You may call me Cat (you can spell it as Kat or however you like). This is a blog where I post about writing and my fanfics. I love to talk about books. Feel free to ramble about literature or send other questions and I'll do my best to answer them (unless it's too personal or something I'm uncomfortable sharing)! <3
Masterlist:
The Secret History mini essays/analyses/dissection/breaking illusions: What people fail to remember about Greek class, Propaganda I'm not falling for, Additional Propaganda I'm not falling for, Was Henry "doomed"? (Info from an actual psychiatrist), Bunny wasn't killed because of his diet, Eat the rude, Why we like Henry Winter, Henry's Honour, Francis&Charles, On "Study like Henry Winter", Richard = unreliable narrator?, Richard the "manipulated", Meaning of unreliable narrator Was Henry Winter autistic? What actually happened to Camilla at Bacchanal Henry's medical treatment Camilla and Charles Richard's "intrusive thoughts" Charles the flemish 'angel' Henry's Childhood On romanticizing incest Medea of Colchis
Fanfiction:
Henry Winter: Due to the large quantity, link to the fics is here.
Tom Riddle: Who are you really? (Part 2) Hidden thoughts "Ethical" immortality Well played Somnophilia Just the tip Blue is My World When I'm Without You Undressed Money Power Glory
A Study in Remaking
Sherlock Holmes: The case of absent biscuits and first encounters The case of interference and possible future in-laws The case of sentimentality and the government The case of...Oh, Happy Christmas The case of unmentioned history and nonexistent emotional distance
Matt Murdock: What is it, the suit? Morning workouts The Gala Debacle God knows. But he stays Dominium et Custodia Kind of Got Away from Us There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin Christmas in Hell's Kitchen
Jason Todd: The Cat's Already out of the Bag Romance is Dead (and other Lies) Praise-fueled Jason Todd, meet Fatson Todd Fatson Todd emergency What secrets do couples keep? Black Friday Pushing Through
Clark Kent/Superman: Celebrity by association Chaperones Off Duty Tolerate Clark, ignore Superman
Richard Papen: The Mirror and the Flame
Hannibal Lecter & Will Graham: The Sujihiki part 1 part 2 part 3
Chishiya Shuntaro: Doctor's Orders
Loki Laufeyson: God of Chivalry Arranged Marriage Favor
Prince Rook: Letters of Autumn Autumn Activities
Bruce Wayne/Batman: The Wrong Man's Wife The Bat and the Wraith
Tim Drake: Present and Accounted for Truth Serum Vigilance
Fae: Fair Bargain
Kaz Brekker: Ghezen's Ways Rapture Debrief
OPLA Sanji: Almighty Cure
AKOTSK (Aerion, Valarr, Baelor, Maekar, Daeron): Due to the large quantity, link to the fics is here.
HOTD (Jacaerys, Aemond, Daemon, Ormund): Due to the quantity, link to the fics is here.
James Potter & Sirius Black: Sharing is Caring
Benjamin Poindexter/Bullseye: Homecoming Routine
OUAT Peter Pan: The Lost Girl
The Doctor: John Smith Spoilers
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Guidelines:
I will write fluff, angst, smut — so long as I don’t find it too ooc and it’s something I want to write. Hcs, drabbles, oneshots and multi-part fics are all welcome. I will not write r*pe, teacher/student and other large age gaps, underage smut, parent/child incest, ddlg, violent kink, or really explicit power discrepancies. I’ll write toxic dynamics but it has to come from both sides. I write f!readers and gn!readers. Please specify if you want a f!reader or gn!reader in your request. I cannot promise or guarantee that if you make a request I will write it! I am new at writing fanfics and I'm still learning what I’m interested in and comfortable taking on.
Do not plagiarize, repost, copy, put in AI or claim any of my works as your own.
Summary: You fall asleep watching HOTD and wake up in Westeros, having fallen through the roof of the Starry Sept under divine light, right in front of the Hightowers. The septons and the crowd declare you a miracle from the Seven Gods. You must keep up the act so your strange appearance won't get you labeled a heretic and killed. But Hightowers have their own motivations. Warnings: fictional religion, possessiveness, sexist views, some angst cuz Gwayne is a yearner, arranged marriage, eventual smut.
The last thing you remembered was the glow of your laptop screen, the sting of frustration behind your eyes, and the bitter taste of exhaustion on your tongue. Another episode of House of the Dragon had ended, leaving you with that familiar, hollow ache: watching characters you’d grown to care about march toward their doom, the inevitable tragedy of it all unfold. You’d snapped the laptop shut with more force than necessary, the echo of it hanging in your dark bedroom.
If I had that much wealth and influence, you’d thought bitterly, burying your face in your pillow, still wearing your jeans and t-shirt because you couldn’t even muster the energy to change, I would simply not interfere. I’d take my money and my land and I’d go live in peace. None of this politicking. None of this war. Just…peace and quiet.
You’d fallen asleep to that fantasy. A quiet keep somewhere. A garden. No dragons. No death.
The first thing that pulled you from the depths of unconsciousness was not your alarm clock.
It was the sound of chanting. Low, rhythmic, in a language that felt archaic even though you could understand it. The second thing was the cold. A hard, unyielding surface pressed against your cheek, your hip, your bare forearms. Stone. Cold, smooth stone, polished by what felt like centuries of footfalls.
The third thing was the light. A kaleidoscope of jewel-toned brilliance, dancing across the backs of your eyelids in hues of sapphire, ruby, and emerald. Stained glass. Massive stained glass windows.
Your eyes flew open.
Above you soared a vaulted ceiling of impossible height, painted with stars. The air smelled of incense, beeswax and decayed flowers.
You were sprawled, ungracefully and painfully, on the floor of what could only be described as a cathedral. A sept. No. The sept. The Starry Sept of Oldtown.
Panic, cold and absolute, seized your lungs. It was a dream. It had to be a dream. An incredibly vivid, tactile, olfactory hallucination of a dream. The stone felt too real. The chill in the air bit too sharply at your bare arms. The smell of incense was too cloying.
Then you heard gasps and frantic voices.
“...a crash! Did you not hear it? A crash from above, and a great light!”
“Look! Look there, upon the floor! A woman!”
“Where did she come from? The ceiling is intact!”
“It was a light from the Seven Heavens themselves, I tell you! A rending of the veil!”
You pushed yourself up onto your hands, your head swimming. You were in the center of the sept. A ring of faces, pale and shocked, stared at you. Men in robes and crystal pendants. Septons. Women in grey habits, their hands clasped to their chests. Septas. They were all speaking at once, a cacophony of awe and terror, their words washing over you.
Beyond them, standing apart, observing the chaos with varying degrees of shock and calculation, were three men you recognized with a jolt of surreal, stomach-dropping horror.
The tallest, broadest, with a stern, handsome face and dark hair, clad in a dark green doublet with subtle silver embroidery, was unmistakably Ormund Hightower.
Beside him, younger, slighter, with the reddish hair and light blue eyes, was Prince Daeron Targaryen. His expression was one of pure, wide-eyed, startled wonder. A boy, not a man.
And at their head, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword, was Ser Gwayne Hightower. He wore a long overcoat of smoke-grey colour, slashed to show an under-tunic of green.
You knew them. You knew their fates. In the book, Gwayne would be dead soon, taken in the fall of King’s Landing. Ormund would die at Tumbleton, as would Daeron. A part of your brain, the part that was screaming at you to wake up, cataloged this automatically.
“It is a miracle!” a septon with a face like a wrinkled red apple declared, his voice rising above the din. “The Seven have seen our plight, our war, and they have answered our prayers! Look upon her! She fell from the heavens themselves, bathed in holy light!”
Gwayne’s voice cut through the fervor, calm but firm. “I did not pray for a woman. I prayed for peace for my family. For an end to this bloodshed.”
Ormund said nothing. His silence was louder than any prayer.
Then Daeron spoke, his voice so soft it was almost lost in the vast space. He flushed and looked down at his boots, then back up at you, his young face earnest and suddenly vulnerable. “I was…I was praying to the Mother.” He swallowed. “For guidance. And a gentle hand. And perhaps…a friend.” He admitted the last word with such quiet, aching loneliness that your heart, despite your terror, gave a small, painful twist.
The wrinkled septon was undeterred. “The Seven are not to be taken so literally, my prince! A gift is a gift, whatever form it takes. It is the spirit of the prayer that is answered, not the letter. She is a miracle, a clear sign that the gods favor House Hightower! In these dark times of war, when a woman sits the Iron Throne and violates the natural order of things, the Seven have seen fit to send a sign directly to us!”
They were speaking over you, not to you. As if you were a prize pig at a fair. Your terror was beginning to curdle into a desperate, trapped anger. This was not a dream. The cold on your skin, the ache in your hip from the fall, the sheer sensory overload, it was all too solid, too real. And they were already assigning you a purpose, a meaning, before you’d even stood up.
Daeron was still staring, his blue eyes huge. Gwayne, however, was the only one whose gaze had dropped from your divine provenance to your actual person. He saw the wild, trapped look in your eyes, the way your chest was heaving under your thin t-shirt, the way your hands, still pressed to the cold stone, were trembling. The other men saw a sign. The septas, you noticed, some of them were eyeing your jeans with pursed lips, a flicker of disapproval cutting through their awe. Women, it seemed, could always be counted on to police other women, even in the face of a miracle.
Gwayne stepped forward. He ignored the babbling septon and extended a hand toward you, his expression not one of religious ecstasy but of simple, human concern. His hand was gloved in fine, soft leather. “You’re afraid,” he said quietly, so only you could hear.
You couldn’t speak. Your throat was a closed fist. You just stared up at him, a man you knew to be dead in one version of this story, and who was terrifyingly, solidly alive in this one. What universe was this? The show’s? The book’s? A blend of both? But they looked like the actors. If you died here, would you wake up in your bed? Was this a Narnia situation where decades could pass and you’d snap back to the moment you fell asleep? The frantic calculations were a shield against the panic.
You took his hand. His grip was firm, steady, and he pulled you to your feet with an easy strength. You swayed for a moment, your legs feeling like jelly, and instinctively clutched at his forearm for balance.
The moment your hand touched him, a fresh wave of murmurs swept through the assembled clergy. Gwayne stiffened almost imperceptibly, but didn’t pull away. He was looking at you.
Ormund’s voice, smooth and commanding, silenced the whispers. “Why is she dressed so immodestly?”
All eyes fell on your clothes. Your perfectly normal, utterly mundane jeans and t-shirt. In this world, you may as well have been naked. You felt a hot wash of shame and defensive anger. You fell through a ceiling and the first question is about your clothes?
Gwayne’s arm shifted subtly, angling his body as if to partially shield you from the brunt of his cousin’s stare. Ormund’s question hung in the air, direct and challenging. He might claim to be addressing the clergy, but his gaze was fixed on you, and there was intelligence there. He could tell you were not a noblewoman. He could tell you didn’t know their customs.
Before you could even formulate a lie, the apple-faced septon seized the opportunity. “It is clear, my lord! In the Seven Heavens, there is no sin of lust! There is no shame, no base desire to hide the form the Seven themselves crafted. Her state is one of prelapsarian innocence!”
Prelapsarian innocence. You could have kissed the old man. You immediately schooled your face into what you hoped was an expression of serene, otherworldly blankness, and gave a slow, deliberate nod. You didn't trust your voice.
“How did you come to be here, child?” another septon asked, this one younger and more fervent, his eyes burning with zealous light. “What are heavens like?”
Your mouth was dry. You couldn't describe a heaven. They’d catch you in a lie in an instant. So you did the only thing you could do. You turned, slowly, and pointed. Your finger, still trembling slightly, aimed first at the statue of the Mother, her arms outstretched in eternal, gentle welcome. Then, you moved it to the Maiden, her face a mask of serene, youthful grace.
Then you lowered your hand and clasped it with your other one in front of you. You met the young septon’s eyes and shook your head slowly, a gesture of profound, unknowing mystery.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” you whispered, your voice raspy and strange to your own ears. It was the absolute, unvarnished truth. “I don’t remember.”
The reaction was instantaneous. The septons and septas dissolved into a fresh chorus of interpretation. The old septon was nodding sagely. “The mind cannot comprehend the divine. It is a mercy. A mortal vessel could not contain the memories of paradise and remain tethered to this sinful earth. Her very silence is proof!”
But then the mood shifted. A septa with a face like a hatchet, her eyes lingering with open disapproval on the way your jeans clung to your legs, spoke up. Her voice was thin and sharp. “A woman, sent to three unmarried Hightower men. The gods’ purpose is clear, is it not? If it were merely a friend for the young prince, the Seven would have sent a boy his own age.”
You felt the blood drain from your face. No. No, no, no. This was spiraling completely out of control. You were not a gift. You were not a cosmic wife-delivery service.
Ormund’s gaze sharpened with a new, appraising intensity. He looked you up and down, not with lust, but with the look of a lord assessing a new, valuable resource. “She is too old for Daeron,” he said, his voice flat and dismissive, as if Daeron weren’t standing right there. “She is a woman grown. Sent to an older, unwed lord. It is the natural order.”
Gwayne’s expression was troubled, a deep furrow appearing between his brows. You felt his arm tense under your hand. He was looking at Ormund with a weariness that spoke of a lifetime of small concessions. “Ormund,” he said, his voice low with warning. “You speak of her as if she were a parcel of land.”
“She can be taught,” Ormund continued, ignoring Gwayne completely, his mind already spinning a future you wanted no part of. “She clearly has no knowledge of our ways. No curtsy. No proper address. A rough stone, but one with a divine gleam. She can be polished. Taught everything a lady needs to know.” He took a step closer, and his gaze was so proprietary, so certain, that your entire body reacted on instinct.
You flinched back and pressed yourself closer to Gwayne, your fingers digging into his sleeve like a lifeline. It was pure, primal panic.
Ormund stopped, misinterpreting the gesture with a slight, knowing smile. “She is not used to the company of men. A true innocent.”
Gwayne looked down at where your hand was digging into his arm. He saw the panic, the silent plea. He looked back at his cousin, the Lord of Oldtown, a man he had deferred to since childhood. How many times had he let Ormund win? A tourney match, a hunting prize, a place of honor at the table? All to avoid the cold, punishing silence, the sulking, the throwing of a fit that a man of his stature should have long outgrown. It was easier. It had always been easier to bend than to watch Ormund break something in his displeasure.
His gaze fell on Daeron, who was watching the exchange with a mixture of confusion and a distant, lingering loneliness. The boy had wanted a friend. And now even this one strange, miraculous thing was being haggled over by the adults.
Gwayne Hightower was, above all else, a knight. And a knight protected the innocent. He made a decision. It was a small one but it was a start. He did not shake off your grip. He did not step away. He remained exactly where he was, a bulwark of stillness against the current of Ormund’s ambition. He held Ormund’s gaze and said, in a voice laced with a steel he rarely showed his cousin, “She is afraid. Any discussion of her...purpose...can wait until she is not shaking like a leaf.”
He turned his head to you, his voice softening again to the tone he’d used when he first helped you up. “My lady,” he said, the title a deliberate, protective shield, “would you like to sit down? Perhaps some water?” He was asking you. He was, in this entire cacophony of men telling you what you were and what you meant, the only one who thought to ask what you wanted.
You managed a small, jerky nod, still unable to form words around the knot of terror in your throat. You didn’t know if this was the show universe or the book universe. You didn’t know if death here meant waking up at home. You didn’t know anything. All you knew was the chilling certainty that your simple wish for a quiet, peaceful life had been answered in the most terrifyingly complicated way imaginable. You were in the heart of the Hightower, a supposed miracle, and the one thing you knew for sure about this world was that war was coming, and it would not leave anyone in peace.
Gwayne did not release your hand as he guided you away from the center of the sept while your thoughts were still spinning. His grip was light, respectful, but present, a steady anchor as he led you toward a carved wooden bench near one of the massive pillars. The septons and septas parted before you, their whispers following in your wake.
You sat because your legs would no longer hold you. The bench was hard and cold, but it was solid. Real. Everything was too real. The grain of the wood beneath your fingers. The faint vibration of the sept's bells tolling somewhere far above. The way the light through the stained glass painted Daeron's face in fragments of blue and gold as he hovered uncertainly a few paces away.
Ormund had followed, of course. He stood a few feet away, his arms crossed over his chest, his brown curls catching the colored light. He was not yet thirty perhaps, or didn't look like it, you realized now that the initial shock was fading and you could see him more clearly. Younger than you'd first assumed. But there was a gravity to him, a sense of authority that aged him beyond his years. The Lord of Oldtown. The weight of an entire house rested on his shoulders, and it showed in the set of his jaw, the watchfulness of his gaze.
Gwayne remained beside you, standing close enough that his presence felt like a shield. A knight in his prime, not a man nearing the end of his story. In the book, he was already dead.
"We should summon a maester," Daeron said suddenly, his voice cutting through the low murmur of the clergy. He took a half-step forward, then stopped, as if unsure of his welcome. "She fell from a great height. She might be injured."
"A fine suggestion, my prince," the apple-faced septon said, nodding vigorously. "But a fall from the heavens is not a fall from a roof. The Seven would not send a miracle only to have her dashed upon the floor."
"Nevertheless," Gwayne said, his tone polite but firm, "water and a moment of quiet would not go amiss." He glanced down at you. "You are unhurt?"
It took you a moment to realize he was speaking to you. Directly. Waiting for your answer. You swallowed, your throat dry as parchment, and managed a small shake of your head. "I don't...I don't think I'm hurt." Your voice came out as a rasp, barely recognizable. "Just...shaken."
The understatement of your entire existence.
A septa appeared with a clay cup of water. You took it with trembling hands, the cool liquid a small mercy against your parched throat. The septa lingered, her eyes on your strange clothing, but she said nothing. The hatchet-faced one had retreated to the edge of the gathering, her lips pressed into a thin line, clearly displeased but unwilling to challenge the prevailing interpretation of your arrival.
You were a miracle. You had to keep being a miracle. If you stopped being a miracle, you would be a witch, or a madwoman, or simply a woman alone in a world that had no mercy for such creatures. The calculation was clear, cutting through the fog of your terror. You had no wealth. No family. No knowledge of this world beyond what you'd read and watched. Your survival depended entirely on their belief that you were something holy.
The thought made you want to both laugh and cry.
"She should be brought to the Hightower," Ormund declared. "A chamber can be prepared. Servants assigned. She will need proper clothing, instruction. She cannot remain in the sept."
"My lord is wise," the apple-faced septon agreed. "The Hightower is the seat of your noble house. Where better for a gift from the Seven to reside?"
Gwayne's jaw tightened. "And what of her wishes? Should we not ask where she would prefer to go?"
"She does not know our world," Ormund replied smoothly. "You said it yourself: she is afraid, bewildered. She cannot know what she wants. It falls to us to provide guidance. Protection." His gaze flicked to you. "She is under the protection of House Hightower now. We would be remiss in our duty to the Seven if we did not ensure her safety."
The logic was impeccable. Unassailable. And it trapped you as neatly as a cage.
Daeron, who had been listening with his brow furrowed, spoke again. "I could escort her. If…if that would be acceptable." He flushed slightly, his pale cheeks pinking. "I was the one who prayed. It seems only right that I should help."
Ormund considered this, then nodded slowly. "A generous offer. It speaks well of you." He turned to the assembled clergy, raising his voice. "The Seven have blessed this house. Let it be known that House Hightower receives their gift with humility and gratitude. The woman will be given every comfort, every courtesy. And when the time is right, her purpose will be made clear."
There was a murmur of approval. The septons and septas bowed their heads, some making the sign of the seven-pointed star. The crisis was over. The decision was made. You were going to the Hightower.
You set the empty cup down on the bench beside you, your fingers numb. Gwayne was still watching you with a flicker of sympathy, perhaps, or concern. He had argued for your wishes to be considered. He had been overruled. But he had tried.
"My lady," he said quietly, extending his hand to help you rise once more. "Will you walk with us? It is not far."
The walk through Oldtown was a blur. You were aware of cobblestones beneath your inappropriate shoes, of narrow streets and timbered buildings that looked like illustrations from a history book come to life.
People stared as you passed. Of course they did. Word of a miracle spread faster than fire. You walked with your head down, trying not to meet anyone's eyes. Gwayne walked on one side of you, Daeron on the other, and Ormund strode ahead with the confidence of a lord returning to his domain.
You were led up a winding stair, through corridors hung with ancient tapestries, past windows that looked out over the churning waters. Your legs ached.
Finally, you were shown into a chamber. It was larger than your entire apartment back home, furnished with a canopied bed, a carved chest, a small table with candles. A fire crackled in the hearth, casting dancing shadows on the walls. A window overlooked the city below, the slate roofs and twisting streets rendered small and insignificant from this height.
"The servants will bring clothing that fits," Ormund said from the doorway. He had not entered the room, you noticed. "Food and water as well. We will speak more on the morrow, when you have rested."
"I will see that she has everything she needs," Gwayne said, and there was a finality to his tone that suggested he was not asking permission.
Ormund hesitated, then inclined his head. "As you wish." He turned and left, his footsteps fading down the corridor.
Daeron lingered a moment longer. "I hope you sleep well, my lady," he said earnestly. "I am glad you are here. Whatever your purpose may be." He ducked his head in a small bow and followed Ormund, leaving you alone with Gwayne and the crackling fire.
The silence stretched. You stood in the center of the room, your arms wrapped around yourself, and you had never felt so small, so utterly adrift. This was not what you had wished for. You had been dropped into the center of the story, into the hands of a family marked for tragedy.
Gwayne did not leave. He stood by the door, his hand resting on the frame, his expression troubled. "I know you are afraid. I do not pretend to understand what has happened here. The ways of the Seven are beyond mortal comprehension. But I know fear when I see it."
You looked at him. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
It was the truth. The desperate, frightened truth.
Gwayne held your gaze for a long moment. "Neither do I," he admitted. "But whatever it is, you will not face it alone. You have my word on that." He stepped back, his hand dropping from the doorframe. "I will see you on the morrow. Try to rest."
Then he was gone. You sank onto the edge of the bed and pressed your face into your hands.
You were in Westeros. You had no idea how you were going to survive.
Sleep did not come easily.
The bed was soft beyond measure: feather mattress, silk sheets, pillows that seemed to swallow your head, but your body did not trust it. Every creak of the ancient tower made you flinch. Every shift of the wind against the window was a dragon's wing in your half-dreaming mind. You dozed in fragments, waking with your heart pounding, forgetting for a terrible moment where you were, then remembering all at once with a sick lurch of your stomach.
The air was wrong. It was the first thing your body noticed, even before your conscious mind caught up. It was too clear and sharp, heavy with sea breeze. Your sinuses throbbed with it, a dull pressure building behind your eyes and at the bridge of your nose. You tossed and turned, tangling the fine sheets around your legs.
When dawn finally crept through the window, you woke to the taste of copper in your mouth.
Your hand flew to your face. Your fingers came away red. Blood was smeared across your upper lip, trailing down your chin, spotting the pristine white pillowcase in a pattern that looked disturbingly like evidence of violence. A nosebleed. You'd had them before, during allergy season, during dry winters. Your body, overwhelmed by unfamiliar air and the stress of the previous day, had popped a vessel.
You sat up slowly, pressing the heel of your hand against your nose. The blood was already slowing. You needed water. A cloth. You needed to clean this up before anyone saw and decided it was a sign from the heavens, or proof of your mortality, or...
The door opened.
The maid was young, perhaps fifteen, with mousy brown hair and a tray of what you assumed was breakfast balanced in her hands. She took two steps into the room, looked up, and saw you sitting in the bed with blood smeared across your face like a warrior fresh from battle.
The tray hit the floor with a crash that seemed to echo through the entire tower.
Her shriek brought others. You sat frozen, your hand still pressed uselessly to your nose, as a flurry of servants appeared in the doorway. There were gasps. Murmured prayers. Someone made the sign of the seven-pointed star. The maid who had dropped the tray was weeping, certain she had somehow caused this, that her negligence had allowed the holy woman to come to harm.
"It's just a nosebleed," you tried to say, but your voice was muffled by your hand and no one was listening to you anyway.
A older woman with a ring of keys at her belt took charge, shooing the gawkers away, sending someone for water and clean cloths. She had the brisk, no-nonsense manner of a woman who had managed households for decades and had no time for hysterics. "It's the change in air," she announced, as if she had seen this a hundred times. "Happens to sailors, too, when they come to port after long voyages. The body must adjust. Nothing more."
The next hour passed in a haze of cleanup. A basin of cool water was brought. Cloths were pressed into your hands. The bloody sheets were whisked away with an efficiency that suggested the servants of the Hightower had dealt with far worse than a nosebleed. You washed your face, your hands, watching the water in the basin turn pink. By the time you were clean, your nose had stopped bleeding entirely.
It was then that the matter of clothing arose.
"The garments you arrived in," the housekeeper said, her tone carefully neutral, "have been taken for examination."
You looked up from the basin. "Examination?"
"By order of the High Septon himself." There was a note of pride in her voice, the satisfaction of a servant whose household had produced something worthy of such attention. "They are to be studied as holy artifacts. The smiths and tailors have been summoned. None can determine their origin."
You felt a chill that had nothing to do with the morning air. Your jeans. Your t-shirt. Your sneakers. All of it made of materials that did not exist in this world, assembled with techniques that would not be invented for centuries. You had worn them to bed because you'd been too tired to change, and now they were relics of a faith you did not share.
"What...what have they found?" you asked, careful to keep your voice steady.
The housekeeper hesitated, clearly uncertain whether she should be sharing this information. But you were the miracle, the gift from the Seven, and perhaps that entitled you to know. "The shoes," she said slowly, "are made of a substance no one has seen before. Springy. Like rubber, but not rubber. The sole is…not leather. Not wood. The cobbler is baffled." She paused. "The blue trousers are woven of a thread so fine and so white that the smiths cannot understand how the blue was applied. It is not dye. It is as if the threads themselves are both colors at once."
Your jeans. Your ordinary, mass-produced jeans, manufactured in a factory halfway across a world that did not exist here. Of course they couldn't understand.
"And the shirt," the housekeeper continued, "stretches. The tailors have never seen its like. They say it must be spun from something other than wool or linen or silk, but what, they cannot guess."
Polyester. You almost laughed. You were a miracle because of synthetic fiber.
"What of her jewelry?" one of the younger maids ventured, emboldened by the housekeeper's willingness to speak. "The gold bracelet?"
The housekeeper nodded, her expression becoming thoughtful. "Ah, yes. The bracelet. That, at least, is gold. But the chain..." She shook her head. "So fine. So delicate. The goldsmiths say it would take a master craftsman a lifetime to achieve such work. They cannot fathom how it was made."
A gift from a friend years ago, a thin gold chain so delicate it was almost invisible against your skin. You had worn it for so long you forgot it was there. Here, it was a masterpiece beyond the reach of even the finest artisans.
"We have prepared a gown for you," the housekeeper said, gesturing toward the carved chest at the foot of the bed. "Until the holy garments are returned, you will need appropriate clothing."
The gown was beautiful. There was no denying that. It was a deep blue that reminded you of the evening sky. The sleeves were long and fitted, the neckline modest, the skirt full enough to allow movement but not so full as to be impractical. Underthings were provided as well, a shift of fine linen, stockings, a simple pair of leather slippers. The housekeeper and the maids helped you into everything.
You stood still and let them work, grateful for the guidance. You would not have known how to put on half these garments on your own. The lacings, the fastenings, the proper way to drape the sleeves, all of it was foreign to you. You were acutely aware of your ignorance, of how easily a single mistake could expose you.
"You look a proper lady now," the housekeeper said, stepping back to admire her work. "The colors suit you."
You caught a glimpse of yourself in the polished silver mirror that hung on the wall. The woman who stared back was strange to you. You had never felt more like an imposter.
Breakfast was served in a small solar adjacent to the family's private quarters. You were escorted there by a servant who kept glancing at you with barely concealed awe, as if expecting you to burst into holy light at any moment. The solar was a comfortable room, its walls hung with tapestries depicting the founding of the Hightower, its windows looking out over the city. A fire crackled in the hearth. The table was spread with dishes you did not recognize.
Gwayne was already there, standing by the window with a cup of something steaming in his hands. He turned when you entered. "You look well," he said. "The color becomes you."
"Thank you," you replied, and meant it. He was not staring at you like a relic. He was looking at you like a person.
Daeron arrived moments later, his reddish hair still slightly damp from washing, his cheeks flushed from the morning chill. He smiled when he saw you, a bright, genuine smile that made him look even younger than he was. "Good morning, my lady! I hope you slept better than I did. I kept dreaming of falling stars."
"I slept well enough," you lied. "Thank you, my prince."
Ormund was the last to enter. He was dressed for the day already, a long tunic of forest green velvet over darker breeches, his brown curls tamed but still unruly around his temples. He took his seat at the head of the table without ceremony, and a servant immediately appeared to fill his cup and plate. "We have much to discuss," he said, reaching for a piece of bread. "But first, eat. You must be hungry."
You were seated between Daeron and Gwayne, a placement that felt intentional. Ormund sat at the head, where he could watch all of you. The dishes on the table steamed and smelled enticing, but you recognized almost nothing. There were breads of various shapes and colors. A soft cheese studded with herbs. Some sort of pie with a golden crust. Small brown things that might have been sausages or might have been something else entirely. A pot of honey. A dish of what looked like stewed fruit.
You hesitated, your fork hovering uncertainly over the table. In your world, you knew what you liked, what you didn't, what was safe. Here, everything was a mystery. What if you reached for something and it was meant to be eaten with fingers? What if you used a utensil incorrectly? What if...
Daeron caught your eye. He was already spooning stewed fruit onto a piece of bread with the enthusiasm of a teenage boy who had never met a meal he didn't like. Seeing your hesitation, he paused. Then, with a small, knowing smile, he lifted his bread and took a deliberate bite, tilting his head slightly as if to say, like this.
You followed his lead. You picked up a piece of bread, spooned some of the stewed fruit onto it, and took a bite. It was good: warm, sweet and spiced with something you couldn't name. Daeron's smile widened.
Throughout the meal, you watched him. When he picked up a sausage, you did the same. When he used his knife to spread the herbed cheese on a piece of bread, you copied the motion exactly. It became a game between you. He would catch your eye before taking a bite of something, you would mirror him, and he would grin like a child who had found a playmate.
"You are a quick study," Gwayne murmured from your other side. There was amusement in his voice.
"I have a good teacher," you replied, nodding toward Daeron.
Gwayne's lips twitched. "He has been in need of a friend. I am glad you seem to be one."
Ormund, who had been eating in silence, set down his fork with a decisive clink. "Speaking of teaching," he said, drawing the attention of the table, "we must arrange for lessons. You cannot read, I assume?"
You blinked. "I can read."
A pause. Ormund's eyebrows rose slightly. "Can you? In what language?"
"The Common Tongue. And I can write, as well." You paused, remembering you could not, in fact, write cursive with a quill and an inkpot. "A little."
This seemed to please him. "Good. That will save time. But there are other things you must learn. History, geography, the noble houses and their sigils, proper etiquette, dancing. The basics of running a household." He leaned back in his chair, studying you with that assessing gaze. "You do not object to lessons?"
It was not really a question, but you treated it as one. "No, my lord. I would be grateful for the instruction."
Ormund nodded, clearly satisfied with your deference. "It is settled, then. I will speak with the maester and the septa. They will arrange a schedule."
Gwayne, who had been watching this exchange with a carefully neutral expression, set down his cup. "And what of the Faith? They will have their own expectations."
A muscle in Ormund's jaw tightened. "The Faith can have their expectations. She is under the protection of House Hightower. That protection does not mean she is a puppet for the septons to parade about."
"They will want her to be seen," Gwayne pressed. "A miracle, appearing in the Starry Sept itself? The High Septon will not let such a sign go unremarked. Especially now."
"Especially now?" you asked, before you could stop yourself.
The three men exchanged glances. It was Daeron who answered, his boyish enthusiasm dimming slightly. "There was another sign," he said. "Last night, in the graveyard by the western gate. The statue of the Stranger…" He trailed off, looking uncomfortable.
"It collapsed," Ormund finished flatly. "Shattered into a dozen pieces. No storm, no earthquake, no apparent cause. The faithful are calling it a portent. The Seven want the war to end."
Heavy silence followed. You thought of the war that was coming, or perhaps already raging, the Dance of the Dragons, the civil war that would tear the realm apart. You thought of Rhaenyra on the Iron Throne, of Aegon, of all the death and fire that was to come. You had wanted no part of it.
But the Seven had apparently decided otherwise. First a woman falling from the heavens. Then a statue of death crumbling to pieces. The people of Oldtown would connect these events. They would see a pattern. A purpose.
Your purpose.
You looked down at your plate, your appetite suddenly gone. "What does it mean?"
Ormund did not answer immediately. When he spoke, his words were careful, measured. "It means that you are exactly where you are meant to be. The Seven sent you here, to us, at the very moment the realm stands on the brink of destruction. That is not coincidence. That is divine will."
Gwayne's expression flickered but he said nothing.
Daeron, ever earnest, reached across the table and touched your hand. "Whatever it means, you are not alone in it. We will help you."
The meal ended, but you did not escape.
Daeron was whisked away by his tutors, there were still expectations, still lessons, even for a prince in the midst of a war, and Gwayne was detained by a steward with questions. You found yourself lingering by the window, watching the morning light play across the rooftops of Oldtown, wondering how long you could reasonably stay in the solar before someone came to fetch you for your own lessons.
The answer was not long.
"Walk with me."
Ormund stood in the doorway. His expression was pleasant enough.
You had no choice. You followed him.
He led you not to the main corridors but to a smaller passage, one that curved along the outer wall of the tower. The windows here were narrow, arrow-slits really, and the wind that slipped through them carried the salt-tang of the sea. The stone was cold, the shadows deep. You walked beside him in silence, your new slippers making soft sounds against the floor, your heart beating too fast in your chest.
He stopped. "You smell different," he said.
The words were so unexpected that you could only stare at him. "My lord?"
"Your scent." He stepped closer. Almost absently, as if drawn by something he could not name. "When your garments were brought to me, before the Faith took them, I noticed it. Something on the fabric. Several somethings." He inhaled slowly, his eyes half-lidding. "It is on you still. Fainter now, after the night, but still there."
Your blood ran cold. Your perfumes. Of course. The evening before you'd fallen asleep, you had stopped at Sephora. It had been a small rebellion against your frustration, a tiny luxury. You'd sprayed three or four different scents on your wrists, your neck, the inside of your elbow: testing them against each other, trying to decide which one you liked best. You hadn't bought any. You'd just walked out wearing a cocktail of expensive fragrances that had clung to your skin and your clothes.
Fragrances made of synthetic compounds. Alcohol-based. Formulated with notes that did not exist in nature. Scents that no one in this world had ever smelled before.
"There is something floral," Ormund murmured, moving closer still. "But not like any flower I know. Something sweet, but not honey. Something..." He shook his head, frustration flickering across his features. "I cannot place it. I pride myself on my senses, my lady. I can identify every ingredient in a dish by smell alone. I can tell you which village a wine comes from. But this…this eludes me."
He was close now. Too close. His head tilted, his gaze dropping to the curve of your neck, and you realized with a jolt of pure, frozen panic that he was going to...
His nose touched your skin.
You went rigid. Every muscle in your body locked tight. His nose pressed into the hollow beneath your ear, where the scent of your perfume would have lingered strongest. He inhaled, long and slow, and then he moved, nosing down the column of your throat, tracing the path of your pulse, breathing you in like a man trying to memorize the notes of a rare wine.
"There." He exhaled against your collarbone, his breath warm and strangely intimate. "That one. What is it? It is almost citrus, but not. Sharper. Cleaner. It reminds me of..." He paused, searching for the word. "Nothing. It reminds me of nothing I have ever known."
He pulled back just enough to look at your face. His own expression was curious, analytical, entirely unaware or unconcerned by your frozen terror. "You are trembling," he observed. "I forget myself. You are not accustomed to the company of men. The septons said as much."
You swallowed, your throat so tight it ached. "My lord, I..."
"It is a curious thing," he continued, as if you had not spoken, "that the Seven would send a woman so innocent. So untouched. And yet..." His gaze dropped to your lips, then back to your eyes. "You are a gift, after all. And gifts are meant to be unwrapped."
You understood, then. He was not just curious about your scent. He was staking a claim. He was testing the boundaries of his ownership.
"Do you know what a desire is?" he asked, his voice dropping to something almost gentle and condescending. "I do not mean the word. I mean the...experience. The feeling. Have you known it?"
You could have told the truth. But you were supposed to be from the Seven Heavens. "In theory," you managed, your voice barely a whisper. "I know of it."
"Theory." He smiled. "Theory is a poor substitute for practice. But perhaps that is why you were sent. To learn." He reached up, his fingers brushed a strand of hair from your face. "I can teach you a great many things."
"Ormund."
The voice cut through the corridor. Gwayne stood at the end of the passage, his auburn hair wind-tousled, his pale blue eyes fixed on his cousin with an expression that was carefully controlled but unmistakably hard. He was not wearing his sword, you noticed distantly, but his hand rested at his belt as if he wished he were.
a/n: Liked the fic? You can donate on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: https://ko-fi.com/catbayunthestoryteller <3
a/n: Next chapter will be from Gwayne's pov. Comment if you'd like to be added to the taglist!
a/n: The concept of falling through the roof of the sept is inspired by an Aemond oneshot I read years ago. If anyone knows the author, lmk. The rest is mine.
first of all, you have more than one precious emerald) I confirm
and you made it even better! gurl you’re keeping me in suspende. As a Ormund fan I want her with Ormund, but Gwayne… god he is so cuuuute (and for gods sake I don't want them to fight 😭), I’m melted. But yk what just let my girl be Daeron’s older sister bestie mother and that’s it!!
AAAA you're so sweet you keep making me flustered hehe 🥰
Daeron is already attached to her and yes, you're right, she's gonna be his older sister bestie mother, not just mother!
Let's just say they have different ways of expressing emotions. Gwayne is a yearner while Ormund wants to be her wife husband asap and have the prettiest wedding. You just know Ormund is the type to be a Bridezilla.
Summary: You fall asleep watching HOTD and wake up in Westeros, having fallen through the roof of the Starry Sept under divine light, right in front of the Hightowers. The septons and the crowd declare you a miracle from the Seven Gods. You must keep up the act so your strange appearance won't get you labeled a heretic and killed. But Hightowers have their own motivations. Warnings: fictional religion, possessiveness, sexist views, some angst cuz Gwayne is a yearner, arranged marriage, eventual smut.
The last thing you remembered was the glow of your laptop screen, the sting of frustration behind your eyes, and the bitter taste of exhaustion on your tongue. Another episode of House of the Dragon had ended, leaving you with that familiar, hollow ache: watching characters you’d grown to care about march toward their doom, the inevitable tragedy of it all unfold. You’d snapped the laptop shut with more force than necessary, the echo of it hanging in your dark bedroom.
If I had that much wealth and influence, you’d thought bitterly, burying your face in your pillow, still wearing your jeans and t-shirt because you couldn’t even muster the energy to change, I would simply not interfere. I’d take my money and my land and I’d go live in peace. None of this politicking. None of this war. Just…peace and quiet.
You’d fallen asleep to that fantasy. A quiet keep somewhere. A garden. No dragons. No death.
The first thing that pulled you from the depths of unconsciousness was not your alarm clock.
It was the sound of chanting. Low, rhythmic, in a language that felt archaic even though you could understand it. The second thing was the cold. A hard, unyielding surface pressed against your cheek, your hip, your bare forearms. Stone. Cold, smooth stone, polished by what felt like centuries of footfalls.
The third thing was the light. A kaleidoscope of jewel-toned brilliance, dancing across the backs of your eyelids in hues of sapphire, ruby, and emerald. Stained glass. Massive stained glass windows.
Your eyes flew open.
Above you soared a vaulted ceiling of impossible height, painted with stars. The air smelled of incense, beeswax and decayed flowers.
You were sprawled, ungracefully and painfully, on the floor of what could only be described as a cathedral. A sept. No. The sept. The Starry Sept of Oldtown.
Panic, cold and absolute, seized your lungs. It was a dream. It had to be a dream. An incredibly vivid, tactile, olfactory hallucination of a dream. The stone felt too real. The chill in the air bit too sharply at your bare arms. The smell of incense was too cloying.
Then you heard gasps and frantic voices.
“...a crash! Did you not hear it? A crash from above, and a great light!”
“Look! Look there, upon the floor! A woman!”
“Where did she come from? The ceiling is intact!”
“It was a light from the Seven Heavens themselves, I tell you! A rending of the veil!”
You pushed yourself up onto your hands, your head swimming. You were in the center of the sept. A ring of faces, pale and shocked, stared at you. Men in robes and crystal pendants. Septons. Women in grey habits, their hands clasped to their chests. Septas. They were all speaking at once, a cacophony of awe and terror, their words washing over you.
Beyond them, standing apart, observing the chaos with varying degrees of shock and calculation, were three men you recognized with a jolt of surreal, stomach-dropping horror.
The tallest, broadest, with a stern, handsome face and dark hair, clad in a dark green doublet with subtle silver embroidery, was unmistakably Ormund Hightower.
Beside him, younger, slighter, with the reddish hair and light blue eyes, was Prince Daeron Targaryen. His expression was one of pure, wide-eyed, startled wonder. A boy, not a man.
And at their head, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword, was Ser Gwayne Hightower. He wore a long overcoat of smoke-grey colour, slashed to show an under-tunic of green.
You knew them. You knew their fates. In the book, Gwayne would be dead soon, taken in the fall of King’s Landing. Ormund would die at Tumbleton, as would Daeron. A part of your brain, the part that was screaming at you to wake up, cataloged this automatically.
“It is a miracle!” a septon with a face like a wrinkled red apple declared, his voice rising above the din. “The Seven have seen our plight, our war, and they have answered our prayers! Look upon her! She fell from the heavens themselves, bathed in holy light!”
Gwayne’s voice cut through the fervor, calm but firm. “I did not pray for a woman. I prayed for peace for my family. For an end to this bloodshed.”
Ormund said nothing. His silence was louder than any prayer.
Then Daeron spoke, his voice so soft it was almost lost in the vast space. He flushed and looked down at his boots, then back up at you, his young face earnest and suddenly vulnerable. “I was…I was praying to the Mother.” He swallowed. “For guidance. And a gentle hand. And perhaps…a friend.” He admitted the last word with such quiet, aching loneliness that your heart, despite your terror, gave a small, painful twist.
The wrinkled septon was undeterred. “The Seven are not to be taken so literally, my prince! A gift is a gift, whatever form it takes. It is the spirit of the prayer that is answered, not the letter. She is a miracle, a clear sign that the gods favor House Hightower! In these dark times of war, when a woman sits the Iron Throne and violates the natural order of things, the Seven have seen fit to send a sign directly to us!”
They were speaking over you, not to you. As if you were a prize pig at a fair. Your terror was beginning to curdle into a desperate, trapped anger. This was not a dream. The cold on your skin, the ache in your hip from the fall, the sheer sensory overload, it was all too solid, too real. And they were already assigning you a purpose, a meaning, before you’d even stood up.
Daeron was still staring, his blue eyes huge. Gwayne, however, was the only one whose gaze had dropped from your divine provenance to your actual person. He saw the wild, trapped look in your eyes, the way your chest was heaving under your thin t-shirt, the way your hands, still pressed to the cold stone, were trembling. The other men saw a sign. The septas, you noticed, some of them were eyeing your jeans with pursed lips, a flicker of disapproval cutting through their awe. Women, it seemed, could always be counted on to police other women, even in the face of a miracle.
Gwayne stepped forward. He ignored the babbling septon and extended a hand toward you, his expression not one of religious ecstasy but of simple, human concern. His hand was gloved in fine, soft leather. “You’re afraid,” he said quietly, so only you could hear.
You couldn’t speak. Your throat was a closed fist. You just stared up at him, a man you knew to be dead in one version of this story, and who was terrifyingly, solidly alive in this one. What universe was this? The show’s? The book’s? A blend of both? But they looked like the actors. If you died here, would you wake up in your bed? Was this a Narnia situation where decades could pass and you’d snap back to the moment you fell asleep? The frantic calculations were a shield against the panic.
You took his hand. His grip was firm, steady, and he pulled you to your feet with an easy strength. You swayed for a moment, your legs feeling like jelly, and instinctively clutched at his forearm for balance.
The moment your hand touched him, a fresh wave of murmurs swept through the assembled clergy. Gwayne stiffened almost imperceptibly, but didn’t pull away. He was looking at you.
Ormund’s voice, smooth and commanding, silenced the whispers. “Why is she dressed so immodestly?”
All eyes fell on your clothes. Your perfectly normal, utterly mundane jeans and t-shirt. In this world, you may as well have been naked. You felt a hot wash of shame and defensive anger. You fell through a ceiling and the first question is about your clothes?
Gwayne’s arm shifted subtly, angling his body as if to partially shield you from the brunt of his cousin’s stare. Ormund’s question hung in the air, direct and challenging. He might claim to be addressing the clergy, but his gaze was fixed on you, and there was intelligence there. He could tell you were not a noblewoman. He could tell you didn’t know their customs.
Before you could even formulate a lie, the apple-faced septon seized the opportunity. “It is clear, my lord! In the Seven Heavens, there is no sin of lust! There is no shame, no base desire to hide the form the Seven themselves crafted. Her state is one of prelapsarian innocence!”
Prelapsarian innocence. You could have kissed the old man. You immediately schooled your face into what you hoped was an expression of serene, otherworldly blankness, and gave a slow, deliberate nod. You didn't trust your voice.
“How did you come to be here, child?” another septon asked, this one younger and more fervent, his eyes burning with zealous light. “What are heavens like?”
Your mouth was dry. You couldn't describe a heaven. They’d catch you in a lie in an instant. So you did the only thing you could do. You turned, slowly, and pointed. Your finger, still trembling slightly, aimed first at the statue of the Mother, her arms outstretched in eternal, gentle welcome. Then, you moved it to the Maiden, her face a mask of serene, youthful grace.
Then you lowered your hand and clasped it with your other one in front of you. You met the young septon’s eyes and shook your head slowly, a gesture of profound, unknowing mystery.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” you whispered, your voice raspy and strange to your own ears. It was the absolute, unvarnished truth. “I don’t remember.”
The reaction was instantaneous. The septons and septas dissolved into a fresh chorus of interpretation. The old septon was nodding sagely. “The mind cannot comprehend the divine. It is a mercy. A mortal vessel could not contain the memories of paradise and remain tethered to this sinful earth. Her very silence is proof!”
But then the mood shifted. A septa with a face like a hatchet, her eyes lingering with open disapproval on the way your jeans clung to your legs, spoke up. Her voice was thin and sharp. “A woman, sent to three unmarried Hightower men. The gods’ purpose is clear, is it not? If it were merely a friend for the young prince, the Seven would have sent a boy his own age.”
You felt the blood drain from your face. No. No, no, no. This was spiraling completely out of control. You were not a gift. You were not a cosmic wife-delivery service.
Ormund’s gaze sharpened with a new, appraising intensity. He looked you up and down, not with lust, but with the look of a lord assessing a new, valuable resource. “She is too old for Daeron,” he said, his voice flat and dismissive, as if Daeron weren’t standing right there. “She is a woman grown. Sent to an older, unwed lord. It is the natural order.”
Gwayne’s expression was troubled, a deep furrow appearing between his brows. You felt his arm tense under your hand. He was looking at Ormund with a weariness that spoke of a lifetime of small concessions. “Ormund,” he said, his voice low with warning. “You speak of her as if she were a parcel of land.”
“She can be taught,” Ormund continued, ignoring Gwayne completely, his mind already spinning a future you wanted no part of. “She clearly has no knowledge of our ways. No curtsy. No proper address. A rough stone, but one with a divine gleam. She can be polished. Taught everything a lady needs to know.” He took a step closer, and his gaze was so proprietary, so certain, that your entire body reacted on instinct.
You flinched back and pressed yourself closer to Gwayne, your fingers digging into his sleeve like a lifeline. It was pure, primal panic.
Ormund stopped, misinterpreting the gesture with a slight, knowing smile. “She is not used to the company of men. A true innocent.”
Gwayne looked down at where your hand was digging into his arm. He saw the panic, the silent plea. He looked back at his cousin, the Lord of Oldtown, a man he had deferred to since childhood. How many times had he let Ormund win? A tourney match, a hunting prize, a place of honor at the table? All to avoid the cold, punishing silence, the sulking, the throwing of a fit that a man of his stature should have long outgrown. It was easier. It had always been easier to bend than to watch Ormund break something in his displeasure.
His gaze fell on Daeron, who was watching the exchange with a mixture of confusion and a distant, lingering loneliness. The boy had wanted a friend. And now even this one strange, miraculous thing was being haggled over by the adults.
Gwayne Hightower was, above all else, a knight. And a knight protected the innocent. He made a decision. It was a small one but it was a start. He did not shake off your grip. He did not step away. He remained exactly where he was, a bulwark of stillness against the current of Ormund’s ambition. He held Ormund’s gaze and said, in a voice laced with a steel he rarely showed his cousin, “She is afraid. Any discussion of her...purpose...can wait until she is not shaking like a leaf.”
He turned his head to you, his voice softening again to the tone he’d used when he first helped you up. “My lady,” he said, the title a deliberate, protective shield, “would you like to sit down? Perhaps some water?” He was asking you. He was, in this entire cacophony of men telling you what you were and what you meant, the only one who thought to ask what you wanted.
You managed a small, jerky nod, still unable to form words around the knot of terror in your throat. You didn’t know if this was the show universe or the book universe. You didn’t know if death here meant waking up at home. You didn’t know anything. All you knew was the chilling certainty that your simple wish for a quiet, peaceful life had been answered in the most terrifyingly complicated way imaginable. You were in the heart of the Hightower, a supposed miracle, and the one thing you knew for sure about this world was that war was coming, and it would not leave anyone in peace.
Gwayne did not release your hand as he guided you away from the center of the sept while your thoughts were still spinning. His grip was light, respectful, but present, a steady anchor as he led you toward a carved wooden bench near one of the massive pillars. The septons and septas parted before you, their whispers following in your wake.
You sat because your legs would no longer hold you. The bench was hard and cold, but it was solid. Real. Everything was too real. The grain of the wood beneath your fingers. The faint vibration of the sept's bells tolling somewhere far above. The way the light through the stained glass painted Daeron's face in fragments of blue and gold as he hovered uncertainly a few paces away.
Ormund had followed, of course. He stood a few feet away, his arms crossed over his chest, his brown curls catching the colored light. He was not yet thirty perhaps, or didn't look like it, you realized now that the initial shock was fading and you could see him more clearly. Younger than you'd first assumed. But there was a gravity to him, a sense of authority that aged him beyond his years. The Lord of Oldtown. The weight of an entire house rested on his shoulders, and it showed in the set of his jaw, the watchfulness of his gaze.
Gwayne remained beside you, standing close enough that his presence felt like a shield. A knight in his prime, not a man nearing the end of his story. In the book, he was already dead.
"We should summon a maester," Daeron said suddenly, his voice cutting through the low murmur of the clergy. He took a half-step forward, then stopped, as if unsure of his welcome. "She fell from a great height. She might be injured."
"A fine suggestion, my prince," the apple-faced septon said, nodding vigorously. "But a fall from the heavens is not a fall from a roof. The Seven would not send a miracle only to have her dashed upon the floor."
"Nevertheless," Gwayne said, his tone polite but firm, "water and a moment of quiet would not go amiss." He glanced down at you. "You are unhurt?"
It took you a moment to realize he was speaking to you. Directly. Waiting for your answer. You swallowed, your throat dry as parchment, and managed a small shake of your head. "I don't...I don't think I'm hurt." Your voice came out as a rasp, barely recognizable. "Just...shaken."
The understatement of your entire existence.
A septa appeared with a clay cup of water. You took it with trembling hands, the cool liquid a small mercy against your parched throat. The septa lingered, her eyes on your strange clothing, but she said nothing. The hatchet-faced one had retreated to the edge of the gathering, her lips pressed into a thin line, clearly displeased but unwilling to challenge the prevailing interpretation of your arrival.
You were a miracle. You had to keep being a miracle. If you stopped being a miracle, you would be a witch, or a madwoman, or simply a woman alone in a world that had no mercy for such creatures. The calculation was clear, cutting through the fog of your terror. You had no wealth. No family. No knowledge of this world beyond what you'd read and watched. Your survival depended entirely on their belief that you were something holy.
The thought made you want to both laugh and cry.
"She should be brought to the Hightower," Ormund declared. "A chamber can be prepared. Servants assigned. She will need proper clothing, instruction. She cannot remain in the sept."
"My lord is wise," the apple-faced septon agreed. "The Hightower is the seat of your noble house. Where better for a gift from the Seven to reside?"
Gwayne's jaw tightened. "And what of her wishes? Should we not ask where she would prefer to go?"
"She does not know our world," Ormund replied smoothly. "You said it yourself: she is afraid, bewildered. She cannot know what she wants. It falls to us to provide guidance. Protection." His gaze flicked to you. "She is under the protection of House Hightower now. We would be remiss in our duty to the Seven if we did not ensure her safety."
The logic was impeccable. Unassailable. And it trapped you as neatly as a cage.
Daeron, who had been listening with his brow furrowed, spoke again. "I could escort her. If…if that would be acceptable." He flushed slightly, his pale cheeks pinking. "I was the one who prayed. It seems only right that I should help."
Ormund considered this, then nodded slowly. "A generous offer. It speaks well of you." He turned to the assembled clergy, raising his voice. "The Seven have blessed this house. Let it be known that House Hightower receives their gift with humility and gratitude. The woman will be given every comfort, every courtesy. And when the time is right, her purpose will be made clear."
There was a murmur of approval. The septons and septas bowed their heads, some making the sign of the seven-pointed star. The crisis was over. The decision was made. You were going to the Hightower.
You set the empty cup down on the bench beside you, your fingers numb. Gwayne was still watching you with a flicker of sympathy, perhaps, or concern. He had argued for your wishes to be considered. He had been overruled. But he had tried.
"My lady," he said quietly, extending his hand to help you rise once more. "Will you walk with us? It is not far."
The walk through Oldtown was a blur. You were aware of cobblestones beneath your inappropriate shoes, of narrow streets and timbered buildings that looked like illustrations from a history book come to life.
People stared as you passed. Of course they did. Word of a miracle spread faster than fire. You walked with your head down, trying not to meet anyone's eyes. Gwayne walked on one side of you, Daeron on the other, and Ormund strode ahead with the confidence of a lord returning to his domain.
You were led up a winding stair, through corridors hung with ancient tapestries, past windows that looked out over the churning waters. Your legs ached.
Finally, you were shown into a chamber. It was larger than your entire apartment back home, furnished with a canopied bed, a carved chest, a small table with candles. A fire crackled in the hearth, casting dancing shadows on the walls. A window overlooked the city below, the slate roofs and twisting streets rendered small and insignificant from this height.
"The servants will bring clothing that fits," Ormund said from the doorway. He had not entered the room, you noticed. "Food and water as well. We will speak more on the morrow, when you have rested."
"I will see that she has everything she needs," Gwayne said, and there was a finality to his tone that suggested he was not asking permission.
Ormund hesitated, then inclined his head. "As you wish." He turned and left, his footsteps fading down the corridor.
Daeron lingered a moment longer. "I hope you sleep well, my lady," he said earnestly. "I am glad you are here. Whatever your purpose may be." He ducked his head in a small bow and followed Ormund, leaving you alone with Gwayne and the crackling fire.
The silence stretched. You stood in the center of the room, your arms wrapped around yourself, and you had never felt so small, so utterly adrift. This was not what you had wished for. You had been dropped into the center of the story, into the hands of a family marked for tragedy.
Gwayne did not leave. He stood by the door, his hand resting on the frame, his expression troubled. "I know you are afraid. I do not pretend to understand what has happened here. The ways of the Seven are beyond mortal comprehension. But I know fear when I see it."
You looked at him. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
It was the truth. The desperate, frightened truth.
Gwayne held your gaze for a long moment. "Neither do I," he admitted. "But whatever it is, you will not face it alone. You have my word on that." He stepped back, his hand dropping from the doorframe. "I will see you on the morrow. Try to rest."
Then he was gone. You sank onto the edge of the bed and pressed your face into your hands.
You were in Westeros. You had no idea how you were going to survive.
Sleep did not come easily.
The bed was soft beyond measure: feather mattress, silk sheets, pillows that seemed to swallow your head, but your body did not trust it. Every creak of the ancient tower made you flinch. Every shift of the wind against the window was a dragon's wing in your half-dreaming mind. You dozed in fragments, waking with your heart pounding, forgetting for a terrible moment where you were, then remembering all at once with a sick lurch of your stomach.
The air was wrong. It was the first thing your body noticed, even before your conscious mind caught up. It was too clear and sharp, heavy with sea breeze. Your sinuses throbbed with it, a dull pressure building behind your eyes and at the bridge of your nose. You tossed and turned, tangling the fine sheets around your legs.
When dawn finally crept through the window, you woke to the taste of copper in your mouth.
Your hand flew to your face. Your fingers came away red. Blood was smeared across your upper lip, trailing down your chin, spotting the pristine white pillowcase in a pattern that looked disturbingly like evidence of violence. A nosebleed. You'd had them before, during allergy season, during dry winters. Your body, overwhelmed by unfamiliar air and the stress of the previous day, had popped a vessel.
You sat up slowly, pressing the heel of your hand against your nose. The blood was already slowing. You needed water. A cloth. You needed to clean this up before anyone saw and decided it was a sign from the heavens, or proof of your mortality, or...
The door opened.
The maid was young, perhaps fifteen, with mousy brown hair and a tray of what you assumed was breakfast balanced in her hands. She took two steps into the room, looked up, and saw you sitting in the bed with blood smeared across your face like a warrior fresh from battle.
The tray hit the floor with a crash that seemed to echo through the entire tower.
Her shriek brought others. You sat frozen, your hand still pressed uselessly to your nose, as a flurry of servants appeared in the doorway. There were gasps. Murmured prayers. Someone made the sign of the seven-pointed star. The maid who had dropped the tray was weeping, certain she had somehow caused this, that her negligence had allowed the holy woman to come to harm.
"It's just a nosebleed," you tried to say, but your voice was muffled by your hand and no one was listening to you anyway.
A older woman with a ring of keys at her belt took charge, shooing the gawkers away, sending someone for water and clean cloths. She had the brisk, no-nonsense manner of a woman who had managed households for decades and had no time for hysterics. "It's the change in air," she announced, as if she had seen this a hundred times. "Happens to sailors, too, when they come to port after long voyages. The body must adjust. Nothing more."
The next hour passed in a haze of cleanup. A basin of cool water was brought. Cloths were pressed into your hands. The bloody sheets were whisked away with an efficiency that suggested the servants of the Hightower had dealt with far worse than a nosebleed. You washed your face, your hands, watching the water in the basin turn pink. By the time you were clean, your nose had stopped bleeding entirely.
It was then that the matter of clothing arose.
"The garments you arrived in," the housekeeper said, her tone carefully neutral, "have been taken for examination."
You looked up from the basin. "Examination?"
"By order of the High Septon himself." There was a note of pride in her voice, the satisfaction of a servant whose household had produced something worthy of such attention. "They are to be studied as holy artifacts. The smiths and tailors have been summoned. None can determine their origin."
You felt a chill that had nothing to do with the morning air. Your jeans. Your t-shirt. Your sneakers. All of it made of materials that did not exist in this world, assembled with techniques that would not be invented for centuries. You had worn them to bed because you'd been too tired to change, and now they were relics of a faith you did not share.
"What...what have they found?" you asked, careful to keep your voice steady.
The housekeeper hesitated, clearly uncertain whether she should be sharing this information. But you were the miracle, the gift from the Seven, and perhaps that entitled you to know. "The shoes," she said slowly, "are made of a substance no one has seen before. Springy. Like rubber, but not rubber. The sole is…not leather. Not wood. The cobbler is baffled." She paused. "The blue trousers are woven of a thread so fine and so white that the smiths cannot understand how the blue was applied. It is not dye. It is as if the threads themselves are both colors at once."
Your jeans. Your ordinary, mass-produced jeans, manufactured in a factory halfway across a world that did not exist here. Of course they couldn't understand.
"And the shirt," the housekeeper continued, "stretches. The tailors have never seen its like. They say it must be spun from something other than wool or linen or silk, but what, they cannot guess."
Polyester. You almost laughed. You were a miracle because of synthetic fiber.
"What of her jewelry?" one of the younger maids ventured, emboldened by the housekeeper's willingness to speak. "The gold bracelet?"
The housekeeper nodded, her expression becoming thoughtful. "Ah, yes. The bracelet. That, at least, is gold. But the chain..." She shook her head. "So fine. So delicate. The goldsmiths say it would take a master craftsman a lifetime to achieve such work. They cannot fathom how it was made."
A gift from a friend years ago, a thin gold chain so delicate it was almost invisible against your skin. You had worn it for so long you forgot it was there. Here, it was a masterpiece beyond the reach of even the finest artisans.
"We have prepared a gown for you," the housekeeper said, gesturing toward the carved chest at the foot of the bed. "Until the holy garments are returned, you will need appropriate clothing."
The gown was beautiful. There was no denying that. It was a deep blue that reminded you of the evening sky. The sleeves were long and fitted, the neckline modest, the skirt full enough to allow movement but not so full as to be impractical. Underthings were provided as well, a shift of fine linen, stockings, a simple pair of leather slippers. The housekeeper and the maids helped you into everything.
You stood still and let them work, grateful for the guidance. You would not have known how to put on half these garments on your own. The lacings, the fastenings, the proper way to drape the sleeves, all of it was foreign to you. You were acutely aware of your ignorance, of how easily a single mistake could expose you.
"You look a proper lady now," the housekeeper said, stepping back to admire her work. "The colors suit you."
You caught a glimpse of yourself in the polished silver mirror that hung on the wall. The woman who stared back was strange to you. You had never felt more like an imposter.
Breakfast was served in a small solar adjacent to the family's private quarters. You were escorted there by a servant who kept glancing at you with barely concealed awe, as if expecting you to burst into holy light at any moment. The solar was a comfortable room, its walls hung with tapestries depicting the founding of the Hightower, its windows looking out over the city. A fire crackled in the hearth. The table was spread with dishes you did not recognize.
Gwayne was already there, standing by the window with a cup of something steaming in his hands. He turned when you entered. "You look well," he said. "The color becomes you."
"Thank you," you replied, and meant it. He was not staring at you like a relic. He was looking at you like a person.
Daeron arrived moments later, his reddish hair still slightly damp from washing, his cheeks flushed from the morning chill. He smiled when he saw you, a bright, genuine smile that made him look even younger than he was. "Good morning, my lady! I hope you slept better than I did. I kept dreaming of falling stars."
"I slept well enough," you lied. "Thank you, my prince."
Ormund was the last to enter. He was dressed for the day already, a long tunic of forest green velvet over darker breeches, his brown curls tamed but still unruly around his temples. He took his seat at the head of the table without ceremony, and a servant immediately appeared to fill his cup and plate. "We have much to discuss," he said, reaching for a piece of bread. "But first, eat. You must be hungry."
You were seated between Daeron and Gwayne, a placement that felt intentional. Ormund sat at the head, where he could watch all of you. The dishes on the table steamed and smelled enticing, but you recognized almost nothing. There were breads of various shapes and colors. A soft cheese studded with herbs. Some sort of pie with a golden crust. Small brown things that might have been sausages or might have been something else entirely. A pot of honey. A dish of what looked like stewed fruit.
You hesitated, your fork hovering uncertainly over the table. In your world, you knew what you liked, what you didn't, what was safe. Here, everything was a mystery. What if you reached for something and it was meant to be eaten with fingers? What if you used a utensil incorrectly? What if...
Daeron caught your eye. He was already spooning stewed fruit onto a piece of bread with the enthusiasm of a teenage boy who had never met a meal he didn't like. Seeing your hesitation, he paused. Then, with a small, knowing smile, he lifted his bread and took a deliberate bite, tilting his head slightly as if to say, like this.
You followed his lead. You picked up a piece of bread, spooned some of the stewed fruit onto it, and took a bite. It was good: warm, sweet and spiced with something you couldn't name. Daeron's smile widened.
Throughout the meal, you watched him. When he picked up a sausage, you did the same. When he used his knife to spread the herbed cheese on a piece of bread, you copied the motion exactly. It became a game between you. He would catch your eye before taking a bite of something, you would mirror him, and he would grin like a child who had found a playmate.
"You are a quick study," Gwayne murmured from your other side. There was amusement in his voice.
"I have a good teacher," you replied, nodding toward Daeron.
Gwayne's lips twitched. "He has been in need of a friend. I am glad you seem to be one."
Ormund, who had been eating in silence, set down his fork with a decisive clink. "Speaking of teaching," he said, drawing the attention of the table, "we must arrange for lessons. You cannot read, I assume?"
You blinked. "I can read."
A pause. Ormund's eyebrows rose slightly. "Can you? In what language?"
"The Common Tongue. And I can write, as well." You paused, remembering you could not, in fact, write cursive with a quill and an inkpot. "A little."
This seemed to please him. "Good. That will save time. But there are other things you must learn. History, geography, the noble houses and their sigils, proper etiquette, dancing. The basics of running a household." He leaned back in his chair, studying you with that assessing gaze. "You do not object to lessons?"
It was not really a question, but you treated it as one. "No, my lord. I would be grateful for the instruction."
Ormund nodded, clearly satisfied with your deference. "It is settled, then. I will speak with the maester and the septa. They will arrange a schedule."
Gwayne, who had been watching this exchange with a carefully neutral expression, set down his cup. "And what of the Faith? They will have their own expectations."
A muscle in Ormund's jaw tightened. "The Faith can have their expectations. She is under the protection of House Hightower. That protection does not mean she is a puppet for the septons to parade about."
"They will want her to be seen," Gwayne pressed. "A miracle, appearing in the Starry Sept itself? The High Septon will not let such a sign go unremarked. Especially now."
"Especially now?" you asked, before you could stop yourself.
The three men exchanged glances. It was Daeron who answered, his boyish enthusiasm dimming slightly. "There was another sign," he said. "Last night, in the graveyard by the western gate. The statue of the Stranger…" He trailed off, looking uncomfortable.
"It collapsed," Ormund finished flatly. "Shattered into a dozen pieces. No storm, no earthquake, no apparent cause. The faithful are calling it a portent. The Seven want the war to end."
Heavy silence followed. You thought of the war that was coming, or perhaps already raging, the Dance of the Dragons, the civil war that would tear the realm apart. You thought of Rhaenyra on the Iron Throne, of Aegon, of all the death and fire that was to come. You had wanted no part of it.
But the Seven had apparently decided otherwise. First a woman falling from the heavens. Then a statue of death crumbling to pieces. The people of Oldtown would connect these events. They would see a pattern. A purpose.
Your purpose.
You looked down at your plate, your appetite suddenly gone. "What does it mean?"
Ormund did not answer immediately. When he spoke, his words were careful, measured. "It means that you are exactly where you are meant to be. The Seven sent you here, to us, at the very moment the realm stands on the brink of destruction. That is not coincidence. That is divine will."
Gwayne's expression flickered but he said nothing.
Daeron, ever earnest, reached across the table and touched your hand. "Whatever it means, you are not alone in it. We will help you."
The meal ended, but you did not escape.
Daeron was whisked away by his tutors, there were still expectations, still lessons, even for a prince in the midst of a war, and Gwayne was detained by a steward with questions. You found yourself lingering by the window, watching the morning light play across the rooftops of Oldtown, wondering how long you could reasonably stay in the solar before someone came to fetch you for your own lessons.
The answer was not long.
"Walk with me."
Ormund stood in the doorway. His expression was pleasant enough.
You had no choice. You followed him.
He led you not to the main corridors but to a smaller passage, one that curved along the outer wall of the tower. The windows here were narrow, arrow-slits really, and the wind that slipped through them carried the salt-tang of the sea. The stone was cold, the shadows deep. You walked beside him in silence, your new slippers making soft sounds against the floor, your heart beating too fast in your chest.
He stopped. "You smell different," he said.
The words were so unexpected that you could only stare at him. "My lord?"
"Your scent." He stepped closer. Almost absently, as if drawn by something he could not name. "When your garments were brought to me, before the Faith took them, I noticed it. Something on the fabric. Several somethings." He inhaled slowly, his eyes half-lidding. "It is on you still. Fainter now, after the night, but still there."
Your blood ran cold. Your perfumes. Of course. The evening before you'd fallen asleep, you had stopped at Sephora. It had been a small rebellion against your frustration, a tiny luxury. You'd sprayed three or four different scents on your wrists, your neck, the inside of your elbow: testing them against each other, trying to decide which one you liked best. You hadn't bought any. You'd just walked out wearing a cocktail of expensive fragrances that had clung to your skin and your clothes.
Fragrances made of synthetic compounds. Alcohol-based. Formulated with notes that did not exist in nature. Scents that no one in this world had ever smelled before.
"There is something floral," Ormund murmured, moving closer still. "But not like any flower I know. Something sweet, but not honey. Something..." He shook his head, frustration flickering across his features. "I cannot place it. I pride myself on my senses, my lady. I can identify every ingredient in a dish by smell alone. I can tell you which village a wine comes from. But this…this eludes me."
He was close now. Too close. His head tilted, his gaze dropping to the curve of your neck, and you realized with a jolt of pure, frozen panic that he was going to...
His nose touched your skin.
You went rigid. Every muscle in your body locked tight. His nose pressed into the hollow beneath your ear, where the scent of your perfume would have lingered strongest. He inhaled, long and slow, and then he moved, nosing down the column of your throat, tracing the path of your pulse, breathing you in like a man trying to memorize the notes of a rare wine.
"There." He exhaled against your collarbone, his breath warm and strangely intimate. "That one. What is it? It is almost citrus, but not. Sharper. Cleaner. It reminds me of..." He paused, searching for the word. "Nothing. It reminds me of nothing I have ever known."
He pulled back just enough to look at your face. His own expression was curious, analytical, entirely unaware or unconcerned by your frozen terror. "You are trembling," he observed. "I forget myself. You are not accustomed to the company of men. The septons said as much."
You swallowed, your throat so tight it ached. "My lord, I..."
"It is a curious thing," he continued, as if you had not spoken, "that the Seven would send a woman so innocent. So untouched. And yet..." His gaze dropped to your lips, then back to your eyes. "You are a gift, after all. And gifts are meant to be unwrapped."
You understood, then. He was not just curious about your scent. He was staking a claim. He was testing the boundaries of his ownership.
"Do you know what a desire is?" he asked, his voice dropping to something almost gentle and condescending. "I do not mean the word. I mean the...experience. The feeling. Have you known it?"
You could have told the truth. But you were supposed to be from the Seven Heavens. "In theory," you managed, your voice barely a whisper. "I know of it."
"Theory." He smiled. "Theory is a poor substitute for practice. But perhaps that is why you were sent. To learn." He reached up, his fingers brushed a strand of hair from your face. "I can teach you a great many things."
"Ormund."
The voice cut through the corridor. Gwayne stood at the end of the passage, his auburn hair wind-tousled, his pale blue eyes fixed on his cousin with an expression that was carefully controlled but unmistakably hard. He was not wearing his sword, you noticed distantly, but his hand rested at his belt as if he wished he were.
a/n: Liked the fic? You can donate on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: https://ko-fi.com/catbayunthestoryteller <3
a/n: Next chapter will be from Gwayne's pov. Comment if you'd like to be added to the taglist!
a/n: The concept of falling through the roof of the sept is inspired by an Aemond oneshot I read years ago. If anyone knows the author, lmk. The rest is mine.
Tbh i clicked on "the miracle" only for Gwayne ( i love your writing and i live him so this was perfect😍) but now i wanna see how far our modern reader is gonna take the whole "i am 100% a virgin" thing with Ormund😄😄😄
"Bro just trust me. Source? Divine intuition ✨️ 😌".
Summary: You fall asleep watching HOTD and wake up in Westeros, having fallen through the roof of the Starry Sept under divine light, right in front of the Hightowers. The septons and the crowd declare you a miracle from the Seven Gods. You must keep up the act so your strange appearance won't get you labeled a heretic and killed. But Hightowers have their own motivations. Warnings: fictional religion, possessiveness, sexist views, some angst cuz Gwayne is a yearner, arranged marriage, eventual smut.
The last thing you remembered was the glow of your laptop screen, the sting of frustration behind your eyes, and the bitter taste of exhaustion on your tongue. Another episode of House of the Dragon had ended, leaving you with that familiar, hollow ache: watching characters you’d grown to care about march toward their doom, the inevitable tragedy of it all unfold. You’d snapped the laptop shut with more force than necessary, the echo of it hanging in your dark bedroom.
If I had that much wealth and influence, you’d thought bitterly, burying your face in your pillow, still wearing your jeans and t-shirt because you couldn’t even muster the energy to change, I would simply not interfere. I’d take my money and my land and I’d go live in peace. None of this politicking. None of this war. Just…peace and quiet.
You’d fallen asleep to that fantasy. A quiet keep somewhere. A garden. No dragons. No death.
The first thing that pulled you from the depths of unconsciousness was not your alarm clock.
It was the sound of chanting. Low, rhythmic, in a language that felt archaic even though you could understand it. The second thing was the cold. A hard, unyielding surface pressed against your cheek, your hip, your bare forearms. Stone. Cold, smooth stone, polished by what felt like centuries of footfalls.
The third thing was the light. A kaleidoscope of jewel-toned brilliance, dancing across the backs of your eyelids in hues of sapphire, ruby, and emerald. Stained glass. Massive stained glass windows.
Your eyes flew open.
Above you soared a vaulted ceiling of impossible height, painted with stars. The air smelled of incense, beeswax and decayed flowers.
You were sprawled, ungracefully and painfully, on the floor of what could only be described as a cathedral. A sept. No. The sept. The Starry Sept of Oldtown.
Panic, cold and absolute, seized your lungs. It was a dream. It had to be a dream. An incredibly vivid, tactile, olfactory hallucination of a dream. The stone felt too real. The chill in the air bit too sharply at your bare arms. The smell of incense was too cloying.
Then you heard gasps and frantic voices.
“...a crash! Did you not hear it? A crash from above, and a great light!”
“Look! Look there, upon the floor! A woman!”
“Where did she come from? The ceiling is intact!”
“It was a light from the Seven Heavens themselves, I tell you! A rending of the veil!”
You pushed yourself up onto your hands, your head swimming. You were in the center of the sept. A ring of faces, pale and shocked, stared at you. Men in robes and crystal pendants. Septons. Women in grey habits, their hands clasped to their chests. Septas. They were all speaking at once, a cacophony of awe and terror, their words washing over you.
Beyond them, standing apart, observing the chaos with varying degrees of shock and calculation, were three men you recognized with a jolt of surreal, stomach-dropping horror.
The tallest, broadest, with a stern, handsome face and dark hair, clad in a dark green doublet with subtle silver embroidery, was unmistakably Ormund Hightower.
Beside him, younger, slighter, with the reddish hair and light blue eyes, was Prince Daeron Targaryen. His expression was one of pure, wide-eyed, startled wonder. A boy, not a man.
And at their head, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword, was Ser Gwayne Hightower. He wore a long overcoat of smoke-grey colour, slashed to show an under-tunic of green.
You knew them. You knew their fates. In the book, Gwayne would be dead soon, taken in the fall of King’s Landing. Ormund would die at Tumbleton, as would Daeron. A part of your brain, the part that was screaming at you to wake up, cataloged this automatically.
“It is a miracle!” a septon with a face like a wrinkled red apple declared, his voice rising above the din. “The Seven have seen our plight, our war, and they have answered our prayers! Look upon her! She fell from the heavens themselves, bathed in holy light!”
Gwayne’s voice cut through the fervor, calm but firm. “I did not pray for a woman. I prayed for peace for my family. For an end to this bloodshed.”
Ormund said nothing. His silence was louder than any prayer.
Then Daeron spoke, his voice so soft it was almost lost in the vast space. He flushed and looked down at his boots, then back up at you, his young face earnest and suddenly vulnerable. “I was…I was praying to the Mother.” He swallowed. “For guidance. And a gentle hand. And perhaps…a friend.” He admitted the last word with such quiet, aching loneliness that your heart, despite your terror, gave a small, painful twist.
The wrinkled septon was undeterred. “The Seven are not to be taken so literally, my prince! A gift is a gift, whatever form it takes. It is the spirit of the prayer that is answered, not the letter. She is a miracle, a clear sign that the gods favor House Hightower! In these dark times of war, when a woman sits the Iron Throne and violates the natural order of things, the Seven have seen fit to send a sign directly to us!”
They were speaking over you, not to you. As if you were a prize pig at a fair. Your terror was beginning to curdle into a desperate, trapped anger. This was not a dream. The cold on your skin, the ache in your hip from the fall, the sheer sensory overload, it was all too solid, too real. And they were already assigning you a purpose, a meaning, before you’d even stood up.
Daeron was still staring, his blue eyes huge. Gwayne, however, was the only one whose gaze had dropped from your divine provenance to your actual person. He saw the wild, trapped look in your eyes, the way your chest was heaving under your thin t-shirt, the way your hands, still pressed to the cold stone, were trembling. The other men saw a sign. The septas, you noticed, some of them were eyeing your jeans with pursed lips, a flicker of disapproval cutting through their awe. Women, it seemed, could always be counted on to police other women, even in the face of a miracle.
Gwayne stepped forward. He ignored the babbling septon and extended a hand toward you, his expression not one of religious ecstasy but of simple, human concern. His hand was gloved in fine, soft leather. “You’re afraid,” he said quietly, so only you could hear.
You couldn’t speak. Your throat was a closed fist. You just stared up at him, a man you knew to be dead in one version of this story, and who was terrifyingly, solidly alive in this one. What universe was this? The show’s? The book’s? A blend of both? But they looked like the actors. If you died here, would you wake up in your bed? Was this a Narnia situation where decades could pass and you’d snap back to the moment you fell asleep? The frantic calculations were a shield against the panic.
You took his hand. His grip was firm, steady, and he pulled you to your feet with an easy strength. You swayed for a moment, your legs feeling like jelly, and instinctively clutched at his forearm for balance.
The moment your hand touched him, a fresh wave of murmurs swept through the assembled clergy. Gwayne stiffened almost imperceptibly, but didn’t pull away. He was looking at you.
Ormund’s voice, smooth and commanding, silenced the whispers. “Why is she dressed so immodestly?”
All eyes fell on your clothes. Your perfectly normal, utterly mundane jeans and t-shirt. In this world, you may as well have been naked. You felt a hot wash of shame and defensive anger. You fell through a ceiling and the first question is about your clothes?
Gwayne’s arm shifted subtly, angling his body as if to partially shield you from the brunt of his cousin’s stare. Ormund’s question hung in the air, direct and challenging. He might claim to be addressing the clergy, but his gaze was fixed on you, and there was intelligence there. He could tell you were not a noblewoman. He could tell you didn’t know their customs.
Before you could even formulate a lie, the apple-faced septon seized the opportunity. “It is clear, my lord! In the Seven Heavens, there is no sin of lust! There is no shame, no base desire to hide the form the Seven themselves crafted. Her state is one of prelapsarian innocence!”
Prelapsarian innocence. You could have kissed the old man. You immediately schooled your face into what you hoped was an expression of serene, otherworldly blankness, and gave a slow, deliberate nod. You didn't trust your voice.
“How did you come to be here, child?” another septon asked, this one younger and more fervent, his eyes burning with zealous light. “What are heavens like?”
Your mouth was dry. You couldn't describe a heaven. They’d catch you in a lie in an instant. So you did the only thing you could do. You turned, slowly, and pointed. Your finger, still trembling slightly, aimed first at the statue of the Mother, her arms outstretched in eternal, gentle welcome. Then, you moved it to the Maiden, her face a mask of serene, youthful grace.
Then you lowered your hand and clasped it with your other one in front of you. You met the young septon’s eyes and shook your head slowly, a gesture of profound, unknowing mystery.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” you whispered, your voice raspy and strange to your own ears. It was the absolute, unvarnished truth. “I don’t remember.”
The reaction was instantaneous. The septons and septas dissolved into a fresh chorus of interpretation. The old septon was nodding sagely. “The mind cannot comprehend the divine. It is a mercy. A mortal vessel could not contain the memories of paradise and remain tethered to this sinful earth. Her very silence is proof!”
But then the mood shifted. A septa with a face like a hatchet, her eyes lingering with open disapproval on the way your jeans clung to your legs, spoke up. Her voice was thin and sharp. “A woman, sent to three unmarried Hightower men. The gods’ purpose is clear, is it not? If it were merely a friend for the young prince, the Seven would have sent a boy his own age.”
You felt the blood drain from your face. No. No, no, no. This was spiraling completely out of control. You were not a gift. You were not a cosmic wife-delivery service.
Ormund’s gaze sharpened with a new, appraising intensity. He looked you up and down, not with lust, but with the look of a lord assessing a new, valuable resource. “She is too old for Daeron,” he said, his voice flat and dismissive, as if Daeron weren’t standing right there. “She is a woman grown. Sent to an older, unwed lord. It is the natural order.”
Gwayne’s expression was troubled, a deep furrow appearing between his brows. You felt his arm tense under your hand. He was looking at Ormund with a weariness that spoke of a lifetime of small concessions. “Ormund,” he said, his voice low with warning. “You speak of her as if she were a parcel of land.”
“She can be taught,” Ormund continued, ignoring Gwayne completely, his mind already spinning a future you wanted no part of. “She clearly has no knowledge of our ways. No curtsy. No proper address. A rough stone, but one with a divine gleam. She can be polished. Taught everything a lady needs to know.” He took a step closer, and his gaze was so proprietary, so certain, that your entire body reacted on instinct.
You flinched back and pressed yourself closer to Gwayne, your fingers digging into his sleeve like a lifeline. It was pure, primal panic.
Ormund stopped, misinterpreting the gesture with a slight, knowing smile. “She is not used to the company of men. A true innocent.”
Gwayne looked down at where your hand was digging into his arm. He saw the panic, the silent plea. He looked back at his cousin, the Lord of Oldtown, a man he had deferred to since childhood. How many times had he let Ormund win? A tourney match, a hunting prize, a place of honor at the table? All to avoid the cold, punishing silence, the sulking, the throwing of a fit that a man of his stature should have long outgrown. It was easier. It had always been easier to bend than to watch Ormund break something in his displeasure.
His gaze fell on Daeron, who was watching the exchange with a mixture of confusion and a distant, lingering loneliness. The boy had wanted a friend. And now even this one strange, miraculous thing was being haggled over by the adults.
Gwayne Hightower was, above all else, a knight. And a knight protected the innocent. He made a decision. It was a small one but it was a start. He did not shake off your grip. He did not step away. He remained exactly where he was, a bulwark of stillness against the current of Ormund’s ambition. He held Ormund’s gaze and said, in a voice laced with a steel he rarely showed his cousin, “She is afraid. Any discussion of her...purpose...can wait until she is not shaking like a leaf.”
He turned his head to you, his voice softening again to the tone he’d used when he first helped you up. “My lady,” he said, the title a deliberate, protective shield, “would you like to sit down? Perhaps some water?” He was asking you. He was, in this entire cacophony of men telling you what you were and what you meant, the only one who thought to ask what you wanted.
You managed a small, jerky nod, still unable to form words around the knot of terror in your throat. You didn’t know if this was the show universe or the book universe. You didn’t know if death here meant waking up at home. You didn’t know anything. All you knew was the chilling certainty that your simple wish for a quiet, peaceful life had been answered in the most terrifyingly complicated way imaginable. You were in the heart of the Hightower, a supposed miracle, and the one thing you knew for sure about this world was that war was coming, and it would not leave anyone in peace.
Gwayne did not release your hand as he guided you away from the center of the sept while your thoughts were still spinning. His grip was light, respectful, but present, a steady anchor as he led you toward a carved wooden bench near one of the massive pillars. The septons and septas parted before you, their whispers following in your wake.
You sat because your legs would no longer hold you. The bench was hard and cold, but it was solid. Real. Everything was too real. The grain of the wood beneath your fingers. The faint vibration of the sept's bells tolling somewhere far above. The way the light through the stained glass painted Daeron's face in fragments of blue and gold as he hovered uncertainly a few paces away.
Ormund had followed, of course. He stood a few feet away, his arms crossed over his chest, his brown curls catching the colored light. He was not yet thirty perhaps, or didn't look like it, you realized now that the initial shock was fading and you could see him more clearly. Younger than you'd first assumed. But there was a gravity to him, a sense of authority that aged him beyond his years. The Lord of Oldtown. The weight of an entire house rested on his shoulders, and it showed in the set of his jaw, the watchfulness of his gaze.
Gwayne remained beside you, standing close enough that his presence felt like a shield. A knight in his prime, not a man nearing the end of his story. In the book, he was already dead.
"We should summon a maester," Daeron said suddenly, his voice cutting through the low murmur of the clergy. He took a half-step forward, then stopped, as if unsure of his welcome. "She fell from a great height. She might be injured."
"A fine suggestion, my prince," the apple-faced septon said, nodding vigorously. "But a fall from the heavens is not a fall from a roof. The Seven would not send a miracle only to have her dashed upon the floor."
"Nevertheless," Gwayne said, his tone polite but firm, "water and a moment of quiet would not go amiss." He glanced down at you. "You are unhurt?"
It took you a moment to realize he was speaking to you. Directly. Waiting for your answer. You swallowed, your throat dry as parchment, and managed a small shake of your head. "I don't...I don't think I'm hurt." Your voice came out as a rasp, barely recognizable. "Just...shaken."
The understatement of your entire existence.
A septa appeared with a clay cup of water. You took it with trembling hands, the cool liquid a small mercy against your parched throat. The septa lingered, her eyes on your strange clothing, but she said nothing. The hatchet-faced one had retreated to the edge of the gathering, her lips pressed into a thin line, clearly displeased but unwilling to challenge the prevailing interpretation of your arrival.
You were a miracle. You had to keep being a miracle. If you stopped being a miracle, you would be a witch, or a madwoman, or simply a woman alone in a world that had no mercy for such creatures. The calculation was clear, cutting through the fog of your terror. You had no wealth. No family. No knowledge of this world beyond what you'd read and watched. Your survival depended entirely on their belief that you were something holy.
The thought made you want to both laugh and cry.
"She should be brought to the Hightower," Ormund declared. "A chamber can be prepared. Servants assigned. She will need proper clothing, instruction. She cannot remain in the sept."
"My lord is wise," the apple-faced septon agreed. "The Hightower is the seat of your noble house. Where better for a gift from the Seven to reside?"
Gwayne's jaw tightened. "And what of her wishes? Should we not ask where she would prefer to go?"
"She does not know our world," Ormund replied smoothly. "You said it yourself: she is afraid, bewildered. She cannot know what she wants. It falls to us to provide guidance. Protection." His gaze flicked to you. "She is under the protection of House Hightower now. We would be remiss in our duty to the Seven if we did not ensure her safety."
The logic was impeccable. Unassailable. And it trapped you as neatly as a cage.
Daeron, who had been listening with his brow furrowed, spoke again. "I could escort her. If…if that would be acceptable." He flushed slightly, his pale cheeks pinking. "I was the one who prayed. It seems only right that I should help."
Ormund considered this, then nodded slowly. "A generous offer. It speaks well of you." He turned to the assembled clergy, raising his voice. "The Seven have blessed this house. Let it be known that House Hightower receives their gift with humility and gratitude. The woman will be given every comfort, every courtesy. And when the time is right, her purpose will be made clear."
There was a murmur of approval. The septons and septas bowed their heads, some making the sign of the seven-pointed star. The crisis was over. The decision was made. You were going to the Hightower.
You set the empty cup down on the bench beside you, your fingers numb. Gwayne was still watching you with a flicker of sympathy, perhaps, or concern. He had argued for your wishes to be considered. He had been overruled. But he had tried.
"My lady," he said quietly, extending his hand to help you rise once more. "Will you walk with us? It is not far."
The walk through Oldtown was a blur. You were aware of cobblestones beneath your inappropriate shoes, of narrow streets and timbered buildings that looked like illustrations from a history book come to life.
People stared as you passed. Of course they did. Word of a miracle spread faster than fire. You walked with your head down, trying not to meet anyone's eyes. Gwayne walked on one side of you, Daeron on the other, and Ormund strode ahead with the confidence of a lord returning to his domain.
You were led up a winding stair, through corridors hung with ancient tapestries, past windows that looked out over the churning waters. Your legs ached.
Finally, you were shown into a chamber. It was larger than your entire apartment back home, furnished with a canopied bed, a carved chest, a small table with candles. A fire crackled in the hearth, casting dancing shadows on the walls. A window overlooked the city below, the slate roofs and twisting streets rendered small and insignificant from this height.
"The servants will bring clothing that fits," Ormund said from the doorway. He had not entered the room, you noticed. "Food and water as well. We will speak more on the morrow, when you have rested."
"I will see that she has everything she needs," Gwayne said, and there was a finality to his tone that suggested he was not asking permission.
Ormund hesitated, then inclined his head. "As you wish." He turned and left, his footsteps fading down the corridor.
Daeron lingered a moment longer. "I hope you sleep well, my lady," he said earnestly. "I am glad you are here. Whatever your purpose may be." He ducked his head in a small bow and followed Ormund, leaving you alone with Gwayne and the crackling fire.
The silence stretched. You stood in the center of the room, your arms wrapped around yourself, and you had never felt so small, so utterly adrift. This was not what you had wished for. You had been dropped into the center of the story, into the hands of a family marked for tragedy.
Gwayne did not leave. He stood by the door, his hand resting on the frame, his expression troubled. "I know you are afraid. I do not pretend to understand what has happened here. The ways of the Seven are beyond mortal comprehension. But I know fear when I see it."
You looked at him. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do."
It was the truth. The desperate, frightened truth.
Gwayne held your gaze for a long moment. "Neither do I," he admitted. "But whatever it is, you will not face it alone. You have my word on that." He stepped back, his hand dropping from the doorframe. "I will see you on the morrow. Try to rest."
Then he was gone. You sank onto the edge of the bed and pressed your face into your hands.
You were in Westeros. You had no idea how you were going to survive.
Sleep did not come easily.
The bed was soft beyond measure: feather mattress, silk sheets, pillows that seemed to swallow your head, but your body did not trust it. Every creak of the ancient tower made you flinch. Every shift of the wind against the window was a dragon's wing in your half-dreaming mind. You dozed in fragments, waking with your heart pounding, forgetting for a terrible moment where you were, then remembering all at once with a sick lurch of your stomach.
The air was wrong. It was the first thing your body noticed, even before your conscious mind caught up. It was too clear and sharp, heavy with sea breeze. Your sinuses throbbed with it, a dull pressure building behind your eyes and at the bridge of your nose. You tossed and turned, tangling the fine sheets around your legs.
When dawn finally crept through the window, you woke to the taste of copper in your mouth.
Your hand flew to your face. Your fingers came away red. Blood was smeared across your upper lip, trailing down your chin, spotting the pristine white pillowcase in a pattern that looked disturbingly like evidence of violence. A nosebleed. You'd had them before, during allergy season, during dry winters. Your body, overwhelmed by unfamiliar air and the stress of the previous day, had popped a vessel.
You sat up slowly, pressing the heel of your hand against your nose. The blood was already slowing. You needed water. A cloth. You needed to clean this up before anyone saw and decided it was a sign from the heavens, or proof of your mortality, or...
The door opened.
The maid was young, perhaps fifteen, with mousy brown hair and a tray of what you assumed was breakfast balanced in her hands. She took two steps into the room, looked up, and saw you sitting in the bed with blood smeared across your face like a warrior fresh from battle.
The tray hit the floor with a crash that seemed to echo through the entire tower.
Her shriek brought others. You sat frozen, your hand still pressed uselessly to your nose, as a flurry of servants appeared in the doorway. There were gasps. Murmured prayers. Someone made the sign of the seven-pointed star. The maid who had dropped the tray was weeping, certain she had somehow caused this, that her negligence had allowed the holy woman to come to harm.
"It's just a nosebleed," you tried to say, but your voice was muffled by your hand and no one was listening to you anyway.
A older woman with a ring of keys at her belt took charge, shooing the gawkers away, sending someone for water and clean cloths. She had the brisk, no-nonsense manner of a woman who had managed households for decades and had no time for hysterics. "It's the change in air," she announced, as if she had seen this a hundred times. "Happens to sailors, too, when they come to port after long voyages. The body must adjust. Nothing more."
The next hour passed in a haze of cleanup. A basin of cool water was brought. Cloths were pressed into your hands. The bloody sheets were whisked away with an efficiency that suggested the servants of the Hightower had dealt with far worse than a nosebleed. You washed your face, your hands, watching the water in the basin turn pink. By the time you were clean, your nose had stopped bleeding entirely.
It was then that the matter of clothing arose.
"The garments you arrived in," the housekeeper said, her tone carefully neutral, "have been taken for examination."
You looked up from the basin. "Examination?"
"By order of the High Septon himself." There was a note of pride in her voice, the satisfaction of a servant whose household had produced something worthy of such attention. "They are to be studied as holy artifacts. The smiths and tailors have been summoned. None can determine their origin."
You felt a chill that had nothing to do with the morning air. Your jeans. Your t-shirt. Your sneakers. All of it made of materials that did not exist in this world, assembled with techniques that would not be invented for centuries. You had worn them to bed because you'd been too tired to change, and now they were relics of a faith you did not share.
"What...what have they found?" you asked, careful to keep your voice steady.
The housekeeper hesitated, clearly uncertain whether she should be sharing this information. But you were the miracle, the gift from the Seven, and perhaps that entitled you to know. "The shoes," she said slowly, "are made of a substance no one has seen before. Springy. Like rubber, but not rubber. The sole is…not leather. Not wood. The cobbler is baffled." She paused. "The blue trousers are woven of a thread so fine and so white that the smiths cannot understand how the blue was applied. It is not dye. It is as if the threads themselves are both colors at once."
Your jeans. Your ordinary, mass-produced jeans, manufactured in a factory halfway across a world that did not exist here. Of course they couldn't understand.
"And the shirt," the housekeeper continued, "stretches. The tailors have never seen its like. They say it must be spun from something other than wool or linen or silk, but what, they cannot guess."
Polyester. You almost laughed. You were a miracle because of synthetic fiber.
"What of her jewelry?" one of the younger maids ventured, emboldened by the housekeeper's willingness to speak. "The gold bracelet?"
The housekeeper nodded, her expression becoming thoughtful. "Ah, yes. The bracelet. That, at least, is gold. But the chain..." She shook her head. "So fine. So delicate. The goldsmiths say it would take a master craftsman a lifetime to achieve such work. They cannot fathom how it was made."
A gift from a friend years ago, a thin gold chain so delicate it was almost invisible against your skin. You had worn it for so long you forgot it was there. Here, it was a masterpiece beyond the reach of even the finest artisans.
"We have prepared a gown for you," the housekeeper said, gesturing toward the carved chest at the foot of the bed. "Until the holy garments are returned, you will need appropriate clothing."
The gown was beautiful. There was no denying that. It was a deep blue that reminded you of the evening sky. The sleeves were long and fitted, the neckline modest, the skirt full enough to allow movement but not so full as to be impractical. Underthings were provided as well, a shift of fine linen, stockings, a simple pair of leather slippers. The housekeeper and the maids helped you into everything.
You stood still and let them work, grateful for the guidance. You would not have known how to put on half these garments on your own. The lacings, the fastenings, the proper way to drape the sleeves, all of it was foreign to you. You were acutely aware of your ignorance, of how easily a single mistake could expose you.
"You look a proper lady now," the housekeeper said, stepping back to admire her work. "The colors suit you."
You caught a glimpse of yourself in the polished silver mirror that hung on the wall. The woman who stared back was strange to you. You had never felt more like an imposter.
Breakfast was served in a small solar adjacent to the family's private quarters. You were escorted there by a servant who kept glancing at you with barely concealed awe, as if expecting you to burst into holy light at any moment. The solar was a comfortable room, its walls hung with tapestries depicting the founding of the Hightower, its windows looking out over the city. A fire crackled in the hearth. The table was spread with dishes you did not recognize.
Gwayne was already there, standing by the window with a cup of something steaming in his hands. He turned when you entered. "You look well," he said. "The color becomes you."
"Thank you," you replied, and meant it. He was not staring at you like a relic. He was looking at you like a person.
Daeron arrived moments later, his reddish hair still slightly damp from washing, his cheeks flushed from the morning chill. He smiled when he saw you, a bright, genuine smile that made him look even younger than he was. "Good morning, my lady! I hope you slept better than I did. I kept dreaming of falling stars."
"I slept well enough," you lied. "Thank you, my prince."
Ormund was the last to enter. He was dressed for the day already, a long tunic of forest green velvet over darker breeches, his brown curls tamed but still unruly around his temples. He took his seat at the head of the table without ceremony, and a servant immediately appeared to fill his cup and plate. "We have much to discuss," he said, reaching for a piece of bread. "But first, eat. You must be hungry."
You were seated between Daeron and Gwayne, a placement that felt intentional. Ormund sat at the head, where he could watch all of you. The dishes on the table steamed and smelled enticing, but you recognized almost nothing. There were breads of various shapes and colors. A soft cheese studded with herbs. Some sort of pie with a golden crust. Small brown things that might have been sausages or might have been something else entirely. A pot of honey. A dish of what looked like stewed fruit.
You hesitated, your fork hovering uncertainly over the table. In your world, you knew what you liked, what you didn't, what was safe. Here, everything was a mystery. What if you reached for something and it was meant to be eaten with fingers? What if you used a utensil incorrectly? What if...
Daeron caught your eye. He was already spooning stewed fruit onto a piece of bread with the enthusiasm of a teenage boy who had never met a meal he didn't like. Seeing your hesitation, he paused. Then, with a small, knowing smile, he lifted his bread and took a deliberate bite, tilting his head slightly as if to say, like this.
You followed his lead. You picked up a piece of bread, spooned some of the stewed fruit onto it, and took a bite. It was good: warm, sweet and spiced with something you couldn't name. Daeron's smile widened.
Throughout the meal, you watched him. When he picked up a sausage, you did the same. When he used his knife to spread the herbed cheese on a piece of bread, you copied the motion exactly. It became a game between you. He would catch your eye before taking a bite of something, you would mirror him, and he would grin like a child who had found a playmate.
"You are a quick study," Gwayne murmured from your other side. There was amusement in his voice.
"I have a good teacher," you replied, nodding toward Daeron.
Gwayne's lips twitched. "He has been in need of a friend. I am glad you seem to be one."
Ormund, who had been eating in silence, set down his fork with a decisive clink. "Speaking of teaching," he said, drawing the attention of the table, "we must arrange for lessons. You cannot read, I assume?"
You blinked. "I can read."
A pause. Ormund's eyebrows rose slightly. "Can you? In what language?"
"The Common Tongue. And I can write, as well." You paused, remembering you could not, in fact, write cursive with a quill and an inkpot. "A little."
This seemed to please him. "Good. That will save time. But there are other things you must learn. History, geography, the noble houses and their sigils, proper etiquette, dancing. The basics of running a household." He leaned back in his chair, studying you with that assessing gaze. "You do not object to lessons?"
It was not really a question, but you treated it as one. "No, my lord. I would be grateful for the instruction."
Ormund nodded, clearly satisfied with your deference. "It is settled, then. I will speak with the maester and the septa. They will arrange a schedule."
Gwayne, who had been watching this exchange with a carefully neutral expression, set down his cup. "And what of the Faith? They will have their own expectations."
A muscle in Ormund's jaw tightened. "The Faith can have their expectations. She is under the protection of House Hightower. That protection does not mean she is a puppet for the septons to parade about."
"They will want her to be seen," Gwayne pressed. "A miracle, appearing in the Starry Sept itself? The High Septon will not let such a sign go unremarked. Especially now."
"Especially now?" you asked, before you could stop yourself.
The three men exchanged glances. It was Daeron who answered, his boyish enthusiasm dimming slightly. "There was another sign," he said. "Last night, in the graveyard by the western gate. The statue of the Stranger…" He trailed off, looking uncomfortable.
"It collapsed," Ormund finished flatly. "Shattered into a dozen pieces. No storm, no earthquake, no apparent cause. The faithful are calling it a portent. The Seven want the war to end."
Heavy silence followed. You thought of the war that was coming, or perhaps already raging, the Dance of the Dragons, the civil war that would tear the realm apart. You thought of Rhaenyra on the Iron Throne, of Aegon, of all the death and fire that was to come. You had wanted no part of it.
But the Seven had apparently decided otherwise. First a woman falling from the heavens. Then a statue of death crumbling to pieces. The people of Oldtown would connect these events. They would see a pattern. A purpose.
Your purpose.
You looked down at your plate, your appetite suddenly gone. "What does it mean?"
Ormund did not answer immediately. When he spoke, his words were careful, measured. "It means that you are exactly where you are meant to be. The Seven sent you here, to us, at the very moment the realm stands on the brink of destruction. That is not coincidence. That is divine will."
Gwayne's expression flickered but he said nothing.
Daeron, ever earnest, reached across the table and touched your hand. "Whatever it means, you are not alone in it. We will help you."
The meal ended, but you did not escape.
Daeron was whisked away by his tutors, there were still expectations, still lessons, even for a prince in the midst of a war, and Gwayne was detained by a steward with questions. You found yourself lingering by the window, watching the morning light play across the rooftops of Oldtown, wondering how long you could reasonably stay in the solar before someone came to fetch you for your own lessons.
The answer was not long.
"Walk with me."
Ormund stood in the doorway. His expression was pleasant enough.
You had no choice. You followed him.
He led you not to the main corridors but to a smaller passage, one that curved along the outer wall of the tower. The windows here were narrow, arrow-slits really, and the wind that slipped through them carried the salt-tang of the sea. The stone was cold, the shadows deep. You walked beside him in silence, your new slippers making soft sounds against the floor, your heart beating too fast in your chest.
He stopped. "You smell different," he said.
The words were so unexpected that you could only stare at him. "My lord?"
"Your scent." He stepped closer. Almost absently, as if drawn by something he could not name. "When your garments were brought to me, before the Faith took them, I noticed it. Something on the fabric. Several somethings." He inhaled slowly, his eyes half-lidding. "It is on you still. Fainter now, after the night, but still there."
Your blood ran cold. Your perfumes. Of course. The evening before you'd fallen asleep, you had stopped at Sephora. It had been a small rebellion against your frustration, a tiny luxury. You'd sprayed three or four different scents on your wrists, your neck, the inside of your elbow: testing them against each other, trying to decide which one you liked best. You hadn't bought any. You'd just walked out wearing a cocktail of expensive fragrances that had clung to your skin and your clothes.
Fragrances made of synthetic compounds. Alcohol-based. Formulated with notes that did not exist in nature. Scents that no one in this world had ever smelled before.
"There is something floral," Ormund murmured, moving closer still. "But not like any flower I know. Something sweet, but not honey. Something..." He shook his head, frustration flickering across his features. "I cannot place it. I pride myself on my senses, my lady. I can identify every ingredient in a dish by smell alone. I can tell you which village a wine comes from. But this…this eludes me."
He was close now. Too close. His head tilted, his gaze dropping to the curve of your neck, and you realized with a jolt of pure, frozen panic that he was going to...
His nose touched your skin.
You went rigid. Every muscle in your body locked tight. His nose pressed into the hollow beneath your ear, where the scent of your perfume would have lingered strongest. He inhaled, long and slow, and then he moved, nosing down the column of your throat, tracing the path of your pulse, breathing you in like a man trying to memorize the notes of a rare wine.
"There." He exhaled against your collarbone, his breath warm and strangely intimate. "That one. What is it? It is almost citrus, but not. Sharper. Cleaner. It reminds me of..." He paused, searching for the word. "Nothing. It reminds me of nothing I have ever known."
He pulled back just enough to look at your face. His own expression was curious, analytical, entirely unaware or unconcerned by your frozen terror. "You are trembling," he observed. "I forget myself. You are not accustomed to the company of men. The septons said as much."
You swallowed, your throat so tight it ached. "My lord, I..."
"It is a curious thing," he continued, as if you had not spoken, "that the Seven would send a woman so innocent. So untouched. And yet..." His gaze dropped to your lips, then back to your eyes. "You are a gift, after all. And gifts are meant to be unwrapped."
You understood, then. He was not just curious about your scent. He was staking a claim. He was testing the boundaries of his ownership.
"Do you know what a desire is?" he asked, his voice dropping to something almost gentle and condescending. "I do not mean the word. I mean the...experience. The feeling. Have you known it?"
You could have told the truth. But you were supposed to be from the Seven Heavens. "In theory," you managed, your voice barely a whisper. "I know of it."
"Theory." He smiled. "Theory is a poor substitute for practice. But perhaps that is why you were sent. To learn." He reached up, his fingers brushed a strand of hair from your face. "I can teach you a great many things."
"Ormund."
The voice cut through the corridor. Gwayne stood at the end of the passage, his auburn hair wind-tousled, his pale blue eyes fixed on his cousin with an expression that was carefully controlled but unmistakably hard. He was not wearing his sword, you noticed distantly, but his hand rested at his belt as if he wished he were.
Ormund did not startle. He did not jump back or flush with embarrassment. He simply turned his head, his hand still hovering near your face, and regarded his cousin with the mild irritation of a lord interrupted at his accounts. "Gwayne. I thought you were with the steward."
"The steward can wait." Gwayne walked toward you, his boots echoing on the stone. "Our guest looks unwell. Perhaps she should rest before her lessons begin."
"Our guest is fine." Ormund's tone was pleasant but there was an edge beneath it, a warning. "We were merely conversing."
"Were you." Gwayne stopped a few feet away, his gaze flicking to you. "She does not look like a woman who was merely conversing."
"I presume nothing. I observe." Gwayne met his eyes without flinching. "She is afraid. She has been afraid since the moment she arrived. And you are not helping."
The silence stretched. The wind whistled through the arrow-slit. You could feel the tension between them: years of it, decades of it, compressed into this single moment. The heir and the spare. The lord and the knight. Ormund, who was used to getting his way, and Gwayne, who was tired of letting him.
Then Ormund laughed. It was a soft sound, dismissive, genuinely amused. "Ever the chivalrous knight. Very well, Gwayne. Escort her back to her chambers. I would not want to be accused of distressing our miracle." He stepped back from you. "But we will continue this conversation another time, my lady. There is much you have yet to learn."
He walked away down the corridor, his footsteps unhurried, his shoulders easy. A man who had simply chosen to retreat, for now, because it suited him.
The moment he was out of sight, Gwayne's brow furrowed with concern.
You sucked in a breath. "He...he was just..."
"I know." Gwayne's jaw tightened. "I saw. I should have come sooner. I did not think he would..." He trailed off, shaking his head. "Forgive me. I knew what he was, and I still left you alone with him."
"It's not your fault. You couldn't have known."
"I should have. Ormund is...he is not a cruel man. Not on purpose. But he has never been denied anything in his life, and he does not take well to it. When he wants something, he pursues it until he has it. And he has decided that you are what he wants."
He offered you his arm, you took it. The walk back to your chambers was silent. Gwayne did not try to fill it with meaningless reassurances.
When you reached your door, he paused. "I will speak with him," he said. "I cannot promise it will change anything. Ormund listens to no one but himself. But I will try."
"Thank you," you whispered. "For coming when you did."
"I will always come," he promised. "If you have need of me, I will always come."
a/n: Liked the fic? You can donate on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: https://ko-fi.com/catbayunthestoryteller <3
a/n: Next chapter will be from Gwayne's pov. Comment if you'd like to be added to the taglist!
a/n: The concept of falling through the roof of the sept is inspired by an Aemond oneshot I read years ago. If anyone knows the author, lmk. The rest is mine.
Summary: A noble lady from a disgraced house that supported Blackfyres is married off to Lord Bloodraven as a reward for his loyalty and prowess in battle. But he prefers to occupy his time with duties as the Hand of the King. Comfortable but lonely, she befriends one of his ravens. Part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here.Warnings: arranged marriage, yearning, smut, angst, fluff, Westeros politics.
Brynden had summoned you to his solar with a brief message delivered by one of his young guardsmen: the Hand requires your presence, my lady, at your earliest convenience. This was not unusual. You often spent your evenings in the solar now, reading by the fire while he worked, the comfortable silence between you punctuated by the scratch of his quill and the occasional rustle of raven wings. Sometimes he would call you over to his desk to show you something amusing in a letter, or to ask your opinion on a matter of court gossip, or simply to kiss you before returning to his work.
So you went willingly, leaving Alysanne in the care of her nurses, and climbed the winding stair to the Tower of the Hand with a light heart.
The solar was warm, lit by the usual blaze in the hearth and the candles in their iron holders. Brynden sat at his desk, a stack of parchments before him, his quill moving steadily across a letter. He did not look up when you entered, but he gestured to his lap with a flick of his fingers, a silent command that had become familiar over the years.
Come here.
You crossed the room and settled onto his lap, arranging your skirts so they did not interfere with his work. His free hand came to rest on your hip, he pressed a brief kiss to the curve of your neck before returning his attention to his letter.
This, too, was familiar. He liked having you close while he worked, liked the warmth of you against him. You had learned long ago that he found your presence grounding, a tether to the present moment when his mind was scattered across the Seven Kingdoms, seeing through the eyes of a hundred different ravens. Sometimes he would pause in his writing to squeeze your hip or brush his lips against your temple, small gestures of affection that required no words.
Tonight, however, his hand did not stay on your hip.
You were reading over his shoulder, a letter from the Warden of the North, something about grain stores and winter preparations, when his fingers slipped beneath the hem of your dress. The touch was casual, almost absentminded, as though he were stroking the arm of his chair rather than the inside of your thigh. You shifted slightly, surprised but not displeased, and his hand moved higher.
His fingers found the slit in your smallclothes, and then they found you, warm, dry and entirely unprepared.
You opened your mouth to speak: a question, a protest, you were not sure which, but the word dissolved into a sharp intake of breath as his thumb pressed against your pearl. He did not look at you. His eye remained fixed on the parchment before him, his quill still scratching across the page, but his hand was moving now, stroking you with a slow rhythm that made your thoughts scatter like startled birds.
"Brynden," you managed, but the word came out strangled.
He did not answer. His thumb circled your pearl, feather-light, then two of his fingers dipped lower, slipping inside you with an ease that made your face burn. You were already growing wet, your body responding to his touch with a readiness that was at odds with your confusion. His fingers curled, finding that spot inside you that made your vision blur, and you bit down on your lip to stifle the sound that wanted to escape.
He worked you steadily, methodically, his thumb stroking and pressing while his fingers pumped in a rhythm that was almost leisurely. The pleasure built in waves, coiling tight in your belly, and you felt yourself approaching the peak, your breathing quickening, your fingers digging into the arm of the chair...
He stopped.
His fingers stilled inside you. His thumb lifted from your pearl. The sudden absence of sensation was jarring, like a door slamming shut in your face. You made a sound, a small, desperate whimper, and tried to shift your hips, seeking the friction he had denied you.
His arm tightened around your waist, holding you still.
"Brynden, what..."
He pinched your pearl. Not hard enough to hurt but hard enough to make your words dissolve into a high, breathless squeak. His fingers twisted inside you, and the sharp jolt of sensation somewhere between pleasure and discomfort, stole the rest of your sentence from your throat.
You slumped against him, panting. He released the pressure and resumed the gentle stroking, his thumb soothing the ache he had just created, his fingers moving in that same unhurried rhythm.
He still had not spoken. He still had not looked at you. His quill was still moving across the page, though you noticed now that his handwriting had grown slightly less precise, the letters a fraction larger than usual.
The pleasure built again. You tried to stay quiet this time, tried to prepare yourself for the moment he would stop, but when his fingers slowed and his thumb lifted, the denial was just as jarring as before. You let out a sound that was almost a sob, your head falling back against his shoulder.
"Please," you whispered. "Please, I..."
Another pinch. Another twist of his fingers. The words shattered on your tongue, replaced by a moan that you could not have suppressed if your life depended on it.
He gentled his hand again, returning to the slow, steady massage of your cunny, and you realized with a kind of dazed wonder that he was not going to let you speak. Every time you tried to form a word, every time you opened your mouth to ask a question or voice a protest, he would pinch your pearl or twist his fingers or press down hard on that spot inside you until your voice failed you entirely.
This was on purpose. This was calculated. This was, in its own strange way, a kind of conversation, one in which you were not permitted to participate.
The cycle repeated. Over and over. He would stroke you to the edge of release, his touch steady and relentless, and then he would stop just before you could fall, leaving you gasping, trembling and clutching at his arm. You tried to be quiet, tried to hold still, tried to prove that you could endure whatever strange game he was playing, but your body betrayed you every time. You whimpered. You begged. You moaned his name.
"Brynden. Brynden. Please, husband..."
He inhaled sharply at that, husband, and for a moment his fingers stilled entirely. Then he resumed his stroking, slower now, gentle, you felt the tension in his shoulders ease a fraction.
But he still did not let you peak.
By the time the candles had burned down to stubs and the fire had settled into a bed of glowing embers, you had stopped trying altogether. You were slumped against his chest, your head lolling on his shoulder, your body a trembling, over-sensitized wreck. Your mind had gone blank and hazy, all thought dissolved into a fog of thwarted pleasure and exhaustion. You could not have formed a sentence if you tried. You could barely remember your own name.
You did not understand. Your husband was strange, you had known that from the beginning, had accepted it, had learned to love it. He had his moods, his silences, his moments of peculiar intensity. But he had never directed anything of the sort toward you before. He had always been gentle with you, even in passion. He had always explained himself, even when the explanation was difficult. It was one of the cornerstones of your marriage, this habit of laying your minds bare to each other, no matter how ridiculous or uncomfortable the thoughts might be. It was what had brought you together in those early, uncertain days, and it was what had kept you together through everything that followed.
Yet now he would not speak. He would not look at you. His brow was furrowed as he read the text in front of him, a different letter now, something about trade routes in the Stormlands, and his jaw was tight. His fingers were still moving inside you, and you did not know what you had done wrong.
The tears came without warning. One moment you were drifting in the fog, and the next you were crying, silent tears sliding down your cheeks and dripping onto his doublet. You sniffled, a wet, pathetic sound, and your shoulders shook with the effort of keeping quiet.
Brynden sighed.
It was a soft sound, more weary than exasperated, but it made you flinch anyway. His hand stilled. His quill stopped moving. For the first time since you had settled on his lap, he spoke.
"Silly girl," he murmured.
His voice was low, almost tender, but there was an edge to it that you did not recognize. He sounded...miffed, you thought. As though you had somehow disappointed him, though you could not fathom how.
But even as he said it, his thumb found your pearl again, and this time he did not stop. He stroked you with a firm, steady pressure, his fingers curling inside you in just the right way, and the release that had been denied so many times crashed over you like a wave. You cried out, your back arching, your hands clutching at his arm, and he held you through it, his touch gentling as the last tremors faded.
You were too exhausted to move. Your limbs felt like water, your eyelids too heavy to lift. You were dimly aware of Brynden setting down his quill, lifting you in his arms and carrying you through the darkened Tower to your bedchamber. You were aware of him laying you on the bed and drawing the blankets up to your chin, of him pressing a kiss to your forehead and murmuring something you were too tired to hear.
Then you were asleep.
The next day, he acted as though nothing had happened.
He was already gone when you woke, his side of the bed cold. You lay there for a long moment, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of the night before. The memories came back in fragments: his hand beneath your dress, the endless cycle of pleasure and denial, the tears on your cheeks, the sound of his voice calling you a silly girl.
Your body still ached faintly, a pleasant soreness between your legs that made your face heat when you shifted under the blankets.
You dressed slowly, your mind turning the puzzle over and over. Perhaps he was simply stressed. The realm was always demanding, and the Hand of the King bore the brunt of it. There had been tensions with the Iron Islands, trade disputes in the Vale, the usual undercurrent of conspiracy that ran beneath the court like a hidden river. It was possible that he had needed an outlet, some strange release from the pressures of his office.
It was possible. But it did not feel like the whole truth.
You found him in the great hall at midday, breaking his fast with the king and the small council. He looked up when you entered, and his single red eye met yours across the room. There was nothing in his expression to suggest that the night before had been anything out of the ordinary. He nodded to you, a brief, courteous gesture, and then returned his attention to Lord Velaryon, who was expounding at length about something to do with shipwrights.
You relaxed, a little. Perhaps you had imagined the strangeness. Perhaps it was only one of his moods, and it had passed.
But that evening, when the summons came again, your stomach tightened with a mixture of anticipation and unease.
You went to him anyway.
The second night was worse.
He did not even bother with the pretense of working. When you settled onto his lap, his hand went immediately to your thigh, sliding beneath your dress with a purposeful efficiency that made your breath catch. His eye was fixed on you now, not on the parchments on his desk, and his gaze made you feel like a mouse pinned under the shadow of a hawk.
You tried to be still. You tried to be quiet. But when his fingers slipped inside you, already wet, already aching from the memory of the night before, you could not stop the small, desperate sound that escaped your throat.
The cycle began again. Pleasure, building and building, and then the sudden, jarring halt. Pinching. Twisting. Denial.
This time, you tried to scramble off his lap.
You twisted in his grip, your hands pushing against his chest, but his arm tightened around your waist like an iron band. He did not yank you back or hold you down by force. He simply…held you. His arm was immovable, his grip unbreakable. You looked up at him with wide, bewildered eyes. He arched a single silver eyebrow, unimpressed.
"Did I displease you somehow?" The words burst out of you before you could stop them, high and trembling. "Have I done something wrong? I do not understand what is happening. I do not understand what you want from me. Please, Brynden, just...just tell me what I did..."
"You did nothing wrong." His voice was calm, measured, entirely at odds with the chaos he was wreaking on your body. His fingers were still moving inside you, slow and steady, and it was almost impossible to think through the haze of sensation. "I simply want your thoughts on me."
You stared at him, uncomprehending. "My...my thoughts?"
"Your thoughts." He repeated the words as though they should be self-explanatory. His thumb traced a lazy circle around your pearl, and your hips jerked involuntarily. "I want your thoughts on me. Your mind. Your attention."
"My thoughts are already on you." Your voice cracked with frustration. "They are always on you. You are my husband. My dearest friend. My closest confidant. The father of my daughter. Of course my thoughts are on you. I have not been refusing my wifely duties. I have not been refusing to bed you. I do not understand what you..."
He was not listening. Or rather, he was listening with only one ear, his attention divided between your words and something else entirely. His eye had dropped to your chest, to the emerald necklace that rested against your collarbone, the oak leaf pendant he had given you years ago, the one you had worn almost every day since.
You fell silent, your protests dying in your throat. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong, you did not know what it was, and the man who had always explained things to you was staring at your necklace as though it held the answer to a question he had not asked.
Then he spoke.
"Do you ever imagine a different life?"
The question was so unexpected, so disconnected from everything that had come before, that you could only blink at him. "What?"
"A different life." His fingers stilled inside you, but he did not withdraw them. His eye lifted to meet yours, his gaze was cold and searching but terribly fragile. "Some days. When you are alone. Do you imagine what your life would be like if the king had never decreed that you be married to a bastard sorcerer as punishment for your family's treachery?"
Your heart stopped.
"If you had married a pretty Reach knight instead?" His voice was quiet, almost conversational. "A man with a bright smile and a lively laugh? Sunlit curls and a face unmarked? You would live in his castle, surrounded by green fields and summer flowers. You would bear him children who shared his comely likeness and a legitimate name. You would wake every morning to a handsome face on the pillow beside you, instead of..." He gestured vaguely at his own face, the birthmark, the scarred hollow of his missing eye. "Instead of this."
You stared at him. The haze of pleasure had evaporated entirely, replaced by a cold, creeping understanding.
The lord from the Reach.
He had arrived at court three days ago. A young man, newly come into his inheritance, with hair the color of honey and eyes like summer sky. He had been charming and polite and almost impossibly beautiful, the kind of beauty that belonged in songs and tapestries, the kind of beauty that made people stop and stare.
You had been charmed by him. Not in the way Brynden feared, not in the way of a woman tempted to stray, but in the way of someone who had spent years surrounded by the muted colors of the Crownlands and who had suddenly been reminded of the vivid greens and golds of home. He had spoken of the Reach, of Oldtown and Mander and Arbor, and you had drunk in his words like a woman dying of thirst.
You had also, you remembered with a sinking heart, commented on his appearance.
He ought to have a dozen portraits commissioned of himself, you had said to Brynden, after the lord had taken his leave. It would not be vanity. He is simply breathtaking to look at. Like a painting come to life. Like a statue by a master sculptor. I have never seen a face so perfectly proportioned.
You had meant it as an observation. An aesthetic appreciation. The way one might admire a sunset, or a particularly well-constructed bridge, or a bird with exceptionally glossy feathers. The lord was beautiful in the way that a mountain was beautiful: impressive, awe-inspiring, and entirely irrelevant to your personal happiness.
But Brynden had not heard it that way.
You looked at your husband now and you saw what you had missed before. The tension in his jaw that was not from the pressures of the realm. The way his hand trembled slightly where it rested on your hip. The fragile, defiant misery in his single red eye.
He had heard your words and he had understood them in the only way he knew how. He had heard you praising another man's beauty, and he had remembered every time he had burned for Shiera Seastar, every time he had begged for her hand and been refused, every time he had watched her choose another man over him. He had remembered what it was like to love a great beauty and dream of her, and he had assumed that you were doing the same.
That you were dreaming of a prettier life. A prettier husband. A prettier face to wake up to.
"Oh, Brynden," you breathed.
His expression flickered. "I am not asking for reassurance. I am asking a question. Do you imagine it? Do you wish..."
"No." The word came out stronger than you expected. "No. I do not wish for a different life. I do not imagine being married to a pretty Reach knight. I do not dream of sunlit curls and bright smiles. I do not want a castle in the Reach or children with his comely likeness. I want you. I have always wanted you. You are my husband, my friend, my home. How can you not know that?"
"You said he was breathtaking."
"I said the sunset over Blackwater Bay was breathtaking last week. Do you think I wish to marry the sunset?"
"That is not the same."
"It is exactly the same." You reached up and cupped his face in your hands, forcing him to look at you. "He is beautiful in the way a painting is beautiful. Something to admire and then walk past. He is more beautiful than either of us. It means nothing. He is not you."
Brynden's mouth opened but no sound came out.
"You have spent so many years believing you are hard to love," you continued, your voice trembling. "You have spent so many years measuring yourself against beautiful things and finding yourself wanting. But I do not love you for your face. I love you for your heart, your mind, your strange and stubborn soul. I love you for the way you lean down to kiss me. I love you for the way you look at our daughter as though she is the most precious thing in the world. I love you for the way you said 'silly girl' last night, even when you were being cruel, because I could hear the tenderness underneath it."
His eye was very bright. "I was not being cruel."
"You were being frightened." You stroked your thumb across his birthmark, the way you had done a thousand times before. "You were frightened that I might want someone else. Someone easier. Someone prettier. So you tried to…what? Keep my attention? Prove that you could hold it, even if you could not hold my heart?"
"I was not..." He stopped. Swallowed. "I do not know what I was doing."
"Yes, you do. You were trying to make sure I could not think about anyone else. You were trying to fill my mind so completely that there was no room for pretty Reach lords or imaginary lives." You leaned forward and pressed your forehead to his. "But my mind was already full of you. It has been full of you for years. You did not need to do any of this."
He was silent for a long moment. His hand was still inside you, you realized distantly, though it had gone still and slack. The absurdity of the situation struck you suddenly.
"I am an idiot," he said finally.
"You are a man who has been hurt very badly and who never quite believed he deserved to be loved." You kissed the corner of his mouth. "But you do. You deserve to be loved. And you are loved. By me. By Alysanne. By that wretched raven, in his own way. You are loved, Brynden Rivers, and no pretty Reach lord is going to change that."
His hand slipped out of you, you felt the loss of him like a small ache. He wiped his fingers absently on a handkerchief and then wrapped both arms around you, pulling you tight against his chest. His face pressed into the curve of your neck, his breath was warm and unsteady against your skin.
"I am sorry," he said, the words muffled. "I should have spoken to you. I should have explained. I should not have..."
"No, you should not have." You stroked his hair, the silver strands slipping through your fingers. "But I forgive you. Just…next time, use your words. You are very good with words when you choose to be."
"I am out of practice with difficult ones."
"Then practice." You pulled back and looked at him, your hands still framing his face. "We will practice together. As we have always done."
He looked at you, the misery in his eye fading. "I do not deserve you."
"You say that so often that it has ceased to have meaning." You kissed him deeper and felt his arms tighten around you. "Now. Are you going to finish what you started, or are you going to leave me aching for a second night in a row?"
The corner of his mouth twitched. "That depends. Are your thoughts on me?"
"My thoughts," you said, "are so full of you that there is no room for anything else. There never has been. There never will be."
He kissed you and his hand found its way beneath your dress again.
The first time Pebble stole a strip of bacon from your breakfast plate and flew off with it still dangling from his beak, you assumed he was simply being greedy.
The second time, when he snatched a chunk of chicken and vanished out the window without so much as a parting croak, you assumed he was being greedy and ungrateful.
By the fifth time, you knew something was amiss.
"He is not eating it," you said, standing at the window of the solar with your hands on your hips, staring at the empty sky where your raven had disappeared. "He takes the food, flies away, and does not come back for hours. He is not eating it here. He is taking it somewhere else."
Brynden did not look up from his desk. "He is a raven. Ravens cache food. It is what they do."
"He is not caching it. I followed him once...well, I tried to follow him. He flew over the rooftops and I lost him near the kitchens." You turned to face your husband, your expression accusing, as though he were personally responsible for Pebble's mysterious behavior. "Something is going on."
"He is a raven," Brynden repeated, his quill scratching steadily across a parchment. "He does raven things. You are overthinking this."
"I am not overthinking. I am observing. You are always telling me to observe."
"I tell my spies to observe. You are not my spy."
"I could be your spy. I am very observant."
Brynden set down his quill and looked at you. His expression was the one he wore when he was trying to decide whether to be amused or exasperated. "You wish to be a spy now?"
"I wish to know what my raven is doing with all the food I give him." You crossed your arms. "He is not eating it. He is taking it somewhere. What if he is in trouble? What if he has gotten himself caught in something and he needs the food to...to bribe a cat, or something?"
"My love..."
"Ravens are intelligent. He could bribe a cat."
Brynden pinched the bridge of his nose. "My love. You are aware that I am currently attempting to prevent a war between the Iron Islands and the North. There are Greyjoy longships massing near Bear Island. The Master of Ships is in a panic. The Warden of the North has sent three ravens in as many days demanding the Crown's intervention. And you wish me to divert my attention to investigating the dietary habits of your pet raven."
"He is not a pet. He is a companion."
"He is a stout bird who has you wrapped around his talon."
"He is not..." You stopped, took a breath, and tried a different approach. "You can see through the eyes of your ravens. You do it every day. It would take you five minutes. Less than five minutes. You could send one of your working ravens after him, follow him to wherever he is going, and then you would know. I would stop asking, and you could go back to preventing the war with the Iron Islands."
Brynden stared at you. You stared back.
"I will stop asking," you repeated, "if you just look. Once. Please."
The silence stretched. Ravens on the perch had gone silent as if sensing an argument.
"Very well," Brynden said with the voice of a man who had weighed the costs of resistance and found them too high. "I will send a raven after your errant bird. But when we discover that he is simply hoarding food in a gutter somewhere, I expect you to concede that you were being ridiculous."
"I will concede nothing until I have evidence."
"You are the most stubborn woman I have ever met. I love you. Now shoo and let me work."
The next morning, you fed Pebble an extra portion of shredded capon, the tender meat you had specifically requested from the kitchens. He wolfed down a few bites while perched on your wrist, his black eyes bright with satisfaction, and then he snatched the largest remaining piece and launched himself out the window.
"Now?" you asked, turning to Brynden.
"Now," he agreed and closed his eye.
You watched him as he reached out with his mind, his consciousness slipping into the network of ravens that blanketed the city. His expression went distant, his body still and relaxed in his chair, his breathing slow and even. It was a strange thing to witness, the man you loved, present and absent all at once, his mind soaring over the rooftops of King's Landing while his body sat motionless before you.
Minutes passed. You twisted your hands in your lap and tried to be patient.
Then Brynden's eye opened.
"He has a family," he declared.
You blinked. "What?"
"A family. A mate and three hatchlings. He has been taking the food you give him and bringing it to them." Brynden's voice was flat, but his expression was bewildered. "They are living in a crevice in the Tower of the Hand. Three floors down. He has been commuting."
You stared at him. "Pebble has a wife?"
"A mate. Ravens do not marry."
"Pebble has a mate and children and he did not tell me?"
"He is a raven. He does not speak. He cannot tell you anything."
"He could have indicated. He could have…I do not know. Drawn pictures in the dirt. He is very intelligent."
Brynden leaned back in his chair and regarded you with an expression perilously close to amusement. "You are upset that your raven did not inform you of his marital status."
"I am not upset. I am…surprised." You stood up and began to pace, your skirts swirling around your ankles. "All this time, I thought he was lonely. I thought he needed my attention. I brought him into our bed because I thought he was sad and cold. And the whole time, he had a family three floors down."
"A family you fattened him up for. He has been using your generosity to provide for his mate and offspring. It is rather resourceful, when you think about it."
"He has been using me."
"He has been accepting your offerings and distributing them to his dependents. It is what any good provider would do."
You stopped pacing and turned to face your husband. "I want to see them."
"The hatchlings?"
"The mate. The hatchlings. All of them. I want to meet them."
Brynden sighed. "They are wild ravens. They are not accustomed to human interaction. They will not perch on your finger and eat from your hand the way Pebble does."
"Brynden."
He held up his hands in surrender. "When the hatchlings are old enough to fly, I am sure Pebble will bring them to meet you. He has brought you everything else. Dead mice. Shiny buttons. The occasional stolen ring. His offspring seem like the natural next step."
You sat down heavily in the chair across from his desk. "Pebble has a family," you repeated. "He was not lonely after all."
Brynden rose from his chair and crossed to you. He knelt before your chair, his hand finding yours, his single eye searching your face.
"You were lonely," he said quietly. "When you first came here. You were lonely, and you found comfort in a raven because there was no one else to give it to." He lifted your hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to your knuckles. "But you are not lonely now. You have me. You have Alysanne. And Pebble, it seems, has a family of his own. Perhaps that is not a betrayal. Perhaps it is simply…growth."
You looked at him. "When did you become so wise?"
"I have always been wise. I simply did not always apply it to matters of the heart."
"Because you were too busy applying it to the Greyjoy longships."
"The Greyjoy longships are significantly less complicated than you are."
You let out a wet laugh.
Three weeks later, Pebble brought his family to meet you.
You were in the nursery, playing with Alysanne on a blanket spread across the floor. She was sitting up on her own and grabbing at everything within reach, her silver hair sticking up in soft tufts and her eyes bright with curiosity. She had recently discovered the joy of blocks, small wooden cubes painted with letters and animals, and was engaged in the serious business of knocking over every tower you built.
Then you heard the familiar scratch of claws on the windowsill.
Pebble hopped through the narrow opening and landed on his customary perch. But he was not alone. Behind him came another raven, smaller and sleeker, her feathers a glossy black with a blot of white on her left wing. And behind her came three young ravens, their flight still a little unsteady.
You stared.
Pebble puffed out his chest and made a sound that could only be described as smug. Look, he seemed to be saying. Look what I made.
"Pebble," you breathed. "Are these your...is this your family?"
The female raven cocked her head at you, her black eyes assessing. She did not seem afraid, only curious. The hatchlings, fledglings, you supposed they were now, huddled together on the perch, peering at you with the wide-eyed uncertainty of children meeting a stranger.
Alysanne let out a delighted shriek and waved her blocks in the direction of the ravens. "Ba!" she announced, which was her current word for everything.
"Yes, birds," you said. "They are birds. Very good, sweetling."
Pebble hopped down from the perch and waddled across the floor to where you sat.
"You want me to feed your children?"
Pebble croaked.
"Your children who you did not tell me about. Your children who you have been feeding with the food I gave you."
Another croak, this one slightly more insistent.
You looked at the fledglings, still huddled on the perch. They were watching their father with expressions that clearly said, Father, why are you talking to the large featherless creature?
"All right," you said, picking up the dried meat. "But only because they are your children. And because they are adorable."
You held out the meat toward the fledglings. They did not move. The female raven, Pebble's mate, you supposed, gave a soft caw, and one of the fledglings, the boldest of the three, fluttered down from the perch and landed on the floor a few feet away from you.
"Hello," you said softly. "I am your father's…person. I am the one who has been feeding him all these years. You have my food to thank for your survival."
The fledgling hopped closer. Its eyes were bright and curious, so like Pebble's that your heart warmed. It snatched the meat from your fingers and fluttered back to the perch, where its siblings immediately began squabbling over the prize.
Pebble watched this with an air of paternal satisfaction.
Brynden found you an hour later, still in the nursery, surrounded by ravens. The female had come down from the perch and was sitting on the arm of your chair, allowing you to stroke her breast feathers with a tentative finger. The fledglings had grown bold and were hopping around the blanket, investigating Alysanne's blocks and pulling at the fringe of the rug. Alysanne herself was in raptures, her tiny hands reaching for the birds with the focus of a child who had inherited her father's determination.
"What," Brynden said from the doorway, "is happening."
"Pebble brought his family to meet us." You looked up at him with a smile that was only slightly sheepish. "This is his mate. I have not named her yet. And these are the children. Also not yet named."
"You are going to name them."
"Of course I am going to name them. They are Pebble's family. They deserve names."
Brynden looked at the ravens. The ravens looked at Brynden. There was a moment of mutual assessment, the Hand of the King and the flock of birds regarding each other with identically tilted heads.
"Pebble has found himself a handsome family," Brynden said finally, nodding toward the fledglings.
"They are beautiful," you agreed. "What about Pearl for the wife? For the white on her wing. It looks like a pearl against the black. The little one with the white spot on his breast, I am thinking of calling him Speckle. The smallest one shall be Pudge. And the bold one who came down first, perhaps Pebble Junior. Though that might be confusing."
"You are going to name the bold one Pebble Junior."
"He is very like his father."
Brynden crossed the room and knelt on the blanket beside Alysanne, who immediately grabbed a fistful of his silver hair and yanked. He endured this with the stoicism of a man who had long since accepted that fatherhood involved a certain amount of physical abuse.
"Your mother," he told Alysanne, "has adopted an entire flock of ravens."
"Ba," Alysanne agreed.
"Indeed." He extricated his hair from her grip. "Alysanne, there is something important I need to tell you about your mother and these ravens."
Alysanne looked at him with the grave attention of a baby who understood none of the words but appreciated being included in the conversation.
"You must not tell anyone about this," Brynden said, his voice very serious. "When you learn to speak...and I suspect you will learn early, given your parentage, you must not tell the lords and ladies of the court that your mother talks to birds. Do you understand?"
"Ba."
"People will think her mad if you tell them. They already think certain things about this household. They think your mother is being held captive by a ruthless sorcerer who does terrible things to her in his tower. They do not need to know that she spends her afternoons naming ravens."
You snorted. "They think you are torturing me?"
"Rumors persist. I have not bothered to correct them. It is useful to be feared." He glanced at you and his expression softened. "Though I would prefer that our daughter not grow up believing her father is a monster."
"She will not." You reached over and covered his hand with yours. "She will grow up knowing her father is clever and sometimes terrifying, but also kind and gentle and deeply loving. She will know him for who he truly is."
Brynden was quiet for a moment. Then he turned back to Alysanne, who was now attempting to put a wooden block in her mouth.
"The point," he said, "is discretion. The ravens are a family matter. They are not for court. They are for us. Do you understand?"
Alysanne removed the block from her mouth and said, "Bird."
You and Brynden stared at her. She could not yet pronounce the letter r properly, it sounded more like bighd, but it was close enough.
"Did she just..."
"She spoke."
"Her first word was 'bird.'"
Alysanne, apparently pleased with the reaction she had garnered, pointed at the fledglings on the blanket and repeated, "Bird. Bird. Bird."
They responded with caws.
Brynden pinched the bridge of his nose. "Her first word was not 'Mama' or 'Papa.' It was 'bird.'"
"To be fair," you said, "there are a lot of birds in her life."
"This is your fault."
"It is Pebble's fault, actually. He is the one who brought his whole family here."
Alysanne, having grown bored of blocks, crawled over to her father and climbed into his lap with the determination of a tiny conqueror. "Bird," she informed him.
"Yes," Brynden said, wrapping his arms around her. "Bird. There are many birds. And your mother loves them all, and your father loves your mother, so the birds are here to stay. But remember..." He touched a finger to the tip of her nose. "...discretion."
"Bird," Alysanne said firmly.
"That is not discretion."
Alysanne reached up and patted her father's face, her small hand landing squarely on his birthmark. "Ba," she said.
"I will take that as agreement." He pressed a kiss to her silver hair. "You are a good girl, Alysanne. The best of girls. And one day, when you are older, I will explain everything. The ravens, the dreams, the blood of the old gods that runs in our veins. But for now, this is our secret. Yours and mine and your mother's. Can you keep a secret?"
Alysanne looked at him solemnly. Then she turned and pointed at Pebble. "Ba-ba."
"Close enough." Brynden rose to his feet and offered you his hand. "Come. The small council is meeting in an hour, and I need to brief the king on the situation before then. You should eat something before the meeting."
"I am not attending the small council meeting."
"You are attending the small council meeting. You have a better understanding of Reach politics than half the lords on the council, and I need someone in the room who will not spend the entire time arguing about grain tariffs."
You took his hand and let him pull you to your feet. "Is that the only reason?"
"No." He leaned down and kissed you. "I also like having you there. You make the meetings bearable."
"What about Alysanne?"
"The maids will watch her. And our esteemed guests," He glanced around the nursery, at Pearl on the headboard, Speckle and Junior on the windowsill, Pudge on the rug and Pebble on his perch. "shall have to relocate to the Rookery."
Part 5: coming soon...
a/n: Please don't let this flop guys, I have an entire series planned out. Comments, reblogs and likes are appreciated! <3
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Now that I read the prequel of “How to Train Your Raven”, all I can think about is Brynden beating himself up and calling himself stupid for days for making Lady Oakheart cry. It took three days for him to try talking to her again because that was the time it took for him to write a script on how to talk to her properly and rehearse it to his ravens. He may have pulled Shiera (kinda, not really), but the poor man has no game!
Brynden has game in very specific scenarios. He can be scary but also hot. His flirting with Shiera wasn't sunshine and daisies and vanilla. She could be actually mean and cruel to him and say she was flirting. He doesn't know how to charm a lady, only how to be polite. He has a sense of humor but he's not sure how to approach her. LO has sense of humor as well and isn't offended by everything, but she didn't know Brynden then and he had been cold to her. So yeah, he definitely wrote a script after he fumbled the first interaction by accidently fatshaming a bird lol. He even debated how much of his spying to reveal to her. Eventually he decided that telling her "I watched you try on dresses and I actually do think you're very pretty and I'd love to sleep with you don't worry" wasn't the way to go.
Hi Cat! I hope you're doing well! 💖 First off, I wanted to say that I absolutely love your writing and your essays about TSH. Thank you for so many contributions and so many wonderful fics! 💖💖 The reason I'm sending an ask as a long time lurker is to warn you that there's a user named @/b3au-regards who is on a witch hunt in search of an anon they're arguing with. I wasn't 100% sure who the target was but based on what I saw @/spookedstarzz and others comment, it's about you or one of your mutuals. I'm not familiar with them so I won't bother them but I thought you should be warned. Sorry if you don't want to address this. I completely understand if you don't want to respond. I've been your follower for a long time so I know you're not always aware what goes on in fandoms. Please don't take this personally I'm begging you.
I read your latest TSH posts and I'm so sorry the way you've been treated in this fandom made you stop writing! 😭 Much love from me! 💖💖
Hello, dear anon! Thank you for the heads up, I appreciate it. I'm not offended in any way by you, don't worry. I had to look up which blogs you were talking about. Spookedstarzz has had me blocked for about a year now I believe, we haven't interacted. I blocked B3au-regards myself in the beginning of July. He/they/I can't remember the pronouns exactly so apologies for that/ didn't have me blocked, I blocked him myself and haven't interacted since. I don't even remember the exact reasons for blocking, but some time ago a blog taught me a valuable lesson that I can just block people and don't have to be nice to everyone by doing that to me after I was perfectly civil to him, so I've followed his example and I've been blocking people now left and right without engaging in arguments.
Which brings me to this: why haven't that blog or any others in similar predicaments have been doing that? What do they gain from responding to those anons? So far only pointing a finger at me and making baseless thinly veiled accusations. Apparently, this has been going on for quite some time, and they have nothing better to do than sit and attempt to poison people against me and ruin my reputation. There are some blogs I rather dislike, mostly outside tsh entirely, but they don't receive any anons, and I've chosen this one random blog to be obsessed with? Please. My mutuals have been receiving rude anons as well, but you don't see us gossiping in the comments spewing venom. It's been months already, it's getting old.
B3au-regards even accused a dear mutual of mine - @transfem-henry-winter of being my alt account in disguise for asking for peace in the fandom. These people are deranged and get sick satisfaction from spreading malice.
I sympathize with people who receive hate. I receive weird anons as well, I imagine it's near impossible to have otherwise reached near 8000 followers on this hellsite. But I don't respond. I press the block button. It's easy. I would've turned off anons asks altogether but I receive a lot of asks about my writing through anons, so I respect people's choice of privacy. They CHOOSE to respond and CHOOSE to blame me for some inexplicable reason.
I shall not engage in such childish, petty, hateful behavior. Any further attempts at this or any lies and perjury will be met with me reporting the account responsible for harassment.
I’ve also received these kinds of accusations and it’s absolutely disgusting. I’ve been through a lot in my life and I assure all these people that I don’t need to hide my identity to face simple internet clowns, which is more than can be said for the anons that have been harassing me lately.
I literally use public tags when I want to kick their asses, I don’t hesitate to post screenshots, I’ve had extremely public arguments without a second thought and I openly stand up for my friends when necessary, what the hell are they talking about?
it's nothing more than a hoax to cultivate drama and and a smearing campaign against us. Nobody is forcing them to interact with us, we blocked them ourselves first and haven't even interacted with them. But no, they can't just press a block button and move on like any normal, sensible, logical person. A three-act-tragedy and a weekly gossip session is necessary whenever the spite overflows in their hearts or a desire to play victims strikes. Turning off anon asks or blocking is a solution that occurs three minutes after seeing it, not three months. If I cried about every weird anon I've received for months on end, I'd have no time for anything else. I can recommend trying to post hot takes in asoiaf fandom as exposure therapy to develop thicker skin.
Girllll I've been eating your fanfics like I'm STARVED They're just sooo good I came here for Maekar and Ormund but I'm devoring everything else as well, een from characters I don't know
You'll make me read whatever media it is that has Kaz and also make me reread HP just for Tom Riddle
Love your writing🫶🏼✨👀
Thank you so much! I love when people come for one fandom and stay for others! Giggling and twirling my hair rn hehe.
I don't think I have any fics where it's impossible to understand what's going on without knowing the lore of the source material, so absolutely, dig through my Masterlist and read whatever you want my lovelies! <3
Hi Cat! Hope you're doing well. I just really loved your posts about Medea and have to say say your opinion was like a breath of fresh air. Gotta tell you my 3rd grade Georgian teacher did NOT play about Medea. I vividly remember her being outraged by Medea's portrayal as a mother who killed her own children and was like, 'Do you guys really believe that she would kill her kids? That's just bad PR'.
Anyway, I don't know if you have already read these, but I'm still gonna send you a link -fingers crossed you find it useful.
THANK YOU to you and your teacher as well! Absolutely, what the ancient Greeks did was a smearing campaign against Medea. They couldn't possibly make look Jason good so they made Medea look really bad. It also sucks that the version of the myth majority learns is the story of "Jason and the Argonauts", implying that Medea just went away with Jason and lived happily ever after...? Jason betraying her and Medea eventually going back to her homeland and helping her father needs to be included as well. It's not just "oh yay Jason won the Fleece hooray" - Jason didn't do shit. You mean Medea won the Fleece and they ran away.
With Minotaur and Theseus myth, it's pretty much always included when Theseus betrays Ariadne, Dionysus finds her and curses him, which causes Theseus' father's death, right? Justice for my girl Medea too. At least she got a statue.
I haven't read this one yet, so thank you, it looks really interesting! I did a deep dive a few years back but I don't even remember all that much.
Hi Cat! I hope you're doing well! 💖 First off, I wanted to say that I absolutely love your writing and your essays about TSH. Thank you for so many contributions and so many wonderful fics! 💖💖 The reason I'm sending an ask as a long time lurker is to warn you that there's a user named @/b3au-regards who is on a witch hunt in search of an anon they're arguing with. I wasn't 100% sure who the target was but based on what I saw @/spookedstarzz and others comment, it's about you or one of your mutuals. I'm not familiar with them so I won't bother them but I thought you should be warned. Sorry if you don't want to address this. I completely understand if you don't want to respond. I've been your follower for a long time so I know you're not always aware what goes on in fandoms. Please don't take this personally I'm begging you.
I read your latest TSH posts and I'm so sorry the way you've been treated in this fandom made you stop writing! 😭 Much love from me! 💖💖
Hello, dear anon! Thank you for the heads up, I appreciate it. I'm not offended in any way by you, don't worry. I had to look up which blogs you were talking about. Spookedstarzz has had me blocked for about a year now I believe, we haven't interacted. I blocked B3au-regards myself in the beginning of July. He/they/I can't remember the pronouns exactly so apologies for that/ didn't have me blocked, I blocked him myself and haven't interacted since. I don't even remember the exact reasons for blocking, but some time ago a blog taught me a valuable lesson that I can just block people and don't have to be nice to everyone by doing that to me after I was perfectly civil to him, so I've followed his example and I've been blocking people now left and right without engaging in arguments.
Which brings me to this: why haven't that blog or any others in similar predicaments have been doing that? What do they gain from responding to those anons? So far only pointing a finger at me and making baseless thinly veiled accusations. Apparently, this has been going on for quite some time, and they have nothing better to do than sit and attempt to poison people against me and ruin my reputation. There are some blogs I rather dislike, mostly outside tsh entirely, but they don't receive any anons, and I've chosen this one random blog to be obsessed with? Please. My mutuals have been receiving rude anons as well, but you don't see us gossiping in the comments spewing venom. It's been months already, it's getting old.
B3au-regards even accused a dear mutual of mine - @transfem-henry-winter of being my alt account in disguise for asking for peace in the fandom. These people are deranged and get sick satisfaction from spreading malice.
I sympathize with people who receive hate. I receive weird anons as well, I imagine it's near impossible to have otherwise reached near 8000 followers on this hellsite. But I don't respond. I press the block button. It's easy. I would've turned off anons asks altogether but I receive a lot of asks about my writing through anons, so I respect people's choice of privacy. They CHOOSE to respond and CHOOSE to blame me for some inexplicable reason.
I shall not engage in such childish, petty, hateful behavior. Any further attempts at this or any lies and perjury will be met with me reporting the account responsible for harassment.
why do you keep writing about tsh? shut up already!
Some of you take The Secret History overwhelmingly seriously and it’s endearing, it’s like it’s the first ‘adult’ book you’ve ever read! 🫶🏻 I never would have imagined someone could be parasocial with a book until I started using social media: not everything has to be profound, fictional characters don’t need your defense and you’re not Donna Tartt, hope this helps! ❤
At this point, if some of you are still so obsessed with my harmless interpretations of a bunch of fictional characters, I’ll just assume you’re sick in the head. It’s so pathetic that you’re still foaming at the mouth while I laugh about all this with my friends. 🤡 You have a very dark aura and I hope karma catches up with you soon! 🙏🏻
I’ve blocked all the Usual Suspects, so have some dignity and stop jumping the fence to bark at me. You can’t growl at me in a way that matters! 🫰🏻
