⸺ ⟢ synopsis. jing yuan isn’t a fan of early mornings, and you’re not a fan of heat waves. though perhaps you can both come to an agreement.
pairing. jing yuan x fem! reader | wc. 1.4k words | genres. smut. minors do not interact. | warnings. cock warming. a little sweat mention but it’s not particularly in a kink way. a little lighthearted teasing. idk why it’s taken me so long to write something like this given the current weather. he refers to you as “my dear.” | return to masterlist.
⸺ ⟢ notes. this is your reminder to keep cool, wear spf + drink water if you’re currently suffering like i am ☀️
It had been hot these past few days.
The temperature has made it feel entirely impossible to get any rest at night considering the lack of a breeze coming in through your propped open bedroom window, and it’s definitely not made any better by the huge furnace of a man that was currently pressed up against you either.
Jing Yuan was a cuddler. Terribly so. Usually you wouldn’t be one to complain about it, but when it’s 4am and you’re woken up by the uncomfortable feeling of sweat pooling on your skin from where he’s holding you close to himself, it makes it hard to ignore it.
You blink groggily into the darkness of your bedroom as you wake up for probably the nth time, shifting a little with a movement that emphasises the way the back of your pyjama shirt is completely soaked with sweat, and the realisation is enough to make you cringe.
The flimsy fabric is sandwiched between your own skin and that of Jing Yuan’s broad, warm chest from where he’s got you pressed against it. And following that up with another shift to try and earn yourself some distance, and air, only seems to bring your attention to just how tight he’s got you.
It’s not all that surprising, you’re the first person to know that Jing Yuan’s muscles aren’t all for show, but when they’re the only thing coming between you and some much needed sleep after a long day, you find yourself cursing them anyway.
You struggle against his arms again, trying to move softly as to not wake up the slumbering general behind you— but enough to try and peel his biceps from where they’re hugging around your waist. But even this slight movement is making you feel even hotter, and with every passing second where your body temperature feels like it’s slowly rising— you find yourself getting more frustrated.
You kick your feet a bit, shoving the last of the forsaken comforter off of your legs in a desperate attempt to get more of a breeze. But when your attempts only seem to end in vain and you stop struggling, you swear Jing Yuan’s grip on you only appears to have gotten tighter.
A voice from behind is the only thing that stops you from thwacking him over the head.
“Come now, leaving so soon?” Jing Yuan hums, his voice a waking rumble in his chest as he shifts in the space behind you. “Surely it’s far too early for even you to start the day.”
“Let go off me, it’s too hot.” You huff, emphasising your words with another attempt to get out of his hold. “You’re not making it any better.”
Jing Yuan gives your waist a squeeze.
“Is that so?”
“Be serious, am I the only one sweating? You’re like a human furnace.”
The mattress appears to shift for a moment, and you’re sure if you had your eyes on the general right now he’d have shrugged. “A small price to pay.” His voice follows, proving you right with his smug response. “I find I sleep much better that way.”
“Well, I must tell you you’re alone in that regard.”
You try to shove an elbow back in rebellion, but when it’s met with a hard wall of Jing Yuan’s muscles and a slow, sleepy chuckle from the man behind you; you assume he couldn’t have felt it as anymore than a tickle.
“You wound me.” He breathes against your skin, making you shudder as he tucks you in closer. “Your feeble attempt to escape is noted but ultimately denied.”
“You’re torturing me here.”
“Torturing you, hm?” Jing Yuan murmurs, stroking his thumb beneath the damp fabric of your shirt. “Is that truly how one would refer to their current position?”
You lose your focus on how warm you are when Jing Yuan’s words are followed by his strong biceps pulling you closer to his bare chest, the movement allowing you to feel the way his cock is already hard and aching against your lower back.
His lips press just short of your ear now, tresses of white hair falling along your face as he presses you into the pillows.
“I have a few other terms in mind that you may find much more fitting.” His breath against your skin makes you shudder. “And you’re not exactly making it easy for me, are you? With all of your movements. I would consider you quite calculated, my dear.”
It’s almost involuntary the way you grind your hips back to meet him.
You find yourself wiggling yourself towards him, clutching at his forearm and despite the way you’re sweating against his form— his skin is warm and grounding. His fingers finally slide beneath the fabric of your shirt, and he digs his hands into the supple skin of your hips to keep you in place when he grinds up against you again.
“I’m sweaty though.” You murmur, pressing yourself back hard against Jing Yuan.
He’s busy pressing kisses down the length of your neck, the warmth of his hands only leaving your skin in favour of shoving down his boxers. “Is that supposed to deter me?”
“I of all people know nothing deters you, Jing Yuan.” You throw a half-lidded look over your shoulder. “Though I must admit you have a way of convincing people.”
His chuckle is a slow release, accompanied by his aching cock springing free behind you and smearing beads of precum along the skin of your thighs when you grind back to meet it.
“I have years of negotiations beneath my belt, my dear.” Jing Yuan reminds before his hands return to your skin, and in one smooth motion he lifts up your thighs enough to pull your damp panties to the side. “Though I would consider this one to be amongst the utmost important.”
Jing Yuan’s lips are back against your ear before the press of his aching cock slides its way through your glistening folds. It’s followed by a slow, languid roll of his hips as the heavy shaft drags along the glistening slick of your pussy, soaking him to the base as the blunt head catches on the hood of your clit and it’s gentle enough to make you twitch.
Your head drops back against Jing Yuan’s chest, and you spread your thighs wider when he pulls you back again. His cock presses against your tight hole now and your voice appears to catch in your throat. “I don’t think Fu Xuan will be happy to hear you take this more seriously than your duties.”
That makes him chuckle again, but he doesn’t respond immediately— too busy placing a few open-mouthed kisses along the dip of your shoulder before he’s suddenly sinking up into you.
“Perhaps it’s best we don’t tell her this one, hm?”
It’s all so lazy but deliberate, the way Jing Yuan groans against your throat while one of his hands move to rub soothing, slow circles into your clit as your pussy clenches around him. Accompanied by the stuffy heat in your bedroom, and how deep he already feels, you feel dizzy and full— arching back against him as you attempt to take even more into your flexing walls.
Until you feel him glide past the soft spot that makes your whole body twitch, and you manage a weak, dreamy whine when he eventually bottoms out. His heavy balls press tight against your ass, and when your pussy flexes again— you suddenly find it easier to ignore the wet press of your back against the general’s chest.
You feel Jing Yuan’s jaw clench when you relax against his body once more, feeling his large, warm palm return to its place beneath your shirt as he takes a slow handful of your breast. A thin layer of sweat meets him there, but instead of cringing away— it appears to allow the soft, lazy back and forth swipe of his thumb over your nipple to feel that much more gentle.
“Shall I consider this negotiation a success then, my dear?” Jing Yuan asks after a moment, his voice sounding much more dazed from where he now rests.
And if you didn’t find yourself equal parts full and comfy all of a sudden, you would surely find that previous fire to thwack him would come back.
But instead you wiggle your hips a bit more, enough to make Jing Yuan’s cock throb from where he’s pressing up against your walls and when it’s enough to make him take a sharp breath. You consider that a victory in itself.
“Atleast offer me a fan to cool down next time.” You tease before settling down again, eyes fluttering with sleep.
“Oh, I am sure that would be no trouble at all.” He responds in kind, his voice rougher with drowsiness but still as sly. “You need only ask.”
FEATURING: Jacaerys Velaryon x fem!reader, minor Aegon II Targaryen x fem!reader
SUMMARY: From the moment you were born, you were faced with the scrutiny of the court—the twin who lived while brother and mother died in a bed of blood. Rhaenyra had always done her best to shield you from its cruelty, so when her son is born with dark hair and dark eyes and that cruelty is turned on him, you vow to shield him the same. It is a promise that would come to shape both of your lives far more than either of you could have imagined.
WARNINGS: fem!reader. TARGCEST (aunt-nephew, half-sibling). reader is a Targaryen (daughter of Viserys & Aemma)—no physical features are explicitly described (silver hair, purple eyes, etc) BUT it is implied through Jace's insecurity that he does not look like her because he references not looking like "everyone else". forced marriage (reader & Aegon). Reader & Aegon are VERY young when they have their kids (14 & 13 respectively), and reader has some complications/health issues following the birth because she was so young/her body wasn't ready for it. Eventual smut. Infidelity (technically—Aegon and reader are both cheating on each other LOL but neither gaf). Jace is wildly unhinged about reader and everybody but reader knows. Codependent relationship. Slight age gap (5 years between reader & Jace)
NOTES: WOWWWW my great step into targcest. This will be 3 parts—this first part is their childhood, the second part is driftmark & the inheritance dispute, the third part is the dance. Lowkey I can't believe it took me so long to write targcest LOLLLL, but it is fitting it is for our prettiest prince, Jacaerys Velaryon, prince of Dragonstone, heir to the iron throne <333 There are some things to note so please read: I adjusted the ages for this fic for convenience purposes, but the general timeline will remain the same. Reader is born in 105, Aegon 106, Helaena 108, Aemond 109, Jace & Daeron & Baela/Rhaena 110, Luke 111, Joffrey 118. Laena's funeral takes place in 120, the inheritance dispute & the Dance begins in 128. When it comes time for the Dance, ages are as follows: Reader is 23, Aegon is 22, and Jace is 18. Comments and reblogs are always appreciated! Love you all!
You were not supposed to be the twin who lived.
Nobody tells you that in so many words, but it is the first thing you learn all the same.
You catch your father staring at you sometimes with an empty look in his eyes, and you know he is seeing the ghost of your mother, thinking that if Baelon had been the one to survive instead of you, he might have been able to justify her death. The lords and ladies of the Red Keep constantly look upon you with polite smiles and carefully chosen words, lowering their voices whenever the topic of your birth is raised, as if you are too young to understand them, even though it was the first thing you ever understood at all.
Such a tragedy.
The queen gave everything.
The prince…
The prince, the prince, the prince—it is always the prince.
A son who never lived is afforded every virtue. He would have been strong. He would have been the perfect heir and the perfect king. He would have united the realm, and he would have spared your father his grief. He is remembered with all the generosity reserved for the dead, and none of the criticism reserved for the living.
You grow accustomed to measuring yourself against a brother you never knew. Every accomplishment is met with the unspoken question of whether Baelon might have done it quicker or better, and every celebration carries a shadow of mourning that you will never escape.
It is only Rhaenyra who has ever looked at you and seen nothing to mourn.
She has never spoken of Baelon as though he ought to have taken your place. She sneaks you your favorite desserts when you are sad, and she wipes your tears before anyone else can see them. When you are too scared to be alone at night, she slips into your chambers with stories of dragons raining fire from the sky and queens who crossed seas.
Your father has always been distant, but you have never minded because Rhaenyra is enough warmth for two parents, and when the whispers of the court become loud enough to reach you, she rolls her eyes and steals you away to the dragonpit or cuts the gossipers down with words sharp enough to leave them speechless.
She is your shield whenever the court would have you bleed, and your sword when distraction alone is not enough. For a little while, that is enough.
Then Jacaerys is born.
You are still young enough to be bundled off to lessons with Septa Elaine, feet dangling from chairs too tall for you, when Rhaenyra places him in your arms for the first time.
You think he is beautiful.
He has a mop of dark curls and bright brown eyes that seek you out in every room. He laughs more readily than he cries, and he reaches for your finger whenever you are near, curling his tiny fist around it as though he has claimed you for himself.
He is perfect—you know it the moment he giggles up at you the first time, but the whispers begin before the bloodied sheets are removed from your sister's bed.
Strong. Bastard. Plain.
The words are spoken with feigned innocence, as though they are not daggers pressed to both his back and your sister’s. For the first time since you were born, the court’s attention shifts to another, and you desperately wish that it hadn't.
You know what it is to have your life measured against someone who is not there, but Jacaerys is measured against people who are.
Your half-brother, Aegon, with silver-gold hair that gleams in the sun and eyes the color of amethysts, every inch the image of Old Valyria from the moment he was pulled from your stepmother's womb. Beside him stand Helaena, Aemond, and Daeron, no less unmistakably Targaryen. Silver hair and purple eyes; four children who look exactly as the world insists dragonlords should.
By the time Jacaerys is born, the image of a Targaryen prince has already been firmly etched into the court's mind, and it is not a little boy with brown curls and warm eyes who resembles neither the princess who bore him nor the husband sworn to be his father.
You recognize the look in their eyes intimately when they turn their gazes on him. It is the same one they once turned on you—a child who has already failed to become what the realm expected of them before they have spoken their first words. You had been the daughter who survived instead of the son who should have. Jacaerys is the son who does not look as though he should have.
Rhaenyra never allows you to bear your burden alone. Before the whispers find you, they find her first. Whenever cruel words are spoken, hers are always sharper. She stands between you and the court so often that most days you hardly realize she’s shielding you at all.
So when the whispers begin to follow Jacaerys instead, you do the only thing you have ever been taught—sharpening words and standing between him and the world whenever you can.
If your sister has always been your sword and your shield, then you will be her son’s.
——————————
JACAERYS, 2; READER, 7; 112 AC
“He really does adore you, doesn’t he, princess?” one of your ladies in waiting, Melynda Darklyn, says with a soft laugh after Jacaerys climbs into your lap at Lucerys’s first nameday celebration. You wind your arms around the boy, relishing in the delighted noise he makes once he’s wrapped in your arms.
Your sister and her husband are sitting at the center of the table, chatting with your father and entertaining the assembled lords while musicians fill the hall with cheerful melodies and servants weave between tables bearing silver platters piled high with roasted meats and sugared fruits. Rhaenyra occasionally looks in your direction, casting a small smile your way when she sees how Jacaerys is tucked against you, fisting the embroidery of your gown tight enough that you fear he might rip some of the tiny pearls from the fabric.
“He has excellent taste,” you answer primly, with all of the seriousness a girl of seven can muster, earning a ripple of laughter from your end of the table. “It certainly has nothing to do with the fact that I let him have his sweets before supper.”
Jacaerys blinks, head lolling against your shoulder, unconcerned with being the subject of conversation. You can feel his small fingers picking at the ribbon tied around your wrist, freezing comically every time you look down at him. Each time you return your attention to the feast, his fingers creep back toward the knot with painstaking care, his tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth in concentration. He glances up at you every few moments to make certain you are not watching before tugging experimentally at the ribbon once more.
You pretend not to notice, smiling lightly to yourself when you hear the triumphant little hum that escapes him as the knot finally begins to loosen.
“His hair really is so dark,” Aegon suddenly says on your left, voice idle as he yawns.
The conversation immediately halts.
You wonder if Aegon knows the gravity of the words he spoke, stiffening slightly from where you’re sitting, enough that Jacaerys seems to sense the shift in your demeanor, lifting tiny hands to your face to squish your cheeks. It’s only when you smile at him that he finally lets go, and he returns to toying with your ribbon.
You look at your younger half-brother from the corner of your eye carefully, catching the bored expression on his face as he absently pokes at his peas, still looking at Jacaerys. You do not know why your father insists on seating him near you during feasts—you desperately wish he would sit with his mother and your other half-siblings. He has spent half the evening kicking the legs of his chair and playing with his food, bothering you with inane questions about whether there is an end to the Sunset Sea and if you think there is such a thing as water dragons or ice dragons.
You see three of your ladies-in-waiting exchange glances, Melynda stiffens slightly as she glances between the princes before her gaze meets yours, riddled with concern, and two lords further down the table quiet down immediately to listen in on whatever Aegon might say next. No one speaks openly of Jacaerys’s… coloring. Not yet, at least. The whispers have remained whispers, traded behind fans and cups of wine, because everyone is unwilling to be the first to give them voice.
So the court waits, each lord and lady wondering who will finally speak the unspeakable.
For one fleeting moment, you can’t help but wonder if the Queen has whispered something into Aegon's ear before the feast, if she has sent him here to say what no grown lord dares so that life might be breathed into the whispers haunting Jacaerys. You would not put it past her—she has always had a certain disdain for you and your sister—but you do not think that is the case this time. Aegon is six, and he hardly has the patience for lessons in High Valyrian, much less the conspiracies of court. Every thought that enters his head escapes his mouth within moments, innocent of the havoc it might wreak.
He is simply a little boy who has noticed that his nephew's curls are brown where everyone else's are silver. The court, however, has spent so long waiting for someone to say too much that even a child's idle observation is enough to make half the hall hold its breath.
Aegon notices the silence at last, mid-motion to tug Jacaerys’s hair. You slap his hand away before he can. His brow furrows, and he glances around the table. He looks from one lady to the next as though expecting someone to satisfy his curiosity. Instead, they busy themselves with their cups of wine and suddenly find the roasted lamb before them intensely interesting.
He frowns. “What?”
“I suppose everyone else is too kind to say it,” you say dramatically, giving Aegon a bright smile as he tilts his head questioningly. “You should not speak on someone else’s hair when yours is so greasy, valonqar.” You reach forward to tug a long lock of silver hard, and Aegon yelps, squirming away. “It only draws more attention to it. Did you not bathe before the feast?”
Little brother.
“I did bathe! It’s not greasy!” he disagrees loudly, lifting his hands to cover his hair. “You’re a liar!”
“Of course it is,” you insist. “Why else do you think no one dares look you in the eye? You should be grateful that you have me to tell you the truth when others would avert their gaze and pretend they do not notice. Say, thank you, mandia.”
Older sister.
“No!”
“Do it, or I’ll pull your hair again, you little wretch.”
Aegon gapes at you and looks around the table for help—unfortunately for him, the only one who might have taken his side, scandalized by your behavior, is sitting on your father’s opposite side, watching the two of you from afar, unable to do anything about it. You give the Queen a faux-sweet smile before raising your eyebrows at Aegon and lifting your hand threateningly.
He shrinks back. “Thank you, mandia.”
You raise your chin proudly, and the tension slips away. The tension eases from your shoulders when you realize you’ve successfully averted the crisis, but the dread you feel remains even as goblets are lifted once more, and conversations that had died on waiting breaths begin again. One lord clears his throat loudly and returns to discussing the harvest with his neighbor, and another asks after plans for hawking.
Around the table, everyone is suddenly very eager to prove they had not been listening at all; as though moments before, they hadn’t been on the edge of their seats waiting for someone to give them a chance to speak what they’ve all been thinking.
Jacaerys gives one final victorious tug, and the ribbon slips free into his hands. He squeals with delight, waving it triumphantly in the air, utterly oblivious to what just took place.
You pluck it gently from his fingers before he can stuff it into his mouth, and he immediately looks up at you, big brown eyes watering, lower lip quivering. He pleads in a tiny, wobbly voice, “Please.”
You raise your eyebrows at him pointedly. You say firmly, “Ivestragon ziry drējī.”
Say it correctly.
He stares up at you, brow furrowing in fierce concentration. His lips part once, then close again. He glances toward his mother for help, but she is much too far to be of any assistance, so his little nose wrinkles as he thinks harder.
“K-k…” he begins uncertainly, fingers curling tight around the sleeve of your gown. You wait patiently, toying with the ribbon. At last, he says proudly, “Kolilus!”
“Close,” you say, tapping his nose, smiling softly when he immediately scrunches it again with a giggle. “Kostilus.”
Please.
“Kostilus!” he repeats, beaming. “Kostilus! Kostilus!”
“Sīr albie,” you praise as you tie the ribbon around his small wrist, watching as he waves his hand in the air trying to show Rhaenyra across the room. “Olvie tolī albie pār aōha qȳbor.”
So smart. Much smarter than your uncle.
Jacaerys spends the rest of the feast showing anyone who will look the ribbon tied around his wrist, never noticing the glances that follow him, and you are filled with a dread that will haunt you for years to come, because one day, someone will find the courage to finish Aegon's thought, and when that day comes, no amount of distraction or childish innocence will be enough to swallow the words back down.
——————————
JACAERYS, 3; READER, 8; 113 AC
“Sleepover!”
You wake blearily from where you’re dozing off on your couch as the door to your chambers swings open, exhausted after a day of flying. Rhaenyra finally gave you leave a few months ago to take flight with Zūgaxes, once she was certain you would not go flying off the large dragon's back the moment he took to the air, and you have spent almost every waking moment with him above King's Landing and the Blackwater. Your thighs are sore, and you barely fight a wince when you push yourself into a sitting position just as a small ball of energy slams into your abdomen, pushing you back down against the couch.
You blink once, a smile instinctively curving your lips when Jacaerys’s face pops above yours, a wide, toothy one spread across his lips as he looks down at you, excited, dressed in his nightclothes and holding his favorite blanket.
“Mandianna,” you say fondly, lifting your shoulders enough to press your lips against his cheeks, biting down lightly to make him squeal happily. “What are you doing here?”
Nephew.
“I hope I didn’t wake you, sweet sister,” Rhaenyra murmurs as she makes her way into your room. She holds Lucerys carefully on her hip—the boy is half asleep, blinking sleepily in your direction before giving you a small smile. She nods in the direction of the couch you’re lying on and asks, “May I?”
You tilt your head curiously and nod, shifting to sit up properly. Jacaerys clambers off your lap to go play with the toys he left in your room the other day, and Rhaenyra sits next to you, smiling at you softly as she lifts a hand to tuck your hair behind your ear. Your eyes are wide and adoring as you look up at her, leaning into the familiar warmth of her hand—you have been so busy flying that you've hardly seen her as of late.
"Look at you, growing up so lovely," Rhaenyra sighs lightly, running her thumb along your cheekbone as Lucerys nuzzles into the crook of her neck. "I heard father was upset with you this morning. What happened?"
You scowl immediately, crossing your arms and looking away. The reminder of the argument sets your mood afoul, throat already tightening with a something caught between irritation and hurt.
"He is always upset with me," you mutter. Rhaenyra raises her eyebrows at you, waiting for you to explain, and you push your bottom lip out into a pout. "I only mentioned that I wanted to fly to Highgarden. Ser Lowen says the flowers will be at peak bloom soon. I should like to see them."
Rhaenyra laughs lightly, and your cheeks feel hot as you keep your gaze averted even as she tilts your face toward her. She strokes your hair lightly and says, "You have only just turned eight, hāedar. You cannot expect him to allow you to fly off on your own across the kingdom."
Little sister.
Your eyes well with tears immediately, and Rhaenyra's expression shifts into one of alarm, shifting Lucerys on her lap so that she might face you fully.
"He can hardly even stand the sight of me, mandia. He could at least let me travel. I do not just want to see Highgarden—I want to see the Wall and Casterly Rock. I want to cross the Narrow Sea and travel the Free Cities, see the ruins of Old Valyria, walk the House of the Undying in Qarth. It is not fair. He cannot keep me trapped here forever when nobody even likes me."
Rhaenyra's expression softens; she tilts her head slightly to the side as she holds your face between her palms, stroking your cheeks steadily with her thumbs. You grit your teeth hard to try to stop the tears from spilling over, but you fail miserably, breath shuddering as you sniffle and choke back sobs.
"Did someone say something to you?" she asks you, lips pressed together and eyes a bit cooler. "Ali—the Queen? One of her sons?"
You shake your head, trying to pull your face away, but she does not let you. "I just—"
You just what? You're lonely? You're tired of the way everyone looks at you? It feels unfair to say that to Rhaenyra, who has always done her best to shield you from it all. It feels unfair to say it when Jacaerys and Lucerys have faced worse from the court these past three years.
It is all unfair, you think miserably. All you want to do is lounge in gardens and snack on oranges with your sister and your nephews. You want to watch as Jacaerys plays with his wooden dragons and finds pretty flowers to put in your hair, as Lucerys naps in his mother's arms, oblivious to the world around him. You want to do it all without the eyes of judgment constantly pinned on the back of your head; you want to do it without the fear that someone, one day, will speak the words that will condemn them all.
"Well, then, perhaps it is a good thing that Jacaerys asked for you, hāedar," Rhaenyra says softly. "I did not realize you were so upset. Were you really planning to spend the night alone?"
"I did not want to bother you," you reply glumly, glancing away to where Jacaerys is trying and failing to gather all of his toys up in his arms, pouting each time he drops one back to the floor.
"You are never a bother, sweet sister. You must come to me whenever you feel like this. I loathe the idea of you being alone," Rhaenyra tells you softly as she leans in to brush her lips against your forehead. "Jacaerys, come here."
The boy immediately pokes his head up from the other side of the room, putting down all of his toys except for the wooden dragon you gifted him for his first nameday. He bolts across the room, tossing himself on Rhaenyra's lap and jostling Lucerys, who immediately starts sniffling. Rhaenyra raises her eyebrows at Jacaerys, who gives her a sheepish smile before he gives Lucerys a hug.
"Sorry, Luke," he says dutifully before shifting to sit between the two of you, holding his wooden dragon in his lap. He gives his mother an expectant look.
"Didn't you want to ask your muña something?" Rhaenyra prods, raising her eyebrows. "Instead of coming in here and demanding?"
Aunt (mother's sister)
Jacaerys's face lights up as he swivels his body toward you, brown eyes bright with delight. "Can we have a sleepover, muña?"
You say, "Ivestragon ziry drējī.”
Say it correctly.
Jacaerys immediately wrinkles his nose and gives Rhaenyra a pleading look, but your sister only gives him a small smile, beckoning him to do as you asked.
"You're so mean, muña," Jacaerys whines, giving you a pitiful look, wide eyes and a pushed-out lip that he certainly learned from you whenever you're trying to convince Rhaenyra to get you extra snacks from the kitchens. Unfortunately for you, it is infinitely more effective coming from baby Jacaerys with big brown eyes and chubby cheeks. He wrinkles his nose as he thinks, a few long moments passing before he tries, "Kostan ēdrugon toliot?"
I can stay over?
You correct, "Kostagon nyke ēdrugon toliot?"
Can I stay over?
"Kostagon nyke ēdrugon toliot?" he repeats instantly, leaning forward, tiny fingers wrapping around your hand. "Kostilus, kostilus, kostilus."
Can I stay over? Please, please, please.
You lean in with a small smile and tell him softly, "Hen rhinka, kostā."
Of course, you can.
Jacaerys lets out a squeal of glee and immediately leaps off the couch to run over to your bed, climbing on top and bouncing happily three times before flopping down and rolling around. Your lips curl up into a smile as your sister leans in to nudge her shoulder against yours.
"Are you truly going to look me in the eye and say nobody likes you when mine own son adores you so deeply?" she asks you quietly. "When I do?"
Your shoulders slump slightly, unable to meet her gaze.
"Jace would be distraught if you left," Rhaenyra continues, undeterred. "He has… been having night terrors. He struggles to sleep through the night. He has tried sleeping in bed with Laenor and I, but nothing seems to be enough to rid him of them. At first, I thought he simply preferred being fussed over, but the servants have made me aware that he does not cry out once during his naps in your chambers. When he wakes beside you, he is… lighter."
You turn to look at Jacaerys. He has managed to wrap himself in your blankets like a cocoon, your favorite stuffed dragon tucked to his chest. Every few moments, he glances over his shoulder to make certain you're still watching him before burying himself deeper beneath the covers.
You hear your sister let out a soft huff of laughter at your side at the sight of him, brushing a sleeping Lucerys's curls away from his forehead.
"I did not know," you whisper, guilty now—not just for wanting to leave and travel, but also for the number of days you've landed in the dragonpit with Zūgaxes to find Jacaerys sitting there waiting for you. For hours, Ser Steffon told you once when you'd asked how long he'd been there. "I…"
"I do not think he does either," Rhaenyra admits, smiling sadly. "Children simply know where they feel safe, and he feels safe with you."
Rhaenyra watches Jacaerys for a long moment as he buries himself beneath your blankets, only the top of his dark curls visible.
She says after a moment, "I should like it if you spent more time with him." You blink and give her a questioning look. She amends immediately, "I know you already do, but… he adores you. There is no one in the Seven Kingdoms whose presence delights him half so much as yours. Every morning, he asks whether you will break fast with us. Every afternoon, he asks whether you are flying. Every evening, he asks whether you have already gone to sleep. Laenor has begun telling him that dragons require princesses to nap as often as hatchlings simply to stop the questions."
You giggle, hand flying to your mouth as you imagine an exhausted Laenor forced to answer question after question—Jacaerys is insatiable when it comes to needing things answered. You once spent two hours trying to answer incessant whys when you told him that dragons could not fly forever without taking breaks, and you know Laenor well enough to know his patience is not endless.
"He is noticing things," Rhaenyra tells you after a moment, voice breaking. "He does not understand why some lords smile at him only when I am looking. He asked me last week why everyone stares at him, if he had done something wrong—I had to tell him that people only stare because he is a prince. That they admire him. I lied to him."
You stare at your folded hands, unable to think of anything to say that would make her feel better. You know she lied because there had been no other choice. What else could she have told a three-year-old boy? That grown men whisper about him behind closed doors? That ladies who smile at him in passing spend their evening wondering aloud whether he has any right to the Velaryon name?
Children should not know such things.
You should not have known that the court would have preferred you dead to your brother.
"He believed me," Rhaenyra says quietly, "but he will not forever, and I dread when that day comes. And it will come. One day he will hear every cruel thing that we have kept beyond his reach, but—"
"I will make them stop," you say immediately, leaning forward and grabbing her hands. Rhaenyra gives you a small, sad smile, but you insist with a nod. "I will, mandia. I will cut them down. Ser Steffon is teaching me the sword, I—"
Rhaenyra blinks. "Does father know that?"
"—I will take the head of anyone who says such things about him. I will feed them to Zuzu, and I'll burn their keeps," you declare, ignoring her question, because no, your father does not know, and you have no intention of telling him. "You do not have to worry, mandia. I will protect Jacaerys and Lucerys forever. And you."
Then, she laughs. It is quiet and watery, born through tears rather than amusement, but it is a laugh nonetheless. A success, you think.
"Oh, sweet girl."
You frown. She says it the way she always does when she does not believe you.
"I am serious," you insist.
"I know you are," she sighs, reaching up to cup your face with both hands, smiling softly. "You are a child. You should not be talking about taking heads and feeding people to dragons."
You frown again, deeper this time. "But I mean it," you tell her again. "I will take their heads, and I will feed them to Zuzu. I will burn their keeps, should I please."
"You are eight, hāedar."
"Then, I will wait until I am nine," you say firmly. "I will grow very tall. Taller than Ser Steffon. Even Ser Harrold."
"I think that unlikely."
"I shall," you say fiercely. "And I shall be stronger than Ser Erryck, and wiser than every maester."
You do not know why Rhaenyra looks as though she's going to cry again as she looks down at you, stroking your hair gently. "So, when you are the tallest, strongest, and wisest princess in the Seven Kingdoms…"
"I will protect all of you," you finish. "Anyone who is cruel to Jacaerys will regret it. And Lucerys. And you."
Rhaenyra's smile softens, and your lashes flutter as she leans in to brush her lips against your forehead.
"Well, if you are so adamant, then I suppose I must believe you." You nod at her words, pleased. "Will you promise me one more thing?" You look up expectantly. "If one day, the court makes him feel alone… find him, please."
You nod immediately. "I promise."
"And if one day the court makes you feel alone…"
You hesitate. "… He is only little."
"He will not always be," she tells you with a faint smile, and your nose wrinkles at the idea of Jacaerys growing older. You like him the way he is now—tiny and cuddly. "Promise me you will let him find you, too."
You glance over to where he's curled up in your bed, fast asleep now, ignorant of the conversation taking place between you and his mother. He is so small, you think doubtfully—you cannot imagine a day will ever come when he will be the one to seek you out.
Still, Rhaenyra has that expectant expression on her face, so you find yourself nodding.
"I promise."
—————————
JACAERYS, 4; READER, 9; 114 AC
"Jacaerys?"
You rise to your feet from where you were sitting with your half-sister, Helaena, on the edge of the gardens in Maegor's Holdfast as a small figure rushes past the two of you. Helaena blinks once, tilting her head to the side as she cradles her beetles between her palms.
"He looked sad," she says quietly. "Do you think he's okay?"
You don't respond, rushing after Jacaerys as soon as he turns the corner, ignoring the eyes of the knights and servants lingering as you push past them. You thought he was supposed to be in the training yard with Laenor today? He was excited about it last night—so excited that he kept you up for hours, asking for tips to impress his father and Ser Criston. So why—
"Jacaerys!" you call again as he turns down the hall, taking a familiar path through the holdfast. Where is he going? To his mother's chambers? To yours? "Jacaerys!"
Jacaerys skids to a stop halfway down the next hall, and you glare at a passing knight whose gaze lingers a moment too long on the sniffling boy. He hurries away, leaving you alone with Jacaerys in the long hall. He lifts his face to look at you, and alarm shoots through you when you see the dark bruise on his jaw.
"Jacaerys, what happened?" you demand, making your way over to him. He rushes toward you, throwing his arms around your waist and burying his face in your stomach. You wrap your arms around him, fingers threading through his thick hair as you hold the back of his head to your body, lowering yourself to your knees in front of him. "Jacaerys."
You pull his face back gently. His fingers clutch desperately at the back of your gown, bunching the fabric in both fists as though he fears you'll disappear if he loosens his grip. He is trembling. He is shaking so badly that he can hardly hold himself upright. Your fingers bite a bit too hard into his shoulders as your hands slide from his face down to his upper arms, forcing him to look you in the eye.
"Tell me what happened," you say furiously, rage already bubbling in your chest, vision tinted red as you squeeze his tiny biceps. "Who hurt you? Jacaerys, answer me!"
Jacaerys lifts a hand to wipe at his eyes, tears stubbornly clinging to his long lashes. The bruise on his jaw makes your stomach lurch. You force your grip to ease as you lift a hand to his cheek, cradling it gently as you brush your thumb over the mark.
His lower lip trembles violently before he whispers, "… I fell."
You stare at him blankly. "Did you?"
He gives you a tiny nod, refusing to meet your gaze. He is a terrible liar.
"I see," you say slowly, eyes narrowing slightly, "and the floor struck only your jaw?"
He sniffles and nods again.
"How curious," you say flatly.
You wonder if it was Aegon or Aemond. You thought Aegon was getting along with the boys, for the most part, but your half-brother has always been fickle and capricious, prone to changing his mind on a whim; and Aemond has taken to the sword, but he has always been careful enough with smaller children, more interested in proving himself than hurting anyone else. You struggle to picture him throwing a careless blow at a four-year-old.
"It must have been a very malicious floor," you say at last, the anger ebbing away at the sight of his mouth twitching up into a small, wobbly smile. "I shall have the castle steward informed. Dangerous stones cannot be allowed to wander the halls attacking little princes."
Jacaerys giggles, lifting his fists to wipe clumsily at his eyes.
"It wasn't the floor," he admits in a tiny voice. "I lied."
You sigh lightly as you brush the last lingering tear from beneath his lashes, leaning in to press your lips against his forehead. You say, "I suspected as much. What really happened, mandianna?"
His gaze immediately drops to the floor. "Ser Criston was teaching me how to wield a sword."
You stare at him for a moment and then ask slowly, "Ser Criston gave you this?"
"He didn't mean—" Jacaerys begins quickly, fumbling for words. "He was showing me, that's all."
"Showing you what, exactly?" you question, voice strained.
Jacaerys withdraws, shrinking a little. He says quietly, "I do not want to get in trouble."
"Iksā dōrī isse qopsa lēda nyke, mandianna," you say, softening your tone, sighing lightly as you brush your lips atop the welt forming on his jaw. Jacaerys clutches at your arms, trying to keep you close."Nyke mērī jaelagon ao naejot ivestragon nyke se drēje."
You are never in trouble with me, nephew. I only want you to tell me the truth.
"He was showing me how to block," he finally says, sniffling again as he presses his face into the crook of your neck. "I was supposed to stop it, but I didn't. He said I should have blocked it, and then went back over to Aegon and Aemond."
You do not reply immediately, rubbing between his shoulders to soothe him, one hand sliding down to his tiny wrist and tinier hands, small and uncalloused, barely able to wrap around the hilt of a sword. Ser Criston is a grown man, you think, outraged. He is years older than Rhaenyra, and he struck Jacaerys.
"How hard did he strike you?" you ask him softly.
"It hurt," Jacaerys says, voice small and muffled. Your eye twitches—a kingsguard striking a prince, Criston Cole gets away with far too much because of the Queen's favor. "He said if I cannot stop a practice sword, I will never stop a real one. I couldn't find father—he was supposed to be there—and mother has been busy all day in court, and I—I wanted you, muña. I always want you when…" His face twists as he searches for the right words. "… when things hurt."
Your expression softens into a smile as you sit back on your heels to look him in the eye. Jacaerys looks at you through wet lashes, bottom lip still wobbling, and you hold his face between your hands, squeezing his cheeks gently until he giggles and turns his face into your palm.
"Well," you say lightly after a moment, "your muña is here. How about we go down to the dragonpit and check on Vermax?"
His face lights up instantly. "Yes! Maybe they'll let me feed him. Do you think they'll let me?" he asks, excited, grabbing your hands and squeezing. Before you can respond, he presses, "Will Zuzu be there? Can we go flying?"
You lean in and lower your voice conspiratorially as you whisper, "Only if you promise not to tell your mother."
"I promise! I promise, I promise, I promise!" he cheers.
You give him a small smile, running your thumb one last time over the welt on his cheek before you rise to your feet and hold out your hand to him. He takes it quickly, entwining his fingers with yours as he takes off in the direction of the dragonpit, and you laugh as he drags you along with him.
Jacaerys forgets all about the bruise and Ser Criston Cole by the time the two of you reached the dragonpit, but you do not.
—————————
JACAERYS, 6; READER, 11; 116 AC
Jacaerys becomes your shadow over the next two years.
He rushes to your chambers before you've even woken, and will linger there long into the evening until his mother finally forces him to return to his own. Some nights, he sneaks back well after midnight because he insists that your room is safer than his, though you suspect he simply sleeps better with your dragon stuffed beneath one arm and your hand draped over his back.
He follows you everywhere.
When Ser Steffon trains you in the yard—now with your father's permission, though you had to put up quite the fight because your father was unconvinced that there was any need for a princess to learn the sword—Jacaerys perches himself on the balcony, his chin resting in both palms as he announces every successful strike as though you had just won a tourney.
"You got him!"
"It is a wooden dummy, Jacaerys."
"But he was losing!"
"The dummy?"
"Yes! He looked frightened!"
When you fly Zūgaxes, Jacaerys waits patiently in the Dragonpit with a book in his lap that never seems to advance beyond the same page. The moment your dragon's shadow crosses the courtyard, he leaps to his feet, waving both arms high above his head before racing to meet you
"How high did you go?"
"Very high."
"Higher than the towers?"
"Certainly."
"Higher than the clouds?"
"Not quite."
"Tomorrow?"
"Perhaps."
When you retreat to the gardens with a book, he appears scarcely minutes later, carrying one of his own. He cannot yet sit long enough to read more than a page or two before asking questions, but he tries valiantly, resting his head against your shoulder as he sounds out unfamiliar words. When he inevitably grows frustrated, you take the book from his hand and read aloud instead—by the third chapter, he is almost always asleep against you.
The servants quickly learn that if the young prince cannot be found, they only need ask where the princess has gone, and he is always there.
Which is why you feel so terrible about what you have to do today.
"Tell me it's not true," a shrill voice accuses from the door of your chambers as you finish packing the last of your bag. Ser Steffon gives you an apologetic look as he holds the door open for the little prince, and you grimace but signal for him to close it and step outside so that you can talk to Jacaerys. "You can't be leaving. Say that you're not leaving!"
"Mandianna," you start to sigh, turning to face him. His eyes are already welling with tears, face red and fists clenched at his sides. "I—"
"No!" he screeches. "You're a liar. You're a liar. You promised you wouldn't leave me. You promised I wouldn't be alone. You're a liar, and I hate you."
"Jacaerys," you say quietly, kneeling in front of him. He has grown over the past year, but so have you—and unfortunately for him, you have been growing faster. Where he once nearly reached your shoulder, the top of his curls now barely reaches your chest. He'll be even taller when you return, you think mournfully—how much will you miss? "Come here."
"No."
"Please."
"No!"
"I only want to talk, mandianna."
"I hate talking to you. I don't want to talk to you."
"Jacaerys…" you sigh again, a helpless feeling tugging at you because you do not want to leave while he's angry at you. You knew this would be a difficult conversation, but you'd hoped to at least leave with one last hug. "I know you are angry, but—"
"You don't!" he cries, stamping his foot so hard the floorboards rattle beneath him. "You don't know anything! Everybody hates me here. They all stare at me and think I don't notice, but I do! You promised you would stay, that I would always have you. You're a liar!"
Your breath hitches as you stare down at the tears tracking down his cheek. For a moment, you are no longer looking at Jacaerys. You are six years old again, yourself, standing in the halls of the Red Keep, wondering why everyone always stares at you, convinced that if you disappear, no one but Rhaenyra would notice.
You had spent years hoping he would never know the feeling.
"I know that they do," he insists before you can speak, as though he already knows you will try to deny it to preserve his innocence, as Rhaenyra has been doing for years. "They look at me all the time. They whisper, and then they stop when you or mother comes. They think I don't notice, but I do." He wipes furiously at his face with the heel of his sleeve. "They don't like me because—because I'm not pretty like everyone else, because I don't look like mother or father or grandsire or Aegon. But you always liked me—you said I was clever, and brave, and you said that I always would have you."
"You do, Jacaerys," you start to say. "I meant it."
"Liar!" he shouts again. "You wouldn't leave me if you meant it!"
You do not have a choice, you want to tell him.
Your father has asked you to go to Pentos to convince Daemon to return. You are not sure the Small Council knows of his request, because he has specifically asked you not to breathe a word of it to anyone, knowing too well how fiercely they opposed Daemon and how quickly they might act to convince him otherwise it if they learned where you were bound.
He thought he was doing you a favor—he remembers how badly you wanted to leave two years ago, and is giving you the opportunity now under the guise of a request from him. You did not know how to tell him that the last thing you wanted to do now was leave when Jacaerys hardly goes an hour without you.
You rise slowly from where you are kneeling, crossing the small distance between you. The moment you lift your hand toward him, he recoils.
"Don't touch me! I don't want you to touch me!"
Your fingers freeze in the air before falling back to your side. Your heart feels as though it is stuck in your throat as you stare at him, watching as he wipes hard at his face again, gnawing at his bottom lip as he fights a sob.
"Okay," you finally say, hand dropping back to your side.
"I don't want you to come back," he tells you, sniffling loudly, refusing to look at you. "I hate you."
You know he does not mean it. You do. Children have so few weapons when they are hurting, and cruel words are among the first they learn to wield. You know this better than most, and yet, somehow, his words still manage to find every wound you've ever been dealt in this keep, salt on open wounds because they are being spoken by the one voice whose opinion matters more than any vicious noble ever could.
Your throat feels swollen, and your chest aches so painfully that you fear you might die. You had imagined this moment so differently. You had imagined Jacaerys helping you fasten your cloak, asking you to bring him back gits and insisting you write him every day, faster even than the ravens can deliver. Instead, there is only a frightened little boy glaring at you through tears, insisting that he hates you and never wants to see you again.
"I'll see you soon, mandianna," you say quietly. "Avy jorrāelan. Kesan sagon arlī gō ao gīmigon ziry."
I love you. I will be back before you know it.
You wait just in case he changes his mind, but he does not answer, turning his back on you as your hand closes around the handle of the door.
It is the first time the two of you have to bid goodbye to one another.
It will not be the last.
—————————
JACAERYS, 7; READER, 12; 117 AC
It has been a year since you departed King's Landing.
Pentos had become a fortnight, then a moon, then half a year, and before anyone quite realized what had happened, an entire year had passed. Your father had sent you to talk to his brother, hoping that you might be able to convince your uncle and his wife to return home. Instead, Daemon had laughed in your face and said you were too small to be so bold, and refused every plea you had bade.
You had failed. The only consolation was that Daemon had immediately not sent you away. He had taken one look at your pinched expression and fisted hands, and he took you flying over the bay and the Velvet Hills. He taught you more about your history than any maester in King's Landing ever had, and filled your head with so many stories of Old Valyria that it had you dizzy with homesickness for a place you've never known, longing for a future you would never know.
Every morning, you would challenge him for Dark Sister, and he would pummel you into the tiled floors of the Prince of Pentos's palace, and every evening, he would make you do it again until he properly beat out the "poor teachings of Ser Steffon"—his words, not yours.
You met your cousins for the first time, too.
For years, you only ever had Rhaenyra, Laenor, Jacaerys, and Lucerys, but Baela and Rhaena quickly latched themselves to each of your arms, showing you all around Pentos, desperately trying to keep you in the Free City with them longer.
Baela had insisted on racing dragons before she'd properly introduced herself, offended when Zūgaxes won by what she declared was an unfair margin. She reminded you so much of Jace, forever at your heels, rarely letting you out of her sight for long. Rhaena spent long afternoons wandering Pentoshi markets with you and her mother, pointing out fabrics she thought would look pretty on you and teasing you relentlessly whenever Daemon tripped you and claimed he was only trying to hone your reaction time as you fell flat on your face.
For the first time in years, your world stretches beyond the walls of the Red Keep and lingering gazes, and yet not a single day has passed without you wondering whether Jacaerys still sits in the godswood, waiting for someone who is no longer there.
When your father finally sends a letter recalling you to King's Landing, tiring of your frolic with Daemon and not wanting to deal with another member of his family joining self-imposed exile, you spend the entire flight back thinking about what you would say to him, wondering what he might do when he finally sees you.
You have imagined him running at you and throwing himself into your arms, and you have imagined him turning his back to you once more. You do not know what to expect from him, so your heart is in your throat when you see him standing with the dragonkeepers as they bring out a sheep for Vermax, dark hair flopping around his face, a bright smile on his face.
In your worst fears, the smile drops when he realizes that you have returned.
You clear your throat and force a light expression on your face as you say, “He is almost big enough for you to ride now, isn’t he, mandianna?”
Jacaerys startles, smile dropping just as you feared, eyes widening as he whips around to face you. He stares at you, blinking once, head cocking to the side—for a terrible second, you wonder if he even recognizes you. It has been a year apart, you try to rationalize to mitigate the hurt. You have grown a lot; your hair is styled in the typical Pentoshi way, and you have spent the majority of the past year basking in the sun. It would not be so far-fetched if he did not recognize you right away, in fact—
"Muña?"
"Jacaerys," you greet quietly, hands behind your back to hide the way they're trembling uncertainly. Is he still angry at you? What if he doesn't— "I—"
Jacaerys is across the vast pit in an instant, a blur of black and red as he charges in your direction. The air leaves your lungs in a whoosh of relief as you dip down to catch him in your arms, lifting him off the dirt floor and swinging him through the air. A noise caught between a gasp and a broken sob escapes his lips as he buries his face in the crook of your neck, arms wrapping so tight around your neck that he momentarily chokes you.
For a long while, neither of you speaks. His fingers clutch desperately at the back of your riding leathers, bunching the fabric beneath his fists, and you hold him just as tight, arms wrapped around his waist and face buried in his fluffy hair.
You have spent an entire year imagining this moment, worrying he might shrink away or turn his back on you, fearing that he might remember only your departure and not the years that had come before it. But he clings to you so tightly that your arm and neck begin to ache, and you have never been happier for the pain.
"I'm sorry," he blurts into your shoulder, words muffled against your neck. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
"Mandianna, you have nothing to apologize for," you murmur, pressing your lips to his temple, and letting out a wavering sigh. "I—"
"I said I hated you," he cries, voice catching over the words. "I didn't mean it. I promise."
"I know, Jacaerys," you murmur. "It's okay."
"I wanted to hug you," he sniffles, words tumbling out, desperate to be heard before the courage abandons him. "I was going to, I really was, but then you started leaving, and I got scared, and I thought maybe if I didn't hug you goodbye, you wouldn't leave, but you did leave. I wished I'd hugged you every day."
You let out a huff, unsure if it's a laugh or a sob of your own. "I'm here now, mandianna. You do not need to cry."
"I thought maybe you weren't coming back," he admits, pulling back just enough to look at you, cheeks damp and his eyes red-rimmed. You brush his unruly curls back from his forehead. He hiccups as he presses his nose into your hand. "I thought I made you mad, and you were going to stay away forever. I wanted to send a raven, but I was scared I would only make it worse."
"I could never be mad at you, silly boy," you murmur, carding your fingers through his hair absently. You give him a small smile, and he gives you a wavering one back—he's missing his front tooth. "I missed you."
"I missed you, muña," Jacaerys sniffles, pulling one hand from where he's clutching the back of your tunic to rub his face. You hum lightly, putting him back on the ground and kneeling in front of him, lifting your own hands to cradle his cheeks between them, thumbs wiping away his tears. He returns to clutching your arms, nails digging into your bicep. "I hated going to lessons with Maester Gerardys, and I hated going to feasts, and I hated training, and I hated everything. I just wanted to sit in the garden with you all day, but you weren't here."
You exhale through your nose as you hold his face gently, watching as he tries to hide it in your palm.
"I tried reading by myself," he continues in a rush, "but it wasn't the same because you weren't there to do all the voices. Mother tried, but she doesn't make the dragon sounds the way you do. It made me mad."
"I brought some books back from Pentos," you tell him with a small smile, hoping to calm him down and dry his tears. You pull him closer so that you can ghost your lips to his temple again. He immediately latches back onto you, arms wrapped tight around you. "I think you'll like them."
"What are they about?" he asks, eyes finally shining with excitement instead of sadness as he pulls back to look at you.
"Dragons, of course," you say with a mysterious smile, and Jacaerys gasps in delight. "How about tonight you help me unpack, and afterward I'll read you the first chapter?"
"With the voices?" he presses.
"Would I ever read a dragon story without the voices?" you ask, mock offended.
He smiles immediately, bright enough to chase away every trace of the tears that had been welling in his eyes. For a moment, he looks exactly as he did before you left—missing tooth, unruly curls, and eyes sparkling with excitement at the prospect of a story.
Then, the smile falters. He says quietly, "I missed you."
Your expression softens as you brush his hair back gently. "I missed you too, mandianna."
His gaze drops to the ground
"Sometimes…" he hesitates, chewing nervously on the inside of his cheek, like he isn't sure if he should tell you this next part. "Sometimes I still went to your room. I knew you weren't there! I knew that, but… it still smelled like you. I slept with stuffed Zuzu instead."
You tilt your head with an amused smile. "Surely it did not smell like me for the whole year, mandianna."
"I asked the servants not to wash your blankets," he blurts out before you can finish your sentence. You blink, brows furrowing slightly. "I thought—I didn't want them to smell different. I missed you. When they smelled like you, I could pretend you were still here."
You tilt your head slightly, letting out a puff of air as you give him a small smile. "Oh, Jacaerys."
He shrinks beneath the tenderness in your voice, cheeks red, suddenly looking embarrassed. "I know it's silly."
"It's not silly."
"I just missed you," he says again quietly, bottom lip trembling again. You reach up and cup his cheek again, your thumb brushing beneath his eye. "I missed you a lot, muña."
"You should have written to me," you tell him softly.
His eyes widen. "I wanted to," he insists again. "I really did."
"What stopped you?" you press, raising your eyebrows.
"I told you," he says with a pout, gaze averting to the side. "I didn't know what to say."
"You could have said anything, mandianna," you answer, pinching his cheek enough to watch it redden, laughing when he squeals. "I would have been happy to hear from you even if you were just complaining about Lucerys stealing your honeycakes."
"He stole them all the time!" Jacaerys says furiously. "And mother didn't do anything about it!"
"How dare she?" you gasp with mock offense.
"I was so angry!" he scowls, puffing out his little cheeks. Then he deflates and looks away. "I thought if I wrote the wrong thing, maybe you would stay away longer, so I just… I talked to your room instead."
You give him a bemused smile. "You spoke to my room?"
He nods once. "I told stuffed Zuzu what happened every day the same way I would tell you, but it wasn't the same," he says quietly. He lifts his gaze to yours, and his eyes are shiny again, but you can tell that he is trying his best not to cry from the way his throat bobs, and he chews at the inside of his cheek. His voice breaks in a way that makes you sick as he holds your hands tightly and whispers, "Please don't leave again. Please, muña."
"I won't," you promise, squeezing his hands gently. "Never again."
"You promise?" he asks skeptically, nails digging deep into your skin.
"I promise."
—————————
JACAERYS, 8; READER, 13; 118 AC
"He's so tiny," you say softly as you lounge with Rhaenyra in her chambers. Jacaerys and Lucerys are in the training yard—you were supposed to go with them, because Jacaerys never likes training with Ser Criston without you there to watch, but the birth was harder on your sister than she is willing to admit, and someone needs to look over her. "Tinier than Jacaerys and Lucerys were."
You poke at Joffrey's forehead, delighted when the boy gurgles and reaches for your finger, and Rhaenyra lets out a soft laugh, a fond expression on her face as she looks at the two of you lying in bed, resting back on the settee a few feet away. You had tried to insist that she should lie down, but she was quite adamant against it, and you are not fond of fighting with her when she struggles to keep herself upright.
"As much as I do adore the way you look after me, sweet sister, I am sure you have more important things to be doing. Were you not meant to sit with our father in the small council today?" Rhaenyra asks with a tired smile, pretending she is not in pain as she adjusts her legs.
You hate the way she winces every time she shifts.
You are certain this is Queen Alicent's fault—you had been furious when you passed Laenor and the boys on the way to her apartments, and he told you that the queen had called Rhaenyra to her chambers immediately after the birth, insisting upon seeing the babe before your sister had even been given the chance to rest. She had walked, bleeding and trembling, barely able to stand after the labor but forced to climb the winding stairs from her own apartments with a newborn in her arms, crossing the holdfast while every servant and noble stopped to stare at the blood trailing after her.
You had not been there—you had been in the sky for hours with Zūgaxes, oblivious even to the fact that Rhaenyra had entered her labors—but you found her immediately afterward. Still, she had smiled at you, even as her face had gone pale with exhaustion, and she leaned too heavily against Laenor when she thought no one was looking.
Maester Gerardys had ordered her to remain in bed for several days, but everyone was more concerned with tiny Joffrey, who was born too small for their liking, so no one noticed that your sister was already wandering around after an hour.
Except you, of course.
"All of your attendants and the maestars are focused on Joffrey," you say simply, sniffing as you raise your chin. "Somebody has to attend to you."
You do not notice the way Rhaenyra's expression changes at your words, snatching away the fluff he tries to stuff in his mouth. You stare down at the boy, a conflicted feeling tugging at your chest. You love Rhaenyra's boys—you do, but…
"Mandia," you say quietly after a moment, shoulders a bit hunched as you glance over at Rhaenyra, who tilts her head to the side curiously. You know that all women are meant to bear their husbands sons—you perhaps, more than anyone, so that the blood of Old Valyria might be passed on—but… "I do not think I should like to have children of my own."
Rhaenyra hums. "I used to think so too, did you know?" she tells you, and you look up, blinking at her in surprise. She nods with a small smile when she sees your surprise. "I was terrified when I found out I was with child the first time. I never pictured myself as a mother."
"Really?"
"Really."
You frown. "But you're…" You glance down at the little bundle wriggling happily in the bed next to you. "… You're perfect at it."
Rhaenyra laughs. "I assure you, I am not," she says with a smile. "I have made more mistakes than I can count."
You sniff. "I have never seen one."
"You had never seen a pufferfish until two weeks ago—does that mean they do not exist?" she teases, reminding you of the argument you got into with Laenor a few weeks ago because he insisted there was a type of fish covered in spikes and you refused to believe him until he dragged you out to sea to show you. Your face feels hot as you look away. "As I thought."
"Still," you say primly, crossing your arms and looking away.
"What made you think of this, sweet girl?" Rhaenyra asks, and you know she wishes to cross the room to brush your hair out of your face, but you scowl at her the moment she starts to move, and she sighs, holding her hands up in defeat as she lies back against the settee. "Did my boys horrify you so much they scared you off children altogether?"
She is teasing, but you frown anyway.
You say firmly, "No. I love your boys. In fact, I do not think I need children of my own when I already have two—three, now—little boys who insist on occupying all my time."
Rhaenyra laughs, tilting her head back. For the first time since you arrived in her chambers, she looks genuinely happy. She says, "Jacaerys would be terribly offended to hear himself counted alongside his brothers."
You scoff. "He ought not be. He is the worst offender," you tell her fiercely, smiling. "He sneaks into my apartments almost every night, steals the snacks I go through the effort of stealing from the kitchen, and has somehow convinced himself that half of my wardrobe belongs to him. I found my favorite cloak in his chambers the other day—I had been looking for it for weeks, mandia."
Rhaenyra's shoulders are shaking, though you think they ought not be because it is not funny in the slightest.
"Oh, hāedar, you misunderstand," she manages between laughs, wiping at the corner of her eye. "He would be offended because you called them your little boys as well. He gets rather cross whenever he's reminded that he must share you with his brothers."
You squint. Last week, Lucerys had fallen asleep against your shoulder while you read aloud in the gardens, and Jacaerys had spent the better part of an hour attempting to wedge himself between the two of you under increasingly flimsy pretenses until you had finally sighed and let him climb into your lap as well.
"You may be right," you concede at last, "but I digress."
"What made you think of this then, if not for my boys?" Rhaenyra asks again, determined to get to the bottom of the issue.
Your shoulders hunch slightly. You busy yourself with fixing the blanket wrapped around Joffrey as you try to figure out how to phrase what you want to say.
"The Queen said something to me this morning," you finally admit. "It is why I've spent the whole day flying."
Rhaenyra's expression shifts instantly, fondness hardening and lips pressed together. "What did she say to you?"
"She said she was glad to hear that I've flowered… I did not tell her, I assume one of the servants must have," you say quietly, playing with your own fingers, unable to lift your gaze to meet hers. "She said that she would speak to the king about—matches."
Flowering means womanhood, and womanhood means marriage, and marriage means children.
Rhaenyra exhales hard through her nose, jaw tightening, and you feel guilty instantly. Your sister has just given birth. She has just given birth and was forced to cross the Keep because Queen Alicent demanded to see the babe, and now you are throwing more issues at her as if she isn't already faced with enough.
"Mandia, I—"
"I will speak to our father, hāedar," Rhaenyra says before you can say anything else, gaze lifting to meet yours. She gives you that familiar, reassuring smile that always puts your nerves at ease. "Do not fret. Your elder sister will handle everything. I will not see you forced to do anything you displease."
You know that she means it. If Rhaenyra said she would move the heavens for you, she would spend every waking second ensuring that it happens. Even so…
"I do not wish to be a burden. I—I know it is a woman's duty to wed and bear children, but I—"
"You are not a burden, hāedar. How many times must I remind you?" Rhaenyra tells you with a soft smile. "Be at ease. I shall speak to father. I—"
The door to Rhaenyra's chambers opens with a loud bang, and both of you startle, gaze lifting just as Ser Harwin enters the room. Rhaenyra blinks once and gives the man a questioning look, and you tilt your head to the side.
"Forgive me, princesses," the man says, dark curls framing his face as he looks between the two of you. His gaze settles on you. "The dragonkeepers sent for you, princess. Zūgaxes is—agitated."
—————————
"Are you upset with me?"
You exhale as Jacaerys barges into your chambers later that night, brows furrowed indignantly, as though to mask the anxiety plain in the way he otherwise holds himself. Your gaze slips down to the way his fingers tremble at his sides and his shoulders are too stiff, and Jacaerys instantly shrinks, hiding his hands and standing straighter.
You glance away, lips pressed together, fingers thrumming against your desk.
"'I waited for you in the garden, but you didn't come," Jacaerys continues, voice pitching in accusation as he comes closer to you. "I waited in the library, but you didn't come. And then I thought you'd definitely come for supper, but you didn't. Where were you?"
"I was busy, Jacaerys," you say, clipped, and Jacaerys freezes a few feet away. You stop yourself from glancing at him over your shoulder because you know the moment you see his bottom lip wobbling, your anger will start draining away. "Perhaps you would be better suited attending etiquette lessons with Septa Elaine. You have clearly missed far too many."
Jacaerys does not answer for a long moment. He asks hesitantly, "What does that mean?"
"What that means, Jacaerys," you hiss, whipping around to look at him. He flinches backward, but you barrel on anyway. "is that I found my half-brother crying in the dragonpit after nearly being burnt alive by my dragon because you thought it would be a good idea to taunt him with a pig."
Jacaerys stares at you for a moment uncertainly, shoulders hunching inward as though to make himself small. He has been mad at you countless times before. If he feels as though you're paying more attention to Lucerys, he will give you the cold shoulder all evening, and if you dare to even hint at missing story time, he'll insist he never wants to speak to you again, then will appear in your chambers after supper, asking you to read to him with the sweetest smile.
You have never been angry at him before.
"It was just a joke," he whispers, voice small. "I didn't—"
"You didn't what?" you interrupt. "You didn't mean it? Is that it?"
Distantly, you know you should not yell at him like this.
He is only a boy—you're almost tall enough to reach your sister's shoulders now and still growing at that, but Jacaerys hardly reaches your chest, cheeks still chubby with fat, giggling at every unfunny joke that Laenor makes. Aegon is likely the one at fault for the prank, miserable wretch, but Jacaerys—
Jacaerys should know better.
Jacaerys knows, as you do, what it's like to be ostracized by the court for something out of his control. Aemond is not your favorite sibling—he is too uptight, clings to his mother so much that it makes you roll your eyes—but to mock him for not having a dragon?
You yourself did not have Zūgaxes until your fifth nameday. Your cradle egg did not hatch, and Dreamfyre, Vermithor, and Silverwing had all rejected you. Zūgaxes had been nigh wild after the years he spent terrorizing the Riverlands following Princess Daenerys's death to the Shivers in 60 AC, having hatched moments before the princess took her last breath. The newborn dragon fled in the chaos after losing the bond as soon as it had formed, and if he had not come to you by chance while you were flying with Rhaenyra, you might be in the same position as Aemond is now.
"Aegon said it would be funny," Jacaerys whispers, bottom lip wobbling. "It was a joke."
"Aegon says a lot of things," you hiss. "He is a fool. If he told you to jump from Maegor's Holdfast, would you do it?"
Jacaerys's eyes drop to the floor. He says quietly, "No."
"You know what it is like to have people laugh and whisper," you continue furiously. "You know it feels like to have people smile to your face and question whether you belong the moment you leave the room. You cry to me because they stare at your hair and your eyes, and you cry to me when people mention that you do not look like Ser Laenor. You know those are not jokes."
Jacaerys flinches. "Muña—"
"No," you snap. "Do you think your uncle feels any different when the whole keep laughs at him for not having a dragon?"
"I'm sorry—"
"Your mother will be queen one day, Jacaerys, and you will be king after her," you interrupt. "Everything you do matters. Every laugh and every foolish prank—every time someone sees you, they are deciding what sort of man you might become."
"I didn't mean it—"
"The lords do not whisper about Aegon the same way they whisper at you," you continue harshly, kneeling in front of him and grabbing his shoulders. He is crying now, fat tears rolling over his chubby cheeks, chest rising and falling rapidly as he tries not to sob. "They already question you, Jacaerys, and it will not stop. Every action you take makes them wonder whether or not you deserve the throne your mother will leave you. They are waiting for you to fail, Jacaerys, they—"
You cut yourself off when Jacaerys chokes on a sob, the sound rips through your anger as though someone had plunged a knife straight into it. His little shoulders shake beneath your hands. He is trying so desperately not to cry that it hurts to watch, biting down on his lip so hard you worry he might draw blood.
What are you doing?
"I'm sorry," he whispers again, tears falling freely now. "I'm trying to be good. I am. I didn't think."
Good will not be enough, you think, but do not say, fighting a sob of your own as you pull Jacaerys forward into your arms, sitting back on the floor and letting him clamber into your lap. He buries his face in the crook of your neck, muffling his cries into your skin.
Good will never be enough. You have watched the court use every careless word he has ever spoken as proof that he is unworthy. You have watched them turn his hair, eyes, and face into evidence against him. They will not stop because he grows older—if anything, they will only become crueler and louder.
And you fear one day that words will turn to swords.
You see the glances exchanged between the Queen and her allies, how every feast ends with another whispered slight and word disguised as courtesy. One day, your father will die, and everything held together by his presence will begin to crack.
Your sister will be queen, Jacaerys will be heir, and there are already too many people who have decided they will never accept either of them.
You are scared.
Perhaps you are imagining monsters where none exist—you have spent years watching nobles smile with their mouths and sneer with their haves, and it has made you cynical. You hope one day the two of you will laugh about how frightened you had been over nothing, but until that day comes, the fear remains.
You tighten your arms around Jacaerys until he lets out a tiny squeak of protest. Then he melts into you, arms looped around your shoulders, sniffling into the wet spot at your neck.
"I do not want you to grow up," you whisper before you can stop yourself.
"Why?" Jacaerys murmurs.
Your eyes slide shut. Because the older he gets, the fewer days remain where the greatest thing you have to worry about is a prank gone too far. You smooth a hand through his curls and press another kiss against his temple.
Instead, you say, "Because I like you just as you are."
He giggles. "I still want to grow up."
"Traitor," you tease, brushing your fingers through his hair as he snuggles into you.
"I want to be brave, and I want to ride Vermax all by myself, and I want to protect mother, and Luke, and Joffrey, and—" He pulls back to look at you, big brown eyes still watery. "—and you, muña."
You smile at him, your own eyes stinging with tears. "I'm the one who protects you, silly boy."
Jacaerys shakes his head so vigorously that his curls bounce. "Not forever," he claims. "One day I'll be big and grown, and I'll have a sword, and Vermax will be bigger than Zuzu, and I'll be the one to protect you."
You exhale softly through your nose, swallowing the lump that forms in your throat. He lifts his tiny hands to your cheeks, squeezing hard the way you always do to him when he is sad, then he leans forward until your foreheads touch.
"Don't be scared, muña. I'll be a good king," he tells you simply. "I'll be kind. I won't do things anymore just because Aegon tells me to."
"I know you will, mandianna," you murmur. "I know."
He bites his lip, twisting nervously in your lap. "Are you still mad at me?" You pull back just enough to look at him properly. His eyes are swollen from crying, cheeks blotchy and damp, fingers clinging to you. He whispers, "I want you to be proud of me."
You lift your hands to cradle his cheeks and say firmly, "I'm always proud of you, Jacaerys. Always. I'm sorry if I was cruel—I was only scared."
Jacaerys wrinkles his nose.
"Then don't be scared, muña," he says firmly. "I'll make sure you never have to be."
—————————
You should have known things would never be so easy.
"Where are my trunks?" you ask as you make your way to where Rhaenyra and the boys are getting ready to leave for Dragonstone. Jacaerys's face lights up from a glum frown when he sees you, and you toss him a wink that he giggles at. You look back up at your sister and say, "I told my handmaidens to make sure they were brought down."
Rhaenyra's brows furrow. "They are coming, perhaps?" she offers, making her way toward you to ghost her lips against your cheeks in greeting. "We are not in a rush, hāedar, do not fret."
But there is a tightness in your chest that unsettles you. Something has been off the past few days—you know it. The Queen always has that small, knowing smile on her face, and your father seemed inordinately pleased with himself. You had thought, maybe, the Queen was just pettily satisfied that Ser Harwin was being sent away and your father was just happy having his third grandson, but there was something—something off-putting that could not let you rest.
"Mandia," you whisper, clutching the sleeve of her gown. Your fingers are shaking. Rhaenyra looks down at your hands, alarmed. "I don't…"
"There you are! To think it would be so difficult to find my own daughter for a conversation," you hear your father say from the top of the steps leading into Maegor's Holdfast.
King Viserys leans on his cane as he makes his way down the steps toward you—Rhaenyra blinks in confusion, lips parting but words escaping them as she moves forward to greet him.
He looks worse, you think absently. Even just walking down the stairs is an effort, his face pale with exertion, sweat beading at his temples. Heaviness weighs on your chest—grief, maybe, but what is there to grieve about a man who has spent most of your life incapable of looking you in the eye?
"Father," Rhaenyra greets with a sad smile. "You did not have to come down to bid us goodbye. You should be resting."
"Nonsense," your father dismisses, squeezing her hand. The Queen Alicent and your half-brother, Aegon, follow behind your father. She looks too pleased with herself still—your heart drops to your stomach. "But it is not the only reason I have come. My dear—" King Viserys turns to look at you, eyes upturned. You think it is the first time he has ever looked you in the eye. "—I would like for you to stay behind."
He reaches out to take your hands in his, passing his cane to a nearby attendant. They are clammy and unfamiliar; you are not sure if you are breathing.
Somewhere behind you, you hear Jacaerys inhale sharply, and to your side, Rhaenyra makes an audible noise, confused.
"Father," she starts, a bemused smile on her face, "I—"
"Alicent—she had the most wonderful idea to unite both sides of the family," King Viserys continues with a breathless smile, squeezing your hands. Behind him, Aegon, who had been bored and looked as though he wished to be anywhere else, starts to squint, realizing something might be wrong. Alarm hits him slower than it has hit you. He looks at you questioningly, but you cannot even bring yourself to meet his gaze. "It is high time we put these petty squabbles behind us, don't you think?"
You cannot feel your fingers.
Your pulse pounds so violently in your ears that you can almost not even hear your father over it. Across the city, you hear Zūgaxes let out a screech, feeling your fear as his own.
"Father," Rhaenyra starts to say, voice riddled with disbelief. "You cannot mean—"
"You and Aegon shall wed, my dear," King Viserys says, squeezing your hands as though this is news that shall delight you. "You are both of age. A marriage between the two of you shall bind the family once and for all. Alicent proposed it only a few days ago—I confess, I do not know why I had not thought of it sooner."
"What?" Aegon blurts out, eyes wide. "Me?"
"Quiet, Aegon," Queen Alicent says sharply, and Aegon silences immediately, gaze darting over to you as though you have any means of fixing this. "It is a fine match."
"A fine match?" Rhaenyra demands, arm extending outward to push you behind her, stepping between you and your father. "They are children. You cannot be serious, father."
Aegon stares at you, and you stare at him.
He is only twelve; you are only thirteen.
You can see the fear you feel reflected in his eyes.
"Alicent tells me that she has bled," Viserys dismisses. You knew it—you knew something was wrong, you knew to be scared. "She is a woman grown, Rhaenyra."
"She is thirteen," Rhaenyra hisses. "Aegon is twelve."
"The King has already made his decision, Rhaenyra," Queen Alicent says coolly. "Would you question it?"
Rhaenyra stares at her in disbelief, a scoff slipping from her lips. She asks quietly, "How could you do this?"
For a moment, something flickers across the Queen's face—her lips become pinched, her gaze flits to the side—guilt? It couldn't be—Alicent is cold and cruel, stone made flesh, she has always hated you and your sister. You must be mistaken.
"Was it not you who offered marriage between your son, Jacaerys, and my daughter, Helaena?" the Queen asks. You blink, unsure if you heard her properly. "Let us bind our families through marriage, as you once proposed yourself."
Your head snaps toward Rhaenyra, appalled. She was trying to marry Jacaerys off? Rhaenyra does not meet your gaze, so you know it is true.
"It is not the same," Rhaenyra says, shaking her head, stepping forward again. She turns to your father, expression clearing of anger and disdain as she gives him a more pleading look. "Father, please. She has only just flowered—she has hardly had a chance to understand what that means. You cannot mean to—"
"Enough, Rhaenyra," King Viserys interrupts, exhausted. He looks as though he's aged decades in a matter of minutes. Did he really expect everyone to be made happy by this news? "I have made my decision."
The pavilion goes quiet, and you cannot breathe. This cannot be happening. It is—it is not possible. You are not meant to marry Aegon, of all people. You would rather anyone else. You would rather take the vows and become a septa. Your gaze lifts to meet Rhaenyra's, but there is a terribly defeated expression on her face—one that you have never seen before. You feel nauseous, bile rising in your throat, lightness in your head.
"What does that mean?" Jacaerys finally asks, breaking the silence somewhere behind you. "What does that mean? Muña is still coming with us, isn't she?"
"Jacaerys," Rhaenyra begins quietly, voice low and unsteady, because if the king puts his foot down, there is nothing she can do. She looks at both of you desperately, because for the first time in her life, your sister does not know what to say. "I—"
"She promised," Jacaerys interrupts, voice becoming a bit shrill—understanding enough from Rhaenyra's tone to know that you will not be coming with him. That you will be breaking the promise you made to him not two years ago. He turns his gaze onto you, eyes blown wide with anxiety. "You promised, you—"
"Jacaerys," you say, barely able to keep your voice steady as you make your way over to him and kneel in front of him. His eyes well with unshed tears, and you lift one hand to his face, brushing your thumb beneath his eye to catch the tears before they fall. You lower your voice, speaking just to him as you say quietly, "Do not let them see you cry. You are a prince of the realm, your mother's heir. You must be brave, remember?"
Jacaerys's bottom lip wobbles as he nods.
"I will not be across the sea this time, mandianna—only the bay. Vermax is growing quickly. You will be able to visit as frequently as you please," you soothe, brushing his curls from his forehead, "and I will be able to come to you."
"But—"
"There are no buts, mandianna," you say softly, and Jacaerys inhales sharply, fighting a sob. "We all have our roles to play. You will be king one day, your duty is to the realm, and mine—" Your voice threatens to crack, before it can, you clear your throat and force a small smile. If you start crying, so will Jacaerys, and he needs to be strong now more than ever. "—and mine is to a husband. I must stay at his side."
"Then I will be your husband, muña," Jacaerys says desperately, fingers clinging to your sleeve. "You can come with us then. You won't have to stay here."
You exhale through your nose, pulling Jacaerys closer so that you can press your lips to his temple, rubbing easy circles against his upper back. He flings his arms around your shoulders and buries his face into your hair to hide his sniffles.
"That is not how it works, Jacaerys," you tell him quietly. His shoulders are trembling, small whimpers in the back of his throat as he tries not to cry. You hold him a bit tighter. "The king has made his decision."
"It's not fair," he sniffles. "You're my muña. Why does Aegon get to have you? He doesn't even want to marry you. I want to marry you."
You laugh despite yourself, because Jacaerys is too young to know what marriage entails, but he says it with the conviction of someone who has never been more certain of anything in his life. You press your lips to his hair before you pull back just enough to look at him. You find him glaring over your shoulder at Aegon with all the ferocity he can muster with shiny eyes and wobbly lips.
Aegon has gone pale, but you do not think it's because of Jacaerys's righteous fury.
"I don't think…" Aegon begins awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck. "I mean, I never—"
"Quiet, Aegon," Alicent says again sharply, and he falls silently immediately, shoulders slumping. She lifts her gaze to Rhaenyra, giving her a curve of the lips that doesn't reach her eyes. "Well, you and yours had best get going. Safe travels, Rhaenyra."
Rhaenyra scoffs and turns on her heel, but Jacaerys's grip on you tightens at the prospect of leaving.
"He doesn't even know your favorite story," he says desperately, as though it might change something, "or that you don't like onions, or that you can only eat two honey cakes before you start feeling sick, or that you can only sleep if there's a candle going. It's not fair. He doesn't know anything. He'll never take care of you."
"Jacaerys—"
"But I can!" he insists, wiping angrily at his cheeks. "I already do. I make sure you eat when you forget, and I bring your favorite cloak when you're cold, and I tell the servants not to wake you if you've fallen asleep reading. I know how."
"Jacaerys, come here," Rhaenyra says quietly, but Jacaerys only clings more desperately, nails digging into your skin. "Jace—"
You look up at your sister. There are tears in her eyes now too, though she does not let them fall. She gives you the smallest nod, an apology, a goodbye, and a promise wrapped into one gesture. This would not be the end of this—she will get the boys settled at Dragonstone, and she will return for you.
"Mandianna," you murmur, cupping Jacaerys's damp face between your hands. "You must go with your mother." You press a kiss to his forehead, then another to each cheek. "Look after Luke and Joffrey, and mind your mother—she is terribly stubborn and will forget to rest if no one reminds her."
Jacaerys fights another sob and nods, but Rhaenyra successfully pulls him away this time. She gathers him into her arms, and he clutches at her desperately, still looking at you over her shoulder.
"I'll come back for you," he promises. "I promise, muña! I do!"
You smile because he needs you to, even as your vision blurs—luckily, he is too far to see the unshed tears.
"I know you will, Jacaerys," you tell him. "I'll be waiting."
you should’ve known it would come to this, really.
the comforter, previously dumped unceremoniously on the floor from prior activities, now acts as a makeshift bed when xavier hikes one leg of yours over his shoulder. his silver hair lays a bit matted across his forehead, still warm from the shower you two took, but the hunger in his eyes is all the same—dark, prevalent, and ever growing.
“my hair is still wet…!” you try to complain, though it trails off into a small squeak when you feel the press of xavier’s blunt cock against your entrance. “xavie, we just—hnng, we just cleaned up.”
as you say this, your boyfriend only rocks his hips deeper, causing a soft moan to fall from your lips. your cunt weeps, still sore from the past few rounds, but yet graciously welcomes him home all the same.
xavier, to his credit, does pause when considering the situation you two are in: on the carpet of his room, his rock-hard dick partially in you, the bedsheets a soaked-through mess…
he blinks once. twice.
“we can always clean up again,” comes his soft yet firm decision.
then he’s pushing all the way in, stretching your gummy walls until the only think you can think of is how deliciously full you feel. your lips part in a whiny moan, one that xavier responds to by grabbing your other leg and hoisting it up onto his other shoulder.
“f-fuck, starlight,” xavier pants, head dipping lower as he loses control. “feels s’good, i just can’t get enough of you—please. please cum f’me again, haaah!”
you, meanwhile, are now scrambling for purchase, knuckles whitening as they grip the comforter for dear life. “xavie! please don’t stop, sh-shit—gonna cum—”
he gives the fat of your hips a tight squeeze, one that you hope leaves bruises, while his cock drills into your sopping pussy. at this point he’s got you in a mating press seeing stars, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
you’re so close, and he must be able to tell, because suddenly his thumb is on your puffy little clit rubbing circles, and that’s all it takes—you cum with a wail of a moan and a bowing arch, whimpers high and needy. he follows soon after, thick ropes of cum painting your walls, hot and gooey and dripping when he slowly pulls out.
xavier inspects the mess you two made with the casual interest of a man engaging in the news’ daily weather report.
when shouto comes back from long missions, you always expect him to immediately fall into bed and sleep for a week. but every time without fail you find yourself herded in the bed instead and fucked so thoroughly it's you who needs to sleep for a week.
SUMMARY: A prince washes up on the shore outside your cottage, and you must decide whether you’re going to leave him to his fate or save his life. Either way, you know there will be consequences.
WARNINGS: fem!reader, commoner!reader, eventual dragonseed!reader, jace lives, eventual smut, class differences (jace is obviously a prince and reader is a commoner). Reader is not too fond of him at first because she is from Sharp Point. This is a bit of a mix of show canon and book canon in that Jace went to the Gullet to save his brothers and Rhaena still claimed Sheepstealer
AUTHOR'S NOTES: i HADDDD to do a fic for our beloved boy </3 i miss you jacaerys velaryon, prince of dragonstone, heir to the iron throne. I will truly never move on from this death </3 so we need a world where he does not die. I'm saur excited for this because it's my first time writing a reader who comes from a commoner background, AND I finally get to write the dragons ... originally she was not supposed to be a dragonseed, but I just cannot help myself. If I'm going to be writing a hotd era fic, our girl is going to have a dragon. ANYWAY I hope you guys enjoy! please leave a comment or reblog mwah mwah
You wonder whether it is chance or divine intervention that a Targaryen prince washes ashore beside your cottage.
By the time you get to the edge of the sea after catching a glimpse of the corpse from your porch, it is half buried in the wet sand, lying limp at your feet, and there is a lump in your throat that you cannot seem to swallow away.
You do not know how you didn’t notice the sigil sooner.
It should have been the first thing that caught your eye, considering it was only a fortnight past that the Prince Aemond brought the great dragon Vhagar over the town you were raised in and razed it to the ground. The green and gold banners have been flying over the area since, and soldiers from the Reach have been constantly patrolling the roads, seeking out rebels and sympathizers.
You know better than to involve yourself in the affairs of any man that dons the three-headed dragon, you tell yourself, trying to will yourself to walk away from the corpse before anyone can catch you standing near it.
Red or gold, black or green—it does not matter to you, the wars of nobles are graves for common folk, and you have no desire to meet an early one. You have done well enough for yourself since your father passed. You refuse to squander the life you’ve built because a prince washed up on the shore near your home.
The boy at your feet is young, you cannot help but notice—your age, perhaps—dark of hair and fair of skin. At a distance, he had looked like any other body the sea had decided to return, and your first instinct had been to rush toward him rather than avert your gaze and pretend you had seen nothing.
Your hands tremble at your sides, and you have to forcibly still them as you take in a deep breath.
This is war, you recall the soldiers saying when the survivors demanded to know the reason for the tragedy that took place at Sharp Point—mothers with tears in their eyes and no bodies to bury, fathers who had lost their livelihood and the children for whom they built it, your neighbors, your friends. They say Lord Bar Emmon sits on the usurper’s council, so all of the commonfolk who were unfortunate enough to be born beneath his banners have been made to pay the price of his loyalties, allies of a queen they have never seen and casualties of a war they never chose.
This is war, they will tell you the same as they cut off your head if they see you kneeling beside this corpse and call mercy treason. Because it is always the burden of the commonfolk, paying the price of noble quarrels. Princes speak of honor and succession, of rights and oaths and stolen crowns, and it is fishermen and farmers who have to bury their dead. They will not care to hear what you have to say if they think you're affiliated with the Black queen and her supporters, just as the Prince Aemond did not care whether the people of Sharp Point had declared for the Blacks or merely happened to be born beneath the wrong lord.
But now, a prince lies dead upon your shore, and you wonder if this is how it begins again.
You should leave him.
The thought comes immediately, sensible in light of the circumstances, even if it does make your stomach flip. You should turn around and go home, bolt your door, and tell no one what you saw. The sea will reclaim him, or the crabs will pick his bones clean; maybe the patrol will stumble upon the body before the tide rises, and they can parade it through the streets the same way you heard they did to Princess Rhaenys’s dragon.
By the morning, he will be gone one way or another, and you can move on with your life as though you never saw him at all. He will be somebody else’s misfortune, or more hopefully, no one else’s at all.
It is a corpse, anyway. The boy has not moved since you arrived, and his chest does not seem to be rising and falling. There are two arrows through his shoulder, and a blueness to his lips that you’ve only seen in the dead, so—
As though to mock you, he lets out a wet, ragged cough, water bubbling at his lips, lashes fluttering just enough for you to catch sight of dark, hazy eyes that slip over you once before they slide shut again.
You feel sick to your stomach.
He does not stir again. One side of his face is bruised an ugly purple, his dark hair plastered to his brow with seawater and blood. He cannot be much older than you—the traitorous thought crosses your mind again. There is something terribly young about him, lying there half-drowned in the surf, one hand curled weakly into the sand as though, even unconscious, he is still trying to cling to something.
He does not look like a prince, you think miserably. He looks like a boy who is going to die.
The sea foams around your boots, and his body twitches as it threatens to reclaim him—the only feeble resistance he’s capable of in his state. You do not know how he still breathes—the fires might still burn on the Gullet, but the fighting ended days past. How long has he been floating about, dragged around by vicious currents and tossed by waves? It doesn’t even seem as though it should be possible, as though the Seven themselves intervened and—
—and dropped him on your shore, in your hands, and you are contemplating leaving him to die.
The thought is unpleasant, a heavy stone in your chest in place of your heart.
You are not a cruel person. You have cared for gulls with broken wings, and you leave scraps outside your door for the old orange cat that wanders the area. During the winter three years prior, you spent a fortnight nursing a lamb that did not even belong to you because you could not bear the sound of it crying.
And now there is a boy at your feet—bleeding, drowned, scarcely clinging to life—and because there is a dragon sewn onto his chest, you are trying to convince yourself to let the sea finish what arrows and war could not.
His lashes are dark against his cheek. Young, you think again, even more traitorous than the last, no older than ten and nine, if even. There is salt crusted at the corners of his mouth and blood soaking through his tunic in sluggish, rusty streams that stain the pale sand beneath him.
He looks cold—traitor, traitor, traitor.
He looks like a prince, you try to insist. A dragon prince, fire and blood and ruin, dangerous.
Cold. Hurt. Dying.
You need to walk away, you tell yourself again, desperate this time, because the longer you stand there staring at him, the more you fail to convince yourself of the correct path.
A prince's life is worth more than yours, more than your cottage and your little patch of land and the fishing boat your father left you. It is worth armies and dragons and castles and men willing to kill for a name.
If this boy lives, others will come looking for him.
And if the soldiers discover him in your home, they will not ask questions. They will not care that you found him by chance or that you never bent the knee to Queen Rhaenyra—that you could not even tell anyone why one half of House Targaryen wishes the other dead. They will see the three-headed dragon on his breast and the roof over his head, and that will be enough to condemn you.
Worse, the Prince Aemond and the dragon Vhagar could return. You think of Tom, the miller’s son, pulled from the boiling river after dragonfire reached the gristmill. You think of little Grace’s face as she searched the ashes for her mother. You think of all of your neighbors, all of your friends, who hardly survived the first time fire rained from the sky, and you think of all of those who didn’t.
He is not worth it. He is not worth the risk. A prince is only a man born with a special name, there’s no reason you should save him and condemn countless others—he bleeds the same, he dies the same, and when the Stranger comes for him, he is no more spared than any other man.
Except, he didn’t, did he?
He should be dead—any other man would be dead.
Two arrows through the shoulder, half-drowned, tossed upon the sea for days on end—there is no surviving that. Yet he breathes still, ragged and shallow though it may be, his fingers twitching every now and then.
The Stranger came for him and left empty-handed.
The Stranger came for him and left him with you.
Why?
There are no prophecies in your life, no gods whispering in your ear. You are a fisherman's daughter with a cottage by the sea and enough coin to keep yourself fed through winter if the catch is good. You know little of the gods save for the prayers your father taught you as a child and the candles you light for him on his nameday. The Seven did not save your father or your town; they did not save Tom or Grace’s mother or any of the others who screamed as dragonfire turned their homes to ash.
So why? Why this boy? Why this prince? Why should the gods spare a dragon's son when they had not spared children and fishermen and mothers? Why have they left him for you?
You do not have an answer. The only answer before you is a body on the sand, breathing when it ought not to be.
You stare down at him, furious and distressed and so, so unsure. He looks dead again—still as driftwood, cold and pale, stiff. His lips are blue like the dead, and his chest hardly rises and falls. You wonder if you imagined what you saw before. If your guilt conjured a cough where there had been none, if your conscience simply could not bear the thought of walking away even from a corpse.
Slowly, you sink to your knees beside him, damp sand clinging to your knees, the sea foam wetting your trousers. Your hand is still trembling in spite of all efforts to still it. You lift it to his throat, hesitating only for a moment.
If there is life, you will do what you must.
If there is not, you will turn and walk away.
You have never prayed for someone to be dead before.
Please, you think now miserably. Please.
Your fingers brush the skin of his throat—it is cold. He must be cold. So cold, that for a brief, terrible moment, hope flares in your chest, and then—
There is a flutter—it is weak and uneven, so faint that you almost miss it, but it is there.
Your head hangs forward, and you blink away the tears that prick in your eyes, because you know this action will have consequences. You know that there is no going back once you have entangled yourself with dragons. You know that every story told of House Targaryen ends in blood and fire and ruin for everyone foolish enough to stand too close them.
You know that this boy could be the death of you.
The soldiers could discover him. Your neighbors could discover him—as much as they care for you, they fear Vhagar more. If word spreads that a prince of the black faction lives and is hidden beneath your roof, you could hang for it. They could burn your cottage to the ground. They could drag you through the streets and call you traitor.
Worse still, he could recover.
Because then he would not be a half-dead boy on the sand. He would be a prince again. A son of the house of the dragon. He would leave, and the war would continue, and perhaps one day you would hear his name in some tavern and learn that he had mounted a dragon and burned a town much like your own.
The sea rushes forward again, cold water washing over your boots and his legs alike. He does not move. He is so cold.
“Why did you have to wash up here?” you breathe out—frustrated, angry, resigned, because you have never been one to turn your back on someone in need.
His pulse flutters once more against your fingers, and he does not stir.
Then, because the gods have a cruel sense of humor and because your heart has always been softer than your head, you slide your arms beneath the prince’s shoulders and knees.
With a soft curse and the sea at your heels, you gather the dragon prince into your arms and carry home your ruin.
—————————
He is Jacaerys Velaryon, son of Queen Rhaenyra, Prince of Dragonstone, Heir to the Iron Throne.
Three days have passed since you found him on the shore, and he has hardly stirred since you dragged him into your cottage. You have been riddled with anxiety since, jumping at every sound and fearing the worst when someone addresses you. It is only a matter of time—whenever a rider passes on the road beyond the trees or the patrol sweeps down your shore, you think they care coming for him. Coming for you.
You spend the first day trying to keep him alive.
You drag him home, soaked to the bone and half-frozen, laying him atop your bed as you get a fire going and wrap him in your blankets. For a while, you can only stand there staring at him, because it is one thing to decide not to leave a boy to die and another entirely to realize you have no idea how to save him.
You have to cut away his tunic to remove it, and it makes it easier to breathe once the three-headed dragon is out of sight, but then you have to address the monstrosity beneath it—bruises darkening one side of his ribs, yellow and purple and black, cuts everywhere, salt crusting his skin and body a ruin of blood.
You wonder how many rocks the currents slammed him into before he finally washed to shore. The sea around Sharp Point is, well, sharp. Jagged rocks and narrow inlets line the coast, and more than one fisherman has vanished into the sea after his boat drifted too close to reefs beneath the tide.
It is a cruel stretch of sea—crueler still to a boy half-dead and alone.
And then there were the arrows.
The shafts protrude from his shoulders at awful angles, the flesh around them angry and swollen. You cry while removing them, because you have never done something like it before, and your hands cannot stop shaking. A part of you wonders if the gods left him for you so that his blood could be on your hands instead, and you cannot fathom what you’ve done to deserve this.
You expect him to wake once you start removing them. At the very least, you expect him to scream. The first shaft pierced cleanly through his shoulder and is easy enough to ease out, but the second lodged itself deep in the flesh, refusing to budge until you brace your foot against the bedframe and pull with both hands.
It should have been agony—any man would have cried out.
The prince does not so much as flinch.
You remember staring at him afterward, the arrow clutched in your hand and your own cheeks wet with tears, wondering if he had died while you were removing it. You press your fingers to his throat with a panic that borders on hysteria, and you aren’t sure if you’re relieved or disappointed when you feel the fluttering pulse still there.
A traitorous part of you wishes that he had died.
A corpse is a tragedy, but a tragedy can be dumped in the sea and abandoned. A tragedy will not bring more war to your ravaged home.
A living prince, on the other hand, is a catastrophe that you do not know what to do with. Your home has already faced ruin once, and the longer he remains in your care, the more at risk you will be of bringing it upon you all again, because if he is captured in your care, then that means war and blood and fire and more dragons. The whole town, all of the survivors, everyone will be branded traitors to the crown.
But the prince lived, so you can only hope that he will heal quick enough and be gone before you have the chance to regret helping him.
The fever comes on the second day, and the corpse in your bed finally gives to life.
You notice it when you are wiping the blood from his face, and your hand brushes his forehead. It’s as though all of the cold of the sea had fled his body at once and left only fire behind. It’s what you expect of a Targaryen prince, really—the burning heat, closer to dragon than man— it feels more natural than the cold, but you are scared anyway.
You do not know much about treating battle wounds, but you do know about fever.
Your younger brother died of it during a long winter a decade past—no matter how hard your mother worked to keep it at bay, he was dead by nightfall. Your mother passed in the same moon, to the same sickness, as did half of the children in Sharp Point, because fever does not care whether you are young or old, rich or poor, prince or peasant.
His skin is flushed, sweat beading along his brow and soaking the dark hair at his temples as he twists in the sheets violently, threatening to reopen the wounds you just stitched close. His breathing changes too—no longer the slow drags of air, shallow and erratic, like he had spent days at sea only to begin suffocating on dry land.
You fetch water from the well until your shoulders ache. You lay cloths upon his brow and change them whenever they grow warm. You feed the fire, then fear you have made him too hot and let it die down, only to panic that he would grow cold again and build it back up.
Every few minutes, you find yourself pressing your hand to his forehead or his throat, checking for fever and pulse alike. There is never a change—still alive and burning, and you don’t know whether to be grateful or terrified.
At one point, he begins muttering. You cannot make out most of it—the words are slurred, little more than broken sounds spilling from fevered lips. Names, you think. Places, maybe. Some do not seem to be spoken in the common tongue.
Once, very clearly, he whispers, "Mother.”
You have to change the cloth on his forehead afterward and pretend your eyes are not stinging with tears. You curse the gods throughout that second day—you wish that you’d never left the cottage at all the morning you found him, you wish you’d left him to die, you wish, you wish, you wish, as though any of it matters anymore.
You sleep little that night, sitting beside your bed and watching him breathe. Terrified every time his breathing slowed, and equally terrified every time it quickened. You count the moments between each breath until dawn creeps through your shutters, and by morning, you feel like you have lived a lifetime in a single night.
The third day—today—you have to make the trek into town.
You have used the last of your willow bark, and there is only a heel of stale bread left, a few onions, and enough drinking water to last another day if you’re careful. You need fruit and vegetables, more barley, and you have a catch that you never got the chance to bring to the market to trade the morning you found the prince.
You cannot put it off any longer, much as you may wish—the prince needs supplies, and unfortunately, so do you.
You do not like going into town. You have never liked going into town—you have always been fond of your neighbors and your friends, but you were not fond of the way they circle and crowd you whenever you make your weekly appearance for trade. You got overwhelmed too quickly, and you didn’t know how to make an exit without seeming rude, so you ended up staying there for hours when there were many chores you had to get done at home.
Now, it is like a graveyard. The destruction following the Prince Aemond’s attack on Sharp Point has yet to be cleared. The soldiers are too busy with war and patrols, and the survivors are too busy trying to salvage what they can of their ruined lives.
When you enter the town, you can still smell charred flesh and death.
The children usually run to you when you arrive, chattering about the games they’ve played and the rumors they’ve heard, if you saw the wild dragon Grey Ghost while you were out on your boat this week, and you smile and nod along with them. But all of the children are dead now, and you are not crowded by friends and neighbors eager to make conversation with you, because most of them are dead now too.
It is in the market when you overhear green-cloaked soldiers talking about the battle that took place in the Gullet, and you finally put a name to the face of the prince in your home. You try to pretend that you’re not eavesdropping, fingers shaking terribly as you sort through the fruits and vegetables that Wylem carted in from his farm, because you need to know if they have figured out what you’ve done, if they know the prince is in your care, under your roof.
But they only laugh as they speak of dead dragons and a mourning pretender queen. They say the Blacks have lost two dragons, and the bastard prince, Jacaerys Velaryon, is dead. Any man who can find his body washed up on the shore to deliver to the King will see unfathomable riches.
Momentarily, you are angry at yourself because the royals brought this war and have caused all of this suffering, but when your lashes flutter shut, for a split second, you can only picture the haunted look on your mother’s face as she held your dead brother in her arms. You think of Miss Ellyn, who tossed herself into the sea when she found out her son had been killed on the Kingsroad. You think of your friend, Marie, who you found screaming, fisting her infant daughter’s ashes after the burning of the town. You think of them, and then you think of the black queen on her throne, and you feel the same lump in your throat.
Then you remind yourself that this is her doing.
Her doing, her half-brother’s doing, the other nobles’ doing. They brought this war to Westeros, they brought death and destruction, fire and blood, and you force yourself to shake your head and push it all away, trading some of the fish you caught for fruits and vegetables and barley with a watery smile that you’re sure Wylem took notice of.
There are more important things to worry about: if there is a bounty on the prince’s body, everybody will be searching for him. Not just soldiers, the people too—your friends, your neighbors, everyone. Many starve, more struggle, so if there is an opportunity for gold, they will all be on the hunt. You need to burn his cloak and tunic when you get back to the cottage, anything that associates him with House Targaryen.
You nearly trip over your own feet racing back to the cottage, second-guessing every conversation you had in the town. Wylem asked you why you were getting twice as much food as you usually get—you do not remember how you responded.
Did you imply that you had a visitor? Why can’t you remember? What excuse did you give? Did the soldiers overhear? Are they following you? Do they know? Why can’t you remember? You’re scared—you do not think you’ve ever been so scared in your entire life.
You look over your shoulder every five steps, worried that they’re going to come charging after you, demanding you to bring them to the Prince Jacaerys before taking your head. You’re not cut out for this—you’re the daughter of a fisherman. There’s no world where you should be worrying whether soldiers are going to hunt you down for saving a prince.
There are tears in your eyes when you make it back to the cottage, and your fingers are trembling around the bags Wylem packed for you. You shut the door behind you, and it takes you three tries to bolt it properly. When you finally do, you rest your forehead against the wood and let out a trembling sigh.
You—
“Who are you?”
There is a knife to your throat.
You stare at the crack in the wood of your door, breath catching, desperately trying not to move lest you risk the knife slicing through your skin. The crack appeared last winter, you remind yourself, trying not to focus too much on the fact that you can feel the cool edge of the blade. Your friend, Evander, was meant to fix before the next, but Evander is dead now, and you may well be too, if the knife at your throat presses any deeper.
“Answer me, who are you? Where am I? Wh—” the prince—Jacaerys Velaryon, Prince of Dragonstone, Heir to the Iron Throne—falters suddenly, and you can only breathe again when the knife drops from your neck, and you feel the presence at your back disappear. “You—you are a woman.”
You do not turn to look at him immediately, eyes sliding shut as you fight to steady the frantic beating of your heart, drawing one slow breath after another until your shaking eases enough to trust your legs. Your fingers tighten on the bags cradled in your arms before you force yourself to turn around.
Prince Jacaerys Velaryon stands three paces behind you, one hand braced against the edge of your table, pained, pale, barely conscious. He is bare from the waist up, and the stitches you painstakingly worked through his torn skin have pulled loose, fresh blood soaking the bandages and dripping down his chest and back.
You see more clearly in the light of the afternoon sun just how ruined his body is, bruises and cuts—you think his ribs must be broken, you did not notice just how bad off he was when you had him lying in the dim corner where you keep your bed.
For a moment, you forget that you are face-to-face with a Targaryen prince—it is only the boy you dragged in from the sea and spent hours trying to keep alive.
Your lips curve down into a deep frown, brows knitting together. You exhale as you say, “You reopened your wounds. It took me an hour to get them properly closed.”
The prince stares at you.
As soon as the words fly from your mouth, you remember who it is before you. The son of a queen. The heir to the Iron Throne, if one listens to his mother. A pretender's heir and bastard, if one listens to her enemies. You do not know which of them is right, nor do you particularly care. Such questions belong to lords and knights and people with far too much time to argue over crowns.
To the likes of you, prince is title enough for you to keep your mouth shut and your head bowed.
He does not immediately respond, gaze flicking around your cottage uncertainly. Your bed, stained with his blood. The dying hearth. The table where you left out the last bits of the bread, just in case he awoke while you were gone and was hungry. The bandages you left at his bedside. The basin of pink water you forgot to empty before leaving for town.
His lips, dry and cracked, part as he stares at you and murmurs more to himself than to you, “You tended my wounds.”
You hesitate, then nod, swallowing once. “I found you on the shore a few days past, my prince—” Your Grace? What is the proper way to address a prince? My Lord does not seem grand enough for the heir to a queen. Prince feels the safest—whatever he may be, no one seems inclined to dispute that part. “—I… you should probably be resting.”
“I need to know what happened,” he says instead, stepping closer to you. He is too pale, sweat beads at his forehead, dark curls matted to his skin. His eyes are wide and wild, pupils dilated the same way you’ve seen in men mad with grief or fear or fury, moments before lashing out at the nearest person. You find yourself tensing instinctively. “What do you know of the battle that took place on the Gullet? Did Baela make it back to Dragonstone? And Rhaena—she was on that wild dragon, and—my brothers, did my brothers make it back? How long has it been? Where are we? How far is it to Dragonstone? I must return immediately, I—”
The prince only just seems to realize how you’ve drawn away, back pressed against the door to your own home, arms tightening around the sack in your arms whenever he comes closer. His tongue darts out to wet his cracked lips, gaze flicking to the knife he dropped onto the floor and the fear in your face.
Shame crosses his expression instantly.
“I—” His expression twists as he puts space between the two of you again. You wonder whether it’s from pain or from struggling to force out an apology. Both, likely. He continues, “You have helped me—saved my life, most like—and here I am frightening you. I… I thought I’d been captured. I woke in an unfamiliar place. I didn't know where I was. I didn't know if I was a prisoner or if the battle had been lost. I heard the door open and…”
He trails off, and you stand there awkwardly, tension easing slowly from your shoulders. He is still on guard, but he does not seem so inclined to pull a blade on you again. Your lips part to tell him where he is, what little you know of the battle on the Gullet.
Instead, you ask, “Do most enemy strongholds look like a fisherman’s cottage, my prince?”
You are mortified the moment the question spills from your lips—he is a Targaryen prince, they are known for blood and fire and madness, dragons and crowns, and you speak to him as though he’s one of your peers.
Prince Jacaerys stares at you for a long moment, and then, to your astonishment, his gaze flicks around the inside of your home again, and something suspiciously like embarrassment crosses his face.
“I suppose not.”
The corner of your mouth twitches despite yourself, and you let out a soft puff of air through your nose before making your way across the room to place the sack you’ve carried from town onto the table. You will have to sort all of what you’ve got later; for now, you need to get the prince resettled before he opens up any more of his wounds.
You turn to look at him again, faltering when you see the pained expression that crosses his face, so sudden that it steals all the color from his cheeks. His hand shoots to his side, fingers digging into the bandages wrapped around his ribs.
“My prince?” you ask hesitantly, taking half a step forward, arm only slightly extended. It is one thing to carry him to your cottage and treat his wounds while he’s unconscious; it is different now that he’s awake.
Prince Jacaerys inhales sharply through his teeth. He is swaying on his feet, breath gone shallow—he looks as though he’s moments from collapsing hard onto your wooden floor. Still, his jaw clenches and the muscles in his neck tighten as he draws himself upright through sheer stubbornness.
“I am fine,” he insists.
“You should sit, my prince.”
“I am standing,” he replies with a tight smile, as though a bead of sweat isn’t rolling down his temple from strain to remain upright and his lips aren’t trembling with pain.
“Barely.”
The prince blinks as though caught off guard by the response, casting a look that is partially confused, and mostly offended in your direction. Your lashes flutter shut as you brace yourself for a volatile reaction, because he is a prince and you are a fisherman’s daughter, and you are arguing with him as though he is an equal and not one of those dragon-riding royals people compose songs about. You think you must have lost your wits entirely these past few days.
Instead, he shoots back, with all the dignity he can muster while visibly swaying, "I have endured worse."
You stare at the blood soaking through the bandages wrapped around his shoulder, uncertain if you believe him. You say with less heat, "That is not the same as being well, my prince."
His jaw tightens, and you fight a sigh. Gods, he actually looks as though he is preparing an argument.
You wonder, briefly, what your life has become. Three weeks ago, your greatest concern had been whether the currents would ease up enough for you to take the boat out of the shallows to catch some fish. Now, Sharp Point has burned and you are standing in your cottage, arguing with a dragon prince about his injuries.
The absurdity of it nearly makes you laugh, wondering if perhaps this entire ordeal is some fever dream brought on by bad fish and Leila’s uncle’s dubious ale.
Then, Prince Jacaerys’s left leg buckles.
He reaches for the table and misses, injured shoulder slamming into the edge hard enough to wrench a strangled cry from him, and before you can think better of it, you're moving.
You let go of the sack of fruits and vegetables and barley you were keeping steady on your table; it topples over, and all of your pristine apples go rolling across the floor of your cottage, but you barely notice, panicked when you realize that he careening right toward the hardwood floor.
You catch the prince around the waist just as he starts to fall, but he is heavier than you expect.
You brace yourself, convinced that he is going to take you down with him, but you manage to steer him sideways toward the chair beside the table. He collapses into it heavily, breath hissing through clenched teeth as pain flashes across his face.
Momentum carries you forward with him—far, far too forward.
One hand lands against the uninjured side of his chest to steady yourself, the other gripping the arm of the chair. For a horrifying second, you are practically sprawled across the heir to the Iron Throne’s lap. You jerk away so quickly you nearly trip over one of the escaped apples, face burning and hands shaking.
"Sorry," you blurt, mortified. “Sorry. Sorry, I did not mean—”
“I believe,” Prince Jacaerys begins with a grimace, “that was my fault.”
You do not respond, flustered, trying to put more distance between you to calm yourself down. Your gaze flicks back over to him, but he is too busy grinding his teeth as he glances down at his wounds to pay you any mind. You let out a soft puff of air through your nose before you look at the apples rolling about your floor, and then reach for one still on your table—you might have lost some sense over the past three days with the little sleep you’ve gotten, but you are not about to feed a prince food off your floor.
You make your way back over to him and hold the apple out to him. He blinks once at it before his gaze lifts to yours questioningly.
“I do not know when last you ate—a while, certainly,” you tell him quietly. “You should get something in you while I redress the bandages. I’ll cook some stew once I’m certain you’re not going to bleed out.”
Prince Jacaerys exhales through his nose before he takes the apple from you, rolling it between his fingers. You step past him so that you can move the basin of water closer to where he’s sitting, grabbing a clean rag and the bandages that you left next to your bed.
You come to stand in front of him again, hesitating before you motion to the wounds on his shoulder. You ask, “May I?”
His dark gaze flicks up to yours briefly before he nods, and your throat tightens as you shift closer, fingers fumbling a bit as you grab for the edge of the bandages to unwind them from around him. It is much more intimidating doing this while he’s awake, inches away from you, and eyes tracking your every move.
“I found you three days ago, my prince,” you tell him at last, trying to remember all of the questions he asked earlier so that you can busy your mind with something other than the fact that you can feel his skin hot against yours. “Before that, the fighting died another three. In truth, my prince, I do not know how you survived so long at sea.”
Prince Jacaerys says nothing in response. His attention remains fixed somewhere beyond the wall behind you, expression distant. You suspect he is counting the days since the battle, the hours his family has believed he is dead, the minutes his mother has spent mourning him. You keep your gaze trained on his shoulder as you unwind the last of the bandages and set them down on the table.
You press your lips together when you see that the stitches have loosened at the back of his shoulder—where one of the arrows had dug deep, but not deep enough to pass cleanly through. Pulling it free had torn through muscle and flesh alike, leaving a ragged injury that had taken you nearly an hour to clean, stitch, and stop bleeding.
You exhale as you run the pad of your finger briefly over the stitches, trying to figure out if you can salvage what effort you already put in or if you would have to pull them out and redo them entirely.
“And my family? My younger brothers? Baela and Rhaena? Have you heard what has become of them?” the prince asks, and you glance up just enough to see how his jaw tightens when your finger brushes over the wound. “Did we win the battle?”
“I do not know if anyone can be said to have won that battle, my prince,” you answer quietly, tongue darting out to wet your lips as you finally start to get to work at reclosing the wound. Your gaze slips to the side when he finally starts to eat the apple you passed to him. He makes a noise in the back of his throat, as though he’s only just realized how hungry he is. “Both fleets were decimated. The dead still wash up on the northern shore.”
How did Prince Jacaerys make it to your shore, then?
Not for the first time, you have to wonder if the gods themselves placed him directly into your hands.
Most of the rest of the dead have washed up on the northern and western shores of Sharp Point, as it is where the currents run strongest, but the prince somehow made it to where your cottage sits on the eastern shore. If he had washed up anywhere else, the patrol would have certainly found him by now. You've heard they have spent the last several days combing the beaches, hauling bloated corpses from the tide and turning them over with the tips of their spears, searching for the dragon prince they are certain the sea claimed.
Prince Jacaerys’s breath hitches when you tug lightly at the stitches holding the skin of his shoulder together. Already, he’s finished the apple you handed him, absentmindedly turning the core between his fingers while his thoughts remain leagues away.
It is only when the last bite is gone that he seems to notice, and his gaze drifts toward the table. He hesitates, and you think it is almost comical—this is the heir to the Iron Throne, a dragonrider, a prince who has flown into battle, and he looks as though asking for another apple might be an imposition too great to make when he’s been floating at sea for at least a week.
You hold the stitches carefully with your right hand so that you can lean forward and grab another apple from your table to pass to him. His cheeks color slightly when he realizes that you noticed.
“I did not mean to stare,” he murmurs, taking the apple from you and cradling it carefully between his hands. He asks again, “Have you heard what has become of my family?”
You shake your head, focusing on tending to his wounds again. You think that you’ll be able to salvage your work. It is good, you think—you can get him resting and then cook some stew for the two of you. You didn’t eat much yesterday, frazzled by the fever and trying to keep him comfortable, and you’re starting to feel a lightness in your head.
“I’ve only heard what the soldiers say in town, my prince,” you murmur, trying to figure out how to go about speaking the news he certainly won’t take well. The last thing you need is for grief to send him bolting for Dragonstone before he can so much as walk across your cottage without collapsing. If he does not kill himself by straining his body when it is not ready, then the patrols will certainly catch him and have his head—and then yours.
You let out a soft sigh as you tie off the stitches on his shoulder blade and lean down to wet the clean rag before lifting it to his bloody skin. You’re careful around the edges of the wound, trying not to disturb the stitches, working slowly at the dried and wet blood from the curve of his shoulder, over the collarbone, down the length of his back.
You try not to think too hard about what you’re doing.
If you do, it begins to feel far too intimate.
It is one thing to drag an unconscious stranger from the sea. It is another to stand so close that you can feel the warmth radiating from his skin, to brush your fingers across the line of his shoulders. You have spent three days tending him without much thought, because there had been no room for embarrassment while the Stranger lingered at his bedside.
Now he is awake and watching you, and every accidental brush of your knuckles against his skin seems to linger a heartbeat too long. He is a prince of the realm, and you are a fisherman’s daughter—people like you are not supposed to touch people like him, and yet—
You exhale through your nose harshly. You busy yourself with the rag, scrubbing a little harder than necessary at a streak of dried blood along his collarbone simply to distract yourself, and his jaw pinches.
“Sorry,” you say quietly.
“It does not hurt,” he replies—a lie, surely, any man would be in agonizing pain. But maybe not; any man also would have died in the sea. Maybe the rumors are true: the Targaryens are closer to god than man; they do not feel pain or have to fear the Stranger the same way people like you ought to. “What have you heard from the soldiers in town? Where are we?”
“Half a league from Sharp Point, my prince,” you answer, still evading the question, which he seems to realize from the way he glances at you over his shoulder, gaze sharp and accusing. He knows you are withholding something. You exhale lightly through your nose and then say hesitantly, “They say two dragons fell over the Gullet. I could not tell you which.”
“Two?!” Prince Jacaerys demands, immediately rising to his feet, so quickly that the chair scrapes against the floor, and you fear he might rip back open the stitches. He whirls on you, eyes wide, pupils large as coins, and you almost flinch. “Two dragons?”
You swallow thickly as you nod. “My prince—”
“One must be—” His voice catches. He cannot finish the thought. For the first time since he awoke, real grief overtakes him completely. It drains his face of what little color had returned, leaves him staring at nothing as though he can already see the answer waiting for him. “I need to know the second. Whose was it? Which dragon fell?”
It unsettles you how close he sounds to pleading when moments before, you had been wondering whether the stories of the Targaryens’ deism held some weight, because gods do not look like this. They do not stand in a stranger’s cottage with fear plain on their face, hands trembling as they wait for an answer they already dread.
The same lump forms in your throat now that did when you heard the soldiers mocking a grieving queen and couldn’t help your thoughts from turning to your own mother, to Miss Ellyn, to your friend, Marie. For a moment, he is not a Targaryen prince or a dragonlord; you see a son and an older brother. A boy your age who knows there are only a handful of dragons flying over the Gullet, and every one of them belongs to someone he loves.
“I do not—”
“I need to return home,” he says immediately, as though his face isn’t white with pain and his stitches don’t strain every time he moves. His eyes glaze over you as though you’re not even there, and he takes a step toward the door to your small cottage. “Sharp Point—there must be passage to Dragonstone, there—”
Panic flares in your chest when he makes as though to leave. It is noon, and the patrols have become more frequent along the shores outside your cottage. They’ve spent a week carding through the western and northern shores, and they’ve been sending more and more men to the east—you worry they’re becoming desperate. The longer they go without finding a corpse, the more they may fear that there isn’t one.
If they have an inkling that Prince Jacaerys is still alive, they’ll start kicking down doors, and if they start kicking down doors, they will find him, and your life will be forfeit for harboring him.
“You cannot,” you say before you can think better of it, lunging forward as though to grab his wrist, but you stop yourself before you can make a terrible mistake, stopping a hairsbreadth from brushing his skin.
What is wrong with you? you think furiously. You need to rest tonight before you do something you cannot take back. Already you have gotten snide with and you have argued with a prince of the realm—now you have commanded him and nearly tried to seize him. You would have been lucky to only lose your hand in any other circumstance. Had he been standing in a hall instead of your cottage, surrounded by knights instead of rough-hewn furniture, you might have lost your head.
“I cannot?” Prince Jacaerys turns to you, bafflement momentarily eclipsing the fear that had consumed him only seconds before, as though he cannot quite fathom that someone has just told him no.
“My prince, you can scarcely stand,” you say. His gaze drops to where your hand is still hovering near his arm, head cocking to the side and brows lifting, and you snap it back to your chest immediately, heat flooding your face. “You have lost a lot of blood, you have barely eaten in a week, your wounds have only just been stitched again, and there are patrols searching for you every road between here and the sea.”
He continues to stare at you, disbelief riddling his expression. You have the distinct impression that no one has ever spoken to him this way before—certainly not a fisherman’s daughter. You force yourself to press on while he’s silent, hoping to make your point and rid him of this futile endeavor before he gets you both killed.
“The Prince Aemond burned Sharp Point’s harbor. There are no ships capable of navigating the currents of the Gullet, and the water still burns besides. I do not have a horse for you to ride to Stonedance. You could not get to Dragonstone even if you were not hurt,” you insist. “I will return to town tomorrow to try to get more information, but please, my prince, you mustn’t leave. You will only be putting us both at risk.”
For a long moment, you think that he will invoke his title or duty and insist upon leaving anyway, or maybe he will simply walk out the door despite everything you have said, and there is nothing you could do to stop him.
Then, his expression changes, twisting into something pained as he looks away, a shuddered breath escaping his lips. His shoulders, held tense since the moment you uttered the word two, sink ever so slightly. The panic that had driven him to his feet has nowhere left to go, draining from him all at once, leaving only exhaustion behind.
One hand drops back down to his ribs, pain crossing his face. Whatever strength carried him to his feet abandons him just as quickly as the panic, leaving him swaying where he stands. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he reopens them, the panic has been replaced by a type of defeat that is infinitely more difficult to look at.
You step forward cautiously when you see how his body is trembling, hand hovering uncertainly between the two of you, silently asking permission to help him. Prince Jacaerys stares at your outstretched hand, then at the bed on the far side of the room; you think, for a second, that he will attempt to cross on his own, but then his nostrils flare as he exhales, inclining his head just enough to grant you the permission his pride refuses to voice aloud.
Carefully, you slip beneath his uninjured arm, taking care to avoid the fresh bandages. He is warm—still warmer than he ought to be—and you can’t help but wonder if his fever has returned or if this is just how hot dragon prince’s typically run.
He leans into you only slightly, weight settling lightly against your shoulder—you suspect he is trying very hard not to. The journey from the door to your bed is scarcely a dozen paces, but it feels much longer.
“We were supposed to win this victory for her,” Prince Jacaerys says after a moment, voice breaking, the words slip free before he can stop it. You do not think the admission is meant for you, so you stay quiet. His throat works as he swallows. “We were supposed to—”
He cuts himself off, looking away again as you help him ease back down into your bed. As soon as he is seated, something close to relief crosses his face, lashes fluttering; the pain is still there, but not quite as terrible as it was when he was straining on his feet.
“The fact that you are alive at all is a victory, my prince,” you say quietly, even though you do not think the words will be of any reassurance. “You should rest. The sooner you are well, the sooner we can figure out a way to get you home. I’ll cook up a stew and wake you when it’s finished.”
He exhales again, jaw tightening as he looks away with a resigned expression. You turn your back on him to deal with the mess you made of the kitchen area, grimacing slightly at everything spilled across your floorboards and the table.
“What is your name?” Prince Jacaerys asks you suddenly. “I think I ought to know the name of the woman who saved my life.”
You let a soft breath, glancing over your shoulder at him. He is pained still, but there is an earnest look in his eyes that makes you falter—you remember how close you were to leaving him to his fate, and you have to look away again before he can catch the guilt that crosses over your face.
With a shaky exhale, you give the prince your name, and you cannot help but feel as though your life has irrevocably changed, and you do not think for the better.
————————————
The sea is on fire.
Jace cannot tell where the flames end and the water begins. Ships burn around him, masts collapsing into the waves with deafening cracks; men scream as they’re consumed by the fire, and dragons let out terrible shrieks as they dive low to bring down another ship full of Myrish mercenaries.
He tries to focus.
He chases after the rogue dragon, hoping to kill the rider before the dragon can burn any more of the Velayron fleet—or worse, catch Baela and Moondancer. But there is panic clawing at his chest, and smoke and salt clogging his throat and stinging his eyes. He’s screaming at Vermax to fly faster, to kill the rider, and then—then he sees Rhaena.
He sees Rhaena atop the wild dragon, and she is screaming, crying, desperately trying to get it under control, and Jace is confused, reeling as he yells at Vermax to stop at the last second. He and dragon both diving down away from the chase before Vermax could breathe fire on his cousin.
Rhaena does not have a dragon, he thinks, trying to figure out what is happening, and Rhaena is supposed to be with his brothers, and his brothers are captured by the enemy, and he isn’t sure if Stormcloud and Aegon made it to shore, and there is too much going on, and—
—and Vermax is falling.
Vermax is banking hard, being dragged down into the sea, and Jace’s stomach lurches. He’s yelling—begging—Vermax to fly, and Vermax is trying, he’s trying so hard, wings beating smoke through the air. He shrieks as another bolt catches him in the wing, and Jace feels the pain himself—he feels the pain, the primal fear, everything that Vermax does, because Vermax is his, and he is Vermax’s, and they are bonded, and Vermax is drowning, and the water is so cold, and Jace cannot feel his legs or his hands or his face.
He fumbles as he tries to unhook himself from the saddle, choking on water and air, maybe a sob, as Vermax sinks into the sea, a stream of bubbles rising to the surface as he cries for Jace, slowly disappearing into the dark waters. Jace desperately tries to dive after him, as if he has the strength to hold them both above the sea, because Jace has already lost Luke, and he—he cannot lose Vermax.
Not the dragon who had slept beside his cradle before he was old enough to walk, the hatchling he had grown up alongside, whose neck had once fit beneath his arm, whose first uncertain flights had ended with both of them tumbling into the sandy shore of Dragonstone while his mother laughed herself breathless.
Jace does not know a life without him—he does not want to know a life without him. His earliest recollections are not of nursery songs or wooden swords, but of warm green scales beneath tiny hands and the deep, rumbling croon that had lulled him to sleep when he was scarcely more than a babe.
When Jace learned to walk, Vermax learned to fly; when Jace’s voice deepened, Vermax’s roar had too.
There has never been a Jacaerys without Vermax.
But Jace’s lungs are burning, and he cannot see the familiar green scales anymore, and his body is reacting, seizing and spasming because there is no air left in him and water all around. He does not know which way is up and which way is down, the water is too dark and too cold, and he cannot think, but—but he sees the bubbles. He sees the bubbles, and he follows them, and even as Vermax sinks to the bottom of the sea, he saves his rider one final time.
He reaches the surface with a gasp, gulping the smoky air, and everything hurts. His arms ache, his chest is too tight, his eyes burn, and he cannot breathe, because Vermax is gone. He can feel that Vermax is gone; there is a gaping hole in his chest where his dragon used to be, and Jace does not know what to do, he does not know how to live anymore, and he wants—
He wants his mother.
He just wants his mother.
He hears the cheers before he feels the first arrow, gaze lifting to the sky as he searches for Baela and Moondancer—they are not too far, he thinks, she'll come for him.
And then, there’s a dull throb in his shoulder blade as he pulls himself over a floating piece of driftwood, but he hardly takes note of the pain, because everywhere hurts, because Vermax is gone, because he wants his mother. He turns when he hears the cheering, and he sees the men on the ship, and he sees the crossbows and the bows and the Myrish banners, but he does not see anything at all, really, blinking once, staring.
The second arrow catches him closer to the chest.
And then—then all he remembers is sea.
White foam and bubbles, vicious currents and sharp rocks. He thinks he is dead more than he thinks he is alive, but there is so much pain. There is pain and emptiness, and Jace just wants—
“... prince, the stew is ready.”
Jace startles awake, breath hitching in the back of his throat. His body tenses immediately, because he does not remember where he is—he remembers the sea and the waves and rocks and pain and Vermax, but he does not remember…
The cottage. Waking up alone. The door opening, the fear—was he captured? Where is he? Where are his brothers? Where is Baela? What was Rhaena doing on the wild dragon? Mother, mother, mother—
You avert your eyes suddenly, an awkward expression on your face, and Jace suddenly remembers. He remembers you, the apple you passed him as you tended to his wounds; how he held a knife to the throat of a woman who is risking her own life to save his. He remembers that he is stuck bedridden in the bed of a commoner while his mother thinks he’s dead and fights for her throne alone.
He opens his mouth to apologize—to tell you that he will leave as soon as he is able, that he will ensure you’re properly compensated for saving his life—but he falters when he feels something hot and wet drip down his face.
He lifts his hand to his cheek and wipes at his face, looking down at the wetness smeared on his fingertips. For a long moment, he does not understand—seawater, maybe? But he is no longer being tossed around by the sea. He is warm in your cottage, the hearth burns low and your blankets are tangled around him. He blinks once, and another fat droplet of water rolls from his eye down his cheek.
Is he crying?
Heat rushes to his face so quickly he thinks it rivals the fever. He wipes away furiously, not sure if it’s more or less humiliating that you’re pretending not to notice for his sake, turning your back to him to ready the table.
Jace has wept before, more than most ought to—for the father who taught him fishing and sea shanties, and the other who passed before either of them could speak the truth out loud, for the grandfather he never truly knew, for the brother who felt less like a brother and more like his other half—but never, never in front of a stranger.
Jace promptly clears his throat and pulls himself together. He glances at you, praying that his face does not betray him, an excuse on his lips as takes a deep breath. Then he falters, mouth watering instantly, gaze cutting to the side where you are busy ladling stew into two chipped wooden bowls, back politely turned, as though you never noticed anything at all.
Jace doesn't think he’s ever been this hungry. He has dined in castles all his life—roasted swan, lemon cakes, arbor wines. He has consumed the finest meals Westeros has to offer and found them lacking, but he almost feels dizzy with need and pleasure at the scent of the stew you made.
“It—” Jace’s voice is hoarse from sleep. Embarrassed, he clears his throat again to try to even it out. “It smells good.”
You look at him over your shoulder with a small smile and murmur demurely, “I’m sure nothing compared to what you’re used to, my prince.”
“I do not know that,” he says lightly as he forces himself to his feet, grimacing as pain immediately shoots through his body.
Everything aches—his chest, his shoulders, his legs, his arms, his head. In truth, all he wants to do is curl up and sleep more; he cannot bear to keep going. Not now. Not after Vermax, after Luke, after making such a terrible mistake that he might have cost his mother her throne. His stomach flips at the thought, and he fights a shuddered breath.
He needs to keep going—there is no other choice. He needs to get back to Dragonstone as soon as possible.
You pause in the middle of setting the bowls on the table at his words to give him a questioning look. “My prince?”
“I have not tasted it yet,” he tells you, forcing levity into his tone, because you have saved his life, tended to his wounds, and now stand over a pot of stew you cooked for him, worrying that it is not good enough to satisfy a prince. The least he can do is ease your mind. "It would seem unfair to compare a meal I have not eaten yet.”
You blink at him once, and then you smile slightly—it’s a genuine one, not like the small one you forced in his direction just before—and Jace tries his best to return it as he crosses the small room. He shuffles the last few steps toward the table with considerably less grace than he would have liked.
“Perhaps” you reply softly, waiting for him to take a seat at the table before you do as well.
You do not immediately lift your spoon, and Jace hesitates—for a brief moment, an old childhood lesson surfaces. Do not eat until someone else has tasted it. Feasts at King’s Landing and supper at Dragonstone had been meticulous about such things—cups were poured and tasted before his mother, and plates were sampled before any of them took a bite of their food. The paranoia claws at him and disappears as quickly as it comes.
You had dragged him half-dead from the sea, spent days stitching his wounds and breaking his fever, and gave up your bed so he could sleep comfortably. If you wished him dead, you need only have left him on the shore.
“I never thanked you for what you’ve done for me,” he says at last, fingers grazing the wooden spoon dipped into the broth. “When I return to Dragonstone, I shall speak with my mother. She will see you properly rewarded.”
“There is no need,” you murmur, finally taking a sip of the stew when Jace lifts the spoon to his lips.
The broth is hot enough to sting his tongue, but he scarcely notices. It is a simple meal—carrots and celery, chunks of what he thinks is rabbit. It is the plainest thing he has eaten in years, and yet somehow, the best meal he can remember.
His stomach twists painfully as warmth settles into it, and before he can stop himself, he takes another spoonful, then another, the hunger of the past week overwhelming whatever restraint court etiquette had once led him. It is only when half the bowl is gone that he realizes how quickly he is eating.
Embarrassed, he forces himself to slow, lowering the spoon.
“My apologies,” he says, clearing his throat. “I fear I may have forgotten my manners.”
“You haven’t had a meal in over a week, my prince. You’re allowed to be hungry,” you say with a faint smile.
Jace lets out a half-hearted huff of amusement through his nose, though his smile fades as quickly as it came, returning to conversation to try to force himself to slow down and show a modicum of etiquette before he embarrasses himself further.
“There is every need for reward,” he disagrees, leaning forward slightly to look at you. For the first time since he woke in your cottage, he actually observes you—you cannot be much older than he is, beautiful certainly, but there’s a weariness in your expression that Jace cannot help but feel as though is his fault. “You saved the life of the heir to the Iron Throne. You surrendered your bed, tended wounds that would have killed most men, and risked the wrath of the Greens simply by allowing me beneath your roof. I cannot allow that debt to go unanswered.”
You stare at him for a moment, a conflicted expression on your face, and Jace shakes his head slightly as he presses.
“I do not possess enough coin to repay such a debt myself—” nor, he suspects, does anyone “—but my mother will. You needn't live here any longer if you do not wish to. We could see your cottage rebuilt if the fighting has damaged it, or grant you land elsewhere, if that is what you'd prefer. Whatever you ask, so long as it is within my power, I will see it done.”
You are quiet for a long while as Jace finishes off the stew, but he expects hesitation as you mull over what to ask for: gold, land, a better ship, perhaps. Your gaze drifts off to the side, and Jace’s follows it, faltering when he realizes that you’re looking in the direction of what remains of Sharp Point.
That’s right, he remembers—you mentioned your cottage was less than a league away.
From where he sits, he can just see the destruction through the small window. The town is little more than scorched foundations and splintered timbers now, dragonfire having reduced generations of work to ash in the span of a single afternoon. He cannot look at it for long, stomach twisting so unpleasantly that he fears the stew you just cooked him might come right up.
You stay silent for so long that Jace wonders if you have not heard him, and his lips part to repeat himself futilely.
“We used to think they were beautiful, you know?” you say, voice barely over a breath. “We would watch your family fly from King’s Landing and Dragonstone. The children would cheer and call out the names of whatever dragon and royal was passing overhead, even though they knew you could not hear them.” A wistful smile tugs briefly at your lips, and Jace suddenly feels a rock in his stomach, a heaviness that he cannot seem to push away. “There is a wild dragon in these parts—we call him Grey Ghost. He hunts fish along the eastern shore. I see him frequently when I take my father’s boat out. We lived alongside him for years—sometimes he swoops down close when we have a big catch, but he never bothers us. My father always said he was curious—shy, but curious.”
You exhale suddenly as you rise to your feet; Jace wonders if he should ignore the unshed tears in your eyes the same way you politely did for him.
“Then the Prince Aemond and Vhagar came,” you say at last. “The only thing I want, my prince, is for this war to end, but I know you cannot give me that. If you don't mind, I should see to my father's boat before the tide turns. There is more stew in the pot if you would have it. Then you ought to rest. You'll not heal by arguing with your own body.”
Jace opens his mouth.
He does not know what he intends to say, caught between guilt and indignation, because everybody wants the fighting to end—he does, his mother does. Maybe not Daemon, but why do you say it as though he stands opposed to peace? He did not choose this, nor did his mother. It is not his fault that the Greens usurped his mother's throne.
He desperately tries to formulate an answer, but how is he supposed to respond to that? What were they meant to do? Yield to the usurpers? Stand aside while his mother’s birthright was stolen? Let Luke die for nothing? Should he say that he is sorry for your loss? That his mother would never have done this? That Vermax would never have burned a fishing village? That this was all the Greens? That they fight to avenge what happened here?
That dragons are not cruel creatures, he feels the need to tell you when he sees the disdain on your face—it is the people who ride them. It is the Greens. It is Aegon and Aemond, Alicent Hightower and her father.
His lips are parted as though to respond, but he only finds himself staring at you helplessly.
You incline your head politely before slipping out the door, the cool air rushing briefly into the cottage before it shuts behind you once more. Jace remains where he is, staring into the last of his stew until the steam no longer rises from it, the reality of his situation settling over him—Vermax is dead, Luke is dead, and his mother believes them both lost. He does not know whether his brothers and cousins are safe, if his mother still fights for her crown. He is useless, wounded in a fisherman's cottage, alive only because a woman from a town his family failed to protect chose mercy over sense.
He does not think he has ever felt less like the heir to a kingdom.
post sex food hits so different, especially when you’re both still half dressed, a little sleepy, drinking up the marks you’ve left on each other from across your meal…..
thoughts on rin(bllk) or todoroki with a tongue piercing?
oh oh oh gonna talk about todoroki… definitely think he gets talked into it by the other boys on a night out. maybe theyre all tipsy and it’s a dare from hanta … they all stumble into a tattoo/piercing shop under the cool veil of the night and tenya is probably the most sensible yet red cheeked asks the front desk to keep quiet
sho gets his tongue pierced because he doesn’t want it to be obvious? though most people would settle for like an ear or a dermal somewhere secret he gets his TONGUE and because he’s a little awkward when it comes to press and what not nobody seems to notice when pro hero shoto is a little quieter in his interviews than normal whilst dealing with the swelling on his tongue
you can catch glimpses of it when someone makes shoto laugh too hard or he’s opening his mouth to eat. it’s definitely a diamond, cause it sparkles pretty like his ice … seeing clear as day that youre his agent or something n you keep spotting the tongue piercing in interviews or regular come and you think you’re going crazy …
so you sit shoto down in the green room… bossing around this big hunk of a man and you tell him. “open up.” all stern with your hands on your hips preparing to scold him for whatever he’s got going on his mouth, shoto obediently does as he’s told n you us a thumb to tilt his chin up, pull down on the plump curve of his bottom lip …
but brain actually lags at the little diamond stud sitting pretty in the bed of his pink tongue … saliva gathering in his mouth from leaving it open …and like .. shoto isn’t a fool i think he’d know or at least catch on if you were affected by the sight of said piercing n his eyes kinda sparkle in their two toned nature before he manages to speak:
fake dating izuku but only you know its fake. (your managers arranged it to help both of you in the public eye. izuku's last girlfriend was a mess and they dont want to risk that again. meanwhile you're at the bottom of the polls-)
izuku cant be in on it. obviously.he would never go for something like this.
So you have to make the first move.
the two of you manage to meet in the commission HQ. he'a cuter than you remembered, with these pretty freckles and blush that goes across his nose when he laughs. it makes it easy for you to pretend.
"Are you heading out?"
Izuku is halfway through pulling on his coat, giving you this gentle smile. its a stupid question, but he doesnt treat it that way; he chats with you as you grab your own coat.
the elevator ride is awkwardly quiet. The two of you face the door, two feet apart. you can feel your opportunity slipping through your fingers-- goodbye fame, goodbye money, goodbye manager-
Izuku cleara his throat, rubbing his hand around the back of his neck. "If it's not too forward, I was wondering if I could have your number-?"
Before he can finish the last word, you've closed the gap between you two. You catch your lips against his open mouth and the sound of his voice fizzles out. His lips are soft, warm and still-- you pull away before he can react.
"Yeah," you say. "You can have my number."
The elevator door opens and you go to leave, only to be caught by the wrist. he pushes the button for the top floor and lets the door close before he speaks again.
"Do you-?" he breathes out a laugh. "Wanna do that again?"
i believe in strict dom xavier propaganda he runs a tight ass ship. also in the sense that he lets you get away with absolutely everything but is secretly keeping a tally of every time you break a rule, brat him and misbehave. i think he has very little patience but a lot of restraint and so will wait for the perfect moment to pounce n fuck you back into being his sweet little thing. he will literally pinch your clit and deny your orgasms for as many times as you’ve acted up that week ☹️
SUMMARY: you and aerion spend a day on the shores of lys. you do not know that the quiet will not last for much longer, but you take advantage of it anyway.
WARNINGS: fem!reader, reader comes from valyrian lineage but no physical traits are mentioned/described. the high valyrian is not properly translated because we don’t know the words for the words I needed so bear with me LOL. mentions of alcoholism (daeron & reader’s brother). casual mention of slavery in volantis by reader. reader & aerion are not morally good people LOL (when one of them does something wrong, the other’s reaction is very usually ‘oh that wasn’t so bad’ even though it definitely was LOL). aerion's narration is well aerion aufhsduhf LOL he has fantasies of violence and love in the same breath.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Next part!!! This one is a bit lighter plot wise, just reader and aerion bonding a bit more before everything comes crashing down LOLLLLL. The next part is going to be very long and plot heavy I can't wait for you guys to read. Anyway, comments and reblogs always appreciated! I hope you guys enjoy!
READ: RȲ ĀNOGAR SE PERZYS | STARFALL
“I thought you said you knew how to fish.”
You do not know how you got yourself into this dreadful situation.
“I do know how to fish, dragon prince,” you scoff, taking your time with getting the rod Aerion found for you set up, because you do not, indeed, know how to fish, and you’re waiting to see how he sets up his so you can mimic him. “Who doesn’t know how to fish? It is a basic skill.”
He watches you for a moment longer than necessary—gaze trained on your face, your eyes, watching the way they flick toward him and then away again, keeping track of what he’s doing. You pointedly keep your eyes ahead when you realize that he’s picked up on the fact that you’re mimicking him.
His mouth twitches.
“Mm,” he hums, turning back to his own rod at last, fingers working easily through the motions, and you watch in disbelief, hardly able to keep up with how quickly he moves, like the whole thing is second nature to him. He agrees, “It is a basic skill.”
You try to follow along with him, but by the time you’ve managed one step, he’s already two ahead, and you’re forced to slow yourself even more so it doesn’t look like you’re scrambling to catch up.
It is deeply irritating.
“You’re holding it wrong,” he says after a beat, not even looking at you.
The nerve.
Defensively, you snap, “I am not.”
That makes him look over at you, head falling to the side so that his gaze can drop to your hands. You resist the urge to adjust your grip on instinct, forcing yourself to raise your chin and hold it exactly as it is. His brow lifts, amused, lips curled up into a smug smile. He knows damn well you’re lying—probably has known since the two of you were strolling through the market trying to busy yourselves with finding the new merchant ship that arrived from Qohor—but you’re far too proud to admit it.
You wish to drown him.
“You are,” he says, lips curling up into a smug smile.
“I know what I’m doing,” you say, raising your chin and giving him a snide look. Why you dig your own grave by doubling and tripling down? A mystery.
“Do you?”
Your eye twitches, and you turn your attention back to your rod with exaggerated focus, pretending not to hear the way he snorts in amusement.
This is your own doing, you think miserably. You are not sure what possessed you to lie when Aerion mentioned offhandedly that he used to enjoy fishing, but the words had slipped out anyway—not only did you claim to know how to fish when you’ve hardly even seen a man fish in passing, but you claimed to be better than him in the same breath, which naturally spurred him challenging you to a competition to prove he is better.
You had half thought he was full of shit anyway—what sort of prince spends his time fishing? There are far more princely hobbies in Westeros, you’re sure. No need for a prince of the blood to spend his time as a common fisherman. You thought the worst that would happen was that you both make fools of yourselves and end up lounging in the sand, but alas, the only fool seems to be you.
But you do not regret it—not yet, at least. The humiliation is still only surface-level; your answer might change by the end of the hour. There had been something strange in his voice when he said it—quieter than usual, stripped of its usual bite, like the thought had come from somewhere further back than he ever lets himself reach. And because Aerion so rarely indulges in that, you have developed a habit of pressing at it when he does.
He had been off all morning, too—wound tight in a way you could not understand and he would not explain. You know that he didn’t get much sleep last night, and he was woken up early to break fast with Vyrano, but it didn’t seem to be because he was tired. When you tried to pry, he turned sullen and defensive, deflecting you at every turn.
So, when he offered up fishing as a peace offering after hours of him jumping down your throat every time you tried to make conversation, you seized on it without thinking. A careless “I used to fish too. Bet I could catch a bigger fish than you,” fell from your mouth before you could stop it—despite the fact that you have never touched a fishing rod in your entire fucking life.
But then he had looked at you—really looked at you, eyes going wide, alive and glittering in a way you have not seen in days—and it had been too late to take it back. You swallowed the truth, doubled down on the lie, and when he demanded to know if you meant it as a challenge, you said yes.
Now you are standing at the edge of the water with a poorly assembled rod and a prince who clearly knows what he is doing, and you can feel the consequences of your own pride settling in around you like a noose.
He steps closer to you, and your spine goes rigid, attention snapping sideways even as you pretend you’re wholly focused on the rod in your hands.
“Here,” he murmurs, voice lower now. His hands close over yours, adjusting your grip so that you’re holding it lower. “If you hold it like that, you’ll snap the line the second something pulls.”
You mutter, “That’s how I was holding it.”
It was not how you were holding it.
“Mhm,” he agrees, thumb pressing briefly against your wrist, correcting the angle, before pressing an open-mouthed kiss beneath your ear. You tilt your head to the side, letting out a soft sigh, and then he lets go and moves back over to his rod, an irritatingly smug smile on his lips.
You watch as he steps back half a step before casting the line forward, and you mimic the motion—it is not nearly as smooth as his, but you pretend it is.
Neither of you says anything for a long while, and you find yourself frowning as you wait for something to happen, squinting out to the calm waters of your cove, waiting for a fish to latch onto your hook. You huff, glancing at his line, but his is equally slack. How long until something happens?
“You do not even know how to fish, wench,” he mutters after a moment, but there is no bite behind the accusation. If anything, it is almost fond. Irritatingly so. “Why did you lie?”
“Yes, I do,” you snap, because you’ve come too far to admit the truth now. “I am fishing, am I not?”
Aerion doesn’t respond, but you can see the way his lips are curled up into an amused smile. You have half a mind to take your rod and shove it up his ass, but before you can, he asks, “Who taught you then? They did a miserable job.”
You side-eye him. “My father, of course. You should watch your tongue, prince,” you reply, lying through your teeth. You think your father would sooner beat you with a fishing rod than teach you how to use one. Aerion snorts softly, and you scowl at him. “And who taught you how to fish, then? You are hardly better than I am.”
He gives you a disbelieving look, but then rolls his eyes and looks ahead again.
He doesn’t respond for a while.
“... My brother, Daeron,” Aerion says after a moment. His voice is quiet, eyes a bit more distant as he looks out toward the water. He exhales deeply through his nose, jaw tightening. He smiles wryly, too tight at the corners, knuckles white around the rod. “Though he has not touched a fishing rod since he picked up a bottle.”
Your gaze shifts to him, curious. Aerion is standing stiffly now, gaze fixed on the water—you do not think he meant to say that. It slipped out, too quick and too honest, and now it lingers between you, heavier than anything that has been said all day.
He doesn’t often talk about his family. You know who he’s referring to; you’ve heard enough rumors about the Targaryen royal family to recognize most of his siblings by name. Daeron the Drunken—the eldest son of Prince Maekar, who can hardly pull himself out of a bottle long enough to sit a horse, much less ride in a tourney.
You shift your weight slightly, sand crunching beneath your feet.
“My brother is also fond of the bottom of a bottle,” you say dryly.
You try to keep your voice light, but it is hard—you think Aerion understands, though, because he lets out a huff through his nose. There’s a heaviness in your chest when you think of the number of times you came home to find your brother drowning himself in wine, miserable and glassy-eyed because once the euphoric wave of reckless laughter and dancing comes to an end, he crashes hard, only wanting to bury himself in your arms—but if he is to be father’s embarrassment, it is easier to be drunk, he tells you as you clean the vomit from his hair and he presses his nose into your neck.
You could protect him from everything back then, but never from himself.
Now, you cannot protect him from anything at all.
You do not like thinking about this.
“The two of you aren’t close anymore?” you ask after a moment to distract yourself from your thoughts, gaze tracing the way his hair frames his face. His hair grows so fast, you think woefully—much faster than yours, faster than even your brother’s. You think you will try to get him to let you braid it later; you’ve been itching to since you realized he was letting it grow out, but he always bats your hands away when you reach for his hair.
“No,” Aerion answers, voice flatter now, more closed off. Then you see his jaw tighten, lips pressing together hard. He adds bitterly, “He did not even see me off. Was probably off drunk in a ditch somewhere.” His throat bobs as he swallows, and then he exhales hard through his nose. “I do not wish to speak of this.”
“We do not have to,” you say easily when you see the expression on his face. Your fingers thrum against the wood of your fishing rod before you hum lightly and test, “Can I ask something else, then? Or are we to sit in silence until a fish deems our bait worthy?”
Aerion lets out an annoyed breath, already side-eyeing you. “You only ask that when you are about to ask something particularly irritating.”
Usually, you would answer that with a teasing smile and a nip at his jaw, but your grip only tightens around the fishing rod as you stare ahead, trying to articulate exactly what you want to ask without him throwing a fit. You see him look at you from the corner of your eye, suspicious, realizing that this question might be worse than all of the rest, which it probably will be.
“What is it, wench?” he asks when you don’t immediately speak. “You look as though you’re about to swallow a lemon.”
You ignore that, still trying to figure out how you want to broach the subject. “I was curious,” you finally say, “as to what actually occurred at the tourney in Ashford.”
Aerion stills the way you expect him to. His tongue darts out to wet his lips. His voice is cool and defensive as he asks, “Why, exactly, are you asking about Ashford?”
You raise your eyebrows, tilting your head to the side to meet the daggers he’s shooting at you with an innocent expression. Tread lightly, you remind yourself—he’s been testy all morning, you might be pushing it. “Curiosity, I said. You know the whole grand story behind my exile. I want to know yours.”
Aerion wants to argue with you—you know him well enough by now to know his tells. His shoulders are tense, and his fingers are twitching around the fishing rod he holds, half-inclined to snap it in half. His teeth grind together as he holds your gaze for a second longer, and when you expect him to spit venom—
—he deflates.
You physically turn to him now, concern worming in your chest when you see how his shoulders slump and he lets out a puff of air. The pale scars that line his cheeks gleam under the mid-afternoon sun, and he looks away from you, gaze dropping to the shallow waves brushing his feet.
“It was not grand,” he finally says, voice smaller than you expect. “It was not grand, or righteous, or something to be proud of. It was not like yours. It was—”
He exhales hard again, shaking his head, expression twisting up as he tries to find a word to describe it.
“It was a mistake,” he finishes quietly. “A stupid one. One of my own design, no less.”
You don’t respond right away, because Aerion seems inclined to continue, lips parting over words, but he can’t seem to force them out, brows furrowing before he squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. You lower the rod you’re holding a little, fingers twitching to reach out for him, but you stop yourself.
“They say it started with treason,” you say after a few moments, when he can’t bring himself to add anything else, and Aerion looks at you with such a hollow expression, so tired, so defeated in a way you’ve never seen from him before, that you know what he has been trying and failing to say. “There was no treason.”
Aerion’s eyes slide shut again, breath ragged now as he inhales deeply through his nose once and lets it out. For a second, he looks like he wants to fight the statement—of course, it was treason, you can hear threatening to burst from his lips, because he doesn’t dare splinter the flimsy shield that absolves him of responsibility for what happened, but then his expression twists.
“It was a puppet show,” Aerion finally says with a bitter scoff. “I was not even supposed to be there. I do not even know how I found myself there. I was supposed to be at dinner with my father and uncle. I must have looked like a damn fool standing there among the rabble, watching like it was meant for me.” He lets go of the rod with one hand to rub his face harshly. “It was ridiculous. A woman dressed up as a knight playing at hero. A dragon made of wood and cloth. I—I was enjoying it, at first. It was—”
He doesn’t finish what he was about to say, but you can imagine. The way he speaks of dragons, dreams of them—sometimes, you hear him mumbling in his sleep, restless and tormented. You can’t catch every word he slurs out, but you always catch one: zaldrīzes. He likes to ramble about them when you let him, telling you about all of the dragons of the Targaryen dynasty—their names, the colors of their scales and flames, how big they are in comparison to the Temple of Yndros on the northside of the isle. Every time you think he’s told you everything he knows about them, he comes forward with half a dozen new facts he hasn’t shared yet. You think you must know more about the Targaryen dragons than half their dynasty because of him. You imagine that he must have been fascinated by it before whatever happened next that made it all go south.
“And then she killed it,” Aerion says flatly. He does not look at you when he continues. “They celebrated it. They cheered. The whore smiled. So I—” Aerion doesn’t finish for a moment. He looks at you, an unreadable expression on his face as he stares at you, as though gauging your reaction before he even says anything. “I broke her fingers—and had her tent burned later.”
You raise your eyebrows. “Merciful of you,” you say wryly, leaning in to knock your shoulder against his. “That you did not take her hands.”
Aerion huffs out what you think is a laugh, expression easing, tension bleeding from his shoulders and a smile softening his face. You wonder if he expected you to scorn him, and the thought nearly makes you snort, because he is a fool, and you know damn well he’s heard the tales of your first year of exile.
He tosses you a smile that leaves you breathless for a split second. He is pretty, you think, watching his pale lashes lower as he looks down at the water, skin golden from the time the two of you have spent lounging in the sun. You have half a mind to reach out and brush your fingers through his hair, but you refrain when he continues talking.
“No one else thought so,” he says quietly, smile fading. “That oaf of a hedge knight—he threw me across the tent after he bashed my face in. Demanded a trial by combat after being accused.”
“He struck you before a whole tent of people? And he lived to demand a trial by combat?” you ask, voice riddled in disbelief, and when Aerion grimaces as an answer, you laugh and shake your head. “Your Sunset Kingdom is… fascinating. I don’t even know what would happen if a Freeborn or a slave struck one of the old blood. They certainly wouldn’t live long enough to demand combat.”
“Yes, well, perhaps if my uncle and wretch of a younger brother didn’t intervene on the oaf’s behalf, it would have gone down similarly,” Aerion scoffs, lips pressed together tightly as he stares at the rippling water again. “But they did, so I demanded a Trial of Seven and—”
“You must explain your Andal customs, dragon prince,” you drawl, lips curling up in amusement when he gives you a suspicious look, not sure if he should take it as an insult or not. “I do not know them.”
“They are not mine—”
“Yet, you called upon them.”
“Do you want the whole story or not, you miserable wench?” he hisses, tanned cheeks pink as he glares at you. You smile and pointedly shut your mouth. “It is self-descriptive, if you would use that brain you claim to have. A trial by combat where seven champions are declared for each side, and they face one another in battle.”
“An apt name, then,” you say. And then add, “We have a very similar custom, you know. Iderenne hen perzys.”
Trial of the Flames.
Aerion doesn’t reply, but he doesn’t need to. He stares at you hungrily, waiting for you to explain, as he always does whenever you off-handedly mention a Valyrian tradition that his family has not retained over the years. You raise your eyebrows at him, but oblige—you suppose you could grant him this without teasing since you’ve decided to pry on a sensitive subject.
“It is declared between families of the old blood,” you tell him flippantly, eager to get back to his story. “There is an accuser and an accused. Each must name six other representatives of the Fourteen Flames to stand for them, and those chosen meet in a battle to the death. We revere all of the Flames, of course, but each house keeps a patron—and only a votary of a Flame may represent them during the trial. Whichever side loses the trial is exterminated to the tenth degree. It is a dishonor to their patron otherwise. The stain must be cut out entirely for it to be restored.”
Aerion, who had the wide-eyed look he always wears when listening to you talk about this, blinks at the last sentence.
“To the tenth degree? What does that even mean?”
“The loser of the trial, of course, and their representatives, if they did not fall in battle. Their ascendants to the third generation, and their descendants to the third. All collateral kin of their line—siblings, and the issue of those siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins. Their consorts, and the blood of those consorts in equal measure,” you tell him, watching the way his eyes widen as the list goes on. “In short, anyone who shares their blood, or has bound themselves to it. It is not often invoked because the declaring process can get quite chaotic, and many families are tied through marriage now, so the extermination process would be, ah, messy, and blood magic is always finicky. I think the last time it was invoked was during the Century of Blood, actually.”
“Ah,” Aerion replies, clearing his throat. “Well—it is similar in a way, yes.”
You snort. “You were saying—the Trial of Seven? What happened with it?”
“Ah,” he says again, inhaling deeply. “I… did not think the hedge knight would be able to gather six champions to defend him. I meant to—” His jaw tightens. “—I meant to embarrass him. Make a quick thing of it. I did not anticipate that—”
You think you know this part.
“That your uncle would side with the hedge knight,” you finish for him quietly.
Aerion grimaces, fingers tightening around the fishing rod again. “I did not mean for him to die,” he admits, voice cracking over the words. He clears his throat again as though to cover up the weakness in his voice. He says more firmly, though his voice is strained, his pitch betraying his attempt at ambivalence, “But if the Trial of Seven was really meant to be the gods' bidding, then that speaks for itself, does it not?”
It is another flimsy shield, a weak one that already has cracks in it from the way his brows pinch and his lips press together so tightly, throat bobbing as soon as he speaks them. A way of convincing himself that it really is not his fault, blaming gods he doesn’t even believe in to absolve himself of the blood spilled in his name—the rest of the world labels him ‘the Monstrous’ and a kinslayer, along with his father, but…
You sigh. “It is not your fault, Aerion,” you say dismissively. “Even if your trial isn’t some work of the Andal gods. Your uncle chose to ride for the hedge knight—he knew the risks.”
Aerion makes a noise in the back of his throat, but he does not respond for a long while. You glance at him from the corner of your eye and exhale softly when you see that his shoulders have hunched inward slightly, that he turned his face away from you to collect himself.
“I think my father would have preferred it,” Aerion rasps after a moment, staring down at his hands, a dull expression on his face. His fingers are trembling. “If I had died instead of Baelor. I think he would have preferred it.”
Your lips part, but you have no words to respond to what Aerion just said to you. You think he didn’t mean to say that either—a thought that has been plaguing him for nearly a year that he never dared to speak out loud—because his expression crumbles, a breath leaving him as though all the air was knocked from his lungs with just three simple sentences.
“A—” You can’t even get his name out before the fishing rod nearly goes flying from your hands. Your grip, which had loosened during your conversation with Aerion, tightens before you can lose it. “What the—a fish!”
You don’t know what to do. You dig your heels into the sand when the line jerks violently in your hands, the rod bending in a way that feels like it’s about to snap clean in half, and you make a startled, undignified noise as you scramble to keep hold of it.
“What do I—” you start to ask, gaping when the line yanks so hard that you have to take half a step forward. “What type of fucking fish—Aerion!”
You toss a panicked look in his direction, and you falter when you see the wide-eyed expression on his face. And then—
He laughs. Not the sharp, cutting sound you are used to, or the mocking huff he gives when he is amused at your expense, but a real, bright, unrestrained laugh, bursting out of him before he can stop it. He leans forward as the sound spills free, easy and unguarded in a way you have never heard from him before, amethyst eyes glittering, crinkled at the corners and lips curled up into a pretty, boyish smile.
For a moment, you forget the fish entirely, breathless at the sight of him, and then it reminds you of its presence when it nearly rips the rod from your hands again.
“Aerion, stop laughing!” you sputter, scandalized, as the line jerks again and he laughs harder, like watching you struggle against the fish is the most entertaining thing he has ever seen. “What do I do?”
“I thought you knew how to fish,” he mocks. “Didn’t your father teach you?”
“My father is a fucking Triarch, not a fishmonger, you buffoon,” you spit as he makes his way over to you, still snorting through laughter. He comes to stand behind you, close enough that you can feel the heat of him at your back, his chest brushing your shoulder blades as he reaches around you.
“Gods, you are hopeless,” he says, and you don’t have to look at him to know he’s smiling, so you scowl as his hands close over yours, taking control of the rod before you lose it entirely, guiding your hands into place before you can even think to argue. He murmurs near your ear, amusement still lacing his tone, breath warm against your skin, “Do not fight it like that. You will lose the line.”
“I am not losing it—” you start to snap, but the line jerks again, harder this time, and your grip slips enough to send a jolt of panic through you, but his hands tighten over yours immediately to correct your mistake.
“Hold,” he tells you, laughter fading as he focuses on the issue at hand, adjusting your stance with a nudge of his knee against yours. “Let it run a little—do not drag it in all at once, you’ll snap it.”
You grit your teeth and let him take the lead, following the guidance of his hands, loosening when the fish pulls, tightening when it falters, until he shifts his grip entirely, one hand sliding down to the line to take over. He works it in easily, drawing the fish closer, and you turn your head to watch him instead of the line, gaze focusing on the way he pokes his tongue out slightly in concentration, silver-gold strands falling loose across his brows, catching the light as the sea breeze puts it in his eyes.
You want to braid it, you think again, almost forgetting entirely what the two of you are doing until the fish breaks the surface with a violent splash, thrashing as he drags it through the shallows and onto the sand at your feet, red scales gleaming under the sun.
Your eyes widen. “I caught it!”
Aerion gapes at you. “I caught the fish, you useless wench. I did all of the work.”
You give him a smug look. “It is on my rod, isn’t it?” you say, raising your chin, delighted. He stares at you in disbelief. “It is my fish. I told you I would catch the bigger fish.”
“This is my fish,” he snaps, stepping forward to crouch down as the thing flops in the sand, trying to work the hook free before it tangles itself. You lean over his shoulder, watching how he handles the fish with nimble, uncharacteristically gentle fingers. “It was my effort.”
“Our fish, then,” you say, chest brushing his shoulder as you stare at the fish. It is pretty, you decide—a fitting fish for the two of you. “What do we do with it now?”
Aerion huffs, but there is no real irritation in it, only the ghost of that earlier laughter lingering at the edges as he shakes his head. “You are insufferable,” he tells you. “We can kill it or put it back in the water.”
You hum. “Put it back in the water.”
He looks at you from the corner of his eye and then reaches out to grab the fish by its tail and toss it back into the water. You watch it splash, leaping out of the shallows once before swimming far away, and then you slink your arms around Aerion’s shoulders and drag him down until he’s sitting in the sand between your legs. He lets out a startled noise as you pull him down, but he doesn’t pull away as you settle your chin on his shoulder.
“What are you doing?” he asks dryly.
You don’t respond for a long while, fingers slipping underneath his silks to flatten your palm against his chest, feeling the warmth of his skin, and the steady beat of his heart beneath your touch. You ghost your lips against his shoulder, inhaling once as you choose what you want to say carefully, his words from before still ringing through your head.
“I cannot speak to what your father would prefer,” you say quietly. He stiffens in your arms, heart jumping beneath your touch, but your grip tightens, forcing him still before he can bristle. “Fathers are—” You press your lips together, remembering how willing your father was to send your twin off to his death if it meant you would remain his heir. You finish quietly, “—cruel. But I can speak for myself, I would not have preferred it.”
You press your face into the crook of his neck, eyes sliding shut as words work over in your head, trying to figure out how you want to articulate yourself. For a moment, you think he’ll pull away, but then he sinks back into you.
He’s tired, you realize—you should take advantage of it when he dozes off so that you can braid his hair the way you want.
“I am glad you are here. With me,” you tell him softly. And it is the truth—you are glad. Aerion burns, and he cuts, he bristles and rages and screeches, and there is a good chance that this story that the two of you are living is not going to end happily, because you do not know what will happen when he is called back to Westeros, but you would not have it any other way. “I would not have it differently—not for anything. I am glad you are here.”
Aerion does not respond for a long time.
“You are a fool,” he tells you. His voice is thin. It wobbles. You both pretend that it doesn’t. “Since when are you so sentimental?”
“Do not fret, I do not plan to make a habit of it,” you say with a smile, kissing the crook of his neck once. Twice. A third time before you sigh. “Let’s sit here for a while, okay?”
He exhales hard. “Yeah,” he agrees quietly. “Okay.”
————————————
“What are you doing?”
Aerion feels you pause from where you were about to section off a third part of his hair. He was startled awake when he felt you pull through a knot, and he squints when he realizes that you seem to be preparing his hair for something.
The sun is setting, he realizes, blinking twice blearily. It was noon, not too long ago, wasn’t it? How long has he been asleep? He doesn’t even remember falling asleep. His eyes almost droop again as he sinks back into your arms, until he notices the sweet smile you’re giving him and instantly becomes suspicious. He lifts a hand to rub his face, trying to recall the last thing he remembers.
I would not have it differently—not for anything. I am glad you are here.
Oh, he thinks, a lump suddenly lodged in his throat.
“Nothing,” you reply easily, lifting your hands to force his face forward again. He lets out a noise in the back of his throat, indignant at the feeling of you manhandling him, but he is too tired to snap his teeth at you. “Do not be a child, dragon prince. I am braiding your hair.”
He scowls and shakes out his hair from the neat sections you’ve divided it into. You let out a frustrated noise at him and tug his hair furiously. He sees the way your fingers twist in the sand, as though you’re about to grab a handful of it and fling it at his face. Sensing your waning temper, he shifts away from you, turning to give you a more accusing look head-on.
“You will not play with my hair like I am some maid, you wench,” he mutters with a yawn, brushing his hair back over his shoulder, thoroughly away from you. Your lips curl down into a frown, but he ignores it as he toys with a stray strand framing his face. He muses, “It has gotten too long. I should have it cut. It is becoming irritating.”
“If you cut your hair, I will cut your throat, dragon prince,” you say with another sweet smile, and you ignore the appalled expression he casts your way. You add, “I prefer it longer.”
“I do not,” he scoffs, “and I do not care for what you prefer.”
You stare at him for a moment and then hum, looking away. Aerion’s eye twitches because he can sense the snide comment that’s running through your head without you having to say a word.
“What?” he demands, irritated. “It is obvious you have something to say, so spit it out.”
“It is nothing,” you say dismissively, and Aerion’s eyes narrow even more when he sees how you’re fighting a smile, bracing himself for whatever you’re about to say, because it’s certainly going to be infuriating, and he is far too tired to argue with you right now. “It’s only that I thought you, too, would prefer your hair at a longer length. It is the typical style Valyrian men wear their hair, but the Andals do prefer their hair cropped short—or so I’ve heard—so I suppose it makes sense you prefer it that way.”
Aerion stares at you, blinking once, slowly, as your words process. It takes a second for him to realize what you’re implying, and when it does, his pride flares violently, teeth grinding together as you give him that despicable smile.
“... You think me an Andal?” he asks through his teeth. You said it earlier, too, didn’t you—your Andal customs. He should have your tongue. You irritate him terribly. You call him an Andal, you claim his fish as your own, you tell him—
You shrug lazily, brushing the sand from your palm as you say, “I think that if the look suits—”
He catches your wrist before you can finish the sentence, fingers warm and tight as he yanks you closer to him. You let out a delighted laugh as he pulls you half into his lap, and Aerion has half a mind to wipe the smile right off your face. He would, he determines, if you were worth the effort—and if his chest didn’t flutter at the sight of it, but he won’t admit that. You make yourself comfortable on his lap, to his displeasure, settling there and draping your arms around his shoulders, toying with the ends of his hair, leaning in to brush your lips against the corner of his mouth, his jaw, beneath his ear.
He shudders, but he pretends he doesn’t.
“Do not finish that sentence,” he says, voice low.
Your lips curl up tauntingly, and you lean in to finally ghost them against his. Aerion almost lets out a sigh when he feels you bite down lightly on his bottom lip. You are despicable, and he cannot stand you. Still, he brings his hands to your hips to hold you close, one hand sliding around to your lower back.
“Or what?” you breathe out.
For a moment, he only watches you. The sea wind lifts strands of his silver gold hair from where they’ve fallen loose around his face, and you lift your hand to tuck them behind his ear. He should bat your hand away, but he decides against it—not worth the energy. Instead, he lets his lashes flutter as you brush your fingers lightly through his hair once before cupping his face between your hands.
“You are insufferable,” he murmurs, though there is little heat behind the words now, and he feels as though he’s half a second from dozing off again, letting the weight of his head fall heavy in your palms.
It is not his fault, he tells himself, exhaling heavily as his head lolls between your hands.
He is exhausted—he spent all night trying to write a letter back to his father, unsure what to say in response to the news that his grandfather and his cousins, Valarr and Matarys, have all passed. Maekar did not even ask how he was doing. Did not spare any pleasantries. It was a clipped message, a report, if anything. Devoid of heart, devoid of care. Aerion almost doesn’t want to respond at all, but he needs to know if he’s being called back to Westeros any time soon.
Then, to top it all off, Magister Vyrano had woken him up at the ass-crack of dawn to join him and his daughter when he finally started to fall asleep to break fast, and then you showed up, far too energized as you dragged him to the square to find a merchant from Qohor who evidently only makes it to Lys twice a year, and then, you had the nerve to all but challenge him to a fishing competition when he off-handedly mentioned he used to fish.
But you were a welcome distraction from the letters in his chambers, unlike Vyrano and his irritating daughter and even more irritating attendants. You are always a welcome distraction, he thinks, bitterly, adoringly, warmly—even when you are lying through your teeth and claiming to be better than him.
He cannot stand you, and he cannot get enough of you.
After a long moment, he opens his eyes again, studying the oddly open expression on your face, and then decides, “You may braid my hair.”
You blink. “Really?”
“I will not say it again, wench,” Aerion mutters, but he leans his face into your hand, lips brushing your palm once before he raises his eyebrows at you, waiting for you to get on with it.
A smile splits your face, and Aerion falters, eyes softening as you shift off his lap to sit behind him, immediately getting to work at combing your fingers through his hair. His throat feels terribly tight for a second before he forces the feeling away.
“Nothing too ornamental. I am a dragon, not a Lyseni whore,” he barks after a moment, but you only wave him off dismissively. He shudders when you drag your nails against his scalp to part his hair. You are oddly meticulous in your efforts to section it off evenly—sighing and picking at individual strands if you feel one section is smaller than the other. “I did not take you as the type of person to enjoy styling hair.”
You let out a huff of laughter through your nose. “Not my own,” you admit. “But I often braided my brother’s hair back home. He was a terribly whiny little thing—after our mother died, he would never let anyone else touch his hair besides me. When my father sent me away to deal with pirates or bandits or a khalasar that rode too close to our city, I would come back to his hair so knotted that it took hours to untangle.”
Aerion pauses when he hears the wistfulness in your voice—open and vulnerable as it always is when you find yourself talking about home. You don’t often; he doesn’t think you like talking about it, and he can’t necessarily blame you. He does not like talking about Westeros either, and he loathes how much you had gotten him to say earlier, so perhaps you will let him make it even now by answering his questions.
He hears you sigh lightly, running your fingers through his hair before you start to braid it.
“Are you the elder?” Aerion asks after a moment, eyes sliding shut as he lets you do what you please with his hair. He assumes that you are the eldest from the way you talk about him, but he is curious to know for sure. “Between you and your brother?”
“We are twins,” you say simply after a moment, and Aerion rolls his eyes. He knows that.
“Yes, but you did not pop out of the womb at the same time, did you? Which of you came out first?” Aerion asks dryly, scowling when he feels you pointedly tug at his hair in response to his attitude. “It is a genuine question, wench, answer it or not.”
“I am the elder,” you say after a moment, “by less than an hour, according to my father.”
Aerion hums. “I thought so,” he says, pleased with himself, sighing lightly when he feels you tie off his hair.
He tilts his head to the side slightly to look at you when you smooth your hand over the finished braid, and then both down his shoulders before you shift closer to slide your arms around his waist, propping your chin on his shoulder. He hates that as soon as he’s resting back against your chest, his eyes feel heavy again.
Fuck, he’s exhausted—he can feel it in his limbs, sluggish and weighted, unwilling to cooperate when he has half a mind to push you away. He should have just gone back to his chambers instead of following you out to the market and then to the beach, but he can never seem to help himself when it comes to you, and he fucking hates it.
“What gave you that idea?” you ask dryly, burying your face into the crook of his neck and inhaling deeply.
Aerion lets out a slow breath, eyes still closed, head tipping back just enough to give you more space without quite meaning to. He murmurs, “The way you look when you speak of him. It is—” The same way Baelor used to look at Maekar, before Maekar caved his skull in while trying to protect Aerion. The same way Valarr used to look at Matarys, before they both succumbed to fever. The same way Daeron used to look at Aerion, before everything changed. “It is telling.”
“Telling,” you echo, and he can hear the mockery in your voice, but you kiss the crook of his neck before he can make a complaint. You sigh, and then say quietly, “He has always been mine—to protect, to scold, to drag back by his collar when he forgets himself.” There is a smile in your voice, but he can hear it fading as you add, “To stand in front of things he should never have to face.”
Aerion’s brows furrow faintly, though his eyes remain closed. He remembers, “Your brother was the spare. You never told me his name. Tell me about him.”
You hum in agreement, nipping playfully at his neck before you rest your forehead against his shoulder.
“Viserys,” you say softly. Aerion is unsure why something ugly and green pits in his stomach when he hears the warmth in your voice as you say his name. You always sound this way when you speak of him, and Aerion inexplicably hates it. “He loves music and reading—wine too, even when he was far too young to be drinking. He spent so much time in the library when we were children that my father had to drag him from the cushions, kicking and screaming, when it came time for war games. My mother would try to convince him to let Viserys sit them out—said it was not for him and that there was no use forcing it —but our father would not have it. It’s one thing for the Maegyr family to have a useless son, his words, not mine, but it’s another thing to have a son who wouldn’t even try. So, he would try. He hated it, of course—and he was terrible at defending his territory, I would have to fight my way to him every time—but he tried.”
Fathers can be cruel, you had said. Fathers in power with high expectations for their children are crueler, you had not said, but he supposes you must be intimately familiar with that, more than most, more than Aerion, probably. A daughter of a Triarch of Volantis and the second son of a fourth son of the late Lord of the Seven Kingdoms—the two of you make quite the pair, don’t you?
Aerion hums, deciding to prod some more since you’re in a talkative mood. “And your mother? What happened to her?”
“She died,” you say after a moment, fingers stilling against his body. He shivers when you slip your hand into his silks, palm flattening against his bare abdomen, nails scratching lightly at his skin. “Childbirth. Viserys and I were ten. It was a boy—he was small. Quiet. He didn’t cry.” You pause, and then you add, “Didn’t survive either. My father refused to deal with funerary rites, shut himself away for weeks after she and the baby died, and Viserys was hysterical, so it fell on me.”
Aerion exhales, hand sliding to his abdomen to rest over yours, palm covering the back of your hand, fingers entwining with yours. He swallows thickly and says, “My mother died the same way. Also, when I was ten. I—”
He shouldn’t have said that. The moment it leaves his mouth, Aerion knows it—it feels sharp and wrong, something that should have stayed tucked neatly away. He doesn’t like speaking of his mother, doesn’t even like thinking about her. He can still feel the ghost of Dyanna’s hands running through his hair, can still hear the softness in her voice as she pulls him into her lap and calls him her little star.
Eight years later, and his mother’s death is still an open wound.
“It does not matter,” he forces out, voice much too weak for his liking. “I do not wish to speak of this. Tell me more about your family.”
You do not push the way you usually would; instead, you hum lightly and return to nosing his neck. And then you speak—you tell him of the gardens in your family’s palace, the trees of blood oranges that you and your brother loved, the fountains of fresh water and pools that looked like liquid gold under the setting sun. You tell him more of cyvasse, of the first time you beat your father and the last time you ever lost, and then tales of war games where you would bring all of the other Tiger children to heel. You speak of the heat and palaces and long, languid afternoons spent draped across marble, listening to your brother play the harp or the lyre.
Aerion listens as you tell him all of this, and Aerion also—he also remembers.
His mother used to do his hair like this, too, Aerion realizes dully as he lifts his fingers to trace the braid you created—an old memory he’d locked away, resurfacing with a vengeance as you tell him a time when you and Viserys pretended to be one another to trick your peers during a war game.
His throat bobs as he swallows, and something hot presses behind his eyes as he squeezes them shut. He blames you for forcing him to remember these things—you prodded at him all day with questions about Daeron and Maekar and Baelor and the Trial, and now it’s all hitting him at once. He tries to push the memories away, desperate, but he cannot.
He used to sit on a stool too tall for him, he remembers against his will, legs swinging, impatient and fidgeting, until she tapped his shoulder and told him to be still. Her hands had been gentle, brushing through his tangled hair, the same way yours had moments ago. He kept it long back then, longer than it is even now, long enough to brush his waist, soft and silky, bright when it catches the light.
She had liked it that way, said it suited him, called him pretty, and kissed the crown of his head before she braided it neatly and sent him off running after Daeron.
He had cut it the moment she was gone. He remembers the way the blade had slipped in his hand, cutting through his palm; he remembers ignoring the blood and the pain, tears streaking his face as he cut it to his ears. It was uneven and ugly, too short and too jagged, and he had thrown up the moment the silver hit the floor, because he looked at himself in the mirror, and he knew his mother would’ve hated it.
He had kept it that way for years, because it was easier to manage, easier not to have to look in the mirror and be reminded of his mother, and yet now, it brushes past his shoulder blades again. He should have cut it already—he had meant to, he had taken his blade to his ears multiple times with the intention of cropping it short again, but he had set it aside.
Why hadn’t he?
“If you cut your hair, I will cut your throat, dragon prince.”
It’s you, he thinks bitterly, eyes sliding shut again as he sinks back into your chest. It’s the way your fingers always find his hair, absent and instinctive, toying with the ends when you sit too close, winding a strand around your finger as if it belongs there. It’s the way you smile when you see it loose over his shoulders, eyes flicking over it with something that feels far too much like approval.
It’s always you, he thinks again—angry, bitter, yearning, wanting, adoring. He hates all of the things you make him feel. You make him want to carve his own heart out of his chest just to stop the way it jumps whenever you’re near. You make him want to hurl when he finds his lips curving up into a smile while he watches you argue with someone from afar. He wants to wrap his hands around your throat and squeeze until your eyes bulge, and he wants to cradle your face between his hands and press his lips to yours. He wants to lay you back against the sand and run his hands over your body, mapping out every inch of you until he knows you better than he knows himself. He wants you to know all of him—the good, the bad, the mad—and he wants to know you the same. He wants to stop fearing that one day you’ll see him the same way everyone else does, and he hates that he fears it at all, hates how much he relies on your promises, the way you brush your fingers against his face and tell him, iksan aōhon, iksā ñuhon. Hates that all he wants is to be with you.
You infuriate him, and you terrify him—he has never felt so intensely like this about anyone before, and he doesn’t know how to cope with it.
For now, he settles for letting himself fall asleep in your arms, head rolling back against your shoulder as he listens to you tell another story, a soft puff escaping his lips as the last of the tension bleeds out of him, the exhaustion of the day and lack of sleep finally catching up with him. He can feel your hands on him as he drifts, fingers absently tracing along the braid, across his face, outlining the shape of his lips and the slope of his nose, and he is much too exhausted to make a snide comment or put up a front of prickliness like he usually would.
“Jaelan ra umbagon bisa ñuhoso syt mirre,” he hears your murmur as you ghost your lips beneath his ear, but the words blur together, slipping through his mind before he can grasp them as he finally dozes off in your arms.
⸺ ⟢ synopsis. a run in at the training grounds with the knight commander leaves you feeling something you can’t quite explain, but it seems you’ve still got opportunity to figure that out when he visits you in your chambers later that night.
knight commander! jing yuan x princess! fem reader | wc. 6k words. | genres. smut. royal au. minors do not interact. | warnings. age gap. fem oral receiving. reader wears a dress / corset. i have not written jing yuan in close to a year so please forgive my characterisation. | return to masterlist.
⸺ ⟢ notes. this was supposed to be a warm up for a longer fic / series idea i have for knight! jing yuan, but alas 6k later as i proofread nearing midnight it is finally here lolol! tysm to mykai for the dividers ⚡️
Your breathing is short and laboured as you stand infront of the floor length mirror in your chambers.
Had you not been stubborn enough to send your maids away following a particularly bad run in with an... acquaintance in the courtyard, then you'd probably have saved yourself as much effort as you're expending right now. But because that was simply not the case, you're stuck here instead— blindly reaching for the tightly wrung ribbons of your corset while you try to undress yourself.
Even the reality of it all makes you mad, as if it isn’t your own doing.
But you’re sweating hard as you contort yourself to loosen out another part of the binding, and with the next popped bone of your dress allowing your lungs to expand just that bit wider with your next breath, you feel your body ease.
It does nothing for your still simmering temper, but wonders for your ribs atleast.
"That Jing Yuan, who does he think he is anyway?” You murmur to yourself as you wrestle your fingers beneath the ribbons and pull once more. "How dare he put me in such a ridiculous position, l am a princess."
And a ridiculous position it had been indeed.
But it didn’t help that the commander of your father's army, Jing Yuan, was a particularly frustrating fool of a knight. He was a terrible knight actually. A bad knight. Not in the way that you would expect; he was exceptional in battle and strategy when it came to commanding the ranks, you would even consider that to be exactly where his calling and talents lie.
But outwith the battlefield, when it is just him and.... you. You find the way that he teases you to be so unbecoming of a man of his reputation.
Your day had begun regular enough, you'd finished with your dinner early and found yourself eager to take a walk around the courtyard as you often times do. On your travels, and in the market for a little entertainment, you'd opted to pass by the training grounds— knowing that your father's army were most likely carrying out their daily drills.
You're not naive, you're simply a woman. And as much as some people would probably believe a princess to not be easily swayed by the sight of a bunch of sweaty knight's training hard, they'd be sorely mistaken. Actually, you couldn't have imagined a better way to pass the time than to simply admire the free entertainment given to you within the palace grounds.
Even a princess has her own needs and fantasies after all, and it's not like you're doing anything forbidden. You're simply…. admiring the view.
But what you had not bargained for, was for Jing Yuan of all people to be running the drills today.
He often left the training of the rookie knight's to his military officers; Gepard and Mydei, who were well respected amongst the ranks themselves and took great care when it came to nurturing the upcoming brothers of your father's army. But it seemed today had been a particularly special session, undertaken by the knight commander himself.
The path you had taken had led you to the yard— the dirt arena situated in the heart of three outbuildings. On the yard’s left stood the armory, and on its right, the stables. They sat nestled beneath the shadow of the castle, the sun not yet ready to set.
You'd come to squat in your usual spot, a small little opening hidden behind one of the larger oak tree's just north of the third outbuilding, only to be caught off guard when you'd first caught a glimpse of golden hair tied back expertly with his signature red ribbon.
You'd recognised him almost immediately, adorned in his usual golden crested armour, a steel lion embellished on his right shoulder— an exceptional show of the welders mastery of metals. It was beautiful in comparison to the standard steel edition that most knights wore, fitting for the commander— but more so for Jing Yuan himself.
Much to the delight of many, he was without his helmet today too which allowed the knight's forces to admire him in his entirety.
You’re sure some may believe Jing Yuan had been carved by Gods and Lords alike, only seeming to have grown more impressive with every passing year he’s served as Commander. He was only a few years younger than your father after all, his age showing in the way his muscles had grown softer and less defined now but no smaller in size, accompanied by a few lines in his face that only seemed to make him all the more handsome.
It suited him— in all of his might and glory. But it seemed you weren't the only one caught off guard by his presence either, most of the lesser knight's in their amateur lines had been wearing matching expressions of awe and respect since you had arrived, some even looking close to fearful as they admired the man standing infront of them.
Because as painful as it was for you to actually admit, Jing Yuan was a remarkable man. Even from your hidden position, that much was obvious. Every graceful movement of his body seemed to exude raw power, even if he was just marching himself infront of the raw lines of soldiers, his shoulders pulled back and upright while the muscles in his broad back flexed and moved with every command he called out over the lesser ranks.
But as much as Jing Yuan exuded discipline, you were one of the only people who know that wasn't all he truly was.
You'd often catch him slacking off and napping in the armoury between drills, or snagging a few treats from the maids in the kitchen after offering them a few words that were no doubt just as sweet, wearing that upturned smile of his that always had them swooning about him for days afterwards. It was stomach-churning to watch, to see a notoriously known man of his reputation to also have a side that was quite honestly… unknightly.
And you were not free from those same smiles yourself. Unfortunately, there had always been something strange between you and Jing Yuan. Like something being nurtured but unsaid, an affection, perhaps? Or maybe something more sacred. Though at the same time, if the opportunity ever arose for him to tease or pick on you in his own unique way, he'd gladly take that by the reigns too.
Which made you feel… something. Something you would rather not unpack because you know it would be ridiculous. He was much older than you to begin with, and you would feel truly silly were you to mistake the dotings of your much respected senior for the true affection of someone interested in courting you.
After all, you're sure there's a long list of maidens waiting for Commander Jing Yuan to finally retire and whisk them away into a cottage of their own some day.
Not that it's any of your concern, not at all. But even as you’d found yourself still admiring the slow movement of his muscles as he walked the recruits through their drills— even if only in glimpses beneath the joints in his armour— you couldn’t stop thinking about it. He made every shift of weight look so effortless, such an ease to the strength he exuded even when the usual weight of iron in his hands had been replaced by that of a wooden training sword.
It had made you almost not only restless but reckless, readjusting yourself in your position even if it risked being seen just so you could’ve taken a closer look.
He just made it seem so much more deadly than you would’ve thought. But it was only when Jing Yuan had taken a particularly brutal swing, that you swear you had felt a glimmer of his gaze capture a hold of yours from behind your shrubbery.
It had been fleeting, and gone so quickly that it made you question whether it even happened at all. But you had felt it, something shifting in the depths of your gut and that alone was enough to spook you back to your feet— scurrying towards any sort of shelter in the hopes of severing the idea of the Commander having noticed you gawking at him.
It was only when you had stumble through the back of the closest outbuilding that you realised you had come into the armoury.
Swords, knives, quivers and arrows littered the walls, the shelves equipped with every tool and weapon a man-at-arms might wield. It was all unfamiliar to you, a princess, standing there in your silken corset and your delicate lace. Yet you found it utterly fascinating.
There were jerkins, armour, and chain-mail lying in crates along the floor, and in the centre of the room stood a long oak slab held up by two barrels. You surveyed the room a second time before you had approached it, and only when you had ran your hand across the carvings in the wood did you hear the door you just came through suddenly fasten again behind you.
It almost made you jump.
"Your Highness." Jing Yuan's voice had said first. "To what do we owe the honour of your presence on the grounds today I wonder?”
But that had startled you, making you clasp your hand over your chest at the sudden intrusion before you hurried to turn towards him, frowning in an attempt to play it off. Though the smile Jing Yuan was wearing appeared to let you know he had saw right through you anyway.
"I am the princess, surely I should be able to stop by to check on the army whenever I so please."
To that, the commander smiled. "Of that you may."
"Is that why you came to find me? To question what I'm doing around here?"
Your voice had came out much harsher than you expected it to, but Jing Yuan didn’t seem phased by it at all. Instead he had taken a step closer, willing you to take a step back when he came to stand beneath the torches and hearth— the only source of light in the armoury as they cast shadows over the width of his huge body, reflecting off the gold of his chest plate and gauntlets.
His head tilted, offering you a lazy expression. "Now that I think about it, it would seem that way, wouldn't it?"
"That is not an answer, commander Jing Yuan."
"Mmm, is it not?"
"Must you always speak in such riddles, or do you do it deliberately to tease me?" You hadn’t known where to look when he crossed the room in a few big steps, and any distance you had been hoping to put between you both again had been interrupted when you felt the oak slab press against the backs of your thighs.
Jing Yuan's eyes jumped up and down your body. "Is that what you think of my intentions?" He asked, though there was still a hint of that ever lingering amusement in his tone. "It would be quite unwise of me to tease a princess, especially when she has done us the honour of stopping by of her own accord."
"Good." You had taken a step forward then, trying to keep your head high but your hands were knotting in your skirt. "Keep it that way then. So then… how are they coming along?"
Jing Yuan had raised a brow at you, as if surprised by your sudden interest in the training of your father's army and if you were to be honest, you were surprised by the question out of your own mouth aswell. But considering how close the commander's huge body had been to yours in that moment, it had been the only coherent thing you could think to say.
"There are still preparations to be made for this round of recruits." Jing Yuan explained, "But I believe they will make fine warriors come their graduation, the front lines will be lucky to have them."
You had surveyed him, nodding as if you understood. "That seems to be the case I’m sure, but they are under your watchful eye, commander Jing Yuan. I expect no less."
"Was that a compliment, your Highness?" Jing Yuan asked, with something in his voice that made you perk up.
"Don't let it get to your head."
"Of that I cannot promise." He smiled at you. In that incredibly handsome, but worn way that he usually would and you hadn’t known whether it was the heat of the moment or the doings of your own mind that had made the commander suddenly seem much… closer than he was before.
That was when it had all really went downhill. Perhaps it had been that little, fleeting moment of banter that had ruined it all. You had leaned back against the heavy oak slab in the middle of the floor again and laid your palms flat behind you, giving the older knight a look.
Jing Yuan had looked down at you aswell, his gaze lingering on your mouth before climbing to your eyes and you had been suddenly thankful for the cover of the darkly shadowed armoury. Had it been broad daylight, the intense heat in your cheeks and the flustered expression on your face would have been unmistakable.
But you had suddenly felt tethered— wrapped in an invisible string that tied you to the Knight Commander of your father's army. And then you were painfully aware of how closely you stood— the warmth of his broad body, even smothered beneath his armour— the curve of your breasts above your neckline as you took quick, unsteady breaths— the sound of his calloused hand suddenly having placed itself down on the table next to yours.
“It's a pity I cannot escort you back to your chambers myself.” Jing Yuan said. His lips curled into the ghost of a smile. “But there is still work for me here.”
You had kept still, waiting for something you didn’t have the courage to name. You didn't have to. With his free hand, Jing Yuan had cupped the side of your face, his thumb lingering perilously close to your mouth. Your breathing hitched in your lungs and as if by instinct alone, your lips parted, anticipation melding with a lightness you could not understand.
Jing Yuan let out an abrupt exhale— his thumb brushed across the flesh of your bottom lip, snagging it. Then he leaned closer, you closed your eyes when his mouth was only a whisper from your own.
Your voice caught at the edges. “You are a busy man, Commander.”
"Yes. It can be most unfortunate at times." His breath stirred your eyelashes, the tip of his nose grazing yours.
"You’re good at what you do." You'd said, another compliment. As easy as breathing with the steel of his chest plate pressed against you. "I'm sure everyone is dying to have your undivided attention."
"Really now? Could the same be said about you then, your Highness?" Jing Yuan's words had moved something in you. The same calling that you'd felt before—the same ache.
You wanted him to run his hand over your mouth again— to feel the texture of his rough, hardened skin from all of those years of battle. Your body was screaming, a mindless, impatient call for touch. His unknightly, dishonourable touch.
“It does not matter what I want, Commander Jing Yuan.” Your own throat hitched, eyelids lowering for a fraction of a second until you felt that Jing Yuan's hand had brushed yours. When you looked up, he was watching you, his eyes softer than before.
“I can assure you, it is all that matters.” He said, his mouth close now, so close his lips tugged at yours. It felt... raw. Honest. It felt more than just an oath of loyalty sworn to your father, for a fraction— it felt like he saw you. Something you were deeply unfamiliar with.
It had taken Jing Yuan, Commander of your father's army, and a knight supposedly bound by an oath of loyalty to the crown, to make me you realize what you truly, deeply wanted.
And you were terribly afraid of that.
Which is why, it only took a fraction of a second for you to push Jing Yuan off of you and make your way past him just as quickly. He had let you, and you had known it because you had also known that a man of his stature and position would not easily have been moved by a princess— but you could not have helped the mess that had become of your mind in those fleeting moments alone with him, and he seemed he picked up on that aswell.
It was the very reason you tried to avoid being alone with the older knight to begin with, because you could not allow yourself to feel everything that he made you crave. You were a princess, with a duty and standards and he was a knight— bound by oath and honour. So you had left Jing Yuan there, beneath the torchlight in the armoury, knowing he would not follow you because it was not his duty.
That was when everything had begun to surface;
The regret, the fear, the hope. The child's idea that perhaps you would be able to take hold of your desire was a petulant dream, so by the time you'd pushed your way back up the dirt path and ordered everyone to leave your chambers when they'd tried to help you out of your garments. The only way you could think to manifest your disappointment was to allow it to be felt as something else.
Resentment.
You're pulled from your own hazy memories of the hours prior and sweating hard in the middle of your chambers again when you hear a quick wrap of knuckles on your door.
And immediately— a knot in your stomach forms at the possibility of just who it might be. It's not often you're bothered by many people at these hours, and with the frosty send off you'd given your maids earlier you're confident they won't be coming back for the rest of the night.
That really leaves only one person. And he very rarely visits this side of the wing. Not without summons or purpose that is.
You allow your arm to snake around the bustier of your dress, holding the corset in place as to make sure your breasts don't spill out completely. But you're far too frazzled right now to even take that into consideration when you answer the call.
"Who…. who is it?"
The few seconds of silence following your question feel like lead in your stomach.
"Knight Commander Jing Yuan, your Highness." He calls through the door. "I hope my unofficial visit will not cause you any trouble, but I feel there is something we must discuss."
There's a stammer in your heart at the answer, but you right yourself with a deep inhale and remember your place. You’re a princess— pull yourself together.
"You may enter, Commander."
And that Jing Yuan does.
But immediately, the way he looks at you is simply detestable. It strikes a fire in you that feels like it has never been tended, wild and unfettered as you fidget with the remaining hooks of your bustier. He takes up so much space you feel like your inhale breathes him in, he's shed off his steel armour now, leaving him in only his padded, textile armour that was often worn beneath.
Unfairly, the fitted fabric only appears to accentuate Jing Yuan’s muscles and size even more— but this time he is cast in the warmth of your chambers.
It makes him appear much softer in comparison.
His eyes flicker down towards the pour of your breasts, the fabric only held in place by your arm and then its back to you. He appears to pause at the sight of you, though it's barely noticeable before it's replaced by that same natural smoothness that Jing Yuan always honed.
You never quite know what he’s thinking. But the heat in his gaze gives you some idea as you turn your own away from him, and you hear the door close softly behind him as he steps entirely into your chambers.
Your voice almost catches as a flicker of memory from hours ago flashes through your mind. "I hope you've come to apologise."
"Apologise, hm?" Jing Yuan hums, that same lazy drawl taking hold of his tone and you hear the fabric of his clothes shift, like he's crossing his arms over his chest. "Is that what you expect from me?"
"If that is not the reason for your visit then why else would you stop by?"
Perhaps it's your own shame that's making you act out like this. Your arm squeezes a little tighter around the bones of your dress, and you assume that's the reason it feels so hard to breathe when you hear Jing Yuan take his first, heavy step closer.
In little time he's standing opposite you, confirmed by another shift sounding through the otherwise quiet space surrounding you both. And then his calloused, rough touch brushes against your cheek with contrasted softness. It takes every part of you to not lean into it, feeling your eyes flutter closed when it rests beneath your jaw.
Jing Yuan tilts your chin and turns you back to face him. When you open your eyes this time, his gaze pours into yours.
"You misunderstand. To apologise would suggest that I regret the advances that I have taken, and I am a man who does not make a move without endless preparations and efforts." Jing Yuan says, with such unwavering certainty. "But I am also patient, dishonourable? Perhaps. But do I regret it?" His lips curl into the ghost of a smile. "Well that is another question. If anything, it's a pity official matters have prevented me from doing this for so long."
You keep still, letting the silence fall over you both as Jing Yuan's eyes appear to examine the features of your face. It's only when they fall on your lips do you remember to exhale, and when you make to turn your head away this time, his hand falls back down by his side.
Your face burns hot.
"Well, what are you staring at… help me out of this ridiculously difficult thing." You say with a huff, fidgeting with the bustier of your dress as if it emphasis your current predicament.
Jing Yuan’s voice is slow, idle. "I am not sure that's wise." His words earn him a glare.
"Would you rather I kicked you out then?"
"Were I forced to take my leave, it would make things much easier for me."
His words almost burn you. Forcing you into another beat of silence, and you're surprised it is not filled by the beating of your own heart. Your head whips back around to face him, and only then do you find that Jing Yuan remains where he once was.
You meet his gaze. Examine the certainty that swells in the amber. "But you will not.” You say. Suddenly knowing.
"Alas, I will not." His voice bares the depths of dark water, smooth, unwavering. It makes your lashes flutter as you cast him a look.
He's all but standing over you, his body so much larger in comparison— his years of service evident in every muscle. The golden tresses of his hair frame his handsome face beautifully, and from this angle— you can't help but feel the sudden craving to run your hands through it and pull.
"Then what will you do, Commander Jing Yuan?" You ask through your next exhale.
"Whatever you ask of me." He responds in confidence. As expected of an older knight of his reputation. It hitches your breath.
"And if I asked you to kiss me then?"
Jing Yuan's hand rises again, sliding over your jaw to the nape of your neck, his fingers twisting in your hair, his mouth opening to yours.
"There could be nothing more honourable."
Your lips collide there, and you appear to press your entire self into him, wanting— needing— to feel him against your body as Jing Yuan all but wraps you up in his huge arms. You let go of your corset in favour of latching your arms around his broad shoulders instead, pulling closer as your breasts push up against his chest.
And Jing Yuan gives himself to you just as eagerly, as dishonourable as it was. For a knight of his stature— the commander of your father's army to have the princess wrapped up in him like this. It would be treason, worthy of a lifetime locked away in an iron cell in the basement of this very castle. But he kisses you like that's little a price to pay should it mean he gets to have this now.
You feel his hands cradle you, squishing at the bones of the corset still loosely holding your waist and as your mouth continues to move in delicate, intoxicating circles with his— you press your tongue between them. It's incredibly hot and bewitching, the way Jing Yuan's hands twist into your dress, puckering the fabric as he pulls it up over your knees.
"Please, allow me to have this one thing." You beg between gasps, pressing your mouth against Jing Yuan's as his solid frame keeps you upright. Your hands grab at the hard, worn fabric of his clothes and with little to no effort— he keeps you upright.
His voice smears against your lips. "Oh, I assure you. I will take great delight in this."
It was difficult, removing Jing Yuan's clothes with only one hand. Though you're thankful you're not being made to peel back the steel plates of his armour right now, you can't help but wonder how that would feel too. To feel the steel beneath your touch, and to feel his body curl beneath it.
After a few moments of fumbling with the intricate detailing of the textile defensive jacket, he helps you, bowing over you with his mouth still on yours. After his jacket comes off, his shirt is next— ripped over his head and tossed atop the growing pile of discarded clothes in the darkened corner of your chambers.
But you take a moment to admire him first. You run your hands over the huge muscles of his chest— his stomach, admiring the old battle scars that adorn his physique, his body softening with age but no doubt the strongest he's ever been. It renders you speechless, short on breath, and when your touch stops just below his navel, Jing Yuan shivers and pulls back.
"May I, your Highness?" He asks, sliding his hands up your legs and pushing your dress up until it sits in the crease of your thighs.
You give him a blown out, lidded look. "Aren't we past using titles now?"
"Oh? I thought for certain you liked when I called you that."
Jing Yuan’s fingers catch on your undergarments and with a surprisingly gentle touch he eases them down from your waist, so slow it makes you want to scream, his mouth a pace behind until you're forced to brace against the closest piece of furniture you can reach.
You catch your lower lip between your teeth and throw your head back, "You're insufferable, Commander."
Jing Yuan's cheek rubs against your inner thigh, your knee, your calf. When he slips your underwear off and flings them into the pile of clothes in the corner of the room, his hands return to your thighs and he looks up at you.
"And what of my title then, hm? Just Jing Yuan is fine, it seems you have earned much more than that by now."
"I could think of a few more things to call you should you keep teasing me."
Your breaths come rapidly, far too shallow for you to be making empty threats. But still, Jing Yuan bites with a playful, lazy tilt of his head.
"Is that so? Do share them with me then. We have time after all, I am in little rush."
You suddenly feel even more confined by your dress, despite it being barely laced at the back— the bodice is too constricting, pinning you in all the wrong ways. But this time, you tear the lacings open— your fingers clumsy and wild as the long silken cord releases you. The dress finally falls open, and you're able to take a filling breath, one that's full of him as his hands move to your hips.
Jing Yuan eyes take in the swell of your now free breasts, his gaze travelling all over your body as he drinks up the newly revealed skin. He pushes himself back up to look you in the eyes, that same faint— teasing glow staring back before he kisses you hard, and then he yanks you up by your thighs.
His strength sends you back, sprawling you out on the dresser you had been braced against as Jing Yuan lowers himself to his knees.
It's a sight to behold. To see a knight of his title, take to his knees between the very princess he’d sworn to protect’s thighs— you’re sure it bares some similarities to when he had first sworn that oath, but also many differences considering he is now in the middle of your quarters. He kisses the inside of your leg, the tips of his teeth edging over your skin and then his eyes find yours again.
"Allow me to do this for you." Jing Yuan asks, voice heavy with promise. But still he grins. "To miss out on such an opportunity would be a great loss after all."
"You think I would deny you?"
There's a hint of amusement in his features, he lifts one broad shoulder in a half shrug. "Well, I am an old man, being bound by my oath for years— I consider myself to be a rather boring person."
"You say that like you're ready to retire."
"Far from it, your Highness. I still have many years left in me." With a sharp breath, Jing Yuan pushes your thighs open, wide enough to accommodate his broad shoulders. "You will soon see why."
You put a hand over your mouth and fall back against the smooth oak dresser as the knight between your thighs buries himself beneath the hiked up skirt of your dress. The breath soars out of you, caught between a sigh and a curse, and the ache in your stomach moves lower— amber burning as hot as the gaze that admires from you his place.
You laugh, shutting your eyes and dropping your fingers into his hair. "Perhaps… I do like when you call me that."
"Oh? How interesting." Jing Yuan deliberately sighs his words into you, his huge hands on your hips tightening and holding you beneath him as he closes the only space keeping him from you.
The next kiss he presses below your skirt makes you ache in response, tendrils of heat knotting themselves over and over deep within you as he continues to place more delicate kisses against the folds of your already soaked pussy. He eats you out like you would expect him too, it's slow and lazy— but practiced and thorough, Jing Yuan lets his tongue graze and roll its way through your cunt like he's got all the time in the world.
It feels surreal almost, to think of your current state— pinned to a dresser in the corner of your chambers by your knight, his touch searing your skin, making you feel alive, free. You can feel him in your stomach, the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet.
Jing Yuan presses another long, drawn out kiss against the entrance of your cunt this time and it makes your toes curl in sheer delight. You throw your head back and pull at the blonde of his roots, yanking him closer with every flick of his tongue as he exhales another chuckle across the heightened nerves between your thighs.
It wasn't something that you wished to admit, but he was good at this, dangerously so. With every long swipe of Jing Yuan's tongue you can feel yourself being pushed closer towards an inevitable, ruinous fall. But he wasn't willing to let you fall just yet, with his sighs and the muffled, content growls that he was burying between your folds.
He was taking his time with you. Laying waste to you as your lips part to moan and you squeeze your eyes shut, your hands curling in his hair.
"Have you always been so g-good at this?"
"My, it has been quite some time. I was afraid I would be out of practice."
"Quite the opposite it seems—"
You feel Jing Yuan hum against you at the praise, as if he's pleased by it, driven even. And then suddenly— he's spreading your folds apart with a particularly long roll of his tongue, bringing it up to trace your clit in slow circles and then all of a sudden your whole body is tensing up up.
You cry out, pulling his hair, legs flexing and toes curling. While Jing Yuan only applies more of his weight down on top of you, smiling as he lets his hands slip up your stomach to take hold of one of your breasts and he squeezes. It's all so much at once, the weight of your orgasm— the warmth of his body blanketing yours as he bathes you in soft licks of his tongue, flicking your clit with his mouth until you're trembling and it takes every part of you to finally push him away with shaky hands.
But then you're pulling him back, wrapping him up in your legs and arms and when Jing Yuan's huge body bends over yours and presses you into the dresser— his lips brush yours.
"That was hardly fair."
"You're mistaken." He chuckles, kissing you once more— and if the dresser beneath you weren't the finest of wood you think it would be enough to press you through it. "A knight always fights fair, I have my honour to protect."
The mention of his honour is enough to make you giggle, especially considering the great weight of something heavier that you can feel pressing between your thighs. Jing Yuan seems aware of it too, because when he pulls away to look at you this time, he appears far more repressed than just moments before.
He looks from the glistening folds of your pussy beneath him to your eyes again, and then he hums. Quite pleased, but not yet satisfied.
"With that in mind." He starts again, his gaze honed on you as he strokes at your hips. "Perhaps I'll be fortunate enough to see it through once more. I can keep going to my hearts content."
Your legs are unsteady and trembling, but somehow you're able to push yourself up and end up on the floor with Jing Yuan beneath you. You're both heaped among your discarded belongings, tangled up with one another. And after he helps you discard the remaining fabric of your dress, you feel free enough to really take your own time with him.
You splay both palms flat against the huge muscles in his chest and look down at him, his abundance of restraint seemingly unable to hold back for much longer considering the way you can feel his heavy, thick cock straining between your legs.
"And might I ask what would really make a knight like you’s heart content?"
You tease Jing Yuan, fluttering your lashes and accompanying the question with an intoxicating swirl of your hips. He lets you, though it's not for long— because eventually, and with ease, Jing Yuan flips you onto your back with one fluid motion and never breaks your touch.
His lips find your neck, and when he presses into you, deeper than before. You let out an abrupt breath.
His eyes narrow on you, and his smile takes its usual place once more as he takes in the features of your face. As if memorising them.
cw: on hickeys and places to leave them. smut but no piv penetration. fingering.
“You’re leaving too many,” you whine.
Out of your mouth comes another groan, but the truth is you don’t want Xavier to stop - not the kneading of your breasts from behind, his hands slipped beneath your oversized t-shirt and his thumbs stroking over your pebbled nipples, nor the soft press and suck of his lips on your exposed skin. His teeth have found so many places to nibble along the nape of your neck, the curve of your shoulder, and now are working their way along the curve of your jaw, still from behind, and your back arches with every new spot, your head swimming in pleasure.
Whatever efficiency you thought you’d have tonight has shrunken to probably a quarter of your projected productivity. You don’t know what possessed you to let him get behind you as you worked on your laptop, but you sorely regret it… or perhaps you don’t, because the fact of the matter is that you feel good, with the warmth of your back pressed to his chest, the pressure of his chin on your shoulder, and his ever-working hands, his curious tongue.
“I’m not leaving enough,” he murmurs, kissing your earlobe. The hand on your left breast releases it finally, then trails along the length of your abdomen to rest onto your lap.
“You want my career to fall apart,” you moan, but your eyes are closing and your back is arching as you extend your neck slightly backwards; he kisses your cheek and chuckles against it.
“I want you to get a good night’s rest.”
“By riling me up?” You mewl as his finger slips below the waistband of your cotton shorts, searching, then finding what he’s looking for. The tap of the pad of his finger on your clit sends a jolt of desire through you, sudden and selfish.
“By relaxing you. Perhaps an important part of a bedtime routine.” The palm of his right hand presses onto the front of your neck, covering the spots that you know will bloom overnight.
“What’s relaxing about this?” The thrum of your voice on his palm thrills him and you can feel his arousal press hard and hot against your lower back.
“You’ll find out soon enough. Close your laptop and put it away.”
The order, said softly, doesn’t make it less direct and demanding. You take a deep breath, one that runs through your entire being, and push it onto the coffee table beside you as he moves you flatter against him.
You slump slightly, letting his voice guide you and his body support your weight. Xavier turns your head towards him and takes you in an unfairly breathtaking kiss.
“Baby…” he whispers, once you part. Your voice is breathy with slowed, deep breathing as his fingers start to work a bit faster.
“Y-yeah…”
“Relax here.”
His hand passes through your closed thighs - you part them obediently, and he cups your pussy in his hand.
“All mine,” he murmurs, and he presses another kiss to your neck that will bloom like a flower by morning. Smooth fingers pass through your slit, soaking up your arousal. “You’re eager.”
There’s still a modicum of fight left in you.
“I was also busy,” you quip. He chuckles, slipping two fingers in your hole first, making you gasp, then swallowing the gasp with his mouth. When you’re quiet, breathless yet again, he passes his slick fingers over your lower lip.
“You taste sweet.”
He pokes a finger into your soon parted lips, then slips both into his mouth. You’re reminded of royal food tasters for a moment, and then his fingers are back, pumping and teasing faster. Your moans are faster, louder, until they reach crescendo, and his hard working digits are soaked more thoroughly, a meal fit for a king.
“Xavier!” you cry out his name, his delight, trembling for him.
“Mm? No more hickeys?”
“That’s not…” your voice trails off, still needy, wanting more, much more than a few simple marks.
“Sleepy already?” he says, nuzzling your cheek as if he’s nothing more than a harmless pet.
“Y-you know what you’re doing,” you remind him.
He nods, pulling you into a more careful, close embrace, and suddenly you’re lifted like nothing off your couch. Maneuvering you into his hold, he takes note of your lust-softened features and smiles.
“I’m just taking you to bed, aren’t I?”
You slap weakly at his chest, and he laughs.
“Jerk.”
“I honored your request to stop with the hickeys.”
He guides you sideways into the bedroom before laying you onto the bed. You watch him, your lower lip pulled between your teeth as he pulls off his shirt, desire obvious in your eyes.
“What?”
You watch him fold his shirt, then pull yourself onto your knees, moving to the edge of the bed, and dragging him in gently by the waistband of his sweatpants.
“You can leave hickeys in other places.”
He smiles, without teeth but with just as much bite. “Don’t worry. I know.”
