudden urgency, carefully stepping over the dragon’s enormous feet and stretching toward the iron collar around her neck. Even on the tips of your toes, you could scarcely reach the lock. Your fingers fumbled once before guiding the key inside, and then you turned it. With surprising ease, the collar sprang open and crashed to the cavern floor. It was done.
You hurried back to the dragon’s face and cradled her great snout between your hands. Pressing your brow against her scales, you searched her slitted eyes.
“There,” you murmured, stroking her bumpy hide. “You are free now. No one will stop you.”
The dragon only stared back at you.
Your brows knitted in confusion. “Do you not understand me?”
Still, she did not move. Frustration stirred within you. Something ancient rose from your blood, passed through your heart, and found its way onto your tongue. “Dohaeris.”
The dragon blinked, then lowered her head between your hands, a low rumble vibrating in her throat. Ormund had forbidden you from learning High Valyrian, calling it witchcraft, a barbaric tongue better left to die than permitted to live within your mouth. And yet, before this creature, the words came naturally. It was as though the language had lain dormant inside you all your life, waiting only for some sign that it was safe to awaken.
“Sōvegon sir, zaldrīzes,” you commanded, pressing your hands more firmly against her snout. Her eyes met yours, questioning. “Fly far from this place, beautiful creature, and never return.”
You knew it in your blood: some ancient bond joined your soul to hers. She should have understood you. She should have obeyed. Instead, the dragon looked toward the opening in the cavern, toward the sunlight and freedom waiting beyond it, and lowered her head once more upon her claws in total submission.
She had been beaten, captured, and chained beneath the earth.
And even after you freed the dragon from these shackles, the only thing preventing her flight, she would not leave this prison.
You awoke with a gasp.
The first thing you saw was the canopy above the bed. No cavern roof or towering creature covered in magnificent, glimmering scales. Only the thin fabric draped above a bed you knew all too well. The world returned to you in fragments, as it often did after such a vivid dream. The softness of linen against your skin, the feather pillow beneath your head, the burning ache across your backside. And beneath your cheek, the steady thump of a beating heart.
There were no empty, rumpled sheets beside you as there usually were in the morning. There was a man beneath you instead. A body warm and alive, his chest rising gently with every breath.
Lifting your head, you found Ormund already staring down at you.
There was such intense affection in his eyes that, for one brief moment, you forgot everything that had transpired the night before.
Then the bells of the citadel tolled.
Your eyes widened in recognition. Morning prayer.
You pushed yourself upright so quickly that the movement pulled painfully at the welts across your backside and a gasp escaped you as the blankets slipped down around your waist. “My lord, please forgive me, I-I did not realize it was so late! I should have risen– I mean to say, I should already be at the sept–”
Only once the cool air met your skin did you realize you were bare beneath the covers.
And so was Ormund.
Heat rushed into your face. You seized the coverlet and dragged it hastily over your exposed breasts, clutching it against yourself with both hands. Ormund made no effort to conceal his own nakedness. He remained reclined at leisure against the pillows, his broad chest exposed and the covers pooled low across his hips, watching your flustered movements with amusement.
You looked away at once and began to scoot toward the edge of the bed. “I-I am sorry. I will go at once. Perhaps, if I hurry, I still may–”
Ormund caught your wrist before you could leave. “You will do no such thing. You will remain here with me.”
Your brows knitted in confusion as you looked back at him. Ormund had never once permitted you to miss morning prayer at the sept. Rain or shine, sickness or health, you were expected to be kneeling upon its damp stone floor before the morning bells finished tolling. “But…morning prayer…”
“You have penanced enough for your transgressions last night. The Seven witnessed and will not condemn you for resting.” Ormund tugged at your wrist, drawing you back toward him. “Come back here.”
Though filled with confusion, you allowed yourself to be guided back down until your body rested against his once more, though you kept the coverlet clutched between you.
Ormund noticed the barrier and frowned. “You will not hide yourself from me, girl.”
He pulled the blanket from your grasp and lowered it until your breasts were bare to him once more. Then Ormund drew you closer, pressing your body flush against his. The trimmed hair scattered across his chest brushed against your sensitive nipples, sending a shiver down your spine and stirring that familiar, shameful heat low within your belly.
You went slightly rigid in his arms. This entire morning felt unlike anything you had ever known within Ormund’s chambers. He held you at night, yes. You slept in the same bed, yes. Ormund could be affectionate when he chose to be, like when rewarding you for being good and obedient, or when some merciful turn in his mood compelled him to touch you. In those moments, usually hidden beneath darkness and heavy blankets, you could almost believe you were more than his ward.
But such tenderness was fleeting. It had never been like this. Never had you lain completely exposed before him. Ormund had seen your lower half, of course, on every seventh day– swollen and glistening with that strange wetness that sometimes appeared when he touched you in certain ways, when his gaze lingered too long, or when his voice dropped low beside your ear.
But the whole of you, entirely naked beneath the morning light? Never.
And the night before…the things he said…the things you said…
You turned your face into the crook of his neck, hiding the embarrassment surely spreading across your expression.
“Ormund,” you whispered.
He hummed in response, his hand gliding slowly up and down your bare back, tracing the shallow ridges and hollows of your spine.
“Is this not…is this not improper?”
His hand stopped. After a moment, it began to move lower. Down the curve of your back, down lower over the base of your spine, until his palm settled across the upper swell of your ass. His fingers spread possessively against your skin as he lowered his mouth to your ear.
“It would only be improper if there were something impure between us,” Ormund murmured. “Do you believe there is something impure between us?”
You thought of the night before. You thought of his thumb circling the sensitive bundle of nerves above your entrance. The white-hot crack of his belt against your flesh. The wet sound of Ormund’s fist working himself in a frenzy. The heat of his seed spilling across your thighs, its remnants still dried upon your skin.
You shook your head against his neck. “No, my lord.”
“That is right. Now look at me and listen.” With two fingers beneath your chin, Ormund lifted your face from the shelter of his neck. His expression had grown oddly serious, much as it had when he lectured you as a child. “There is nothing impure between us. The Seven would never have entrusted you to me if there were. They placed you in my care because they knew where you belonged. There is nothing impure between us, and from this day forward, there shall be no walls between us, either.”
Ormund gestured toward your bare bodies, pressed together beneath the morning light. “It was walls that led you into folly yesterday. I was too tolerant in permitting you to remain apart from me when I knew that what you required was my presence, my guidance to keep you grounded. Consider the…nastiness of what happened yesterday. Had I not left your side, Lord Ashford could not have taken advantage of my absence and exploited your feminine naïveté. I allowed you too much freedom, and in that freedom, you became confused.” Ormund paused, his blue eyes searching yours. “Do you not agree?”
His words struck something deep within you. There was shame, certainly. Shame for the dance, for your disobedience towards the one man who cared for you, for every wicked impulse that had pushed you towards Lord Ashford. But beneath it stirred something warmer.
Ormund understood. He always understood.
He had looked upon all the jumbled confusion inside you and could name it plainly. You had not truly wanted Lord Ashford– even you knew that much. You had only become lost without Ormund beside you. And now he was promising that he would never permit you to become lost again.
Your throat tightened beneath the weight of being known so completely. “You speak true, my lord.”
“I know.” The hand already resting across the upper swell of your ass tightened, his fingers sinking possessively into the flesh. “Turn over for me.”
He guided you with that same hand, rolling you carefully onto your stomach while his other remained around your wrist. Once you lay beneath him, Ormund released your wrist and drew the coverlet lower, exposing the marks striped across your backside.
You sucked in a breath as the cool air touched the welts and waited for his reaction. You knew how they must have looked– red, raised, raw, and ugly.
Ormund did not like ugly things.
You remembered an afternoon from childhood, when you and the youngest Hightower boy had been playing in the stables. The two of you had climbed atop the fence posts and sat astride them, pretending they were warhorses. Somehow, the boy had managed to throw himself from his perch and strike his head against a bucket below. The sharp edge had split the skin from his temple to his brow, leaving a terrible gash that poured blood down the side of his face.
You had both screamed as though he had been decapitated until a servant discovered you and hurried you back into the Hightower. You had sat in the study while Lady Hightower held the boy against her chest and waited for the maester. He whimpered and wailed in her arms, still bleeding, while she rocked him gently and paid no mind to the crimson soaking through her gown.
Ormund entered soon afterward, undoubtedly drawn by the commotion and likely prepared to reprimand the lot of you for causing it. Instead, he stopped dead in his tracks. His face went pale as he took in the fleshy wound upon his son’s brow and the spreading stain across his wife’s dress. You remembered watching in confusion as he reached for the table beside him, as though his legs had suddenly weakened. A horrible gagging sound rose from his throat. Then he clapped a hand over his mouth and fled the room with as much dignity as a man fleeing in such a manner could preserve.
Later, you overheard him ordering the servants to burn Lady Hightower’s stained gown. The command had filled you with a peculiar sadness. You had always thought the dress looked so pretty on her.
You waited for the same response now. For Ormund to go pale, to gag, to recoil from the sight of you and leave the room. To leave you alone in your ugliness.
To your surprise, he did none of those things. Ormund merely drew a deep breath through his nose and skimmed his fingertips gingerly along the edge of the first welt. You flinched at the tenderness of the touch.
“I did not enjoy correcting you so harshly,” he said, his voice low and contemplative as his palm settled over the punished flesh. “A decent man should not be compelled to leave such marks upon a woman he loves. But…your imprudence afforded me no gentler means of reaching you.”
“I-I am sorry, Ormund. I was a fool, and I deserved it.”
“You were, and you did,” he agreed. His hand moved slowly down the curve of your ass, following the reddened flesh until his fingers reached the crease where it met your thigh. There, they encountered the dried remnants of his spend.
“But if you remain close to me,” Ormund continued, his fingertips lingering against the evidence of the night before, “if you cease hiding your thoughts and desires and permit me to guide you as I ought, then there will be no cause for such punishment again.”
You wanted nothing more than to be close to him. You would confess every thought if it meant so. “Yes, my lord. I will never hide from you again, I swear.”
Ormund guided you onto your side and then onto your back, handling you carefully when your tender skin met the sheets. He drew you against him once more, one arm settling firmly around your waist while the other hand cupped your face, the cool metal of his rings pressing into your heated cheek.
As he gazed upon you, his handsome face had softened in a way that made your throat tighten even more. Then he leaned closer and kissed you.
Ormund’s lips settled against yours with slow, deliberate certainty. You parted your own slightly, and his warm breath passed between them, entering you like life being breathed into something newly made. The tip of his tongue traced the seam of your mouth before meeting yours.
You gasped, and Ormund swallowed the sound by deepening the kiss, his hand sliding from your cheek into your hair as he held you closer. His tongue moved languidly against your own, coaxing your mouth wider, like he was teaching you how to receive him. You followed clumsily at first, then with growing need, pressing nearer until the soft weight of your breasts flattened against his chest and there was scarcely any space left between you.
This was nothing like the kisses he sometimes granted you in darkness– slow, but restrained. Nothing like the chaste press of his mouth to your temple or the dutiful kisses he demanded upon his freshly shaven cheek. With every movement of his lips and tongue against yours, you felt yourself melting further into him. You wanted to. You wanted to become soft and formless like clay beneath Ormund’s hands, something he could shape however he pleased.
Like two pieces of molten steel poured into the same mold, cooling together until no seam remained between them.
Until there was no you at all. Only Ormund.
Before you could disappear into him, Ormund pulled away. A wounded whine escaped you, your lips chasing his instinctively as he withdrew. Ormund held you in place with a hand at your jaw, amusement in the curve of his mouth.
“You must not be so greedy, my love,” he tutted, though there was no heat in his words. “You will not have to hunger for my attention any longer. I told you, there will be no more distance between us.”
You nodded, though your body still strained to put your lips upon him once more. The final bells of the morning tolled throughout Oldtown, and with the sound came the reminder of everything waiting beyond the bedchamber door.
Council. Petitioners. Visiting lords. Letters stacked upon Ormund’s desk awaiting his response.
He would rise soon. He would dress, leave you beneath the covers, and disappear into the duties that had always possessed him more completely than any living person could.
Your face must have revealed your thoughts, as Ormund mimicked your pout, thumbing at your bottom lip. “What? What is troubling that little head of yours?”
“It is…foolish.”
“We have just spoken of secrets.”
You swallowed, eyes lowering. “I…I was only wondering when you meant to leave. For your duties. I know you said I was to remain here, but I thought perhaps I could–”
“Did you not hear me?” Ormund turned your face towards him. “I told you there was to be no distance between us. Did you believe I meant only until the bells began to toll?”
Your heart throbbed. “But…your duties–”
“You are my ward. Thus, you are my duty.”
The words struck you so deeply that you forgot to breathe. You had only ever wanted to matter. And now, the man who raised you, the man who taught you who you were, had told you just as much.
“You will remain in these chambers today and allow your body to recover,” he continued. “And I will remain with you.”
“All day?”
“Yes, all day.”
The answer was so extraordinary that you searched his face for mockery. Ormund despised idleness. He rose before dawn, attended every council, and refused to permit any interference with the governance of Oldtown. Yet now he lay naked beside you beneath the morning light, speaking as though the lords awaiting him below were no more consequential than dust.
“...For me?” you whispered.
His brows knitted, as if the answer should have been obvious. “For whom else?”
Your eyes filled with tears. You pressed yourself against him, burying your face within the curve of his neck. Ormund received you readily, wrapping both arms around your body and drawing you firmly atop him.
He was staying. He would not leave you for the council. He would not rise and become distant again, leaving the tenderness of the night to feel like something you had only dreamed. He wanted you enough to remain.
“I am happy,” you whimpered, your words wet and muffled against his skin. “I am just so happy that you want me here.”
“My foolish girl…” Ormund pressed his lips to your hair. “Where else could you possibly belong?”
He proved true to his promise. Ormund did not leave the bed until late that afternoon, and even then, it was only to retrieve the books and correspondence his steward had left outside the chamber door. Breakfast was brought upon a silver tray and eaten beneath the covers. He read aloud from The Seven-Pointed Star while you rested against his chest, pausing every so often to feed you a piece of fruit from his own fingers or press an absent kiss to your brow. When he finally turned his attention to the letters awaiting him, he kept one arm around your waist and read them with your body tucked securely against his side.
Not once did he allow you beyond the chamber door.
The days that followed were among the happiest you could remember in your entire life.
Ormund kept you beside him constantly. You accompanied him to the solar and sat next to him while he conducted business, his hand holding yours. During every meal, you remained within reach. When visitors were received, Ormund’s hand rested upon your shoulder or the back of your neck, completely ignoring any curious looks guests would share, wondering why a lord touched his ward as such. At night, he brought you back to his bed and insisted there would be no more gowns or shifts between you during sleep.
“No more walls,” Ormund reminded you whenever embarrassment made you reach for the linens. “Not even these.”
And so you slept bare against him.
At first, you lay rigid beneath the covers, painfully aware of every place your naked body met his. Soon, however, your unease gave way to something else. There were moments when his mouth lingered too long upon yours during the kisses he now gave to you freely and without restraint, when his fingers lingered on the underside of your breasts, grazing your nipples, and that strange, warm wetness gathered once more between your thighs. On those nights, you pressed yourself closer, hoping Ormund would understand what you could not bring yourself to ask.
You remembered his finger moving inside you, the stretch that had transformed pain into pleasure. His thumb toying with that tender place that made your toes curl. The terrible, wondrous coil that had tightened within your belly before he withdrew and left you aching. You wondered often what might have happened had he not stopped.
When you shifted against him sometimes, you felt the unmistakable hardness of his cock against the curve of your backside. Ormund would draw a sharp breath and hold you in place until the moment passed. If curiosity compelled you to glance beneath the covers, he caught your chin and turned your face away.
“You need not concern yourself with that,” he would say firmly.
Just as he had on the seventh night, Ormund never permitted you to see him fully. He kissed you until your lips were red and swollen. He held you until sleep claimed you. He allowed his hands to wander just far enough to leave you trembling beneath them. But he did nothing more.
Though you longed for something more (what, precisely, you could not have said), you remained obedient and disciplined, just as Ormund had raised you to be. Even if this was all he ever gave you– the warmth of his skin against yours, his mouth pressed to your own, your mingled breaths growing ragged while his hands wandered over your body– you would be content.
You would be content even without those things. You would be content merely to remain near him. Because whenever Ormund held you close, you knew with perfect certainty that you were wanted.
You could have lived forever in the bliss of those days that followed. You would have, had the gods been kind.
But after several days spent almost constantly at your side, Ormund’s neglected duties began to demand his attention. One night, after you had already undressed and settled into bed, he told you that he must spend a few hours in the solar sorting through the letters and petitions that had accumulated in his absence. The thought of being left alone unsettled you more than it should have. You had grown so accustomed to his warmth, his touch, and the certainty of his presence that even a few hours apart felt unbearable.
“Obedience also means resting when I ask it of you,” Ormund reminded you, tucking the covers around your bare body. “I will return before morning.”
And so, though every part of you wanted to follow him, you remained where he had placed you and closed your eyes.
That night, you dreamt again of the dragon beneath the Hightower.
She remained where you had left her, curled among the broken remains of her chains. The opening still waited beyond her, though the brilliant sky had darkened to the bruised violet of dusk. You sat by her head, stroking her armored scales.
“Why are you still here?” you wondered aloud. The dragon peeled open one eye to gaze at you, like you already knew the answer. “There is nothing for you in this cave. Would you not rather be in the sky?”
Then, somewhere far beyond the mouth of the cave, another dragon roared. The sound rolled through the earth. Dust rained from the cavern ceiling, and the dragon lifted her head toward the distant call.
Before you could see whether she would rise, you awoke.
“Princess… Princess, please– you must get out of bed.”
Eyes still heavy with sleep, you turned your head. One of the servants stood hovering beside you, a timid young girl who scarcely ever spoke unless directly addressed. Now her face was pale, her eyes wide with barely contained panic.
“What?” you mumbled. “What is it? What is wrong?”
“Lord Hightower has asked for you,” she stammered. Somewhere within the castle, wood splintered with a violent crack. Then came a roar of anguish. The servant flinched and looked toward the chamber door. “H-he demanded that you come at once.”
You pushed yourself upright, and the coverlet slipped from your bare chest. The servant’s eyes darted away at once. With trembling hands, she seized the first garment within reach, Ormund’s discarded dressing robe, and helped you into it. The heavy fabric swallowed you, its hem dragging along the floor. There was no time to find slippers or even properly fasten the robe. The girl hurried you into the corridor, and you followed barefoot, clutching Ormund’s robe closed over your nakedness.
With every step toward the solar, the sounds grew louder. A crash. The scrape of furniture against stone. Ormund’s voice rising in a furious, incoherent bellow before breaking into words you could not understand.
Terror tightened around your chest. You had never witnessed one of these episodes yourself, but you had heard them as a child, muffled through walls and closed doors while Lady Hightower ushered you quickly away. You remembered hiding beneath blankets as Ormund raged somewhere within the tower.
At last, you reached the door to the solar. Two guards stood rigidly outside while a small gathering of servants huddled nearby. Ormund’s steward lingered closest to the door, his face drawn and pale. His eyes moved over you as you approached: the bare feet, the robe dragging along the floor, the collar fallen open enough to reveal the naked skin beneath it. He understood at once that Lord Hightower’s ward had come from his bed wearing nothing but Lord Hightower’s own dressing gown. If the steward had thoughts on the matter, he wisely decided that this was neither the time nor the place to voice them.
Instead, he hurried you toward the door and pulled it open.
“Lord Hightower,” he stammered, ushering you into the room, “your ward– the princess– as requested.”
The moment you crossed the threshold, the steward stepped back and slammed the door behind you.
The solar was in complete chaos. The great oak table, an ornate thing that had stood within the room since before even your grandsire’s birth, had been hacked apart as though it were nothing more than a butcher’s block. Chairs lay overturned. A shattered decanter had spilled wine across the rug like blood. Books had been torn from their shelves, their pages scattered among letters and splintered wood. Tapestries hung in ribbons from the walls, and broken glass glittered across the floor. It looked as though an army had stampeded through the room.
In the center of the ruin stood Ormund. Vigilance hung loosely from one hand, the tip of the sword resting against the floor. His chest heaved beneath his half-fastened shirt. Sweat ran down his reddened face, and his usually ordered curls had been reduced to a wild, disheveled mess.
At the sound of the door closing, Ormund turned. To your horror, his gaze fixed upon you.
“You.”
Vigilance slipped from his hand and struck the stone floor with a deafening clatter. Ormund snatched a half-torn letter from the ruined table and stormed toward you. You barely had time to open your mouth to ask what had happened, to offer whatever words might soothe him before his hand closed around your throat.
The force of him drove you backward against the door. Your head struck the wood, and the breath left your lungs in a choked cry. His palm spanned the front of your neck, rings pressed coldly into your neck while your pulse beat frantically beneath them.
“You treacherous slut,” he snarled, hand tightening around your throat. “You’ve been conspiring with them, haven’t you?”
“M-my lord…” You caught at his wrist with both hands. “I do not understand–”
Ormund thrust the letter before your face, holding it too near and shaking too violently for you to make sense of the lines of ink. “You do not understand this? First Lord Ashford, and now that one-eyed cunt. How long do you intend to play the ignorant fool?”
His thumb pressed beneath your jaw, forcing your face higher. “Do you truly not see what your wantonness has invited into my house? You encouraged that boy! You filled your mother’s head with the belief that you wished to be taken from me!”
Frightened, confused tears now spilled freely down your face. Your eyesight was beginning to blur as his fist pressed into your windpipe. “P-please…my lord…I cannot–”
Suddenly, Ormund released you. You slumped against the door, dragging in a ragged breath as one hand flew instinctively to your throat. He shoved the letter into your trembling hands.
“Read it, then,” he spat. “Surely you have not become so witless that you can no longer recognize words upon a page. Read it, and then attempt to lie to me again.”
Your fingers shook as you raised the letter to your face. The parchment was crumpled and half torn, the ink blurred in places where Ormund’s fist had crushed it, but the handwriting was unmistakable. Your mother’s. Alicent.
Lord Ormund, the letter began in her elegant, flourishing script. I remain grateful for the care you have shown my daughter throughout her years in Oldtown. She is no longer a child, however, and the purpose of her fostering has reached its end.
Prince Aemond has expressed his desire to take her as his wife, and King Aegon looks favorably upon the match. You are therefore instructed to prepare her for an escort to King’s Landing within the fortnight.
The remaining words dissolved before your eyes. The room swayed around you and a distant ringing filled your ears, almost drowning out the frantic pounding of your heart.
Aemond. Wife. King’s Landing.
You wished that you were still dreaming. A dragon imprisoned beneath the Hightower seemed more believable than the words in your hands.
You remembered the childish wish you had voiced after Aegon and Helaena’s wedding. You would marry Aemond, you had announced, and finally return home. You remembered the dreadful emptiness that had settled over Ormund’s face. The fury with which he forbade you from becoming anything like your incestuous kin.
Once, all you had wanted was to belong to your family. To return to King’s Landing. To see your mother and take your rightful place among your brothers and sister. Now, you would sooner have been thrown from the solar window and your body broken upon the stones below than allow anyone to tear you from Ormund.
“I-I do not understand, my lord,” you hiccupped, your eyes passing over the same lines again and again, searching desperately for some proof that they did not say what you knew they did. “I have not seen Aemond in years.”
“But you have written to him.” Ormund advanced upon you and jabbed one shaking finger into your chest. “You have written to him and to that dragon-bred whore you call a mother. You told them you wished to be taken from me.”
You shook your head so fiercely that your vision blurred. “I have n-not, Ormund. I swear it upon the Seven! I have not written to my mother since she last wrote to me, nearly a year ago, and I have never written to Aemond.”
Ormund’s eyes narrowed. He leaned close, searching your face with horrible intensity. “...Never?”
“Never,” you whispered shakily. “I swear it upon my life.”
Ormund only stared at you, into you. He could see the truth. He could look past your face and know every thought hidden within you.
His face collapsed.
Ormund dragged you into his arms so violently that the letter crumpled between your bodies. His embrace tightened until you felt as though your bones might crack beneath it.
“Oh, my darling girl.” His voice broke as he buried his face in your hair, pressing frantic, wet kisses wherever his mouth could reach. “My sweet, good girl. You would never. You would never betray me so.”
His hands moved over you desperately, one cradling the back of your head while the other stroked down your back beneath the robe. He drew back only far enough to take your face between his palms.
“That vicious cunt,” he hissed, though his gaze remained unbearably tender upon you. “She abandons you here for years. She scarcely remembers that she bore you at all. And now, she remembers her daughter only when she finds some use for you. When she may offer you up to that deformed creature of a man.”
Before you could even process his words, Ormund’s mouth crashed onto yours, his lips moving against you as though he could drive every trace of Targaryen from your body. You opened for him at once, clutching the front of his shirt and pressing yourself closer. Ormund groaned softly into your mouth.
“My love,” he breathed between kisses. “My poor, precious darling. They mean to take you from the only home you have ever known.”
“No,” you whimpered against his mouth, panic returning at the thought. “Please, Ormund…do not let them.”
His arms tightened around you. “I would sooner cleave your bitch mother’s head from her body than let her touch you.”
He kissed you again, slower now, his tongue passing over yours before he drew your lower lip between his own. You should have been frightened. You should have felt some love towards your mother. But you did not know her. It had been years since you last saw her. She banished you from her when you were only a few weeks old. Ormund welcomed you. He raised you. He loved you.
And the horrible truth was that, if forced to choose, you would rather your mother die than be taken away from Ormund.
Ormund drew away at last. His breathing remained uneven as he looked down with hatred at the letter crushed between you. “She will not have you.”
He turned his head toward the window. Beyond the broken shutters, the first pale pink light of dawn had begun to spread across Oldtown. Rooftops emerged slowly from the darkness, and in the distance, the great domes and towers of the Citadel glimmered beneath the rising sun.
His gaze fixed upon them. The rage quieted, settling into a silent certainty.
You clutched his shirt more tightly. “What are you going to do?”
Ormund said nothing for a long moment, only staring at the shape of the Citadel in the distance. Then with a solemnity that you had never seen in him before, he looked back down at you. “I am going to do what I should have done years ago.”
Before you could ask anything further, Ormund seized your arm and dragged you after him, stepping over the broken glass and torn letters scattered across the floor. He flung open the solar door and the servants gathered outside recoiled at once.
Ormund pointed toward a young boy standing beside the guards, little more than a squire.
“You, boy,” he barked. “Run to the Citadel and wake the septon.”
The boy shifted uneasily. “B-but, sire, it is not yet light–”
“Did I ask you what time it was, you witless cunt?” Ormund snarled. “Go and wake him before I cut off your cock and make you a bitch, since you are so determined to behave like it.”
The boy swallowed hard and sprinted down the corridor.
A servant stepped forward timidly. “Lord Hightower, if you mean to take the princess to the sept, we should return her to the chambers and see her properly dressed–”
“She is fine as she is.” Ormund did not spare the woman so much as a glance. He shoved past her, dragging you behind him. “We are going before the gods, not before the court. There is no time.”
Ormund dragged you through the Hightower with such haste that you could scarcely keep your feet beneath you.The hem of his dressing robe trailed across the stone behind you, gathering dirt and catching on the uneven floor. You passed the same corridors where you had once raced the Hightower boys as a child, the same alcoves where Lady Hightower had hidden with you during games, the same windows through which you had watched ships crawl along the Honeywine.
Now you crossed them barefoot and naked beneath Ormund’s gown, pulled along by the man who had raised you. He muttered under his breath as he walked, disjointed fragments of scripture mingling with curses against your mother, your brother, and all the diseased blood of Old Valyria. Rage still tightened every line of his body, but there was a frantic current beneath it you could not name.
At the stables, Ormund ordered a horse brought forward before the grooms had finished saddling it. He lifted you onto the animal without warning, then mounted behind you and drew you hard against his chest. His arm locked around your waist while the other seized the reins.
“Four guards,” he barked. “With us. Now.”
No one dared question him. The gates of the Hightower opened, and Ormund drove the horse into the waking city. Cold air tore through the loose folds of the robe. Its hem flapped around your bare legs, already darkened with dust from the castle floors. Citizens flattened themselves against the walls as Lord Hightower thundered through Oldtown with his half-dressed ward clutched before him and armed guards racing behind.
You could scarcely believe he permitted them to see you so. Ormund, who noticed every crooked necklace and loose strand of hair. Ormund, who would send you back to your chambers if a hem sat improperly. Yet now he seemed blind to everything but the road ahead.
By the time the sept came into view, the first light of morning had begun to turn its pale marble walls gold. Ormund reined the horse to a violent stop. He dismounted first, then pulled you down after him and yanked you up the steps. The great doors remained barred against the early hour.
He pounded on them with his fist. “Open this fucking door!”
With a long creak, the towering doors slowly opened. The septon’s disheveled gray head popped through the narrow gap. He blinked once in disbelief at the sight before him: the Lord of Oldtown standing upon the steps with a Targaryen princess in tow, barefoot and wearing nothing but his dirtied dressing robe.
“Lord Ormund?” the septon began. Ormund had already shoved past him, yanking you behind as though you weighed nothing. The four guards followed, their armored boots clattering loudly against the stone floor.
The septon hurried after him, struggling to match his frenzied pace. “My lord, a squire arrived some time ago, but I must confess I remain unclear as to the purpose of this early visit–”
Ormund stopped before the great altar at the center of the seven-walled chamber. Candles still flickered across its surface, waxy remnants of the previous night’s worshippers. He stared at them, something dark still swimming behind his eyes.
Then he turned to the septon, his grip unrelenting around your wrist. “We are to be married.”
For a moment, you were certain you had died.
Yes, that was the only explanation. You must have perished somewhere between the ruined solar and the sept, because there was no possible world in which Ormund had truly spoken those words. Perhaps his hand had closed too tightly around your throat and squeezed the life from you. Perhaps you had fallen beneath the stallion’s hooves on the road through Oldtown. Perhaps you had finally been judged as a wicked creature deserving only death and had been granted at least that mercy.
You swallowed, feeling utterly and completely numb. “Ormund, I… married?”
Ormund ignored you, continuing to address the septon. “You shall officiate the ceremony now and serve as our witness.”
The septon blinked. “I– my lord, perhaps I am not understanding. You wish to…marry the princess?”
Ormund scoffed. “Do you see another woman in this sept?”
“I understand, I just…” the septon’s eyes flicked over to you. “Your ward? Does the Queen Dowager know of this?”
Ormund’s eyes hardened like molten steel. He released you and stepped closer to the old man.
“Who do you imagine keeps the candles burning upon this altar, hmm?” he questioned, tilting his head. “Who repairs these walls when they crack and fills the coffers from which your brothers eat?”
The septon swallowed. “My lord, I only meant–”
“I know precisely what you meant. You will perform the ceremony and you will perform it now.”
Thoroughly beaten into submission, the septon bowed his head. “Y-yes, Lord Hightower. We shall proceed.”
You felt dizzy. The septon scurried behind the altar and snatched up the holy book resting upon its podium. He opened it, then looked toward where you stood at Ormund’s side.
He cleared his throat. “My lord, does your bride possess a cloak bearing the Targaryen colors? And who shall escort her to the altar?”
Ormund’s nails dug into your skin at the question and his face twisted with disgust. “She will not be draped in that filth. And no other man will presume to give her away. I raised her up. I brought her to this altar. I shall escort her myself.”
The old man’s mouth opened and then closed. He nodded. “Yes, of course.”
While the septon hurriedly flipped through the pages of the holy book and searched the satchel at his waist for the ceremonial crystal necklace, you could only watch in stunned silence, still uncertain whether any of this was real life. Ormund remained alight with the frenzy that had carried him from the Hightower. He dragged a hand through his tousled curls, feebly attempting to impose some order upon himself. His eyes flicked toward you once, then again, and frowned in disapproval.
“You must fix yourself.” Ormund smoothed both hands over your windblown hair, pushing it back from your face with uncharacteristically clumsy movements. Then he pulled the sides of his dressing robe more tightly around you and retied the loose sash at your waist. His hands were shaking so badly he could hardly knot it.
Once he determined you presentable, his hands came back up to frame your face. His wild eyes moved between yours, searching. “This is what you wanted, yes? You are happy we are to be wed.”
Perhaps you were. But standing there, scarcely clothed at the break of dawn in the same sept you had once entered hand in hand with Lady Hightower, you could barely comprehend what was happening. Only hours ago, everything had been perfect. Then your mother remembered you existed. Apparently, so had your brother. And now you were about to marry the man who had raised you.
You were happy. You loved Ormund. You wanted what he wanted. More than anything, you wanted to be wanted…and what could prove that desire more completely than being chosen as his wife?
Alicent be damned. Aemond be damned. Dragons be damned. They were not happiness.
This was.
“Lord Hightower, we are ready to begin the ceremony.”
The septon's voice interrupted your thoughts. Ormund took a steadying breath, then dropped his hands from your cheek. He offered you the crook of his arm, and your body moved without your mind understanding why. You put your arm through his.
The septon had fastened the ceremonial crystal necklace around his throat and now stood at the head of the altar. Pale morning light streamed through the stained-glass dome above, scattering jeweled colors across the seven alcoves surrounding you. It was beautiful. It was frightening.
With unsteady feet, you walked beside Ormund toward the altar. His free hand closed over yours, holding you firmly against his arm. You wondered whether he feared you might run.
You did not want to run. You wanted to be here, you told yourself.
The septon opened the holy book before him and cleared his throat.
“Blessed Father, who judges the souls of men, look with mercy upon these two who come before your sight. Blessed Mother, grant them–”
“The gods have heard me pray every morning of my life,” Ormund interrupted, waving his hand in dismissal. “They know my devotion. Get on with the rest of it.”
The old man swallowed and hurriedly turned several pages. “Very well, my lord. Now, the exchange of cloaks.” His gaze moved uneasily over the dirtied dressing robe wrapped around you.
“She has lived beneath the protection of House Hightower since she was an infant,” Ormund said at once. “She was raised within my walls, instructed in my faith, and fed at my table. She has no house to give up. She is a Hightower already.”
As he spoke, you thought of the dragon from your dreams, chained below the Hightower. The dragon who would not fly away, even once unshackled. Perhaps she did not fly, you thought, because she was already home.
Ormund turned toward the guards waiting near the entrance and snapped at the nearest one. “Guard, your cloak.”
The guard quickly unfastened the heavy green cloak from his shoulders and offered it to his lord. Ormund snatched it from him, then stepped behind you and spread the cloak wide. The wool settled over your shoulders and Ormund pulled the edges together beneath your throat.
The septon looked down at the book again. “Before the Seven Who Are One, you shall now speak your promises. Lord Ormund Hightower, do you take this woman as your lady and wife, to protect and cherish from this day until your final day?”
“I do.” The answer came without hesitation.
The septon turned to you. “And do you take Lord Ormund Hightower as your lord and husband, to honor and stand beside him from this day until your final day?”
You stared at Ormund. You thought of his sons. You thought of Lady Hightower. You thought of his bed, his hands, the seventh day. You thought of your mother and Aemond and wanting to belong. You thought of the green dragon. You thought, finally, of love.
“I do,” you whispered.
The septon continued on, his voice wavering with nerves as he led you through the remaining vows. You repeated each one after him, though the words seemed to reach you from a world away. Devotion, obedience, faithfulness. Protection, guidance, and love. Every vow sounded like something the two of you had already lived.
At last, the septon closed the book. “With this kiss, you shall pledge your love.”
Ormund seemingly did not need further instruction. He seized your face between his great hands and brought his mouth down upon yours. You were consumed by him, his lips parting yours and molding into your very being. Ormund kissed you as though with his mouth he could seal every path you might have been taken from him. When he finally withdrew, his forehead remained pressed to yours, his chest heaving.
The septon cleared his throat. “Before the eyes of gods and men, I declare you joined as husband and wife. One flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever.”
Your heart beat wildly against your rib cage, and you could not contain the radiant smile spreading across your face. Tears of happiness slipped from your eyes and darkened the green cloak gathered around you.
Ormund, however, did not smile. His forehead remained pressed to yours, his gaze fixed upon you. “It is not finished.”
The septon paused while putting away the holy book. “...My lord?”
“She is not yet my wife.”
The guards shifted uneasily near the doors. The septon went utterly still.
“But…she is your wife, Lord Hightower,” the old man reasoned carefully. “The ceremony is complete. I have officiated the union, and both I and your guards have borne witness to it.”
Ormund did not look away from you. “Everyone out.”
The septon drew a sharp breath. Understanding passed across his face, though you remained uncertain what Ormund intended. “My lord, surely you do not mean to–”
“I said out.” Every ounce of Ormund’s authority hardened the words. “Do not make me repeat myself.”
The septon hesitated only a moment longer before hurrying toward the doors, muttering beneath his breath about sanctity and sacrilege. The guards followed without daring to glance back. The great oaken doors boomed shut behind them.
You were alone in the sept. Man and wife.
“Ormund,” you breathed, hands tightening into his shirt. Despite your confusion, you could not stop smiling. “We are married, we are one before the gods–”
“Not yet.” His breathing had grown ragged. Ormund clutched you more tightly against him, his hands slipping beneath the green cloak to clutch at the robe wrapped around your body. “We will leave no room for those Valyrian cunts to question the sanctity of our marriage.”
Your brows furrowed as your smile dropped. “What…what do you mean?”
His hands groped the flesh of your hips, fingers digging in as his lips brushed restlessly against yours. “You will give yourself to me as a wife should. We will become one in truth.”
Then his mouth covered yours and swallowed whatever answer you might have given. His tongue parted your lips at once, demanding and authoritative, while his hands fumbled for the clasp at your throat. He tore it loose and stripped the Hightower cloak from your shoulders, throwing the heavy wool onto the stone floor.
Your thoughts scattered as a tremor moved through you. You were naïve, yes. Perhaps ignorant of much that bodies could do and what precisely passed between a husband and wife. But you understood, at least, what occurred upon a wedding night.
You had dreamed of it from time to time, though only through the hazy, girlish imaginings of a young woman who knew little of such things. You had pictured a soft feather bed strewn with flowers. A husband with gentle hands and tender kisses. Quiet declarations of love whispered as he gathered you into his arms. An embrace. A kiss. A bride surrendered to her husband with love and devotion.
Often, as you could now admit, you had given the faceless man in those dreams Ormund’s features. You would awaken afterward with that strange wetness between your thighs and an ache you could neither understand nor name.
But you had never pictured this. Ormund, half frenzied, his hands trembling, his curls disordered and sweat still gleaming along his hairline. You, dressed not in a beautiful gown bearing the colors of your house, but in his dirtied robe, far too large for your body. And worst of all, you remained within the very sept where you had once been blessed as a child.
“O-Ormund,” you gasped as his mouth traveled down your jaw and sucked on your neck. “We should– we shall call the guards, and they can escort us back to the Hightower, so that we may–”
“No. No,” Ormund uttered against your skin, his shaking hands fumbling with the knot at your waist. “We will do it right here. Before the gods.”
Humiliation and confusion churned within you. As his mouth continued moving over your throat, your gaze wandered helplessly around the chamber. Every face of the Seven watched from its alcove.
“But, my lord…” Your voice faltered. “I-I do not think this is right.”
Ormund ceased his kisses and pulled away, his mouth wet and his breathing ragged. Fury had flooded his eyes.
“You disobey your husband so soon?” he hissed. His hands tightened around your waist. “I told you I would fuck you here, and that is precisely what I mean to do.”
You recoiled at the vulgar words, but he drew you closer against him. “Would you give that wretched whore-mother of yours even the smallest opportunity to annul this marriage? Would you allow her to take you from me?”
Fear flooded through you. You saw it at once: the two of you returning to the Hightower only to find the royal escort already waiting. Aemond standing among them, older and taller now than the boy you remembered, come to pry you from your husband’s arms and drag you back to King’s Landing.
You shook your head frantically. “No, my lord. Never.”
“Good girl,” Ormund breathed as some of the anger receded from his wild eyes, though the mania remained. “Now help me with this damned robe.”
Your fingers joined his trembling ones. You held the fabric steady while he fought with the knot, his hands shaking too violently to manage it alone. At last, after several frantic attempts, the sash came loose.
You expected him to peel the robe slowly from your body. To look upon you in the candlelight and proclaim your beauty as he had so many times before.
Instead, Ormund tore it from you. The cold, damp air of the sept struck your naked skin at once, raising gooseflesh along your arms and tightening your nipples. Ormund released a low, guttural groan at the sinful sight of you standing completely bare before the Seven.
Then, without warning, his mouth closed around one stiffened nipple. You gasped as his tongue swept over the sensitive bud, circling before he drew it deeper between his lips. The sharp sensation traveled from your breast directly to your cunt and made your thighs tense beneath you.
Shamefully, you felt yourself growing wet. Wet within the sept. Wet beneath Ormund’s mouth, while every face of the Seven looked down upon you.
With his mouth still latched around your breast, Ormund walked you backward until the small of your back struck the altar where the septon had sanctified your marriage only moments before. He released your nipple with a wet pop. His hands traveled down your back, swept possessively over the curves of your ass, and closed around your thighs. With a grunt, he lifted you from the floor and you clung instinctively to his shoulders as he began lowering you onto the altar.
Your eyes widened. “Ormund, wait– the candles–”
Whether he did not hear you or was too lost within his frenzy to understand, Ormund laid you down regardless. Pools of molten wax met your back and shoulders. Some splashed across the sensitive skin of your neck. Most painfully of all, it spread over the still-healing welts upon your ass. You yelped at the searing heat and Ormund froze.
“It burns,” you sobbed, twisting beneath the iron grip that still held you against the altar. “P-please, my lord– my skin–”
“It burns you?” Ormund’s question came in a rushed, manic breath, his eyes widening. “The wax burned your skin?”
“Y-yes, my lord…it hurts–”
“Oh, my sweet girl, that is good. That is so good.” Tears of relief welled in his eyes. He bent over you and pressed a wet, frantic kiss to your mouth. “The gods have blessed you for me. Our marriage has killed the dragon within you. You have been purged.”
As his mouth continued moving feverishly over yours, you thought again of the dragon from your dreams. This time, you did not see her sleeping peacefully within the cavern beneath the Hightower. You saw only her desecrated, mottled corpse sprawled across the stone.
She was dead.
Ormund’s mouth left yours and descended along your throat, through the valley between your breasts, and over the soft hollow of your stomach.
“My beautiful, good girl,” he murmured against your skin, his voice thick with tears. “You are finally saved. Our marriage has saved you. Had I known…had I understood…I would have wed you years ago...”
He pressed another fervent kiss beneath your navel. “Why did you never tell me? Why did you never ask?”
You could not answer. You stared instead at the crown of his tousled brown curls as his mouth left a wet trail down your body. At last, he reached the curls glistening with arousal at the apex of your thighs. Just as he had upon the seventh day, Ormund tapped the outside of one thigh and you opened yourself for him.
Ormund stared down at your exposed cunt, both thumbs parting your swollen lips as he watched your entrance flutter beneath his gaze.
“I must confess something to you now, princess…” he started, eyes transfixed upon you. “Do you know why I always carried that handkerchief away after I examined your maidenhead?”
You knew the one: the small square of embroidered linen he used to clean his fingers after every seventh-day inspection. Slowly, you shook your head.
“Your scent remained upon my fingers.” His voice had gone thick, almost ashamed, though the hunger in it betrayed him. “And upon the linen. Even after I washed, I could still smell you.”
His thumbs spread your glistening flesh apart further.
“I told myself it was evidence of your corruption. That your cunt betrayed the wickedness you concealed from me.” A broken laugh escaped him. “But…I would hold that cloth beneath my nose when I was alone and spill myself into my hand imagining this.”
His eyes lifted to yours. “Imagining what my good girl would taste like. What you would smell like.”
Ormund lowered his head and pressed a lingering kiss to the inside of your thigh. “I have denied myself long enough.”
He turned his head, and the tip of his nose bumped against your clit. At first, he did nothing but breathe. Ormund inhaled slowly, deeply, with the same concentration he gave the pomanders he carried everywhere. A shudder moved through his body.
“Gods above,” he moaned.
You trembled beneath him, uncertain what he intended. No lesson had ever prepared you for this. You knew a husband entered his wife, that blood might follow, and that afterward she would carry his child. You had never imagined his face and mouth between her legs.
Ormund breathed you in again.
“The finest oils in Lys could not compare,” he murmured, almost reverently. “Every perfume I have ever suffered was filth beside you.”
His lips brushed the inside of your thigh before moving closer. When his tongue finally darted out to touch you, the sensation was so unexpected and strange that your hips jolted from the altar.
“O-Ormund!”
His hands tightened around your thighs, holding you open.
“Be still, my love.” His breath was hot against your dripping pussy as he spoke. “This will only help you receive me.”
Then Ormund’s mouth returned to you. In one long movement, his tongue licked you from entrance to clit. His tongue moved slowly at first as though he had imagined every part of you but still found the reality more intoxicating. He alternated his movements, from languidly pushing his tongue into your hole to lapping quickly at the swollen bundle of nerves above. He groaned against your flesh, the vibration passing through you and pulling another helpless cry from your throat.
You clutched at the altar beneath you, barely trying to conceal the wanton moans that escaped you. Wax crumbled beneath your fingers. Every sweep of his tongue sent heat plunging deeper into your belly, just like that terrible coil he had left wound tight upon the seventh night.
Ormund seemed unable to get enough. He smushed his face into your cunt, so deeply you worried for a moment he may suffocate. His tongue had a mind of its own now, making tight circles around your clit. He whimpered openly, his restraint unraveling with each breath.
“My love…” His voice was muffled against your pussy. “Your cunt is sweeter than anything the gods ever placed upon this earth...”
That feeling from the night before began to climb quickly, like it was racing up a mountain. You did not know what would happen when it reached the pinnacle. Your thighs began to tremble around his head, and panic mingled with pleasure.
“Ooh, gods…Ormund…I feel–”
He lifted his mouth before the gathering sensation could break. You whined pathetically at the loss, your body straining after him. Ormund rose above you, his lips glistening with your wetness and his eyes dark with hunger.
“Not yet,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “The first time my wife comes, she will do so with my cock inside her.”
You felt your pussy flutter at the words and you propped yourself up to watch in a daze as Ormund frantically untied the strings of his breeches. His hands still shook so badly that he cursed beneath his breath before finally wrenching the laces loose. He shoved the fabric down his thighs, and at last you saw what he had forbidden you from looking upon before.
Your breath caught. You had never seen a cock before, but you never imagined it could be so beautiful. Thick with a prominent vein running down the length, flushed, and painfully hard, the swollen red head leaking a drop of glistening precum. Ormund took himself in hand, stroking himself as he moved between your thighs.
“This will hurt you,” he warned, his voice rough. “But only for a moment. Patience follows the pain and blesses those who endure.”
You swallowed and nodded, though fear still crept along your spine. “I-I understand, my lord.”
Ormund dragged the blunt head of his cock through your slick folds, coating himself in your arousal before pressing against your entrance. The pressure alone made you tense, and you wondered how he would ever fit. One finger had filled you thoroughly– you could not imagine there being enough space for the whole of him.
“Relax, girl,” he ordered, though his own body trembled with impatience. “Open for your husband.”
Ormund pushed forward. Your body resisted him and you felt a painful stretch at the first intrusion. You gasped and clutched at his shoulders, every muscle tightening despite your efforts to obey as you had been trained to do.
He pressed deeper. The burn sharpened until it felt as though your body could stretch no farther. Tears gathered in your eyes, and you whimpered his name. Ormund stopped.
For half a heartbeat, he remained utterly still, jaw clenched and breath sawing through his teeth. Then his control fractured completely. With one hard thrust, he forced himself fully inside you.
A sharp tearing sensation split through your center. You cried out in pain, back arching from the altar. Ormund groaned above you, his forehead dropping against yours while his hips remained pressed tightly between your thighs.
“There you go, there you go… You have me now,” he panted. “All of me.”
Your body throbbed around him, struggling to accommodate the unfamiliar fullness. When you shifted, another sting passed through you. Looking down between your bodies, you saw a thin streak of red upon his cock and a small smear of blood against your inner thigh.
You remembered the boy’s split brow and Lady Hightower’s bloodstained dress. “Oh, Ormund…I…”
“Shh, shh…no,” he hushed you, eyes following yours to the blood. “There is to be no fear from you, my love. That is proof.”
Ormund touched the blood with two fingertips. He bent and kissed you, his bloodstained fingers cradling your cheek.
“Proof that you preserved yourself for me,” he whispered against your mouth. “That no man touched what was always meant to be mine.”
His hips shifted and the movement drew a cry from you. He continued to thrust his length into you, every movement lessening the burning pain into something warm and tingling.
Ormund felt the change.
“My untouched bride…” he groaned. His hands closed around your hips as he began to move with greater certainty. “Look how beautifully you take your husband’s cock. Like you were made for it. You were made for me.”
Each thrust rocked you against the altar. The hardened wax scraped beneath your back, but you scarcely noticed it now. Your attention narrowed to Ormund above you, to his flushed face and disordered curls, to the desperate sounds breaking from him each time he buried himself inside you.
Beyond him, the figures in the stained-glass dome shone in the growing morning light. The Father stood at the center of the Seven, his hands raised in solemn blessing.
With every drive of Ormund’s body into yours, his face rose to obscure the Father’s. Then fell away. Then replaced Him once more.
Ormund’s hips moved in a frantic, bruising rhythm. The wet sounds of your bodies joining and the slap of his flesh against yours echoed through the empty sept alongside your cries. Whether those cries came from pleasure or pain, you could no longer tell.
“That’s it…yess, let the gods hear you,” Ormund panted in your ear. “Let them bear witness to whom you belong.”
The base of him rubbed against your clit with every thrust. At first, it was only another confusing pressure. Then the sensation began to gather, each stroke feeding the unfinished coil that you had been chasing after since his tongue was upon you.
Your cries had changed into high-pitched, breathless whines, and Ormund could see the shift in you.
“I know you feel it, my love.” He angled his hips to press against that aching place each time he entered you. The coil tightened so much until you could scarcely breathe. “You are going to give it to me now. No more denying your husband.”
You shook beneath him, frightened by the enormity of the feeling. The walls of your pussy had begun to choke his cock.
“Let it come,” Ormund urged, his voice breaking. “Come around my cock, sweet girl. Show me how grateful you are to be mine.”
You obeyed his command. Stars burst behind your eyes as pleasure tore through you like a riptide, each wave crashing over you harder and harder. Your cunt clenched around him in helpless pulses as the world around you dissolved into white, endless heat.
“Ooh– fuck, fuck–...” Ormund looked down between your bodies, hypnotized by the way your cunt clung around his cock as though reluctant to let him withdraw. “My perfect girl, holding me so tightly.”
His hips drove forward again, forcing a broken sound from both of you.
“Made to take me.”
Once again, he drove into you harder, now chasing his own release while your body still trembled beneath him.
“I-I shall put my child in you,” he gasped. “I shall fill you so thoroughly that no king, no queen, no dragon in this world could ever deny whose woman you are.”
The words sent another tremor through you and you only nodded dumbly in response. All words had left you.
“You will s-swell with my seed,” he blabbered on, nearly incoherent now. “You will carry a Hightower in your belly, and your mother will know she remembered you too late.”
“Yess,” you sobbed, envisioning it clearly. You, large with child. Ormund’s hand upon your belly. Proof of your love. “P-please, my lord...”
“My seed,” he demanded, face scrunching and twisting as his hips slapped against you. “Tell me you want it.”
“I want it!”
“Whose child will you bear?”
“Yours,” you cried. “Yours, Ormund!”
With a deafening cry, he buried his cock as deeply as your body would allow. Heat spilled inside you in heavy pulses. Ormund shook above you, his hips jerking helplessly as he emptied himself into your womb.
At last, his strength abandoned him. He collapsed over you, one trembling hand cradling the back of your head while the other spread into the softness of your stomach.
Ormund turned his head into your neck, his breath hot against you. He kissed you below the ear.
“One flesh,” he whispered. His palm pressed more firmly against your belly, as though he could already feel the life he believed he had planted there. “One heart. One soul.”
Ormund lifted his face and looked deeply into your eyes. “Now it is finished.”
You were exhausted, sore, and so disoriented by the feeling of being wanted so completely that you allowed Ormund to move you as though you were a doll. A small whimper escaped you when he withdrew, the loss of him leaving you strangely empty. He lifted you carefully until you sat against the altar, your trembling legs hanging over its edge.
You felt the warm trickle of his pearly spend slipping from your used cunt. You barely registered Ormund sweeping two fingers through it and pressing it back inside you with grim determination, as though he could not bear to waste even a drop of what he had given you. Only then did he turn away long enough to tuck his softening cock into his breeches and fasten them loosely at his waist.
He did not reach for his dirtied dressing robe. Instead, Ormund retrieved the guard’s green wool cloak from the stone floor and wrapped it tightly around your naked body. He arranged the heavy fabric until you were completely covered in Hightower green, then drew back and rested both hands upon your shoulders. He stared at you with open devotion.
“My wife,” he murmured before capturing your lips in a soft kiss. “I love you.”
You did not need to say it in return. Your face told him everything.
Still gazing into your eyes, Ormund raised his voice. “Septon. You may enter.”
The great doors opened only slightly, and the septon slipped through the narrow gap. A sharp breath escaped him when he saw the two of you before the disturbed altar, but he wisely offered no comment.
You could not bring yourself to look at him. You should have been ashamed. You had been taken upon the same altar where your marriage had been sanctified, beneath the eyes of every face of the Seven.
Yet all you could see was Ormund. Ormund. Ormund.
Your husband.
“Septon, you will write to Queen Dowager Alicent,” Ormund commanded, his eyes never leaving yours. “You will inform her that you have sanctified our marriage and borne witness to its consummation. Prince Aemond’s request is therefore null and void.”
“...yes, my lord,” the septon muttered in defeat. He turned, plainly eager to escape the desecrated chamber.
“One more thing,” Ormund called after him. The old man stopped. “Inform Alicent that any further correspondence intended for Lady Hightower is to be sent through me.”
His hands tightened possessively upon your shoulders. “She need not trouble my wife again.”
The septon offered a single, hurried nod and disappeared through the doors. Ormund drew the green cloak more tightly around your body and gathered you against his chest. You heard the first bells toll throughout the city. It was morning now, with the dawn’s sun pouring through the stained-glass dome and bathing the altar in beautiful, brilliant colors.
As Ormund pressed his lips to the crown of your head, you lifted your gaze once more at the figures overhead. The Father stood at the center of the Seven, his hands raised in blessing, his expression calm.
Only then did you notice the Maiden beside him. Young and beautiful, she clung to the Father’s arm as though He were the only thing keeping her alive. Her face was turned towards you, as if she had borne witness to everything that had happened beneath her gaze. As if she had blessed it.
howwww about a sad Alicent fic with fem!targ reader. Like give me some typical targs in love with older women.
Alicent Hightower x Fem!targreader
warning(s): none really just slight angst
wc: 1.4k
(just a small one shot lowk since i haven’t postedddd in like a week but im working on another one shot with alicent)
The summons came at dawn, delivered by a knight whose eyes would not meet yours. You knew what it meant before you entered the throne room. Rhaenyra sat upon the Iron Throne, her face carved from stone, her grief a palpable thing that filled the air like smoke. She did not look at you when she spoke.
"You will serve as guard to the Dowager Queen Alicent and the Princess Helaena," she said, her voice flat and distant. "You will ensure their safety and report any concerns to the Lord Commander."
You bowed your head, understanding the true nature of this assignment. Exile without leaving the castle. Punishment for the sin of survival, for being present when Jacaerys fell from the sky, his dragon screaming as they plummeted into the sea. Baela had been there too, and Rhaenyra could not bear to look at either of you now.
Your father stood beside the throne, Daemon Targaryen in all his dark glory, and he said nothing. He had said nothing when your mother died, nothing when you wept, nothing when the war tore your world apart. He would say nothing now.
"As you command, Your Grace," you murmured, and retreated from the hall.
The chambers where Alicent and Helaena were kept were in the western tower, rooms that had once been luxurious but now felt like a gilded cage. You stood outside their door that first morning, your hand resting on the pommel of your sword, and wondered what hatred you would face. The woman inside had been queen, had raised the sons who killed Luke, who started this war that took everything.
The door opened. You straightened, expecting a servant, but it was Alicent herself who stood in the doorway. She was smaller than you remembered, her auburn hair simply braided, her gown a muted green. Her eyes, those large brown eyes, studied you with something you had not expected.
Kindness.
"You are Daemon's daughter," she said softly. "Leana's girl. I remember you from court, though you were younger then."
"I am your guard, Your Grace," you replied, the formal words feeling strange on your tongue.
"Come inside," Alicent said, stepping back. "There is no need to stand in the corridor like a stranger."
You hesitated, then followed her into the solar. Helaena sat by the window, her fingers working at embroidery, her silver hair catching the morning light. She looked up and smiled, a gentle, knowing smile that made your chest ache.
"She has sad eyes," Helaena said to her mother. "Like a bird that has forgotten how to sing."
Alicent guided you to a chair near the fire. "Sit. You must be weary."
"I am on duty," you protested weakly.
"And you can guard us just as well from a chair as from the doorway." Alicent poured wine into a cup and pressed it into your hands. Her fingers brushed yours, warm and steady. "Drink. You look as though you have not slept."
You had not. Sleep brought dreams of falling, of screaming, of the way Rhaenyra's face had crumpled when they brought the news. You drank, and Alicent sat across from you, her hands folded in her lap.
"I am sorry for your mother," she said quietly. "Leana Velaryon was a great lady. Her loss must weigh heavily on you."
The unexpected sympathy broke something loose in your chest. No one had spoken of your mother in months. No one had acknowledged that you, too, had lost someone. Tears burned behind your eyes, but you blinked them away.
"Thank you, Your Grace."
"Alicent," she corrected gently. "I am no longer queen of anything."
The days that followed fell into a rhythm. You stood guard, but Alicent would not allow you to remain distant. She insisted you take meals with them, that you sit in their solar rather than the corridor. Helaena would hum strange songs and speak in her riddling way, and Alicent would embroider or read, and slowly, the silence between you became comfortable rather than strained.
Alicent asked about your mother, about Pentos and your childhood, about the things you loved before the war. She listened as no one else had, her attention complete and genuine. When you spoke of Jacaerys, of the guilt that gnawed at you, she reached across the space between your chairs and placed her hand over yours.
"You did not kill him," she said firmly. "War killed him. This terrible, senseless war that has taken all our children."
Her hand remained on yours, her thumb tracing small circles against your knuckles. The touch was innocent, comforting, but it sent warmth spreading through you like wine.
"Your father does not come to see you," Alicent observed one evening as you shared supper. It was not a question.
"My father sees only what serves him," you replied, unable to keep the bitterness from your voice. "I am a reminder of my mother, and he has moved past that grief. I am a reminder of failure, and he cannot abide failure."
Alicent's expression softened with understanding. "I know something of fathers who see their children as pieces on a board rather than people to be loved."
You looked at her then, truly looked at her, and saw the loneliness that mirrored your own. Two women adrift in the aftermath of ambition and war, seeking harbor in each other.
She began to touch you more often after that. A hand on your shoulder when she passed. Her fingers brushing your arm when she wanted your attention. Once, when you had been standing at the window, lost in dark thoughts, she came up behind you and placed both hands on your shoulders, squeezing gently.
"You are not alone," she whispered. "Not while you are here."
You turned, and she was so close you could see the flecks of gold in her brown eyes, could smell the faint scent of rosewater on her skin. Your heart hammered in your chest.
"Alicent," you breathed, and she smiled, sad and sweet.
A week after you had been assigned to her, Alicent asked you to accompany her to the Sept. "I must pray," she said. "And I would feel safer with you beside me."
The Sept was empty in the late afternoon, the light filtering through the windows in shafts of colored gold. The candles flickered before the altars of the Seven, and the air smelled of incense and beeswax. Alicent knelt before the Mother, and you stood behind her, watchful.
After a time, she rose and turned to you. "Do you pray?" she asked.
"I do not know what to pray for anymore," you admitted.
"Peace," Alicent said, stepping closer. "Pray for peace."
She reached for your hand, and you let her take it. Her fingers laced through yours, and she drew you toward one of the alcoves, away from the main altar, into shadow and candlelight.
"I have found something unexpected in these dark days," Alicent said softly, her free hand rising to cup your cheek. "I have found you."
Your breath caught. "Your Grace, I..."
"Alicent," she corrected, and then she kissed you.
Her lips were soft, tentative, asking rather than demanding. You froze for a heartbeat, then melted into her, your free hand coming up to rest at her waist. The kiss was gentle, sweet, tasting of tears and hope and the desperate need to feel something other than grief.
When she pulled back, her eyes searched yours. "Forgive me if I have misread..."
"You have not," you said quickly, and kissed her again, deeper this time, pouring all your loneliness and longing into the press of your mouth against hers.
In the quiet of the Sept, surrounded by the light of a hundred candles, you found what you had been searching for. Not absolution, not forgetting, but comfort. Understanding. A hand to hold in the darkness.
Alicent rested her forehead against yours, her breath mingling with yours. "We are both lost," she whispered. "Perhaps we can be lost together."
"Yes," you breathed. "Yes."
And for the first time since Jacaerys fell, since your mother died, since your father turned away, you felt something other than pain. You felt, impossibly, the first fragile stirrings of hope.
summary: the seventh day approaches, and you test ormund's restraint.
pairing: ormund hightower x targtower!reader
content/warnings: 18+ (mdni), SMUT, dubcon, pussy inspection, fingering, edging, orgasm denial, spanking with belt, male masturbation, forced bathing, nudity, voyeurism, slut-shaming, jealousy, aftercare (...i think?), physical intimidation/rough handling, DADDY ISSUES!!, emotional manipulation, religious abuse and religious guilt, canon-typical incest (cousins), age gap (~20 years), icky guardian/ward relationship, canon-typical misogyny, canon-divergent, no use of y/n
word count: 12k (i blacked out around 5k tbh)
A/N: surprise!! got this chapter out a bit early! guys...what has this man done to my psyche. i'm writing shit i am not even into but since it's him i'm WET!!! this is a long one and i tried my best to proofread, but i'm sure i've missed some things so apologies if it's a lil wonky! sooo thankful for all the love on part I and i hope part II meets your expectations! mr. roxxmo and i are moving houses (yay!) this weekend so that's why the final part of the series will be a bit later. will try to do headcannons or short oneshots if i have the time, and as usual, if i can get part III out before schedule i absolutely will! <3
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MASTERLIST
finale → (COMING 7/31)
The feast unfolded as such evenings always did.
Like the rest of the ancient tower, the Great Hall of the Hightower was composed of whitewashed limestone, its vaulted ceiling rising so high that you sometimes wondered where it ended. As children, you and the Hightower boys would race beneath it, shouting up to hear your voices echo through the chamber. Great tapestries of Hightower green adorned the walls, each depicting the house’s victories in battle alongside scenes devoted to the Faith of the Seven. No matter where you went in the Hightower, the Seven followed.
Tonight, the hall was filled with noble houses from across the Reach. Lords and ladies moved between the long oak tables, drinking, laughing, and otherwise partaking in every sort of merriment before the coming days of tiresome discussions of taxes, grains, and preparations for the season’s harvest.
You sat where you always did: at the head table, on Ormund’s right. In the very place once occupied by the late Lady Hightower. You had done everything he asked after the solar. Your women had pressed damp cloths to your tear-swollen eyes and pinched color back into your cheeks. They had laced you into the embroidered sky-blue gown Ormund preferred, its neckline high enough to preserve modesty, yet low enough that anyone seated too near might glimpse the suggestion of your bosom. You had been washed, gathered, and arranged once more into the woman he had made of you, with every trace of your momentary lapse carefully hidden away.
Ormund had been pleased. He spoke none of Lord Godric Ashford or the excitement in the solar. He simply conducted himself as he usually did at such feasts, discussing philosophy and politics with the visiting lords, occasionally asking for your thoughts and praising you to anyone who would listen– commending how wise his ward was, how faithfully you attended the sept. All the while, his hand remained on your thigh beneath the table, squeezing gently as his thumb moved back and forth over the silk. Just as he usually did.
This should have pleased you. His touch always did. Tonight, though, your mind was muddled with flashes of memories.
The conversation with Lord Ashford you were not meant to hear. Ormund’s rings cutting into your face as he gripped your chin. The cool sheets of his bed twisted in your fists. His hand at your waist, his voice low as he hushed you and told you to be still.
The seventh day.
Following Lady Hightower in the Citadel, your small hand tucked in hers. Playing in the gardens with the Hightower boys. The letter from your queen mother coldly explaining why you could not visit the Red Keep on your sixteenth nameday. The burning pressure. Entering. Stretching. Confessing.
The seventh day.
Ser Joldwin Mormont and the ashes of his fur-trimmed cloak. Lying across Ormund’s bare chest afterward, listening to the rhythmic beat of his heart. His lips against yours, tasting faintly of wine. Watching one of your siblings’ dragons fly overhead, its giant shadow blackening the earth.
The seventh day.
Being held. The knowledge you were never truly wanted.
The seventh day.
“You are fidgeting.”
Ormund’s voice broke whatever spell your thoughts had cast over you.
You lowered your head. “I am sorry, my lord.”
Ormund hummed. Beneath the table, his hand shifted higher on your thigh, pressing into the soft flesh through the silk of your gown. The feast carried on around you, laughter mingling with the chords of lyres and flutes as they echoed through the Great Hall. No one could see the way their host groped you in plain sight. “Are you thinking of tonight?”
Yes, you were. And of so much more. “No, my lord.”
“You appear sad.” He leaned closer, his mouth brushing the shell of your ear, and you shivered. “Have you a reason to be?”
You shook your head quickly. “None, my lord.”
“Good,” he murmured. “Then stop pouting so unbecomingly before our guests and smile.”
You obeyed, because you always did. You arranged your lips into something soft and pleasant, as he liked. Ormund grinned in return and squeezed your thigh once more, hard. “Much better, my dear.”
“Lord Hightower! I do hope we are not intruding, but I simply had to introduce myself properly to your esteemed ward.”
Ormund’s hand stilled upon you, though he had not yet removed it.
A broad, heavyset man stood before the head table, clad in a fine orange doublet. The wine cup in his hand was filled to the brim, sloshing around as he gestured. Drink had reddened his round, bearded face, and a crooked grin seemed fixed upon it. Behind him stood a tall young man with dark curly hair, fine features, and bright brown eyes. Those eyes were fixed entirely upon you. Something in his look sent warmth rushing into your cheeks.
“Lord Ashford,” Ormund greeted tensely. As the man drew nearer, Ormund briefly brushed one finger beneath his nose, the faintest crease appearing between his brows. “I was under the impression that only your son would attend the harvest feast this season. It is a… surprise to see you here as well.”
“And miss the finest wine in the Reach?” Lord Ashford chortled, lifting his cup so enthusiastically that a little spilled over the rim and onto the marble floor. Ormund’s eye twitched as he looked at the puddle. “Of course I had to come.”
Lord Robert Ashford. You knew of him, if not the man himself. He was said to be kind, if somewhat silly, with a particular weakness for feasts and fine drink, but there was not one wicked thing about him. Which meant the young man standing behind him must be…
“And this is my son, Godric,” Lord Ashford continued, stepping to the side with a proud flourish to the young man behind him. “Though I understand the two of you require little introduction. He spoke with you earlier about a certain…someone, did he not, Lord Hightower?”
Godric coughed. “Father–”
“Oh, the boy has heard such wonderful things about the princess,” Lord Ashford went on, tipsy enough he was either failing to notice his son’s embarrassment or actively choosing to ignore it. “Her grace, her devotion to the Seven, and of course I would be remiss not to mention her beauty. I fear he has scarcely spoken of anything else since the prospect of betrothal was–”
“Father, please,” Godric interrupted him, a flush creeping above the collar of his doublet. “I am certain the princess has no wish to hear you recite every private conversation we have shared.”
Lord Ashford chuckled and clapped a broad hand against his son’s shoulder. “There is no shame in admiring a fine young lady. Nor, surely, in allowing two young people the opportunity to become better acquainted.”
Ormund’s fingers pressed so deeply into your thigh that you were certain they would leave marks. You did not dare look at him, though you imagined his face had gone terrifyingly blank.
Oblivious to the storm gathering beside you, Godric bowed. “It is an honor to meet you properly, Princess.”
Remembering Ormund’s warning in the solar– and with his hand still gripping you beneath the table– you offered Godric only the smallest inclination of your head before lowering your eyes once more.
“The honor is mine, my lord,” you murmured.
Godric smiled. Ormund, however, did not.
“Lord Ashford, I am not sure if your son made you aware of the extent of our earlier discussion,” Ormund moved the hand that was on your thigh to the back of your chair. “He made his intentions sufficiently clear. As did I with him.”
Lord Ashford’s crooked smile lowered. “Well, yes…Godric did tell me some of the conversation. But I had hoped that perhaps, upon further reflection–”
“There is nothing upon which to reflect.”
Silence quickly consumed the small gathering at the head table. Ormund smiled urbanely, one hand still gripping the back of your chair. You felt caged.
“Your admiration for my ward is noted, Lord Ashford,” Ormund said coolly. “You are certainly not the first to admire her, and I doubt you will be the last. But this match will not be considered.”
Humiliation ravaged you like a wildfire. You fixed your gaze on the grain of the table, afraid that if you looked up, the Ashfords would see the tears stinging your eyes. You wished– prayed– that they would go away.
Ormund sighed and leaned back in his chair. At last, he released your chair and reached for his cup, lifting it with an air of studied levity. “Now then, I would hate to keep you from the wine you traveled so far to enjoy, Lord Ashford.”
“I– well, of course, Lord Hightower,” Robert stammered, plainly attempting to smooth over the moment. He summoned an easy smile, though it came out strained, and bowed low. “Thank you again for your gracious hospitality.”
Godric’s eyes shifted between you and Ormund before he followed suit. “Lord Hightower. Princess.”
And then, finally, they were gone.
You exhaled shakily, blinking back tears. Ormund had already retrieved the pomander from his breeches and lifted it beneath his nose, breathing deeply.
“Lord Ashford reeks of cheap wine and horse shit,” he grimaced, keeping the pomander close. “You should thank the Seven that you will not be sent away to live among such people.”
You had smelled neither cheap wine nor horse shit when the Ashfords stood before you. You wanted to tell him so. You wanted to tell him it was cruel to speak of them with such contempt when they had done nothing more than ask for your hand. Instead, you lowered your head. “Yes, my lord.”
Ormund’s eyes narrowed as he studied you over the silver pomander. His gaze moved from the wet shine of your eyes to the stiffness of your pouted lips to your quivering chin. He knew you more than anyone had or would ever know. He could see right through you. You knew it. For a second, it looked as if he was about to say something.
A steward suddenly appeared at his shoulder.
“My lord, Lord Uffering requests a private word regarding the grain levies before tomorrow’s council.”
“Lord Uffering can wait,” Ormund replied swiftly, eyes never leaving you.
The steward shifted uneasily, wringing his hands. “Yes, my lord, but, erm…Lord Orme has joined him in the western gallery…and now they are disputing with each other. Quite loudly, I may add.”
Ormund exhaled hard through his nose. “If you could use your eyes, you would see that I am currently occupied.”
“Yes, my lord. But the matter is drawing attention, and…”
Ormund’s fingers tightened around the pomander before he finally lowered it. “Fine.”
He turned back to you, regarding you with such intensity that the clamor of the feast seemed to ebb around you. “You will remain seated here until I return.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“I will not be long.” His hand settled briefly at the nape of your neck, thumb pressing into the divot beneath your ear. “When I come back, we will retire for the evening.”
Your stomach churned. The seventh day.
“Y-yes, my lord,” you whispered.
Ormund held your gaze for another moment, as though searching for the truth only he could uncover. Then he withdrew his hand and rose from the table. You watched him follow the steward toward the western gallery and disappear beneath the archway.
The moment he was out of sight, the stiffness in your bones left you. You slumped in your chair and looked across the crowded Great Hall. The feast continued all around you– lords and ladies mingling, eating, drinking, laughing without a care. Without any knowledge of what these walls truly held.
Why did Ormund restrain you so? Why did he keep you from everyone? Why did he refuse to do the one thing expected of him as your guardian? You were of age. You were a woman in every sense. Would it not serve his interests as your kin to arrange a marriage for you? His sons had gone, and he had been widowed for years. Would it not suit him to be rid of you at last, free to take another wife of his own?
The thought made bile turn in your throat the moment it formed.
Why?
Why did the idea of Ormund with a wife make something sick and vicious twist inside you? Why was any of this happening?
Why was he so cruel? Why did you want him to be?
You understood, at least, his refusal of Aemond. Ormund had told you often enough what such a match meant: brother wed to sister, blood folded endlessly back into itself. Targaryen wickedness in its truest form. He would not permit you to remember that such customs belonged to your heritage as well.
But what of the others? Ser Joldwin, all those years ago, broad and steady and strong. The Martell boy. Every lord and heir who had been dismissed for some fault Ormund alone had deemed unforgivable. Perhaps each of them had shortcomings, that might have been true. But Godric seemed precisely the sort of man Ormund should have wanted for you– young, courteous, well-born, heir to a respectable house.
So what did Ormund want? To keep you as his ward forever? To hold you in his bed one night, kiss your mouth, and tell you how good you were, only to admonish you hours later for whatever sin he had decided lived inside you?
The ceaseless shifting in reality left you dizzy.
“Princess?”
So lost were you in thought that you had not noticed Lord Godric Ashford return to the head table and lower himself into the empty seat beside you.
You startled, and he immediately raised both hands in apology. “Forgive me, Princess. I did not mean to frighten you. I only hoped for a moment to speak with you, if I may?”
Your eyes flitted from Godric to the archway through which Ormund had disappeared. At any moment, he might return and find you speaking to the very man he had forbidden you to entertain. He would punish you, surely. The thought made something low in your belly begin to warm like embers. “Lord Godric, I…I am not certain it is proper for us to be speaking without a chaperone.”
Godric hesitated, glanced out over the crowded Great Hall, then looked back at you with a small, playful smile. “Surely a chaperone of a hundred feast guests would suffice?”
Ormund would not think so. You bit your lip. You knew precisely what he would have you do. Turn up your nose at Godric and tell him you obeyed your guardian in all things. Then scurry obediently to Ormund and confess what had happened, so he might find some reason to bring about the end of House Ashford.
But you always did what Ormund wanted. When had you last considered what you wanted?
The answer should have been simple. Godric was young, kind, and handsome. He wished to marry you. Surely this was what any young woman would want: to be admired by a good man and offered a life beyond the walls that had confined her.
Did you want to speak with him? Perhaps.
Or perhaps you only believed you ought to want it.
“I promise you, my lady, I shall do nothing to scandalize your reputation– aside from perhaps subjecting you to a few poor jokes.” Godric placed a hand solemnly over his heart. “I swear it upon my life.”
You could not help but giggle. You could scarcely remember the last time someone had been so light with you. Years ago, perhaps. “I believe you, Lord Godric.”
“Now my father, on the other hand…” Godric glanced towards the table where Lord Robert was engaging in a loud and animated recounting of some story, wine cup spilling with every exaggerated hand movement. Godric sighed. “He seems to be on the precipice of a scandal every time he steps foot out of Ashford. I am certain you could guess that from his earlier…revelations…which I should apologize again for.”
“There is no need to apologize. Your father was very kind.”
“Ah, you are being lenient with him. He can be a fool, but he is also my father, so I suppose that makes me one as well,” Godric chuckled, and his grin widened when you laughed with him.
For a few moments, the two of you sat together and watched as Lord Robert continued his tale. Then Godric’s expression softened.
“Did…Lord Hightower tell you anything of our conversation earlier?”
Your smile faltered. You remembered every word, pressed against the boarded door in that forgotten corridor. But you could hardly admit you listened to a conversation never intended for your ears. Or that Ormund refused you any true explanation of what happened.
You chose your words carefully. “He told me only that you had spoken with him.”
“I see.”
“I do hope he was not unkind to you.”
“No more than might be expected of a man guarding something very precious to him.”
The words flooded you with warmth. Your gaze dropped to your hands, pressed into the sky-blue silk of your gown. The one Ormund chose for you.
Godric continued, voice genuine. “Lord Hightower seems very protective of you, Princess.”
“He has always been so. Ormund is like a…a father to me.” You felt bile briefly rise in your throat. You swallowed it. “He took me in when I was just a girl. Oldtown is all I have ever known.”
“There is much virtue in that, my lady. A guardian should be concerned for his ward’s safety and reputation. Truly, I would think poorly of him if he were not. But…” He hesitated, glancing toward the western gallery before leaning nearer, his face suddenly gone serious. “You are no longer a child, Princess. And marriage, as you know, is not some minor matter to be settled without your input. A guardian may offer counsel, certainly, but I do not believe any woman should be forced into a marriage she does not desire…or denied one she might.”
You blinked at him, stunned. Ormund spoke of unsuitable bloodlines, weak heirs, vulgar fathers, and men whose intentions he did not trust. He spoke endlessly of what he would permit and what he would prevent. Never once had he asked what you desired. The concept was as foreign to you as Dothraki.
Godric cleared his throat after a few seconds of silence. “Forgive me. I do not mean to speak against Lord Hightower.”
“N-no, no,” you stammered quickly. “You have said nothing wrong.”
He nodded, though concern lingered in his eyes. “Then may I ask you something else?”
You should have refused. You should have told him it was time to retire. You should have found Ormund. Instead, you found yourself nodding.
“Are you…happy here?”
The question struck you like a slap to the face.
Happy?
You had never considered it. Happiness was not a concept widely spoken of in the Hightower. Maybe there were moments. As a child, playing with the Hightower boys in the gardens. When Lady Hightower would sing you lullabies to sleep. Ormund’s bed, warm beneath you in the darkness. His lips against your brow when you memorized all your scripture.
Moments that were fleeting. But moments that stuck.
Then you thought of locked doors. Of punishments. Of Ormund’s voice, loud and raging, his mood shifting at the drop of a pin. Of the seventh day. Of sin.
“I…” Your fingers tightened together in your lap. Would you confess? “I am…content.”
Godric did not appear shocked. Nor did he demand an explanation. He merely regarded you with a quiet sadness that made you feel more exposed than Ormund’s scrutiny ever had.
“I hope you will not think me forward, Princess, but I meant what I told Lord Hightower,” he said. There was a sincerity to him more pure than anything you knew possible. “I have heard nothing but good things of you, and what little time I have spent in your company has only made me wish to know you better.”
Warmth rose into your cheeks.
“I cannot pretend to know whether you might ever desire such a match,” he continued. “But if you were willing, I would still like the opportunity to…entertain the prospect. If that is what you wished, of course.”
Surely you should wish that. Surely you ought not to be thinking of Ormund’s hand gripping your thigh beneath the table. Surely you ought not to wonder what it would feel like if Ormund were the one offering you such a choice.
If he were asking you to be his.
Before you could respond, the musicians reached the end of their song. A livelier tune began almost at once, the beat of the drums rising above the conversations as couples moved toward the center of the hall. Godric glanced toward them, then stood.
“Now, this may embarrass me so thoroughly that you decide to be rid of me altogether, but I must ask regardless.” He turned back to you and held out his hand. “Would you dance with me, Princess?”
You looked once more towards the archway. Ormund would return any second now. He would see you, dancing with Godric in front of the entire feast. He would see you being held by another man. If he did not kill you, he would surely kill Godric.
“Yes,” you whispered, heart beating violently against your ribcage. You placed your hand in Godric’s. “I would.”
Godric led you into the center of the hall crowded with dancing bodies, one hand holding yours while the other hovered near your waist, as though he feared even the smallest impropriety might send you fleeing back to the head table.
“You should know,” he spoke loudly over the music as he guided you into the first turn, “that I was once declared the finest dancer in Ashford.”
“Oh, really?”
“Well…I was seven,” he admitted. “And the only competition was my sister, who could not yet walk. And the judge was my mother.”
Your laughter rang through the hall as he spun you beneath his arm and guided you back into step.
You should have been happy. You were dancing with a handsome young man who had made his interest in you plain. Godric was courteous. He kept his hands precisely where they belonged and made no attempt to grope or possess you. He complimented your dancing, whispered jokes near your ear, knew every step, and led you well.
Yet all you did was look over his shoulder, searching for Ormund.
Your gaze swept over every face, every couple, every archway. He was nowhere to be seen. Something inside you deflated and the realization came with a flush of shame: perhaps you were doing all of this for him. You wanted him to see you. You wanted him to want you.
When the final notes rang through the hall, Godric drew you gently to a stop. Around you, the other dancers bowed and separated, their laughter mingling with the applause.
“I must say, my lady,” Godric was still slightly breathless from the dance, his hand holding yours lightly, “I think we make quite a fine pair of dancers.”
You blushed and lifted your free hand to smooth a few stray hairs from your face. You were about to say something, what exactly you could not remember, when a familiar, low voice spoke directly behind you.
“Lord Godric.”
You turned.
Ormund stood only a few paces away, the crowd having parted around him. Conversations nearby were already quieting. His eyes, blue and still as a frozen pond, were fixed upon your intertwined hands. His face was empty. Terrifyingly, completely empty.
With sudden, perfect clarity, you knew you had gotten what you wished for. And you knew you had made the worst mistake of your life.
“Lord Hightower,” Godric said, his voice turning cautious. He followed Ormund’s gaze and untangled his fingers from yours. “I was only telling the princess that she is an excellent dancer. Whatever lessons you must have arranged for her–”
“Do you make a habit,” Ormund uttered, his voice carrying loudly enough to silence those nearest you, “of disrespecting your hosts?”
Godric blinked and glanced at the confused faces gathering around you. “...My lord?”
“Do you take me for a fool?”
“I– of course not, Lord Hightower.” Godric gave a nervous, uncertain laugh. “We were only dancing.”
“Dancing? Only dancing?” With slow, imposing steps, Ormund advanced into the center of the hall, closer to you. “No, Lord Godric, I think not. I think what you have done is force yourself upon my ward after being expressly forbidden to do so.”
Panic overtook Godric’s expression. “Lord Hightower, I-I did no such thing–”
“But you did, did you not?” Ormund continued, his composure making every word more horrible to endure. “I made my refusal perfectly clear. You pretended to accept my authority, and then, the moment my back was turned, you disregarded my wishes. You disrespected my house. You disrespected her.”
You wanted to interject and defend Godric. You wanted to cower behind Ormund. You did neither.
“You took advantage of her,” Ormund declared, gesturing toward you as though you were evidence to be presented before the hall. “You knew the princess to be quiet and kind. You knew she was too gently raised to humiliate you with a refusal before half the Reach. And so you waited until I was absent and imposed upon her courtesy.”
Godric’s face reddened with the pressure of the entire Great Hall watching this encounter unfold. “The princess agreed to dance with me. She wanted to.”
Ormund’s eyes shifted to you and the hall seemed to contract. Something sharp flickered in his gaze as he tilted his head.
“Did she now?” he asked, so softly it was barely a whisper.
Godric turned to you, an obvious plea in his expression for you to absolve him of whatever crime Ormund had laid at his feet before the assembled houses of the Reach. You felt as though you had committed treason against the Crown itself. No– worse than that. As though you had sinned beneath the very eyes of the Seven.
Contrition flooded you so completely that you could scarcely bear Ormund’s gaze. Instead, you fixed your eyes down at the marble floor of the Great Hall– the same floor you had once raced across as a child.
“Is it true?” He stepped closer until the polished leather of his shoes entered your lowered vision. “Did you wish to dance with him?”
Your voice trembled when you finally answered. “...yes.”
Tears blurred the marble beneath you. Still, you forced yourself to lift your head. Ormund’s face had gone flat once more.
He regarded you for what seemed like minutes, then gave a single, measured nod, as though you had confirmed something he had already known. “I see.”
Ormund’s gaze lingered upon you for another awful moment before he turned toward the watching hall, putting his hand on your arm. His grip was tight. “The princess is plainly unwell,” he announced, his voice once again smooth and measured. “I fear the excitement of the evening has overtaken her.”
A few sympathetic murmurs moved through the crowd. You were unwell, but not for whatever reason Ormund was claiming. You simply kept your eyes fixed above the crowd and willed yourself not to start crying.
“Please,” Ormund continued, offering the gathered guests his courteous, practiced smile that did not reach his eyes, “return to your dancing. There is no reason our feast should be interrupted.”
Then he looked to Godric. “You may rejoin your father.”
Godric’s mouth parted as though he might object, but whatever he saw in Ormund’s face silenced him. He bowed stiffly instead. “Of course, Lord Hightower.”
Ormund moved his hand from your arm to the small of your back. “Come, my dear. I believe it is time to retire for the night.”
You allowed him to steer you through the parting crowd and out of the Great Hall. By the time the noise of the feast had faded behind you, you were sniveling like a pathetic child. Nothing remained but the sharp echo of Ormund’s footsteps and the hurried patter of your own as you struggled to match his long strides through the stone corridor.
Perhaps you should apologize. Perhaps you should explain yourself. If you could only make him understand, then perhaps he would–
Your head snapped backward.
A cry tore from your throat as Ormund seized a fistful of your hair and wrenched you toward him. You stumbled helplessly beneath his grip, dragged backward until your spine struck the stone wall.
“You fucking insolent slut,” he hissed. His fist tightened against your scalp, wrenching your head back until tears sprang anew to your eyes. “I cannot leave you out of my sight for a single minute before you whore yourself before a hall full of lords?”
He yanked again and the back of your head struck the stone with a dull crack. You clawed at his wrist, desperate to relieve the searing pull at your roots, but he twisted easily beyond your grasp.
“O-Ormund, I am– I did not–” you sobbed, reaching for him again.
His grip only tightened. You felt strands of hair pull and snap beneath his fingers.
“Please,” you cried. “It hurts–!”
“I have given everything to raise you. Everything.” Ormund spat the words, flecks of spittle striking your cheeks. “My house. My food. My protection. My own bed. All I have ever asked of you is obedience and respect.” He wrenched your head farther back. “And this is how I am repaid? You make a cuckold of me before half the Reach, shamelessly flaunting yourself for some boy?”
“It was only– we only danced–”
“You might as well have sucked his cock in the Great Hall.” His body crushed yours against the wall until you were flattened beneath his weight, the scabbard of his sword digging painfully into your hip. “Is that what you wanted to do? Hmm? You accomplished so much in the little while I was gone. Perhaps you did that as well.”
Your face flushed in shame as you gasped at his words. “No, Ormund! No–”
He leaned closer until his face hovered mere inches from yours, pure vitriol burning in his eyes. Ormund’s fist remained tangled in your hair, holding you helplessly in place. Then, suddenly, he froze. The fury in him shifted as he lowered his head, the bridge of his nose grazing your jaw.
He breathed in. Ormund’s face twisted at once with disgust, as though he were suppressing the urge to gag. “You smell of him.”
A broken sob escaped you, your scalp still burning beneath his grip. There was no reasoning with him. Still, your heart twisted, and you tried. “I b-barely touched him, my lord. Please. You must believe me!”
The muscle in Ormund’s jaw flexed. Without warning, he wrenched you away from the wall and dragged you after him. His pace quickened as he marched you through the corridor, forcing you to stumble in order to keep from being pulled from your feet. Servants flattened themselves against the walls at the sight of him– the master of the Hightower hauling a princess of the realm by her hair while she sniveled and sobbed behind him. None dared intervene. They only lowered their eyes and stepped aside.
“You are an ungrateful, treacherous brat,” Ormund growled. “You may lie to me. You may lie before every lord in that hall. You may even kneel in the sept and lie beneath the faces of the Seven.” He shoved open the door to his bedchamber and pulled you inside. “But the Father sees what is hidden.”
The door slammed shut behind you. Ormund released your hair only to seize the back of your neck. Though the force of his grip kept your head fixed, your eyes shifted toward the bed, already knowing what would come next.
Instead, he steered you toward the adjoining bathing chamber and threw open the door. Heat and steam billowed from within. Servants still moved around the claw-footed tub, pouring steaming, scented water from brass ewers. At the sight of Ormund storming inside with you trapped beneath his hand, they startled and pressed themselves against the tiled walls.
“The Father judges every falsehood,” Ormund continued, his mouth close to your ear. “Every wicked thought. Every secret desire.”
“I did not–”
“Do not lie to me again.” His fingers dug harder into your neck. “You may deny it until your tongue rots in your mouth, but your body has already betrayed you.”
Ormund lowered his face once more, breathing against your hair, your cheek, the bare skin above your collar. A shudder of revulsion passed through him. “His stink is everywhere.”
He dragged you toward the filled tub. “You will wash it off.”
One of the servants, an older woman with a weathered face, hesitantly stepped forward. “My lord, we were not expecting the princess until later. The water is still too hot–”
Ormund’s head snapped toward her, his gaze blazing. “Leave. At once.”
The servants did not argue. They bowed hurriedly, abandoned the remaining ewers, and fled from the chamber. You did not blame them. For who would want to defend you, who had so obviously sinned before your lord?
Ormund pushed you towards the tub. “Undress.”
You did not move. You could not. Perhaps Ormund had seen glimpses of you before, the shape of your body beneath the sheer nightgowns he often gifted you, the outline of your breasts when candlelight illuminated the fabric. But those moments belonged to the night, in the darkness, when you could tell yourself his eyes were closed or turned elsewhere.
You had never stood naked before your guardian.
Your hair hung tangled around your face, scalp still throbbing where he had pulled. Tears and snot wetted the cupid’s bow of your lip, and you were shaking so violently that your teeth had begun to chatter. You had been diminished to nothing.
“M-my lord,” you whispered, turning towards Ormund. “I can call the women back, they will help me–”
“No.” Ormund stared at you with open contempt. “You will not. You were comfortable enough flaunting yourself for that boy. Now, you discover modesty?”
Your cheeks burned and you hung your head. “Please, my lord…”
Ormund stepped nearer, hands twitching at his side. “You behaved like a harlot in my hall. You may undress like one here.”
Humiliation rippled through you like a wave. You began to believe he was right. You had disobeyed Ormund. You had accepted Godric’s hand. Why? Because you wanted a reaction from Ormund. And now, you had one.
Your fingers fumbled for the ribbons at the back of your gown. They would not obey you. Each time you caught one, it slipped from your trembling grasp.
“You are moving too slowly.”
“I-I am trying…” you sputtered. “But my hands…they will not cease trembling…”
The faint rasp of metal leaving leather made you freeze. Ormund drew the small dagger he carried at his belt.
“My lord, please don’t–”
Ormund caught the back of your gown in one fist, and with one swift movement, he cut through the ribbons. The bodice split open with a series of sharp snaps, the ruined ties falling loose around you. Ormund dragged the blade downward, severing embroidery and silk without care until the gown sagged from your shoulders and exposed your breasts. You gasped and tried to catch the fabric, but Ormund had already sheathed the dagger. He seized the torn gown and wrenched it down over your hips, leaving you naked in a pool of shredded blue silk.
Feebly, you crossed your arms over yourself. Ormund was quicker. He grabbed you by the upper arm and hauled you toward the steaming tub, his chest rising and falling with each furious breath.
“In.”
You lifted one trembling foot over the rim. The instant your toes touched the water, scalding heat shot through you. You recoiled with a yelp. “Ormund, it is too hot–”
“Good.” His hands closed around your shoulders. “Perhaps it will burn his stink from you.”
He forced you down. You cried as the searing water engulfed your body. You tried to rise, but Ormund held you beneath the surface of the bath, his fingers biting into your shoulders. Before you could catch your breath, he had dropped to his knees beside the tub and seized a sponge from the tray.
He caught your wrist and began scrubbing your arm. The rough sponge dragged over your skin again and again, leaving it flushed pink and burning. Ormund’s eyes were wild, his movements frantic. Beneath the fury, there was a panic, a desperation you had witnessed only a handful of times before. It terrified you.
“Men bow to their lords,” he muttered, dragging the sponge from your wrist to your shoulder as though he meant to strip away the skin itself and uncover something clean beneath it.
You recognized the words at once. Scripture, recited in the sept while you knelt beside Lady Hightower. Now Ormund spoke them in the bathing chamber she had once shared with her husband– only she was dead and rotting somewhere in a crypt, and you were grown and naked beneath his hands.
“Repeat it,” he hissed. “As I taught you.”
“M-men bow to their lords.”
“Lords bow to their kings.” The sponge moved across your collarbone, then up the side of your neck.
“Lords bow to their k-kings…”
“And kings and queens bow before the Seven Who Are One.” He scrubbed the tender skin beneath your jaw. The same place where, in the darkness of night, he so often buried his face.
Your voice shook. “Kings and queens bow before the S-seven Who Are One...”
The sponge dragged down your other arm. “All sins may be forgiven.”
“All sins may be forgiven...”
Ormund seized your knee and yanked your leg toward him, scrubbing harshly over your calf. “But crimes must still be punished.”
You swallowed a sob. “But crimes must still be…punished.”
At last, the sponge slipped from his hand and struck the tiled floor with a wet slap. Your entire body was rubbed pink and raw from his touch. Ormund remained kneeling by the tub, chest heaving as though he had just come from hours in the training yard. The water had finally cooled in the tub around you, though your tears had never once ceased.
Men bow to their lords. Kings and queens bow before the Seven Who Are One. Crimes must still be punished.
The words could not cease circling your mind.
Crimes must still be punished. Crimes must still be punished. Crimes must still be punished.
Steam from the bath had loosened Ormund’s brown curls, leaving them wild around his face. The sleeves and front of his doublet were soaked through. His collar sat crooked. Strands of hair had fallen across his brow.
You had never seen him so disordered. Ormund was particular about every detail of his appearance. Now he looked just about as ruined as you felt.
He rose and reached into the tub. You flinched, but his hands closed around your waist and lifted you to your feet. Water streamed from your body, droplets tracing the curves of your breasts and the softness of your stomach before falling back into the bath. The cooler air tightened your skin, your nipples pebbling as you shivered beneath his hands.
Ormund held you there, naked and trembling before him. Then he bent toward you. His nose brushed the wet skin beneath your ear. He inhaled once before moving lower to breathe against your neck and shoulder. You scarcely dared move.
At last, the terrible tension in his body eased.
“Clean,” he murmured. His hands tightened possessively around your waist. “You are clean again.”
Seemingly satisfied with his work, Ormund stepped back and surveyed you. His gaze traveled from your wet hair to your breasts, then lower still, lingering over the glistening curls at the apex of your thighs.
He drew a slow breath, steadying himself, before turning away to restore some measure of order to his appearance. He straightened his collar and smoothed a hand over his damp curls, though the soaked fabric of his doublet clung stubbornly to him. Then he reached into the tub and took your hand. “Out.”
Water streamed from your body and pooled across the tiles as you stepped over the rim. Ormund kept one hand around yours and the other at your waist. Then he retrieved the linen nightgown the servants had left folded over a nearby chair and tossed it toward you without looking. “Dress yourself.”
You clutched it against your chest, relieved merely to have something with which to cover yourself. “Y-yes, my lord.”
With shaking hands, you pulled it over your head. The fabric caught against your wet skin, clinging to your breasts and thighs despite your efforts to tug it loose.
When you had finished, Ormund turned back. For a moment, the two of you merely stared at one another. Then he lifted a hand and brushed a wet tendril of hair from your face, his touch impossibly gentle after the same hand had scrubbed your skin raw only moments before. “Do you understand why I do this for you?”
You nodded slowly.
“Then tell me.”
You swallowed. “To…purge me?”
“Yes.” He stepped nearer, cupping your cheek. “I have told you before, and I will continue to tell you. At your core, you are a wicked creature. However earnestly you may struggle against it, the sins of your forefathers live within you. That is why you disobey. Why you cannot always recognize the corruption in your own desires.”
Your breathing grew shallow at his words.
“It is my duty to purge it from you, to discipline what is wicked and preserve what may yet be made good.” Ormund’s hand settled more firmly against your cheek, holding your face toward his. He studied you expectantly. “Do you understand me?”
“I understand you, Ormund.”
“Good girl.” His hand fell away. He turned and left the bathing chamber without another word. You remained where you were for a moment, waiting until you trusted your legs not to collapse beneath you, then wobbled after him.
The bedchamber had grown dim behind the closed shutters, illuminated only by the wavering glow of candlelight and slivers of moonlight. Ormund stood beside the wardrobe, peeling the soaked doublet from his body and revealing the muscled planes of his back. Though he so often slept without a shirt, you turned away bashfully.
When Ormund faced you again, you kept your gaze fixed upon the ornate rug beneath your bare feet.
“Right,” he said. He dragged a hand over his jaw and glanced from you to the bed. Then he inclined his head toward it. “On the bed, then. Ready yourself.”
Your heart seemed to stop. Your gaze snapped up to him, your brows drawing together. “M-my lord?”
He scoffed as though you were a fool for questioning him. “It is the seventh day. Surely you did not imagine yourself excused…particularly after tonight. I have all the more reason now to question your purity.”
Your mouth opened, then closed again. “B-but, my lord…the bath–”
“The bath did nothing but remove the taint of horse shit from you,” Ormund spat. He advanced upon you. “As I told you before, you managed a great deal in the few minutes I was gone. How am I to know you did not give yourself to Lord Ashford?”
The accusation was absurd. Ormund had been absent for perhaps ten minutes. The hall had been filled with half the Reach. Surely he could not truly believe that you had…
“I said, on the bed,” Ormund repeated, each word sharpened by warning. “Do not make me say it again.”
You hurried toward the bed and crawled onto it. You had done this so many times that the motions should have come as second nature. Yet each time, every part of you trembled with the same terrible mixture of dread and anticipation…and something hotter beneath them both that you could never bring yourself to name.
You shuffled backward until your head met the pillows, then lowered yourself flat against the mattress. Ormund remained at the foot of the bed, the pale skin of his bare chest almost luminous in the candlelight. He looked at your position with a scowl, then closed his hands around your ankles. With one sharp pull, he dragged you toward him until your ass rested at the very edge of the mattress.
He tapped the outsides of your quivering thighs. You parted them, allowing him to step between your legs.
Ormund looked down at you. Your breasts rose and fell beneath the damp nightgown, each breath shallow and unsteady. “You are nervous tonight.”
You began to shake your head, but he clicked his tongue. “Remember what I told you. Do not lie to me.”
Your throat tightened. “I-I am nervous, my lord.”
“Why?” The question was edged with mockery. Ormund reached down and caught the hem of your nightgown between his fingers. “This should hardly surprise you by now. Or…is there something you are trying to hide from me tonight?”
“No, my lord. I swear, I have nothing to hide–”
“We shall see.” He began to draw the nightgown upward. Higher and higher, until the cool air brushed over your calves and thighs, raising gooseflesh in its wake. Higher still, until the fabric gathered around your waist and your sex lay completely exposed beneath his gaze.
Ormund inhaled, and you could have sworn his breath trembled. His thumbs pressed against your puffy pussy lips, parting you beneath the candlelight. You were unbearably sensitive after the scalding bath, and the sudden touch of cool air on your exposed flesh drew a helpless whimper from your throat.
Ormund stilled. His hands remained firmly in place, holding you open as his narrowed eyes lifted to your face. “What was that?”
You swallowed. “N-nothing, my lord.”
“Nothing?” he repeated softly. “Have you learned nothing tonight?”
“I did not mean–”
“Your mouth lies,” Ormund murmured. “But your body confesses so readily.”
Humiliation burned through you. You turned your face toward the pillows, but his voice sharpened.
“Look at me.”
You obeyed. Ormund studied you with a feverish focus. Without speaking, he prodded your entrance with the tip of his middle finger. The sensation made you jolt. He steadied you with a hand pressed firmly upon your hip. “Stay still.”
You tried, desperately. You fixed your eyes upon his face and willed every muscle to quiet, though your breath came shallow and uneven.
Ormund paused, the tip of his finger still pressing against your hole. “What shall I find tonight, hmm? That you have been faithful to the Seven above? Faithful to me? Or shall I find you have let Lord Ashford fuck this pretty little cunt?”
You squirmed beneath his gaze, feeling as though you had been scalded again by his brazen words. “N-no, my lord.”
Ormund hummed in response. Then, once again, he used his other thumb to spread your pussy lips open, his gaze transfixed on where his finger rested.
“Look at you…” His voice was hushed, contemplative. “I have barely touched you, and your pussy is already fluttering.”
You whined, horrifically embarrassed, but he shushed you before you could protest.
“You are thinking of that Ashford boy, aren’t you?”
You shook your head immediately, adamant. You could hardly remember Godric’s face now.
Ormund tutted. “Words.”
“No! No, I am not.”
“Then why,” he asked, his gaze never leaving you, “is your cunt weeping?”
You had no answer, other than your body had answered before your mind.
“It is no matter,” Ormund sighed, thumb still holding you open. “You are a deceitful bitch who will learn her lesson regardless.”
Slowly, Ormund began to push his fingertip into you. A broken moan tore through you at the burning intrusion, though you had felt this so many times before. The walls of your pussy clenched around him, and you tried to will yourself to relax your muscles. Breathe, you commanded yourself. Obey.
His hand stilled, the tip of his finger seated inside you. He did not look away.
“If you are not wet for Lord Godric,” Ormund whispered, finally lifting his gaze to yours, “then who is it for?”
For a moment, you were no longer in Ormund’s chambers. You remembered attending the sept with Lady Hightower, kneeling beside her before the bejeweled statue of the Father. You remembered her lessons, her gentle voice, the certainty with which she had spoken.
“You must always tell the truth,” she had taught you. “For the Father sees all.”
The words echoed now, impossible to ignore. You were compelled. You had to confess.
“You.”
Ormund groaned at the confession, his hand tightening at your waist.
“Do you hear yourself, you harlot?” His voice rattled maniacally, the rings on his fingers pressing into the soft flesh of you. “Do you not hear the lewdness of your own words? Lusting after me, your own guardian?”
Shame flooded through you. You should have lowered your eyes. You should have taken back the confession. But there was something in his voice that told you he was not reprimanding you. Ormund wanted you to say it. He wanted you to confess.
Before you could even think of a response, Ormund’s mouth twisted. Then he spat.
A hot, wet glob landed directly on the swollen pearl at the top of your cunt, obscene and shocking enough that your whole body shuddered. The sensation was like nothing you had ever felt before. Vulgar in a way that made humiliation burn through you even as a moan slipped from your throat.
Ormund saw it, because just as the Father did, he saw everything. A wicked, knowing grin spread across his face.
“Theeere it is,” he murmured, voice low and rough with satisfaction. “Moaning like a bitch in heat. Acting like the whore you are.”
Your face burned and you turned back into the pillows, trying to stifle the whimpering sounds that were attempting to escape you.
Ormund leaned closer, caging your body in with his, the tip of his finger still inserted into you. “You think I do not know you? I raised you. I made you.”
Your thighs twitched instinctively, as if you could push him away. For a moment, he withdrew slightly, as if it were finished. As if Ormund would simply wipe his hand on the handkerchief he always kept on him and declare the matter settled. It had always been that way before.
The ritual– the inspection that occurred every seventh day– always ended the same. Ormund would stop at the first knuckle, claiming only to feel enough to confirm that your maidenhead was still intact. Then he would withdraw, disappear into the bathing chamber for a few moments while you caught your breath alone on the bed, and return composed once more.
Afterward was the part you cherished most. Perhaps it was the only reason you endured the ritual at all. Ormund would take you into his arms. He would press his lips to your brow, your cheek, sometimes even your mouth, and tell you how good you had been. How faithful. How untouched. He would allow you to rest against him, your head upon his chest, while he kissed the top of your head and held you as though you were something precious.
And for a little while, you no longer felt like a ward. No longer like an unwanted addition to his household. For a little while, you felt like a wife would.
You felt wanted.
But this time, Ormund did none of that. Instead, he pushed forward.
You gasped at the invasion, hands tightening around the sheets as his finger slid deeper than it ever had before. It was only one finger, and still you felt stretched open by it, your body struggling to make sense of the unfamiliar pressure. Pain mixed with pleasure, a strange concoction that was better than anything you had ever known.
Ormund watched the reaction move across your face.
“She is so tight,” he whispered, almost in a trance as he looked down at where his finger disappeared inside you. “So untouched. So desperate for more.”
Your stomach twisted at his words. Of course you were untouched. You could not imagine ever being touched by anyone other than Ormund.
“So obedient for your lord,” Ormund added, voice husky. “And still you asked me not to stop.”
His thumb moved slowly, the pad of it pressing against your aching clit right above where his finger held you open. The sensation struck through you so sharply your thighs closed his hand, though he pried them back open with ease.
Ormund’s thumb began to circle your clit, slow and deliberate, while his finger remained seated inside you. The two sensations seemed to pull against one another: the deep stretch of him, the slick pressure of his thumb, the unbearable intimacy of being watched while your body answered him so honestly.
“Do not be so quiet now, my sweet girl,” Ormund commanded you. “Not when your body is finally telling the truth.”
His finger began to move. Slowly at first, dragging almost to the tip before pressing back in. The stretch came easier now, slicker with your growing arousal. His thumb kept circling with maddening precision, steady enough that something began to gather low in your belly.
A coil. A warning. A want. It was overwhelming. It was maddening. It was completely and utterly terrifying.
“Ormund…”
His finger curled slightly inside you, pressing against a soft place that made you see stars, and you cried out, back arching.
“There we are,” Ormund breathed. “That is what you have been trying to tell me.”
“N-no,” you said, though the denial sounded weak even to your own ears.
Ormund leaned closer, mouth skimming your jaw. “You want this. You have wanted this every time I stopped.”
Your lips parted, but no answer came.
The coil inside you wound tighter and tighter, every pass of his thumb dragging you closer to some precipice you did not understand. Your thighs began to tremble. Your breath broke into small, helpless whimpers. Panic and pleasure tangled together until you could no longer tell which one made you shake.
“Ormund, please,” you gasped. “S-something…something is happening!”
“Is it?” His voice was calm, almost cruelly so, his eyes fixed on your face. Then, just as the feeling rose so sharply it frightened you, Ormund withdrew completely. His finger slipped out of you, and his thumb left your clit all at once.
The loss was immediate. You whined, hips lifting after him before you could stop yourself, your cunt clenching around nothing.
Ormund stepped back from the bed, composed and distant, as though whatever had existed between you moments before had vanished entirely. He reached for the handkerchief he kept in his back pocket, and cleaned your glistening arousal off of his finger with a maddening calmness.
You propped yourself up on your elbows, chest heaving. Sweat had beaded on your forehead from the intense pleasure that was there just moments before. When you spoke, your voice was small and confused. “...My lord?”
Ormund did not look at you. “I have confirmed what I needed to know. You are untouched. That has not changed. But you still disobeyed me.”
You stared at him, searching his face for some sign that he did not mean it. Some indication that this was a test, that Ormund would relent as he always did. That he would gather you in his arms, kiss your face, and fall asleep.
He did not.
“You are not forgiven,” Ormund said matter-of-factly. Then came the words you never expected to hear. “You will return to your own chambers tonight.”
Your own chambers. You had not slept there in years. Not since before Lady Hightower had died.
The feast, the bath, the feeling of something coiling in you as Ormund used his fingers upon you like an instrument– it all came crashing down at once. You were unsteady, disoriented. Lost.
He was sending you away from the only place where you knew how to exist. The only place where you had ever felt wanted.
You scrambled from the bed, your feet landing unevenly against the rug. Before you could think better of it, you reached for his arm.
“My lord, please.” Your voice shook. “I-I cannot sleep there.”
Ormund did not move.
“Please,” you whispered. “I can only sleep here. I have only ever slept here.”
He refused to answer. He remained focused on the handkerchief, wiping the finger that had been inside you moments ago.
“Please, Ormund. I-I love you.”
He always liked hearing that. You lifted yourself onto your toes and pressed a desperate, open-mouthed kiss to his cheek, waiting for the familiar response. Waiting for his hand to come to your face, for his voice to soften, for him to tell you that everything was all right.
Ormund did not.
Your heart seemed to collapse inside your chest. You could not understand how he could stand there so calmly when you felt as though you were breaking apart.
“I was so ungrateful,” you sobbed. “I was t-treasonous, my lord. I was wicked.” Your hands tightened around him. “I should have rebuked Lord Godric. I should have listened. I was an insolent fool.”
Not knowing what else to do, you sank to your knees before him, head bowed as though you were kneeling before the altar in the sept. The posture came instinctively from years beneath Ormund’s instruction, a familiar act of surrender and supplication.
“Please forgive me,” you whispered. “I will do anything you ask of me. Please.”
You remained there before him, the room silent save for your trembling breaths and quiet sobs. Your forehead stayed bowed, your hands clutching the fabric of his breeches as though letting go would mean losing him entirely.
Finally, Ormund looked down upon you. “You hear yourself, do you not?”
You lifted your swollen eyes toward him.
“You beg for forgiveness, but you do not yet understand what it is you are asking forgiveness for.” Ormund crouched until he was level with you, hands on your shoulders. “This is not about Godric or a dance or a foolish mistake. It is about what lies beneath it, the thing I have warned you of for years.”
You shivered beneath his touch, the words chilling you.
“The dragon within you.”
It felt as though the entire world had narrowed to this room, to this moment, to you kneeling before him. As though every lesson in the sept, every warning, every correction had led you here.
“I have spent years trying to protect you from the worst parts of yourself,” he continued. “And still, when temptation came, you reached for it. That is why an apology is not enough.”
Your breath caught in your throat.
“You must learn that your impulses do not rule you. Your desires, your pride, they do not rule you. Not even the dragon that plagues your soul.”
“What rules you is none of those.” Ormund leaned closer, his nose brushing yours. “It is me.”
With that, Ormund rose to his feet, though you remained kneeling. His hand went to the leather belt at his waist, the same belt from which his sword scabbard hung. Slowly, he unfastened it and set the scabbard aside on the chest near the bed. He turned to you and gestured for you to stand.
You obeyed instantly, rising on shaky legs.
“If you want forgiveness, you will listen to me,” Ormund said, undoing the belt until it came loose in his hand. “You will disrobe. You will set yourself upon the bed. And you will take the strokes of my belt in penance for your sins. Will you do that for your lord?”
You nodded. You would do anything he asked of you. Hands trembling, you reached for the hem of your nightgown and pulled it over your head. You were bare, naked as the day you were born. It felt different from the bath. This time, there was no steam to soften the room. This time, you could clearly see Ormund take all of you in: the line of your calves, the curve of your hips, the plane of your stomach, the weight of your breasts. His eyes moved over your body shamelessly, intense and hungry.
“Onto the bed,” he ordered. “Face away from me.”
You complied, turning from him and crawling onto the mattress. Before you could move too far, Ormund caught your calf in one hand, signaling for you to stop once you were on all fours near the edge of the bed. His touch lingered there for a moment, and then his hand slid upward, palm dragging from your calf to your thigh, then higher still, until it settled over the soft curve of your ass. His fingers squeezed once, firm and possessive, before dropping lower.
You heard the soft whisper of leather as Ormund folded the belt in his hand. You could not see his face from where you knelt, turned away from him, but you could feel his gaze moving over you. The back of your neck, your trembling spine. Your exposed cunt, surely glistening now with arousal though you could not understand why. And then your ass, presented bare and vulnerable to him, where he intended to mark you.
“You will pray the Seven’s lesson as you were taught,” he said, though his voice had gone strained.
A familiar molten heat, like what you felt just a few minutes earlier, had begun to unwind in your belly. You nodded, eyes on the bed below you. “Yes, my lord.”
Leather cracked across your skin. The sound came before you could even register the pain, sharp and booming like thunder. You cried out as a bright line of heat bloomed over your ass, fingers clutching uselessly at the sheets.
“The Father,” Ormund breathed, voice low. “Tell me His vow.”
You remembered learning your lessons. It was Ormund who taught you when you were just a girl. Before you knew what you would become. What he would become.
“I-I submit to all judgement,” you recited shakily.
The belt came down again, landing just below the first one.
You jolted forward, a broken sound spilling from your mouth as the second stroke landed just below the first. Heat spread through you in terrible waves and your knees trembled, but Ormund’s free hand caught your hip to hold you up.
“The Mother.”
“I seek mercy.”
The third stroke fell harder.
You sobbed again, and shame burned through you at the sound, but Ormund only stepped closer. You could feel him now, the heat of his body just behind yours, the roughness creeping into his breathing.
“The Warrior.”
You pressed your forehead into the sheets, squeezing your eyes shut, willing yourself to submit. “I will have c-courage.”
The fourth stroke cracked across you, closer to your wet sex. The sound that came from you this time was not a sob, but a moan. You heard Ormund utter a low curse under his breath from behind you.
“The Maiden, now, girl. You should know this one by heart.”
“I will guard my innocence.”
Next, the fifth stroke. You cried out, smothering your sounds in the sheet, but this time Ormund made no attempt to hide the rough, ruined exhale he made in response.
You realized there, completely naked on his bed, the bed you had shared with him for years, that Ormund was enjoying this.
“The Smith,” he ordered you.
“I will be remade.”
The sixth stroke landed and pain sparked through you, body sagging slightly before Ormund caught you with his hand. His wide palm moved from your waist to the punished, red flesh of your ass.
“Ormund,” you whispered, though you didn’t know what you wanted of him.
His breath shuddered. “The Crone.”
“I will s-seek wisdom.”
You could hear how close he was. Hear it in the uneven pull of air through his teeth, in the way his hands trembled against your skin.
“Now, the last,” he said.
Like a final judgement, the seventh stroke came down. Hard.
Your cry broke open, high and helpless, your body finally collapsing forward into the sheets as the hurt bloomed through you in a final, burning wave. Ormund followed you down at once, his body bowing over yours from behind.
“The Stranger,” he panted into your ear, bare chest pressed against your back. “Tell me His vow.”
“I will leave behind what I was.”
The belt slipped from his hand and hit the floor. You heard the unmistakable frantic tug of laces being loosened, the rustle of breeches as Ormund shoved them down with no patience at all.
You did not understand what was happening at first. You only knew he was behind you, breathing hard, one hand gripping your hip so hard it bruised while the other was moving between your bodies with a frenzied desperation.
Then you felt him. The hard length of his cock, pressed against the swollen skin of your ass. You gasped at the silky, heavy, throbbing sensation. Perhaps you had felt it before, but between sheets, between linen, pressed against your back in the dead of night. You did not know, or did not want to know, or even fully understand what it was. But you knew now.
You heard movement, skin rubbing skin. Ormund’s fist worked himself in quick, uneven strokes, the leaking head of him pressed against the raw flesh.
Ormund groaned low in his throat, the sound muffled against your shoulder as he bent over you.
“Do you feel that, Princess?” he rasped. His hips jerked forward, the stiff length of him dragging on your ass. The contact made him shudder violently against you. “Do you feel me on you? This is what you do to me. You have bewitched me, heart and flesh alike.”
Your face burned so hot you thought you might cry from the humiliation of it. Bent beneath him in the bed he once shared with his wife. Marked by him. Listening to the rough, wet sound of his hand moving over himself while his body trembled against yours.
You turned your head instinctively, trying to look back. To see the reality of what was happening to your innocence. Ormund’s palm came down between your shoulders, forcing your face down into the sheets.
“No,” he ordered, voice ragged. “Do not l-look at me. Stay down.”
You obeyed. A broken sound left him at that, like a laugh.
“My good girl,” Ormund breathed. “My sweet, good girl.”
His hand moved faster. From behind, you could feel every frantic pull of his fist in the rhythm of his body: the way his hips twitched, the way his thighs pressed against the backs of yours, the way his hot breath puffed against your neck. Ormund dragged the head of himself lower, close enough that you could feel the swollen head of his cock brush your cunt.
“Do you want it?” he asked. “Do you want your guardian to finally take you? Do you want me to give you my cock and fill you with my seed so everyone will know who you belong to?”
You did. You wanted it so badly. You wanted Ormund to fuck you, to finally take the virginity he treasured so much.
“Do you want it, my darling girl?” Ormund repeated shakily, dragging his cock up and down your slick folds, the leaking head of it bumping against your swollen clit. “If I pushed in right now, would you open for me? Would you let me take what is rightfully mine?”
Your fingers twisted into the sheets. You did not even know what you were asking for. You only felt the compulsion of the Father move through you. “Yes, my lord! M-make me yours…”
Ormund groaned. But, to your dismay, he did not push himself into you. Instead, he drew himself back, dragging his cock against your skin as his fist resumed its desperate rhythm.
His mouth found your shoulder, open and trembling. His teeth grazed you once, biting down lightly.
“You are mine,” he said against your skin. “Whether I fuck you tonight or keep you untouched for the rest of your life, you are mine.”
Ormund’s hips stuttered hard against you. “Tell me whose you are, Princess.”
“Y-yours…”
“Say it properly for your lord.”
“I am yours, Ormund!”
With a final, low groan, Ormund collapsed over you, body shaking. You felt something hot and wet spurt across the marks of your ass. His hand kept moving through the violent pulses, dragging every last wave out of himself while he panted your name into the back of your shoulder.
Finally, the spasming of his cock subsided, and his weight softened over you. Ormund remained bowed over your body, trembling as he pressed his forehead between your shoulder blades. His lips moved slowly along your spine. His palm, sticky with release, spread tenderly over your waist, drawing you more firmly beneath him.
“My precious girl,” he whispered, pressing another damp kiss to your back. “My beautiful, perfect princess. You did so well for me.”
You could do nothing but lie there beneath him, overwhelmed and exhausted, your body aching everywhere he had touched you.
Ormund wrapped both arms around you, rolling onto his side and bringing you with him. He gathered your naked body so tightly against his own it felt like he had never intended to let you go. His release remained warm upon your skin, trapped between you as he fitted himself along your back. One arm circled your waist and the other slipped beneath your head, drawing you into the shelter of his bare chest. Ormund kissed the hairs at the nape of your neck, then your shoulder, his mouth lingering over every place it touched.
“Come here,” he murmured. “My pretty little thing.”
Ormund turned you carefully within his arms until you faced him. His hand moved slowly through your hair, smoothing it back from your flushing, tear-streaked face as he pressed kisses across your cheeks. He did not seem to care that you were both disordered and sweaty, that his breeches remained tangled around his thighs, or that his seed still clung to your body.
Your eyes burned. “I-I thought you hated me… That you would send me away forever.”
“No.” Ormund cupped the back of your head, keeping you against him. “No, my love. Never that.”
A sob escaped, and you buried your face against him, clutching at him as though the Hightower itself were crumbling around you.
Ormund drew you fully atop him, arranging your body over his with practiced intimacy. Your cheek rested above his thumping heart. One of your legs slipped between his, your naked bodies fitting together beneath the rumpled sheets as naturally as though you had been made by the Seven for this.
“You frightened yourself tonight,” he murmured, rocking you gently against him. “You forgot what I taught you. But you remember now, do you not?”
You nodded silently. Ormund tipped your face upward. His gaze moved over your swollen eyes and trembling mouth with such devotion it hurt.
“I forgive you.”
Finally.
Finally, the words you had spent the entire night longing to hear. The words you had wanted since the moment you realized your Valyrian blood was something impure.
The weight of it all overwhelmed you, his forgiveness, his naked body beneath yours, the certainty that he was not sending you from his bed. It all crashed over you at once, and your body shook with the force of your tears. Ormund gathered you closer, shushing softly as he kissed your forehead, your temple, your quivering lips.
“I love you,” he murmured. “I love you. Must I say it a thousand times? I love you.”
You pushed yourself further into him and sobbed harder. You believed Ormund. You always did. For he always told the truth.
“I-I am sorry for the wickedness in me, Ormund,” you stuttered, tears wetting his chest. “I should have been better for you.”
“Oh, my sweet girl.” His fingers combed gently through your hair, the same hair he so often praised for lacking the silver-gold of your blood. “You are not the first woman to struggle against the wretchedness within her.”
Ormund shifted beneath the covers, drawing you higher upon his chest until your face rested within the curve of his neck. His lips brushed your brow again and again as though he could not bear to stop kissing you.
“The Seven have blessed you, though,” he continued. “They did not leave you among your diseased kin who would encourage that fire. They did not leave you in the Red Keep. They did not leave you to dragons.”
You lifted your face from his chest. The candles had long since sputtered out, leaving only moonlight to illuminate the handsome angles of his face. The face you loved, the face you worshipped so dearly. Ormund cupped your cheek and brought your mouth to his.
The kiss was slow and delicate, nothing like the frenzy whose presence still marked your bodies: the angry welts left by his belt, his seed drying against your thighs. Ormund kissed you with the solemnity of a husband sealing a vow before the gods. When he pulled away, he did not allow even an inch of space to form between you.
“You were given to me,” he whispered against your mouth. “To raise. To correct when you wandered. And to cherish when you returned.”
A smile spread across Ormund’s face, full of such love and adoration that your soul ached with it. “And you will always return to me.”
Ormund took your hand in his and pressed it flat over the steady beating of his heart. Then he brought your fingers to his lips and kissed each tip one by one. “The Seven knew you needed something greater than blood or the Iron Throne. Greater even than dragons.”
Your eyes grew heavy as the last of your terror loosened beneath his attention. Ormund drew the covers more closely around your entwined bodies and tucked your head beneath his chin. “They knew you needed a home. A father.”
You nestled deeper into his chest, lulled by the heart beating beneath your ear. Sleep had nearly claimed you when his arms tightened around you.
When Ormund spoke again, his voice was so hushed that you thought perhaps you had dreamed it.
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