Summary: Lady Rye Ashford catches the attention of three Targaryen princes during her little sister's nameday celebration. Her future, and that of her house, hangs in the balance until she chooses which fire she can survive. Prince Baelor understands the precarity of the situation, and Prince Maekar tips the scale.
Pairings: Maekar Targaryen x fem!Ashford oc, Baelor Targaryen x fem!Ashford oc
Warnings: significant age gap (both Baelor and Maekar are widowers in this timeline), no smut but suggestive, everyone has issues, love triangle … but worse (it's a dynasty), canon divergence, I have not read a single Dunk & Egg novella I am charting my own course here lads, English is not my native language
Notes: Have this beast of a chapter. I planned to squeeze in more scenes but I had to finish this before it came to finish me. Also yay for Maekar-centric chapter! Tagging @thesoulwitchh :3
The castle was livelier the next day, though there was a pervasive sense of caution around the west tower. Conversation lowered and footsteps softened when servants passed by the first door from the stair, as though a dangerous beast slumbered within. Aerion had been shut in there since his stunt at the tiltyard with Androw, nursing the blows he’d gotten from his father.
Rye woke to the sound of a harsh cawing at her window. A chorus of male voices followed from bellow. She threw off her blankets with a growl, and hobbled to unlatch the casement. A large, agitated hawk was perched on the stony wall without. Wide-eyed, Rye drew back when it spread its wings and snapped its beak at her. “Why— the nerve of you!” she gasped.
The falconers from the ground kept their persistent piping. “My lady! My lady, you must brace him!” they called. “Quick, before he flies off!”
Rye crossed her arms before her chest, hoping the men could not spy her bosom through her shift. She realized this was the same troublesome hawk from the first day of the tourney. “At this rate,” she yelled, “Just set him free!”
She grabbed her robe from behind her chair, shrugged it on, and stepped carefully outside. With an urgent wave, she called the posted guards to deal with the bird.
There was a struggle, of course. The hawk fought and the guards jumped to steer clear of its deadly talons. Rye, barefooted in the corridor, could only throw half-useful instructions at them as feathers flew in a tiny cyclone.
“What are they killing in there?”
The voice excited her. The welcome weight of Maekar’s hands on her shoulders steadied her. She had backed into him as he was passing by.
“A loose hawk.” Rye was aware how close he was. They were practically pressed together.
“They’re doing a piss-poor job of it.”
Rye chuckled. “I meant they’re catching it. To return to the falconers.”
She could feel the heat of him on her cheek. The skin of her neck and collarbone burned in recollection of the night before. She snuck a quick glance at his mouth, which twitched into a smirk. “They’re doing a piss-poor job of that, too.”
The older prince went inside the room and, with a rough shove, sent the guards out of the way. The hawk was screeching, fanning its wings and trampling over the bottles and brushes on Rye’s vanity. Maekar stared it down — sharp, purple eyes against wild amber. When the bird lunged, he stood firm. It closed its wings momentarily and that was when Maekar snatched it off the vanity dresser. He pinned its wings to its sides with one hand, and with the other he held its feet together.
He held the screaming bird aloft, addressing Rye. “Show me your falconers.”
She wanted his mouth back on her neck. She wanted to know what his lips felt like on hers. A wild thought brought about by the lack of breakfast.
“I can’t, dressed as I am.” She glanced down at the state of her. “You won’t miss them. They’re the ones making that racket.”
Flanked by Targaryen and Ashford guards, Maekar stomped through the castle. Rye hurried to the casement. She waited with her whole torso out, leaving her dark hair at the mercy of the early morning wind. She perked up when she saw him come out the archway, unmistakable in his black-and-red court clothes and stark-white head of hair.
Maekar handed the errant bird over to its owners, and asked with cutting, military precision how a hunting hawk came to roost at a lady’s window. The falconers looked cowed, glancing helplessly amongst themselves.
“You’re entrusted with creatures that kill on command,” he said, “and yet you cannot keep them where they belong.”
Maekar stepped forward and the group rippled. Rye had seen countless knights. Warriors. Men who boasted and laughed and filled space with noise and bravado. Maekar did none of that. His power did not come solely from being a prince, it came from the way he carried himself — his unquestionable strength, his unabashed sharpness.
He turned now to the Ashford guards. “If it had been something less accidental, something more deliberately placed…” He paced once. “With your hesitation, you’d be mourning a lady instead of celebrating another’s nameday.”
“I am unaccustomed to failure, especially in a noble house.”
Rye could feel the warmth spilling into her cheeks, the fluttering in her chest. Her heel lifted behind her. If Androw could see her, he would never let her hear the end of it.
“I do not wish to have this conversation again.”
And that was the end of it. The falconers bowed deeply, stammering apologies and milords. They looked up at Rye, who was still watching from her window, and bowed again.
“Return to your posts,” Maekar barked over his shoulder. For a moment, he let himself admire her as she held her curls in place against the wind. No longer than was deemed proper. Then, he went on his way with his hands clasped behind his back.
—
“I woke up to a charcuterie board in my chambers. My cheese was as purple as a yam and smelt of flowers,” Maekar declared. He gave Rye a sidelong glance, a mischievous accusing glimmer in his eyes. “Was that your doing, you witch?"
The garden was a pandemonium of blooms, colorful enough to cause a headache. Rye found him by a gurgling fountain, half-hidden amongst heavy, swaying carnations. His foot was planted on the fountain edge, his arms crossed at his chest. Like he had been waiting.
“I told you,” Rye affirmed, “Lavender calms the nerves. It worked, didn't it?”
Maekar scoffed. “‘Suppose so. I've been uncharacteristically lenient this morning.”
“Why? What would you have done to those falconers?” Rye inquired. She plucked a butter-yellow carnation from a cluster and twirled it between her palms.
“Set the hawk on them.”
She was aware of Maekar stepping behind her, his forehead pressing against her nape, arms wrapping lightly around her waist.
Rye chuckled. “What an awful thing to say.”
His embrace tightened when she didn’t protest. She tilted her head to the side, allowing him to plant a kiss behind her ear and another on her jugular, which trembled with her pulse.
They stood together for a time, not speaking – the silence was comfortable, familiar.
“They look like dollops of icing on a cake,” she remarked, spinning the flower.
“Yes. If you say so,” was his lazy, absentminded reply.
“There was no cake at breakfast this morning,” she told him mournfully.
Maekar set his chin on her shoulder. “A travesty.”
Rye brought the flower to his face and ruffled it in his nose. Miffed, Maekar snatched it out of her hand and tossed it into the fountain, his ears growing pink at the sound of Rye's mirthful giggle.
“You're bold, aren't you?” he mumbled into the crook of her neck.
“You think so?” asked Rye coyly.
“You think so?” Maekar parroted. Rye laughed harder. “I expected you to avoid me after–”
“After what happened in the corridor? Why?” She looked him dead in the eye, seemingly truly curious. “Did you think me a girl who would start something and run half-way?”
Maekar was impressed. “You play a dangerous game.”
Rye shrugged, feeling Maekar's beard scratch the skin of her shoulder. Her hands found his on her midriff, cradling them gently. “I simply know what I want.”
“And what is it you want?”
His voice rumbled in her ear – low and gruff. Something knotted in her belly and she bit her lip at the sensation.
Again, she shrugged, coyly puckering her lower lip. “You claim I play a game, then I think I should like to win.”
Maekar watched her lips pull back in a wolfish grin.
“I would have my cake– and eat it, too.”
“And?” He urged, the words warm with quiet challenge. “Do you fancy yourself the winner?”
There was a palpable change. Something shifted in her eyes. Decision. Intent. What little space remained between them felt protracted, every detail amplified – the heat of her breath, the subtle coral flush of her cheeks, the pounding of his heart in his chest.
He watched her lean in – every nerve in his body crackling the closer she got. Her gaze dipped, briefly, to his lips and he followed.
And when the moment came, when he leaned in without thinking, when his anticipation tipped over into the realm of certainty, she stepped back.
She was out of reach before he realized what had happened, her pale yellow skirts rustling over the flagstones.
Maekar shook his head, smiling despite the disappointment. “Come here,” he sternly told her. Still rooted at the spot where she left him.
Rye walked backwards, reveling in the sight of him – red and fuming. “I'll see you at the stands, my prince.”
“Minx.”
Fine. He would give her this victory. Just this once.
—
Servants raked the dirt and gravel of the tiltyard neatly back into place, combing over unseen blood and gore. Baelor watched the dragmarks and hoofprints disappear, giving way for new challengers to wrestle glory from fate. He paced along the empty stands, fidgeting with a handful of blackberries stolen away from the breakfast feast.
She was not at breakfast, Baelor ruminated, as was his brother. Though, after what happened the night before, Baelor wasn't sure if he was quite ready to face her again.
It was cowardice, shameful as it was to admit. Laughable, even. A grown man. A champion and veteran of war. Afraid of a young woman and her affections. Or perhaps, afraid of how vulnerable he was to it, of what that could cause.
He popped a blackberry into his mouth, leaning his weight against the post. He watched the servants withdraw from the yard, as he wondered which gallant knight would step first into the fray, a more delicate foot disturbed the gravel. It belonged to Rye Ashford.
A coughing fit took Baelor, then, and he retreated back under the canopy. His squire, a curly-haired Dondarrion, rushed to set him right, but the prince waved him away. “I'll fetch you some water, Your Grace.”
Baelor stood firm and forcibly righted himself as he heard Rye ascending the stairs. He could not – would not – tolerate the ignoble prospect of dying by choking on berry juice with her as witness.
“Your Grace–” she glided to his side, gold jewelry tinkling in her urgency. “Are you well?”
“Yes – please – my, lady – I – good morrow,” Baelor managed, each word punctuated by a cough.
“G-good morrow.” The squire returned with a cup of water. She took it to give to Baelor.
“I missed you at breakfast, Lady Rye,” began Baelor. The squire looked suspiciously between the two of them.
“Oh, I dined in my chambers, and just now I was with Prince Maekar.”
The squire stepped away.
“I happened upon him in the garden.”
Baelor was ambivalent. He was well aware of how forward his brother could be. It was the very same intemperance that oftentimes put them in precarious situations over the years – the same intemperance he seemed to have passed down to his children.
“He has been behaving accordingly, I hope? He doesn't take too well to excursions such as this, or being holed up in a place for too long.”
“His Grace has… certainly been himself, my prince.”
Baelor detected a hint of fondness in Rye's voice. Knowing the shared interest they had for the lady, Baelor felt cheated. Like when Maekar whined and threw fits when they were children and got his way.
“You've made it tolerable for him.”
He had always been the dutiful older brother. He gave in. Conceded to every juvenile accusation. Bolstered him in spite of his faults. No one deserved more love than Maekar, but this time he could not keep from feeling a little resentful, even as he knew what had to be done.
“You've been very attentive,” Baelor began, “to us both, my lady.”
His gaze rested on her fully now – kind, perceptive. Rye felt it and the weight of his words. Not quite an accusation. An acknowledgment.
“We greatly appreciate it–”
“It is my duty, Your Grace, and my great pleasure..”
An amused smile stole across Baelor's placid face. “You must understand,” he said, “we are not young men.”
It wasn't bitter, nor self-pitying. Just true.
“We haven't been the sport of pretty young ladies in quite some time.”
The word “sport” tugged the corner of her mouth into a pleased smirk.
“You aren't as old as you think you are, Prince Baelor,” she remarked.
“Nor am I as young as I wish to be, Lady Rye."
Rye sat on the narrow railing and studied him. “It is not me who has reservations,” she pointed out.
Baelor clasped his hands together and sat across from her on the railing. Not too close, not distant either. Proper.
“You're named after the winter grain, are you not?” he inquired, throwing the conversation down a strange turn.
She was. Ashford produced the most rye in the whole Reach. Most, if not all, rye-derived bread, whiskey, and animal fodder came out of their mills, bakehouses and breweries.
Rye nodded politely. “I was born during the harvest season.”
He was trying to tell her something.
“My father had… poetic tendencies.”
Her mother hated it, though. The name was ordinary, she insisted, lazily picked. She had refused to call Rye by name for years, simply referring to her as “my daughter” and “she” if she wasn't speaking to her directly.
“Indeed. Winter rye is the hardiest of its kind. It flourishes in what others would deem poor soil and harsh weather,” Baelor mused. “I imagine Lord Ashford intended it as a hope. That his daughter might have the same nature.”
“He would appreciate that, Your Grace.”
Baelor looked out to the tiltyard. “This tourney… You've been much spoken of because of it."
Rye exhaled. She remembered the awful noise of Androw's rattling armor as Aerion unhorsed him — remembered Aerion's cold gauntlet gripping her thigh, how he gloated over the lands that were part of her dowry. The whispers. Always the whispers.
“I gathered as much.”
“Not unkindly,” Baelor added.
“That is not the same as kindly.”
“No,” Baelor agreed. He held his hands loosely in his lap.
She waited, because this was the moment when something could be said. When something ought to be said.
Baelor doesn't reach for her. He doesn’t close the distance.
“You deserve clarity, my lady,” he told her.
“And what clarity will you offer me, my prince?”
Baelor looked past the yard and into the verdant hills in the distance. “The court is watchful. Its gaze is unforgiving,” he said, “I would not have you placed in an uncomfortable position.”
Rye's fingers tightened on the railing. Baelor doesn't meet her eyes. She settled on studying the baubles that adorned her shoes.
He spoke honestly. “The Realm will pass into my hands, one day. It is not… an easy inheritance. Though I am the heir apparent, there are still those who question it–”
“They will be wrong to,” interjected Rye.
“They will persist.” He paused. His tone and his expression became grave. “And I have sons. They will come before everything.”
Not “before you” – he would never be so harsh.
“Their welfare and their future will shape every decision I make. Any woman who stands beside me will not simply be my wife. She would be asked to endure what is unkind, to be appraised, cruelly and without mercy.”
He looked at her then.
“And she would be expected to do so without ever being the first consideration.”
That quelled whatever fight that had been brewing inside Rye, because she knew deep down that she wanted nothing more than to be chosen. Wholly. Completely.
“If we were to marry, I will not be planting you in untillable earth,” said Baelor. “I will be taking the sun from you entirely. I could never do that to you, my lady.”
“You are very kind, Your Grace,” Rye said softly.
There was a pained crack in Baelor’s smile. “I try to be just.”
She believed him. That was the problem, because kindness, justice, and restraint all lead to the same place. A place where he will never reach for her unless it was perfectly right to do so.
And it will never be perfectly right.
So, he will not claim her at all.
For that was who he was; Good, reserved, and distant. Always just slightly out of reach – the way she knew him from songs and tales and tapestries.
He stood to leave, and Rye rose with him, curtsying as he addressed her formally as Lady Ashford.
She answered in kind, calling him “Your Grace”, watching the portcullis come back down between the recognition they had found in each other. It had been profound, no matter how momentary.
And though Rye mourned the loss, she found that it did not hurt as much as she feared it would.
—
Duty made it difficult to disappear. When she managed to steal away during the luncheon banquet, Rye chose a half-hidden window alcove to hide in. The one perched on the landing of the west tower stair.
She had left her cousins to entertain the guests. They spun in their orange dresses on the dance floor, shining like furious suns in a bare sky. Reach folk songs, marked by upbeat fiddling and underlined by stomping and clapping, drifted from the main dining hall. Somewhere higher in the tower, she could also discern the agitated rattle of a doorlatch locked from the outside.
Aerion, no doubt. Trying to figure out a way to break loose.
Rye pressed her temple to the stone of the wall. Feeling the filtered, noon-time heat of the sun on her back. The noise of the gathered host faded deeper as she shut her eyes.
“You hide quite well for a woman who insists she isn't avoiding me.”
Rye held out her hand to Prince Maekar, who took it without hesitation. “I'm not avoiding you. I'm simply… weary.”
Maekar tutted. He stood in front of her, one large hand working a knot from her shoulder blade. “You can always just leave.”
“I'm afraid I don't have that privilege.”
Maekar retrieved his other hand and kneaded her shoulders with practiced deftness. Rye grumbled at the sensation and rolled her neck to alleviate the strain.
“If someone stole you away, would that ease your conscience?” Maekar’s thumbs traced her jaw. Rye hooked her thumbs in his belt.
“Mmm. Who might that be?”
Maekar was now tracing her lips, his thumb softly pressing, pulling down – testing. He was slowly, carefully leaning down. Her grip on his belt tightened, but she wasn’t exactly pulling him in. She kept him there – half-heartedly, in a way. Something continued to burden her about Maekar, something she knew she had to make clear.
“I am not your wife.”
Maekar’s expression hardened. He blinked furiously, as if that could dispel his confusion.
“You share her coloring,” Maekar admitted, “That is where the likeness ends.”
“Besides, the resemblance isn’t what held my attention.”
Rye huffed the faintest breath – something between disbelief and reluctant amusement.
“You don't believe me.”
“I'm not…” she began, stopping almost immediately. Something sharp made her throat hitch.
Memories – clear and crisp as spring water – flooded her thoughts. Of her proud mother, who was so afraid of being small, of being overlooked after marrying beneath her. Her pin-straight blonde hair held in a severe bun, her austere expression, her tone – hard as nails, dry as rocks. “Do not expect to be chosen so eagerly,” she had told Rye, then a mere child of 12, clay-haired and round-faced. “You must excel elsewhere.”
Do more. Be more. Earn your keeping.
“I don't sing. I don't charm a room. I'm not–” she gestured helplessly. “–remarkable in ways that matter.”
Maekar did not interrupt her. He listened, expression never faltering.
“That isn't what I want,” he told her. “I do not care if you sing. I do not care if you dance well enough to impress a court.”
He tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “I do not seek a mummer.”
That made Rye chuckle.
A lopsided grin stole across Maekar's face. Rare. Pleasant. “I am not above desire,” he admitted, bluntly, “but I am above trivialities.”
Rye leaned into his palm.
“You are difficult to ignore not because you try to be, but because you know who you are and you do not shrink from it. You look at me, and you don't fear me.”
A beat.
“You don't flatter me.”
“Oh, does my flattery not suffice?”
“No,” he said flatly, “You are a bully, not a flatterer.”
They shared an out of place laugh. Rye stroked the line of his jaw. “I thought it was Baelor who had the silver tongue,” she teased.
“I'm not finished.”
Rye covered her mouth. “Do continue,” she said from behind her fingers.
The doorlatch from upstairs rattled again. They turn their heads in its direction with a shared panic.
“I've lost the thought.”
Rye runs her palms over his forearms, placating him. “Oh, come. I understand.”
“Do you?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
Rye tilted her head upward, looking into his eyes. Purple. Foreign. Glowing like some strange sorcerer's fire. Tempting and expectant.
All her life, Rye had held herself against a standard of virtue and expectation, against the quiet, constant fear of being found wanting. Every move measured. Every word shaped into something acceptable. But now, with Maekar Targaryen, she felt none of it, only a pull in her bones that she felt was true.
She smiled – a tight pull of the lips that crinkled the corner of her eyes.
Then, she kissed him.
Maekar's answer was immediate. Certain. His arm found its way behind her head, drawing her close. He nearly eclipsed her as he moved to deepen the kiss, hand finding the frosted pane behind her to steady himself.
From outside, they were a blur of yellow, black, and red.
Voices echoed from the bottom of the winding stair, calling out for Rye. Her cousins – tired from playing minstrel and hostess – come to collect her.
“Come here.” Maekar hoisted her onto his shoulder as though she weighed nothing.
He shushed her sternly when she let out a surprised squeal. Giggling, he climbed the steps and disappeared with his quarry.
—
Maekar set Rye on her feet only to kiss her, gathering her close in a swill of skirts and fragrant curls. He dared not break the kiss, even as he lifted her again to take into his chambers. He kicked the door back in place, not bothering with the latch, inwardly daring anyone to intrude. Just they try, he thought as he rid himself of his clothes – making him growl – Let them see what would come of it.
Rye reached back to undo the fastenings of her stays. When her hands trembled, she simply took Maekar’s hand and placed it on the tangle of ribbons. He pulled her free from the garment as she trailed kisses down his neck, making him sigh softly against her, his nose buried in her hair — mind clouded by need.
Rye's fingers came to rest on his chest, feeling the solidness under her palm, the steady rise and fall of his breath. Her fingertips brushed over a pale scar, one of the many that littered his skin — testaments to a life fully-lived and dangers survived. For the briefest moment, Rye wondered whether this was right, whether there was any real hope for her to step into a story that had been written in another color of ink by another hand.
She felt his hands — large, calloused, warm — stroke the curve of her back, pull her subtly closer. She closed her eyes, feeling him touch his forehead to hers — intimate as a kiss, as a hundred words of reassurance.
“I remember on the first day of shooting being struck by the way he smoked a cigarette. We weren’t sure how much he was going to smoke yet, but I had made some comment early on – because he doesn’t smoke and is very healthy – where I said, ‘Just make sure you don’t smoke it like a high-school girl.’ He must have taken that as a challenge because by the first day of filming he was smoking a cigarette like it was a joint.” - Cary Fukunaga, True Detective director and producer (x)
actually im doing really well except for the fact that everything makes me sad and the things that dont make me sad make me angry. but other than that im fine
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