Pairing: Daario Naharis x Tall!Baratheon!Reader, Jon Snow x Tall!Baratheon!Reader (separate)
Premise: "Coincidence is just the mind's way of making connections where none exist." A series of coincidences can often have unwanted outcomes, especially for the rightful heir to the throne.
Tags: Slowburn, age gap, AFAB reader, unrequited love, angst/comfort, intense bullying, reader is a bit of a cry-baby, no use of y/n, no usage of religion
General Warnings: Canon-typical violence, blood, assault, bullying, death (Death of Cannon characters)
Rating: 18+ (Generally)
Status: On-going
Current word count: 17.5k
I The Grand Devourer
II Unsettling Beginnings
III The Princess and the Queen
IV The Weight of Shadows
V Whispers Beneath the Veil in the Warm Winds
VI Unveiling Horizons
VII Where Dogs Lie
VIII
IX
X
To be added on Tag list: !(•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑/Gen Masterlist
After watching the documentary of Evan I am glad that fucker was struggling just lik me to sing that damn line. It absolutely ruined my karaoke session in the shower, my voice keeps cracking now we twinning so I am happy
BLOOD OF MY BLOOD, KIN OF MY KIN. (ORMUND HIGHTOWER X WIFE!READER, DAERON TARGARYEN X MOTHER FIGURE!READER PREVIEW) — a glimpse into the years you and ormund raised daeron before the war took its toll, and all the years after it.
Daeron’s hands tremble around the leather hilt of Ormund’s sword. His misty eyes find the prisoner kneeling just before him, bloodied and chained for a crime any noble man would surely commit, before glancing slowly to where his uncle looms just behind him. Candelight flickers in shades of orange-gold upon the man’s chiseled features, pooling a dark black in the shadow of his eyes.
“What would Mother think of this?” Daeron hears himself ask, voice shaking under the weight of the tears burning in the backs of his eyes.
Ormund’s face softens, though there is little tenderness in what he asks of the boy now. “Alicent would understand,” he coos in a gentle voice. “War asks difficult things of every great house—”
“I didn’t—” Daeron swallows hard, shier now than moments before. “I did not mean the Lady Alicent…”
Realization flashes across Ormund’s face — a visible recognition of exactly which woman the boy had been referring to, and had been referring to since he was a babe; whenever the word would tumble accidentally from his mouth, without a second spared for the correction. Daeron might not have been yours by blood, but he was yours in every other way that mattered.
But still, Ormund does not soften for it.
“Your mother would be proud,” the man answers, brows lowered as if the answer was plain. “Don’t you see? Any strike against this army is a strike against her, against everything she’s built to keep you safe… Any man who raises his fist against our men raises it, in the end, against her… And do you not want to protect her, just as she has spent every day protecting you?”
Daeron swallows hard; the weight of Ormund’s words feels heavy in his throat. His trembling hands tighten around the sword hilt. His teary eyes linger on the steel blade, flickering gold in the candlelight. “No, please, I beg you,” the prisoner pleads. Daeron’s eyes lift to find his and linger there for a long moment. He sees your face in the back of his mind, the only real mother he’s ever known since he was sent to ward, and hears Ormund’s voice in his head as he draws the heavy blade back.
Then he strikes.
COMING SOON.
p.s. i don't do taglists (other than my @bugfics account) but feel free to leave a comment here if you'd like to be notified when the fic drops!
Benjamin Evan Ainsworth is seventeen. Any adult in this fandom even remotely sexualizing him needs to ask themselves why they see a child's face and start lusting. Write an aged-up book Daeron AU if you want to use his storyline, the idea of a Targaryen raised by Hightowers is damn interesting and I might write one myself one day, but let's not use a teen's face while we do it, shall we.
PRINCESS READER AND CREGAN INFIDELITY PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. Like what would Ormund think or how would he react when his innocent little wife is getting dicked down 24/7 and she’s a willing participant. Let alone she got fucked by a northener lol
The Letter
Ormund Hightower X Targ!Reader
The war had been grinding on for eight months, but Ormund Hightower had not slept in four.
Not since the night she disappeared. She had taken Aethan—his son, his blood—and vanished into the darkness like a ghost, like a traitor, like the ungrateful little whore he had always known she could become if he did not keep her close enough.
He had torn the reach apart searching for her. He had sent riders in every direction, had questioned every guard and servant and spy who might have seen something. Nothing. She had simply… gone. As if she had never existed at all. As if the months of marriage, the nights in his bed, the child she had borne him meant nothing. As if he had not shaped her, taught her, owned her.
He had not been the same since. His men whispered about it behind his back. Lord Hightower had grown erratic. Lord Hightower had stopped eating. Lord Hightower's eyes had taken on a wild, feverish light that made even his most seasoned commanders uneasy. He still led them into battle—he was too good a soldier to abandon the war entirely—but his mind was somewhere else. Always somewhere else. Always chasing the ghost of a silver-haired girl who had slipped through his fingers like smoke, taking his son with her.
And now this. The letter had arrived an hour ago, delivered by a rider who had nearly killed his horse getting there. The man had stumbled into camp, half-frozen and wild-eyed, clutching a scroll sealed with the mark of Ormund's own spy network—the network he had deployed across half of Westeros with one purpose and one purpose only: find her.
The tent was crowded with commanders when the rider was ushered in. Ser Brynden stood at Ormund's right hand, as he always did, Ser Gwayne, and half a dozen other knights and lords who had pledged their swords to the Green cause. They had been in the middle of a strategy session, poring over maps and troop movements, planning the next offensive.
Ormund took the scroll without a word. He broke the seal. He read.
His face went pale first. Bone-white, as if all the blood had been drained from his body in a single instant. Then the color rushed back, flooding his cheeks with a dark, dangerous red that spread down his neck and disappeared beneath the collar of his tunic. His hands began to tremble, just slightly at first, then violently, the parchment shaking in his grip like a leaf in a storm.
"My lord?" Brynden stepped forward, concern etched into his weathered features. "What news?"
Ormund did not answer. His eyes were fixed on the letter, reading and re-reading the words as if repetition might change them. His lips moved silently, forming syllables that no one else could hear. The trembling in his hands spread to his arms, his shoulders, his entire body.
And then he began to scream.
"CREGAN STARK!"
The sound was not human. It was the roar of a wounded animal, a beast caught in a trap, a man whose last thread of sanity had just snapped like a bowstring pulled too tight. The commanders scrambled backward, knocking over chairs and sending maps flying, but Ormund did not seem to see them. He was already moving, already reaching for the sword that rested against the campaign chest in the corner.
"CREGAN FUCKING STARK! I WILL KILL HIM! I WILL TEAR HIS HEART OUT WITH MY BARE HANDS!"
The first blow took the map table in half. Wood splintered and cracked, and the maps that had been spread across it fluttered to the ground like dying birds. Ormund ripped his sword free and swung again, and this time the blade carved a great, jagged slash through the canvas wall of the tent, letting in a shaft of cold grey daylight.
"MY LORD, PLEASE—" Ser Gwayne started forward, but a wild swing of the sword sent him reeling backward, his hands raised in surrender.
"SHE IS MINE!" Ormund brought the sword down on a chair, and the chair exploded. "SHE HAS ALWAYS BEEN MINE! AND HE—THAT NORTHERN SAVAGE—HE HAS TOUCHED HER! HE HAS PUT HIS HANDS ON WHAT BELONGS TO ME!"
She was there. She had been there for weeks. Living openly in Cregan Stark's tent, sleeping in his bed, wearing his colors, warming his furs like some Northern whore. Everyone in the camp knew. Everyone could hear them—the sounds she made, the way she cried out his name, the way she begged for more. His wife. His Aethan's mother. Screaming for another man like a common camp follower. A public affair, the letter said. A very public affair. As if she wanted everyone to know. As if she wanted him to know.
And the child. His son. Living under Stark's protection, being held by Stark's hands, perhaps already learning to call another man father. The thought made something behind his eyes go red and hot and blinding.
"DO YOU KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING RIGHT NOW?" He rounded on his commanders, and they shrank back from the madness in his eyes. "RIGHT NOW, WHILE WE STAND HERE DISCUSSING STRATEGY AND SUPPLY LINES? HE IS TOUCHING HER! HE IS INSIDE HER! HE IS MAKING HER MOAN—THOSE MOANS BELONG TO ME!"
He threw the letter aside and grabbed another chair, hurling it against the central support pole with enough force to shatter it into kindling.
"I taught her everything," he snarled, his voice cracking. "Everything she knows about pleasure, everything she knows about her own body—I taught her that. I was the first. I was the only. And now she—she is using what I taught her with HIM—"
He could see it. That was the worst part. He could see it so clearly in his mind, as if he were standing in the corner of Stark's tent watching. Her silver hair spread across Stark's furs. Her body arching beneath another man's hands. Her lips parting on another man's name. The sounds she made, the expressions that crossed her face, the way she clung and gasped and pleaded—all of it, all of it, was his. He had discovered it. He had cultivated it. He had spent months learning every secret her body held, every spot that made her gasp, every rhythm that made her shatter.
And now Stark was reaping the harvest. Stark was enjoying the fruits of Ormund's labor. Stark was touching what Ormund had claimed, had trained, had owned.
The thought made him want to kill someone. Everyone.
"GET ME A MAP!" he bellowed, driving his sword into the floorboards. "A MAP OF THE NORTH! I WANT TO SEE THE FASTEST ROUTE TO WINTERFELL!"
Ser Brynden stepped forward, his old bones creaking, his weathered face set in lines of grim determination. "My lord, you cannot—"
"I CAN AND I WILL!" Ormund rounded on him, and for a terrible moment, the sword came up. But Brynden did not flinch. He stood his ground, steady as an oak, and met his lord's wild gaze without blinking.
"Strike me if you must," Brynden said quietly. "I have served your house for forty years. I served your father, and his father before him. And I will not stand by and watch you destroy yourself."
"Destroy myself? DESTROY MYSELF?" Ormund laughed, and the sound was utterly unhinged. "I am already destroyed! Do you not see that? She destroyed me the moment she spread her legs for another man!"
"Then let her destruction mean something." Brynden's voice was steady, measured, the voice of a man talking a jumper down from a ledge. "Win the war, my lord. Win the war, and you can have everything. Everything."
Ormund's grip on the sword tightened. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that if you ride north now, you die. You take men into the snow, into Stark territory, and you die. Cregan Stark will put your head on a spike, and your wife will watch, and she will not shed a single tear. Is that what you want? To give him the satisfaction? To give her the satisfaction?"
The words hit Ormund like a physical blow. He staggered, his free hand coming up to press against his temple.
"No," he said, his voice raw. "No. She is mine. She belongs to me."
"Then win the war first." Brynden stepped closer, close enough to lay a hand on Ormund's arm. The touch was gentle, almost paternal. "Win the war, and you win everything. The Iron Throne will owe you a debt that can never be repaid. You can demand Stark's head. You can demand your wife's return. You can have her back in your bed, back where she belongs, and you can make Stark watch while you remind her exactly who she answers to. But only if you win."
The tent was silent. The other commanders held their breath. Somewhere outside, a horse whinnied, and the wind snapped against the torn canvas walls.
Ormund stood perfectly still, his chest heaving, his eyes wild, his sword still clutched in his white-knuckled grip. The letter lay crumpled on the floor at his feet, the words still burning in his mind—words about her, about him, about the sounds she made and the way she cried his name. Stark's name. Not his. Never his, not anymore.
"Stark's head," he said finally, his voice barely above a whisper. "On a spike. Outside my gates."
"Yes," Brynden agreed. "Stark's head on a spike."
"And my wife. Back in my bed. Back where she belongs. In chains if necessary."
Brynden hesitated. "Yes."
"And my son. Back in my house."
"Yes."
Ormund closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the wild, feverish light had not disappeared, but it had banked. Transforming from an inferno into something colder, something infinitely more dangerous.
"Then we win this war," he said. He pulled his sword from the floorboards and slid it back into its sheath with a soft, deadly hiss. "We win this war, and we take King's Landing, and we put Daeron on the throne. And when it is done—when the dragons are dead and the pretender queen is ash and there is no one left to stand against us—I will march north with a full army at my back. And I will tear Winterfell apart stone by stone until I find her."
He turned to face his commanders, and the smile that spread across his face made every man in the tent take an involuntary step backward.
"And when I do," he said, "I am going to make her watch while I kill him. I am going to make her watch every single moment of it. I am going to make her see what happens to men who touch what belongs to me. And then—" He paused, letting the silence stretch, letting them all imagine it. "Then she is coming home. And she is never leaving again.
Cregan Stark was a dead man. He just did not know it yet. Every battle Ormund fought, every victory he won, every strategic decision he made, all of it was in service of that single, burning goal. Win the war. Claim the throne. Take back what was his.
The war would end, and Cregan Stark would die, and Ormund Hightower would have his family back—by any means necessary. By fire and blood, if that was what it took.
He had been patient once before, he could be patient again. He could wait. He could plan. He could let the rage simmer and build and concentrate into something lethal.
--
Every night, the same ritual. Ormund Hightower would sit alone in his tent, a flagon of wine at his elbow, the crumpled spy's letter spread before him on the table, and he would lose his mind all over again.
He tried not to. He tried to focus on strategy, on supply lines, on the thousand logistical details that came with commanding an army. But the moment the silence descended, the moment he was alone with his thoughts, the images would come creeping back. Vivid. Detailed. Unbearable.
Her. With him. Cregan Stark was younger than Ormund. That was the first thing that ate at him, gnawing at his pride like a rat at a corpse. Stark was her age—only a few years older than her, if that. A young man in his prime, not a grizzled lord of forty with grey threading his temples and lines deepening around his eyes. Stark was tall and broad-shouldered and hard-muscled from a lifetime of swinging a greatsword in the Northern wilderness. Stark had a full head of dark hair and a strong jaw and the kind of rugged, wolfish handsomeness that maidens swooned over in the songs.
Ormund had seen him once, years ago, at some tourney or council. He remembered thinking the boy was arrogant. Northern savages, all of them. But now—now he could not stop picturing that arrogance in his bed. In his wife.
He would pour another cup of wine and drink it down in one burning swallow, but the images only grew sharper.
Stark's hands on her hips. Stark's mouth on her throat. Stark's body—younger, harder, stronger—pressing her into the furs. The furs. Northern furs, rough and barbaric, not the fine silk sheets of the Hightower. And she was moaning for him. Making those sounds—those sounds that Ormund had discovered, had cultivated, had taught her to make—for another man.
A younger man.
A man her own age.
"FUCK!"
The goblet flew across the tent and clanged against the central pole, spraying wine across the canvas. Ormund was on his feet, pacing, his hands tearing through his hair.
He was not just any man. That was the second thing. That was what made it so much worse. Cregan Stark was the Lord of Winterfell. The Warden of the North. A Great Lord in his own right, who ruled a territory larger than all the other Kingdoms combined. His titles were ancient and unimpeachable. His bloodline stretched back eight thousand years to the First Men, to the Kings of Winter. The Starks had been royalty when the Hightowers were still lighting signal fires and calling it civilization.
Ormund was a powerful man. He knew that. He was the Lord of Oldtown, the Beacon of the South, the head of one of the oldest and wealthiest houses in the Reach. But he was not a Great House. He was not a Warden. He was a vassal to the Tyrells, technically, however much he might disdain them. He did not have a crown in his history. He did not have the blood of kings.
But Stark did.
She was a princess of the blood. A Targaryen. A dragonrider. And now she was spreading her legs for a man who could call himself her equal—or near enough. A man whose titles could almost match her own. A man who could give her a castle that had stood for thousands of years, a kingdom that bowed to no one, a name that commanded respect across the entire continent.
What could Ormund give her that Stark could not match or exceed?
The thought made him want to kill someone. "HE IS NO BETTER THAN ME!" he roared at the empty tent. "HE IS A SAVAGE IN FURS! HE KNOWS NOTHING OF HER! HE DOES NOT KNOW HER THE WAY I DO!"
But the cruel voice in the back of his mind whispered: He knows her now. He's learning her. Every night, he's learning her.
He hurled the wine flagon against the tent pole, and it shattered, spraying dark red liquid across the maps and the bedroll and the crumpled letter. He picked up a chair and smashed it against the ground. He drove his fist into the tent pole, once, twice, three times, until his knuckles were bloody and the pain cut through the red haze for a few blessed seconds.
"She was MINE!" he screamed at no one. "She was MINE before she was his! She will be MINE after he is dead!"
But the voice whispered: She chose him. She ran from you and chose him.
He staggered to his cot and collapsed onto it, his bloody hand pressed to his face, his breath coming in ragged, uneven gasps. The images would not stop. They never stopped. Every night, the same torture.
Her on her back, her hair fanned out across Stark's furs, her eyes hazy with pleasure. Her legs wrapped around his waist—his young, hard waist, not the softening middle of a man twenty years her senior. Her nails raking down his back. Her lips forming his name. Stark. Cregan. Not Ormund. Never Ormund.
Did she think of him at all? When Stark was inside her, when she was crying out for him, when she was shattering around him—did she remember the man who had taught her what pleasure was? Did she remember her husband?
Or had she forgotten him entirely?
"Ungrateful little WHORE," he snarled, but the word felt hollow. Because she was not a whore, was she? A whore took coin. A whore spread her legs for anyone. She had spread her legs for one man—one other man—and that made it so much worse. That made it a choice. She had chosen Stark. She wanted Stark. She was with Stark not out of duty or desperation but because she preferred him.
Because he was younger. Because he was her age. Because he was a Great Lord, a Warden, a man whose power matched her own.
Because he was not Ormund.
"I GAVE HER EVERYTHING!" The cry was torn from somewhere deep in his chest. "I gave her a home, a name, a son! I protected her! I loved her! And she—she threw it all away for—for a Northern savage who—"
Who could give her a kingdom. Who could give her a castle that made the Hightower look like a merchant's counting house. Who could give her the blood of the First Men, the loyalty of the North, a place at the side of a man who answered to no one but himself.
Ormund had spent his entire life climbing. Clawing his way up the ladder of power, building alliances, accumulating influence. He had married a Targaryen princess—a feat that should have been the crowning achievement of his house. And now she was in another man's bed, and that man outranked him, and there was nothing—nothing—he could do about it except win this damned war and take her back by force.
"I will kill him," he whispered into the darkness. "I will kill him slowly. I will make it last for days. I will make her watch every moment of it. And when he is dead—when she has seen what happens to men who touch what is MINE—she will beg for my forgiveness. She will crawl back to me on her knees. And I will decide whether to give it to her."
He lay back on the cot, staring at the canvas ceiling, his bloody hand cradled against his chest. Outside, the camp was quiet. The sentries walked their posts. The horses stamped in the picket lines. The army slept.
But Ormund Hightower did not sleep. He never slept anymore. He just lay there in the darkness, listening to the sound of his own ragged breathing, and pictured his wife in another man's arms.
Younger. Stronger. Higher-born.
It did not matter. None of it mattered. Because when this war was over, Cregan Stark would be dead, and YN would be back in his bed where she belonged, and he would spend the rest of his life reminding her exactly who owned her.
That was the thought he clung to. That was the thought that got him through the night.
That, and the image of Stark's head on a spike outside the gates of Oldtown, his sightless eyes staring at nothing, his blood dripping down the stone walls.
robert baratheon's only true heir, a dark-haired girl like your father in many ways including your inability to fall out of love with bright-eyed starks.
word count: 150k :)
COMPLETED!
inspo/outline/headcanons
the snow before the storm (what started this all haha)
welcome to winterfell
fights and falls
into the wood
diplomatics and dramatics
escaping execution
in camp
released in the riverlands
moms and murder
wondering why
grandfather's girl
a stark story
the journey north
to find forever
family ties
safe again
breaking broken
becoming
forever found
another queen
one leg up
in part
a need to know
in your dreams
way down we go
reconnected
always more
optimism
revelations
battles and breakage
silver linings
of thunder and ice -
(mini one shots that are just sweet, missed moments in the series)
Whoever is writing daeron x aunt!reader /motherfigure!reader PLEASE SEND THEM MY WAY I need to give him some happiness and some motherly love!!!! Babygirl deserves to be raised by lovingly parents. If it's gwayne x reader that raise him, even better!
amandla
pixelskylines
izzy806
gracieabrams
theartofmadeline
romaincrisis
