AN: My fics are meant to be x-readers, friendly to all skin colors. So, if I accidentally describe something that can only be applied to one race, DM me or inbox me so I can edit and fix it.
When I write that the reader blushes, it's not because the characters can see her blush; it's because she is biologically, physically blushing. All skin colors can "blush"; it's just more/less noticeable in some skin colors.
Blushing=blood+rushing NOT cheeks/face reddening
MOSTLY DARK FICS
Fandoms: If requested on Kofi i'll write for other characters too
AKOTSK: Valarr, Aerion, Daeron, Baelor | HOTD: Gwayne, Ormund, Jacaerys, Cregan, Rhaenyra | GOT: Robb, Daenerys | Percy Jackson: only 18+ actors | MCU | DCU | Jujutsu Kaisen | My Hero Academia | Outer banks | Star wars
Commissions
A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS
Check out the tag "Dark *insert character*" for drabbles, or #name of the story
Valarr Targaryen
The Blackfyre whore part one
The Blackfyre whore part two
The Blackfyre whore part three Feat. Baelor
The Blackfyre Whore part four
Choices, Consequences (ft. Aerion)
Memories
Popstar (tba)
The prince and the childhood friend (tba)
Aerion Targaryen
The prince's whore
Baelor Targaryen
Prima nocta
The Prince and The Septa (tba)
The prince and the childhood friend (tba)
Dark!Ormund Hightower X Targ!Reader (looks not described) X Gwayne Hightower (will be present in part two, Saviour) Part One
2 3 4
Summary: After a failed escape leaves her stranded in the Reach, Princess Y/N Targaryen finds herself at the mercy of Lord Ormund Hightower, a man who has wanted her for years. Taken prisoner and stripped of everything that once gave her power, Y/N is forced into a life of servitude as Ormund slowly attempts to break her resistance and make her his.
A/N: If you are triggered by SA, you can skip this part before reading Saviour. This part focuses on her abuse, while Saviour will center on her healing and finding love.
TW: kidnapping, captivity, violence, graphic violence, murder, character death, physical abuse, torture, sexual harassment, sexual assault, non-consensual touching, sexual coercion, forced nudity, religious abuse, humiliation, degradation, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, manipulation, misogyny, power imbalance, threats of rape, rape. ORMUND IS EVIL!
WC: 12K
You have been traveling for months now, long enough that the sway of the carriage has become a second heartbeat, a constant rhythm of jolts and creaks and the muffled thunder of hooves on packed earth. Your back aches from the endless motion. The cushioned seat, once plush and comfortable, has compressed into a hard slab that offers no relief no matter how you shift your weight. You press your palm against the wooden frame and try to find a position that does not make your spine feel like a column of bruised stones.
You miss Silverwing, the absence of her is a physical ache lodged beneath your sternum, a hollow space where the bond should hum warm and steady. You picture her coiled on the black volcanic beaches of Dragonstone, her scales catching the pale northern light, steam rising from her vast nostrils as the surf crashes against the shore nearby. She would be restless without you. Silverwing always grew restless when you were gone too long, pacing the beach, snapping at the dragonkeepers, refusing to eat. You feel the same restlessness mirrored in your own bones, a constant agitation that no amount of walking or riding or dancing can soothe. Mother insisted you leave her behind, and you understand the logic. Truly, you do. Your mother looked you in the eye and said, "You will leave Silverwing on Dragonstone. I know you, daughter. The moment a suitor displeases you, you will fly home and claim the tour was a failure. I need you to complete this journey. I need you to give each house a genuine opportunity." You agreed because she was right, because you knew yourself well enough to recognize the truth in her words. Understanding does nothing to fill the hollow place inside you. It does nothing to ease the ache.
Your mother's letter arrived four days ago. The words were brief but urgent. The handwriting was your mother's own, but it was shakier than usual, the letters pressed so hard into the parchment that the quill had nearly torn through in places. War has begun. Aegon has been crowned in King's Landing. Your brother Lucerys is dead, murdered by Aemond Targaryen at Storm's End. Return to Dragonstone immediately. Do not delay. Do not stop for any reason. Ride day and night if you must. Come home.
You read the message three times before the shaking started in your hands. The fourth time, you read it aloud to yourself in a whisper, as if hearing the words would make them less terrible. They did not. Lucerys. Sweet Luke, your younger brother, with his easy laugh and his earnest eyes. Dead. Murdered by your uncle Aemond.
Now the carriage moves as fast as the horses can manage, your escort riding close on all sides. Ser Harrold leads them, he has served your mother since before you were born. You remember him lifting you onto your first pony when you were four years old, his calloused hands gentle and sure. He promised your mother he would deliver you safely home, and you believed him when you set out. You believed him with the absolute certainty of a child who has never known true danger. You are less certain now. The roads feel different. The air hums with something invisible and threatening, like the pressure that builds before a thunderstorm breaks. Ser Harrold rides with his hand on his sword hilt at all times. His eyes never stop scanning the horizon. You have caught him muttering prayers under his breath.
You close your eyes and lean your head back against the seat. The motion of the carriage becomes a rocking rhythm, almost soothing despite the discomfort. Your thoughts drift. They always drift to the same place when you are tired and unguarded, when the exhaustion strips away your defenses and leaves the old memories raw and exposed.
Lord Ormund Hightower.
The name curdles in your mind like milk left too long in the sun. You were six and ten when he first appeared at court, the ladies of your mother's household whispered about him constantly. They gathered in corners and alcoves, their voices hushed and breathless, trading observations like stolen treasures. How handsome he was. How commanding his presence. How he moved through a room like a man who knew exactly what he wanted from the world and exactly how to take it. You remember their giggles. You remember the way they blushed when he glanced their way. You remember rolling your eyes so hard it gave you a headache that pulsed behind your temples for an hour afterward.
Handsome. You scoffed at the word then, and you scoff at it now, alone in the dusty confines of your carriage. The man was old. Thirty-five years to your sixteen. Nineteen years gaped between you like an unbridgeable chasm. Your entire lifetime, plus three more years. When he was your age, squiring for some lord or another, you had not even been a flicker of possibility in your mother's womb. You made that observation loudly and often to anyone who would listen, and you made it with the absolute conviction of a girl who believes her opinions are unassailable truths. Your ladies in waiting—Jeyne, Lysa, and sweet little Margot—became your captive audience for a running commentary on Lord Ormund's many, many deficiencies.
"Did you see him at the feast last night?" you asked, sprawled across the velvet settee in your chambers while Jeyne worked your hair. The fire crackled in the hearth, casting dancing shadows across the stone walls. Your shoes lay discarded on the floor where you had kicked them. "He kept sniffing the wine before he drank it. Sniffing it. Like a dog trying to decide whether something is worth eating. I watched him do it three separate times. Three times."
Your ladies laughed, you fed on their laughter like a flame fed on dry kindling, growing brighter and hotter with every sound.
"And his nose," you continued, warming to the subject with the pleasure of a performer who knows her audience is captivated. You sat up straighter on the settee, gesturing dramatically at your own face. "Have you ever seen a nose so... so..." You waggled your fingers vaguely in the air, searching for the most devastating word. "So present? It occupies half his face. It enters a room before he does. I swear to the Seven, he could smell a rose blooming three kingdoms away. He could smell a baker baking bread in a village on the other side of the Narrow Sea."
Jeyne snorted, unladylike and delighted. "You're terrible."
"I am accurate," you declared. "There is a difference. And the way he reacts to scents—have you noticed? He's so sensitive. So delicate. Lady Willa walked past him in the gardens yesterday wearing rosewater on her wrists, just a few drops, barely noticeable. He practically flinched. Flinched! A grown man, a lord of one of the greatest houses in the realm, and he cannot tolerate the scent of flowers. He wrinkled his nose like a child tasting something sour."
Lysa, always the diplomatic one, offered a gentle counterpoint. "They say his sense of smell is exceptionally keen. Some consider it a gift from the gods. The Hightowers have always been known for it—like a family trait, passed down through the blood."
"Some consider it a gift," you repeated, your voice dripping with theatrical disdain. "I consider it ridiculous. What use is a nose that sensitive? He must spend his entire life being assaulted by every odor within a league. Imagine being him at a tourney—the sweat, the horses, the blood. He must be in agony."
"Perhaps he is," Margot offered quietly. "Perhaps that's why he always looks so serious."
You waved her suggestion away with a flick of your wrist. "He looks serious because he has no sense of humor. None. I have never seen him laugh."
Your ladies exchanged glances, you pretended not to see.
You mocked his hair next. "I imagine him standing before a mirror every morning," you said, your voice taking on a cruel, lilting quality, “brushing and arranging and fussing, making sure every single curl falls exactly where it should. His manservant must have the patience of a septon. 'No, my lord, that curl is a quarter-inch too far to the left. Allow me to adjust it.'”
The word creepy became your favorite descriptor, the weapon you reached for most often. Everything about him was creepy. The way he looked at you with those pale eyes, steady and unblinking. The way he seemed to appear wherever you went, materializing at feasts and garden parties and walks through the castle grounds as if he had somehow memorized your schedule. The way he always managed to position himself close enough to speak with you, to compliment the color of your gown or the arrangement of your hair, to let his gaze linger on your face a moment longer than propriety allowed.
"He's ugly," you announced one afternoon with the absolute finality of a judge delivering a sentence. You were lounging in the window seat of your chambers, the spring sunlight warm on your face, while your ladies worked on their embroidery nearby. The declaration came from nowhere, unprompted, as if the thought had been simmering in your mind and finally boiled over. "I don't care what anyone else says. I don't care what the other ladies whisper about. He is old and ugly and odd, and I wish he would go back to Oldtown and stay there. He has no business being at court. He has no business being anywhere near me."
Your ladies exchanged glances again. You knew what those glances meant. You knew every woman at court considered Ormund Hightower devastatingly attractive, with his tall frame and his strong features and his air of authority. You knew Jeyne had once described him as "the most beautiful man I have ever seen" after drinking too much wine at a private supper. You knew Lysa's cheeks flushed pink whenever he entered a room. That knowledge—that universal, undeniable consensus—only made you more determined to despise him. You would never give them the satisfaction of admitting what your eyes could plainly see. Let them call him beautiful. You would call him a relic. You would call him a fossil. You would call him ancient and decrepit and on the very edge of his grave.
The tourney for your sixteenth nameday was meant to be the grandest event of the season, a celebration that would be talked about for years afterward. Knights from every corner of the realm flocked to King's Landing to compete for glory and for the chance to catch the eye of a Targaryen princess. You sat beside your mother in the royal box, elevated above the common spectators, a crown of silver flowers woven through the elaborate coils of your hair. You felt like the center of the universe. You felt like the sun.
You loved every moment of it. You loved the attention that washed over you like warm water, the way every eye turned toward the royal box when you rose to greet the crowd. You loved the spectacle, the pageantry, the thunder of hooves and the crash of lances. You loved knowing that this entire event—the knights, the feasts, the flowers, the music—was all in honor of you. Your mother beamed with pride beside you, her hand occasionally reaching over to squeeze yours. You were her heir, her firstborn, her most precious treasure, and she wanted the whole realm to see what she had created.
The knights paraded past the royal box one by one, their destriers caparisoned in house colors, their armor gleaming with fresh polish. They dipped their lances in salute as they passed, and each dip made the crowd cheer. You smiled and clapped and leaned over to whisper commentary to your ladies, who sat in the row behind you. A young knight from House Mallister winked at you, and Jeyne gasped behind her hand. Lord Ashford's eldest son nearly fell off his horse trying to bow too deeply, and you had to bite the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing out loud.
Then Lord Ormund Hightower rode into view on a massive gray destrier, and the laughter died in your throat, the horse was a magnificent creature, easily seventeen hands high, its coat the pale silver-gray of morning mist. Ormund sat astride it with the easy confidence of a man born to the saddle. His armor gleamed green and silver, the colors of his house, every plate polished to a mirror shine. His helmet was tucked under one arm, leaving his face bare to the sunlight. His hair fell in perfect light brown curls around his shoulders. His blue eyes scanned the stands with calm, unhurried assurance. The crowd cheered. Your stomach clenched.
He reined his horse to a stop directly in front of the royal box. The massive destrier stood motionless, trained to perfection, while Ormund gazed up at you. The sunlight caught the burnished metal of his pauldrons and turned his curls to spun gold. His eyes found yours and held them. The noise of the crowd seemed to dim, to recede, as if the world had narrowed to just the space between you and him.
"Princess," he said. His voice carried across that space with impossible clarity, rich and deep and perfectly controlled. "I would be honored beyond measure if you would grant me your favor this day. To carry your blessing onto the field would give me strength beyond any armor."
Your stomach dropped as if the floor of the royal box had vanished beneath you. The silence that followed his request was suffocating in its intensity. Every person in the stands was watching. Every lord and lady. Every knight waiting in the lists. Every servant and squire and common spectator. You felt their gazes like pins pressing into your skin from every direction. Your instinct screamed at you to refuse. The words were already forming on your tongue designed to wound him as deeply and publicly as possible. Something cutting about his age. Something cruel about his presumption. Something that would make the crowd laugh at him instead of cheer. You opened your mouth.
Your mother's hand closed around your wrist beneath the railing where no one could see, her grip was iron. Her fingers dug into the delicate bones of your wrist with the strength of a woman who had spent years gripping dragon saddles. Her eyes, when you turned to look at her, were steel.
"You will not shame him," Rhaenyra whispered, her voice barely audible beneath the noise of the crowd and utterly impossible to argue with. "Not here. Not today. Not in front of the entire realm. Give him the favor, Y/N. Now."
The injustice of it burned through your chest like dragonfire, hot and consuming. You wanted to scream. You wanted to wrench your arm free from her grip and stand up and tell every single person watching exactly what you thought of Lord Ormund Hightower and his honor and his beautiful, stupid face and his sensitive, ridiculous nose. You wanted to throw the crown of silver flowers to the ground and grind it beneath your heel. You wanted to summon Silverwing and burn the whole tourney ground to ash. You wanted—
You were a princess. A princess did not throw tantrums before the entire realm. Not even you, and you had thrown more tantrums in your sixteen years than most princesses managed in a lifetime.
Your hands moved mechanically, divorced from your will. You lifted the wreath of silver flowers from your hair, the favor you had prepared for no one in particular, the symbol of your blessing that you had assumed you would grant to some dashing young knight close to your own age. The flowers were delicate things, silverbell blossoms woven with silver thread, their petals soft as moth wings against your fingers. You extended the wreath toward Ormund. Your hand trembled with the force of your suppressed rage. You hoped he could see it. You hoped he knew that every fraction of your smile was a lie.
Ormund reached up and took the wreath from your hands. His fingers brushed against yours in the exchange, deliberate, lingering. The touch lasted half a heartbeat longer than necessary. His skin was warm and rough with calluses from sword practice. His eyes never left your face. They held yours with an intensity that made your breath catch in your throat, regardless of how much you wished it would not.
"I will wear it proudly, Princess," he said, and his voice was warm, almost tender, as if you had given him a genuine gift instead of a forced and bitter concession. His thumb traced a slow, deliberate circle against the inside of your wrist before he withdrew, a touch so subtle that no one in the crowd could have seen it, a secret pressed into your skin. "I will think of you with every pass I make. Your favor will be the shield that guards me and the sword that guides my arm."
He secured the wreath to the end of his lance wrapping the silver threads around the dark wood until the flowers sat bright and unmistakable. Then, as the crowd watched in breathless silence, he lifted the wreath to his face and inhaled deeply. His nostrils flared, his pale blue eyes sliding half-closed with an expression of almost indecent satisfaction. The gesture was intimate, private, a thing meant for bedchambers rather than tourney fields. The crowd roared its approval, blind to the violation in the act. Your mother released your wrist. You drew your hand back into your lap and sat motionless, your spine rigid, feeling something cold and heavy settle into the pit of your stomach like a stone dropped into deep water.
You spent the remainder of the tourney silently wishing for his horse to throw him. You imagined it with vivid, detailed clarity, the massive gray destrier stumbling, Ormund pitching forward over its neck, his beautiful armor clattering in the dust, his perfect curls getting tangled with dirt and horse manure. You imagined the crowd gasping in shock. You imagined sending a maester to tend to his bruises, a maester who was very old and very slow and very bad at his job.
None of it happened. Ormund rode brilliantly that day, as if he had been born in the saddle and nursed on victory. He unhorsed three knights in succession, each opponent fell before Ormund's lance like wheat before a scythe. Each victory brought him back to the royal box to salute you, his horse prancing sideways in a display of controlled power. Each time, he lifted his lance high so the silver flowers caught the afternoon light and sparkled. Each time, the crowd cheered louder, their voices growing hoarse with enthusiasm. Each time, his eyes found yours with that same unwavering intensity, and each time, you felt that gaze like a hand pressing against your skin. Each time, you wanted to sink through the floorboards and disappear into the earth.
"He's doing it to spite me," you hissed to Jeyne during a brief pause in the competition, while servants rushed onto the field to clear away the debris of shattered lances. Your voice was low and venomous. "He's showing off. He's rubbing my face in it. Look at him down there, preening like a peacock. He thinks my favor means something. He thinks I actually wanted to give it to him."
Jeyne, who had served you long enough to recognize the particular edge in your voice that preceded an explosion, wisely said nothing. She kept her eyes fixed on the tourney field and her hands folded primly in her lap.
The feast that evening was interminable, you were seated at the high table, the place of honor beside your mother, with the tourney champion given the seat directly to your right. The arrangement was traditional. Inescapable. You understood with bitter clarity that your mother had orchestrated it deliberately, a gesture of respect to the victor, a public acknowledgment of his achievement. Ormund had shed his armor for a doublet of deep green velvet embroidered with silver thread, the Hightower sigil worked in miniature over his heart. He smelled of sandalwood and something muskier beneath the clean scent, like woodsmoke or old leather. You noticed the scent despite yourself. You noticed it because he was so close that his shoulder nearly brushed yours every time he reached for his wine cup, because he leaned toward you whenever he spoke, his voice pitched low and intimate beneath the roar of conversation that filled the great hall.
"You are not eating, Princess," he observed, halfway through the second course. His knife moved with surgical precision as he cut a sliver of roasted boar, the meat so tender it parted like butter beneath the blade. "The boar is excellent. The kitchens have outdone themselves."
"I am not hungry." Your voice was flat and cold as a winter lake.
"That is a pity." He lifted the morsel to his mouth and chewed slowly, deliberately, his eyes never leaving your face. You watched his jaw work. You watched the muscles of his throat move as he swallowed. "A young woman should have an appetite. You are still growing, after all. Still... developing."
The pause before the word was calculated. You felt it land like a stone dropped into still water. His gaze flicked down from your face—just for an instant, just far enough to make your skin crawl—before returning to your eyes. His expression remained perfectly pleasant, perfectly polite. A faint smile curved the corners of his mouth.
You stabbed your fork into the piece of roast fowl on your plate with enough force to make the porcelain shriek. "I find that my appetite depends greatly on the company I am forced to keep."
If the barb struck home, he gave no indication. His smile merely deepened, settling into the lines around his mouth like it belonged there. "I have always admired your spirit, Princess. It is one of the things I find most compelling about you. You are not like the other young ladies at court—so eager to please, so desperate for approval. You are a dragon. Untamed. Unbroken." He lifted his wine cup and swirled the dark liquid within, watching it cling to the sides of the goblet. "I have always wondered what it would take to gentle such a creature. What hand would be steady enough, patient enough, to earn her trust."
"Perhaps no hand at all," you replied, your voice clipped. "Perhaps the creature in question has no interest in being gentled."
"No interest in being gentled," he repeated, as if tasting the words. His tongue swept across his lower lip, slow and thoughtful. "How delightfully fierce. How wonderfully... spirited." He leaned closer, his shoulder pressing against yours now, his mouth dipping toward your ear. His breath was warm and wine-sweet. "But even dragons can be taught to accept the saddle, Princess. It is only a matter of finding the right rider."
He pulled back before you could respond, lifting his goblet in a toast to Lord Beesbury, who had risen to offer a rambling tribute to the tourney champion. You sat rigid in your chair, your heart hammering against your ribs, your appetite truly dead now. You could still feel the heat of his shoulder against yours, the phantom press of his breath against your ear, the way his eyes had dropped from your face in that fleeting, invasive assessment.
The dancing began after the fourth course was cleared away. The musicians struck up a lively tune, and the center of the great hall transformed into a whirl of silk and velvet and flashing jewels. You danced with half a dozen partners in quick succession, a young Lord Caron with sweaty palms, a knight from House Swann who stepped on your toes twice, Lord Rowan's eldest son who kept his eyes fixed on your bodice throughout the entire reel. You smiled through all of it, your cheeks aching with the effort, your mind fixed on the moment you could reasonably excuse yourself and retreat to your chambers.
Then the music shifted. The lively reel faded into something slower, something more intimate, a waltz, measured and stately, the kind of dance that required partners to stand close, to move in unison, to hold each other's gaze for long, suspended moments. You felt his presence before you saw him, a heat at your back, a whisper of sandalwood and woodsmoke curling through the air.
"Princess." Ormund's voice was a low rumble behind you. "I believe this dance is mine."
It was not a question. You turned to face him and found him already extending his hand, his palm upturned, his expression one of patient expectation. Every eye in the hall was upon you again. The champion claiming his privilege. Tradition demanded you accept. Your mother's gaze, from across the room, was a silent, implacable command.
You placed your hand in his, his fingers closed around yours, he drew you onto the dance floor with the smooth confidence of a man who had done this a thousand times, leading you into the first turn of the waltz with effortless precision.
"You dance beautifully," he murmured, his free hand settling at your waist. His palm was broad and warm, his fingers splayed against the small of your back. The heat of his touch radiated through the silk of your gown. "Though I suspect you know that already. You do everything beautifully, don't you, Princess? Even sulking. Even glowering at me as though you wished I would spontaneously combust."
"I am not glowering."
"You are. Fiercely. Your brows are drawn together and your jaw is clenched and there is a vein in your temple that pulses every time I speak." His thumb traced a small circle against your waist, the motion idle, almost unconscious. "It is deeply endearing. I find myself wanting to provoke it more often, just to watch you react. You are so very alive when you are angry. So very vivid."
"I am so very glad my discomfort amuses you, my lord."
"Not discomfort." He spun you through a turn, his hand guiding you with firm authority. When you came back together, you were standing even closer than before. The length of his body was a wall of heat against yours. "Passion. Fire. That Targaryen blood running hot in your veins. You should be grateful for it, you know. Most women your age are so dull, so tame. They simper and blush and say precisely what they think a man wants to hear." His head dipped toward you, his voice dropping to a register that was barely above a whisper. "You bite. I find it... refreshing."
The dance swept you across the floor in a series of measured steps. His hand at your back guided you with subtle pressure, steering you through the other couples with the ease of long practice. His eyes never left your face. That pale blue gaze was a weight, a pressure, a thing you could feel on your skin like the heat of a candle held too close.
Then his hand moved, a gradual slide from the small of your back downward, palm flattening, fingers spreading wide. By the time you registered what was happening, his hand was resting on the curve of your arse, his grip firm and possessive, his fingers pressing into the silk of your gown with unmistakable intent.
You froze mid-step, your body going rigid as a drawn bowstring. The breath seized in your lungs. "Careful," he murmured, his lips brushing the shell of your ear. His hand did not move. His fingers flexed, gripping once, a slow and deliberate squeeze. "You would not want to cause a scene, Princess. All these people watching. Your mother watching. Imagine the scandal."
Your face flooded with heat. Rage and humiliation warred in your chest, a storm of fire and ice. You wanted to shove him away. You wanted to slap his smug, handsome face. You wanted to scream. But his grip on your other hand was unbreakable, and his body was a solid wall blocking your retreat, and the dance was still going on around you, the other couples spinning and laughing, utterly oblivious to the violation happening in their midst.
"Let go of me," you hissed through clenched teeth, your voice low and shaking with fury.
"In a moment." His hand squeezed again, slower this time, almost contemplative. You could feel the heat of his palm through the layers of your gown, the strength of his fingers, the casual ownership in the gesture. "I have been watching you all evening. Watching you dance with those boys. Watching them fumble and stammer and fail to hold your attention for more than a heartbeat. Do you know what I thought, Princess? I thought, She deserves better. She deserves a man who knows how to handle her."
"I would sooner be handled by a Dothraki savage."
His laugh was a low rumble against your ear. "There. That fire. That is what I mean." His hand finally—finally—slid back up to the acceptable territory of your waist, but the memory of its presence lingered like a brand. "I am going to enjoy taming you, little dragon. Every sharp word. Every flash of defiance. Every time you look at me with those furious eyes and think of ways to wound me." He spun you through another turn, and when you came together again, his smile was wolfish and knowing and utterly, terrifyingly patient. "And you will wound me, I am sure. You will try. But I have been wounded before, Princess. I have survived. And I have a very long memory."
The waltz ended. He released you with a formal bow, lifting your hand to his lips and pressing a kiss to your knuckles that lingered a fraction of a second longer than propriety allowed. His eyes met yours over the back of your hand. They were bright with satisfaction, with anticipation, with the quiet certainty of a man who had already won.
"Thank you for the dance," he said, loud enough for the nearest onlookers to hear. "It was everything I hoped it would be."
You fled the great hall the moment you could extricate yourself from the crowd. You fled to your chambers and slammed the door behind you and stood there in the darkness, trembling, your hand pressed to the place on your gown where his fingers had gripped you. You could still feel the phantom pressure of his palm. You could still smell sandalwood and woodsmoke clinging to your skin. You did not sleep that night. You sat at your window and watched the stars wheel overhead and hated him with a purity of feeling that was almost religious in its intensity.
The memory shifts. It blurs at the edges and reforms into a different moment, the same sick feeling coiling in your stomach.
You are standing in the corridor outside your mother's solar. The stone walls are cold against your back where you press yourself against them, hidden in the shadows of a recessed alcove. Sconces flicker along the hallway, their flames guttering in a draft you cannot feel. The door to the solar is not quite closed. A gap of perhaps two inches remains between the heavy oak and the frame, and through that gap, voices drift into the corridor. Your mother's voice, measured and careful, the voice she uses when negotiating something delicate. Another voice, Ormund's voice. You recognize it instantly, the way you would recognize a snake's hiss.
"She is young," your mother is saying. Her voice carries the weight of careful diplomacy. "She has only just turned sixteen. She has a strong will and a stronger temper. You understand what you are asking of her. You understand what you are asking of me."
"I understand completely, Your Grace." Ormund's voice is calm and steady, utterly sure of itself, as if the outcome of this conversation is already decided. "I have thought of nothing else since I first saw her at court. She is extraordinary. Fierce. Intelligent. Beautiful beyond measure. I am prepared to wait for her. I am prepared to be patient while she grows accustomed to the idea. But I wanted to make my intentions known formally, before another suitor pressed a claim that might complicate matters."
A pause. You hear the soft clink of a wine cup being set down on a wooden surface. You imagine your mother taking a long drink, buying herself time to think.
"She is my heir," Rhaenyra says at last. "My firstborn child and my successor. Any man who marries her will one day stand beside the Iron Throne as consort. He will share in her power and her responsibility. You understand that as well, Lord Ormund. This is not simply a marriage. This is the future of the realm."
"I do understand, Your Grace. I understand completely." Ormund's voice is grave now, respectful, pitched to convey the full weight of his sincerity. "My house has served the crown faithfully for generations. The Hightowers have always been leal subjects to the Targaryen dynasty. I would be honored to continue that tradition. I would be honored to stand beside your daughter and support her claim with all the strength of Oldtown and the Hightower behind us. Our children would unite two of the oldest bloodlines in Westeros."
Our children. The words hit you like a physical blow. You press your hand against your mouth to stifle the sound of disgust that rises in your throat. The thought of bearing his children—of him touching you, of his hands on your body, of his seed taking root in your womb—makes your stomach lurch violently.
Another pause, longer this time. You hold your breath until your lungs begin to ache. The flames in the sconces gutter and dance. Your mother does not respond immediately. You hear the rustle of fabric, the soft sound of a goblet being lifted and set down again.
"I will speak with her," Rhaenyra says at last, and her voice carries something you cannot quite identify, caution, perhaps, or weariness. "I will present your suit to her and hear her thoughts on the matter. But I make no promises, Lord Ormund. My daughter's happiness is not a small consideration. It is the primary consideration. I will not force her into a match she cannot accept."
"I would expect nothing less from you, Your Grace. You are a devoted mother as well as a queen. Your daughter is fortunate to have you." A pause. The scrape of a chair being pushed back. "Thank you for hearing me. Thank you for considering my suit. I will await your daughter's decision with hope in my heart."
Footsteps approach the door. You scramble backward, your heart hammering against your ribs so hard you can feel your pulse in your temples. Your slippers make no sound on the stone floor—a small mercy—as you duck around the corner and press yourself into a narrow alcove hidden behind a tapestry. The fabric smells of dust and old incense. You hold your breath.
The door opens. Ormund Hightower walks out of your mother's solar and into the corridor. His stride is confident, unhurried, the stride of a man who has just won something far more valuable than a tourney. His shoulders are relaxed beneath the fine fabric of his doublet. His expression is calm and satisfied, the faint ghost of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. He pauses for a moment in the corridor, looking left and right as if orienting himself.
Then he stops, his nostrils flare. His head turns, slowly, deliberately, toward the tapestry behind which you are hiding. His eyes—those pale, piercing blue eyes—fix on the exact spot where you are concealed. The smile on his face widens by a fraction.
"Jasmine," he murmurs, almost too quietly to hear. "Such a distinctive scent."
He stands there for a long, terrible moment, his gaze boring through the tapestry as if it were made of glass. Then he turns and continues on his way, his footsteps fading gradually into the distance.
Your hands clench into fists at your sides. Your jaw tightens until your teeth ache. You wait until his footsteps have faded completely, and then you are moving, shoving yourself out of the alcove and storming toward the solar door. You push it open with enough force to send it crashing against the interior wall. The sound echoes through the room like a thunderclap. Your mother looks up from her desk, startled, a goblet of wine halfway to her lips. Her expression shifts from surprise to resignation in the space of a heartbeat.
"He asked for my hand." Your voice comes out in a snarl, low and furious and barely controlled. "He asked for my hand in marriage, and you let him. You listened to him. You heard him out while he stood there and talked about me as if I were a piece of property to be negotiated over—"
"Y/N." Your mother sets down the goblet with a deliberate, careful motion. Her voice is dangerously calm, the calm of a dragon before it opens its jaws. "Close the door."
You slam it. The heavy oak crashes into its frame with a boom that rattles the sconces on the walls. "He is old, Mother. He is thirty-five years old. That is nearly twenty years older than me. He is practically in his grave. He is a relic. He is a fossil. He is an ancient, decrepit, gray-haired—"
"His hair is not gray."
"It will be soon! He is closer to forty than thirty. When I am his age, he will be nearly sixty. Sixty, Mother. Imagine being married to a man of sixty. Imagine sharing a bed with a man of sixty. I would rather die. I would rather feed myself to Silverwing. I would rather—"
"You will lower your voice." Rhaenyra rises from her chair. The movement is slow and deliberate, full of the unconscious authority of a woman who has worn a crown for many years. Her eyes flash with warning.
"I will not lower my voice!" You are shouting now, your voice rising to fill the solar. "I will scream it from the rooftops if I must. I will climb to the top of the Tower of the Hand and announce it to the entire city. I will not marry Lord Ormund Hightower. I would rather marry a stable boy. I would rather marry a Dornish horse. I would rather marry the horse's saddle. I would rather marry no one at all and let the succession fall to—"
"Enough." The word cuts through your tirade like a blade through silk. Your mother's voice is not loud, but it carries absolute command. Her eyes flash with the fire of old Valyria. "You will not speak to me this way. You are my daughter and my heir, and I love you beyond measure, but you are still a child in many ways. This display proves it. You are acting like a petulant girl who has been denied a sweet, not like a future queen who understands the weight of political reality."
The sting of that rebuke steals your breath. You stand there in the center of the solar, your chest heaving, tears of fury pricking at the corners of your eyes. The words hit you harder than any blow could have. Your mother sighs. The tension in her shoulders softens slightly. She reaches up and rubs her temples with the tips of her fingers.
"He touched me." The words tear themselves from your throat, raw and shaking. "At the feast. During the waltz. He put his hand on my—he touched me where no one should touch, and he told me not to make a scene, and I could not say anything because everyone was watching, and—"
"What are you talking about" The word cuts through your tirade like a blade through silk. Your mother's voice is not loud, but it carries absolute command. Her eyes flash with the fire of old Valyria. "Tell me everything. Slowly. From the beginning."
You tell her. The words pour out of you in a flood, the hand on your backside, the whisper in your ear. Your mother listens in silence, her face growing paler and harder with every word. When you finish, you are shaking, tears of fury and humiliation streaming down your cheeks.
"I will not marry him." Your voice cracks on the words. "I will never marry him. If you make me marry him, I will—I will feed myself to Silverwing. I will throw myself from the highest tower of the Red Keep. I will—"
"You will not marry him." Your mother's voice is iron, absolute, unshakeable. "I give you my word. Whatever political advantages a Hightower alliance might offer, they are not worth your safety. They are not worth your dignity." She rises from her chair and crosses the room, taking your face in her hands. Her palms are warm and steady against your tear-wet cheeks. "I did not know, my darling. I did not know about the dance. If I had known, I would never have allowed him in this room. I would never have heard his suit."
"Then refuse him." Your voice is a broken whisper. "Promise me you will refuse him."
"I promise." She presses a kiss to your forehead. "I will tell him tomorrow. He will leave court within the fortnight. You will never have to see him again."
The carriage lurches to a halt so abruptly that you are thrown forward against the opposite seat. The violence of the stop catches you completely off guard. Your shoulder strikes the wooden frame with a sickening crack, and pain blossoms through your arm in hot waves. You cry out, the sound torn from your throat before you can suppress it. For a moment, you are simply stunned, crumpled against the seat, trying to understand what has happened.
Then you hear the shouting, your guards are yelling, their voices sharp with alarm and edged with something that sounds terrifyingly like fear. Ser Harrold's voice rises above the others, bellowing orders that you cannot quite make out. Then other voices join the chaos. Rougher voices. Harsher voices. Voices you do not recognize, voices that bark commands in an unfamiliar cadence.
A horn blows. The sound is harsh and brazen, cutting through the shouting like a blade. Steel rings against steel. The clash of swords is unmistakable, a sound you have heard at tourneys a hundred times, but never like this. The metallic shriek of blade meeting blade is punctuated by screams of pain, by the wet, heavy sound of steel sinking into flesh.
Your blood turns to ice. The cold spreads outward from your chest, creeping down your arms and legs until your fingers feel numb and distant. You scramble to the window on hands and knees, your heart hammering so hard you can feel it in your throat. Your fingers fumble with the curtain, clumsy with sudden terror. You tear the fabric aside and press your face to the narrow gap.
Your escort is fighting. Ser Harrold is fighting you can see him in the center, his gray beard matted with blood, his sword flashing in the afternoon sun as he cuts down one attacker and turns to face another. His movements are desperate, the movements of a man who knows he is fighting a losing battle but refuses to yield. Around him, your other guards are falling. You watch Ser Wilsem take a sword thrust through his belly and crumple forward over his horse's neck. You watch young Pete, the squire who blushed every time you looked at him, get dragged from his saddle by three men in green and silver armor. They are outnumbered. They are being slaughtered.
Green and silver armor gleams everywhere you look. Hightower colors. Hightower soldiers. They swarm around the carriage like ants on a carcass, like wolves around a wounded deer. There are so many of them—twenty at least, maybe thirty, their surcoats bright with the tower-and-flame sigil.
An arrow takes Ser Harrold in the throat, you see it happen. You see the gray-fletched shaft appear as if by magic, buried deep in the flesh of his neck. You see the shock register on his weathered face. You see his mouth open as if to speak, and blood bubbles out instead of words. You see him sway in the saddle, his sword slipping from his fingers. You see him fall. You see the blood spray bright and arterial across the trampled grass, a crimson arc that catches the sunlight and seems to hang in the air for a terrible, frozen moment.
A scream tears from your throat, it is a raw, primal sound, ripped from somewhere deep in your chest. It scrapes your throat raw on the way out. You slam your fist against the carriage door, pounding on the wood hard enough to bruise your knuckles. You fumble for the latch. You need to get out. You need to run. You need to find a horse, steal a horse, do something, anything—
The door rips open with a violence that sends splinters flying, a soldier's face appears in the gap, filling the doorway. "There she is," he says, and his voice is a crow's caw of triumph. "The little dragon princess. Lord Ormund's prize. Right where they said she'd be."
You kick him in the face, your foot connects with his nose, driven by pure, animal panic. You feel the cartilage crunch under your heel, a sickening sensation that travels up your leg. Blood sprays from his nostrils, bright red and immediate. He staggers backward with a howl of pain and shock and rage, his hands flying to his ruined face. You launch yourself toward the open door, toward the rectangle of afternoon light, toward freedom.
Hands catch you before you take two steps. Too many hands. They come from every direction, rough and calloused and implacable. They close around your arms and your waist and your shoulders. They drag you from the carriage, your feet leaving the wooden step entirely, and you are fighting, screaming, thrashing, twisting in their grip. You scratch at any flesh you can reach. Your nails rake down a soldier's cheek and you feel the skin tear, feel blood well up under your fingernails. He curses and backhands you across the face with brutal, casual force. The blow snaps your head to the side and fills your mouth with the taste of copper and salt. Bright lights burst behind your eyes.
"Careful with her, you fool!" someone barks from nearby. The voice carries the sharp edge of command. "Lord Ormund said unharmed. He was very specific. Unharmed and unspoiled. Do you want to explain to him why her face is bruised? Do you want to be the one who answers for it when he sees a mark on her?"
The soldiers laugh. It is an ugly sound, thick with dark implication. They hold you fast despite your continued struggles, your arms pinned behind your back at a painful angle, your feet barely touching the blood-slicked grass. The world spins around you, the wrecked carriage, the bodies of your guards scattered like broken toys, the green and silver soldiers moving among the dead. The horses are gone, run off into the fields or stolen by the attackers. The carriage is a wreck, one wheel splintered and the door hanging from its hinges. The afternoon sun beats down on the scene of slaughter with indifferent brightness.
"Pretty thing," one of the soldiers says, leaning close to your face. His breath is hot and foul against your ear, and you flinch away from him, but there is nowhere to go. The hands holding you do not loosen. "Can see why the lord wants her kept whole. A face like that, you'd want to keep it pretty."
"Don't get ideas," another soldier warns. "Lord Ormund's been waiting a long time for this. A very long time. He's not going to share."
"He's been waiting two years," a third soldier adds. There is something knowing in his voice, something that suggests he has heard stories. "Remember how she treated him at the tourney? My cousin was there. Said she gave him her favor with a face like she'd swallowed a cup of piss."
They laugh again. The sound crawls across your skin like insects with too many legs.
"Wouldn't be me," the first soldier mutters, still dabbing at his bleeding nose with the back of his hand. "Someone treated me like that, I'd have taught her some manners right there. Tourney or no tourney. Princess or no princess."
"That's why you're not Lord Ormund," another soldier says. "The man has patience. The man has plans. He's been thinking about this for two years. He told us he can still smell the jasmine in her hair, clear as the day he first caught her scent. Told us he'd know her blindfolded, in a room full of women, just by that smell alone."
"Speak of the scent and the scent shall appear," another soldier says with a dark chuckle. "The lord's going to be very pleased to have her back under his nose. Very pleased indeed."
They bind your wrists with rough rope that bites into your skin the moment it tightens. The rope is coarse hemp, unsoftened by use, and it scrapes your flesh raw with every movement. The soldier tying the knots pulls them cruelly tight, and you feel the rope dig into the delicate skin of your wrists, feel the circulation cut off, feel your fingers begin to tingle and grow numb. You keep struggling anyway. You keep twisting in their grip, keep searching for any weakness, any gap, any opportunity to break free. There is none. These men are soldiers. They are hard and practiced and utterly without mercy. They have done this before. The realization settles over you like a shroud.
They throw you onto the back of a horse like a sack of grain, your stomach hitting the saddle with a force that drives the breath from your lungs. A soldier mounts behind you, swinging up with practiced ease, and his arm locks around your waist with bruising force. You feel the solid bulk of his chest against your back, the rough wool of his surcoat scratching your neck. You feel his breath on your ear, warm and damp. Revulsion crawls across your skin like a living thing, like a thousand tiny feet.
"Lord Ormund's going to be very pleased," the soldier says, and his voice is a low purr of satisfaction. "Very, very pleased. He told us to watch for you special. Gave us your route. Told us exactly where you'd be and exactly when you'd be there. Told us your escort numbers and your travel speed and everything else we needed to know."
The words sink into you like stones dropped into dark water, each one heavier than the last. Gave us your route. Told us exactly where you'd be. He knew. The horse begins to move. You are surrounded by armed men. Your wrists are bound. You are being delivered like a parcel to a man you publicly humiliated, rejected, and mocked without mercy.
The memories crowd in again. They come without your permission, flooding your mind with vivid, unwelcome clarity. The garden, the sniffing, the way you made your ladies laugh. The tourney, his thumb on your wrist, his nose buried in the silver flowers. The feast, his hand on your body, his voice in your ear. The alcove, the tapestry rough against your back, his eyes finding you through the fabric as if you were lit by torchlight.
The soldiers talk among themselves as they ride. Their voices weave around you like a net tightening with every passing mile. You catch fragments of crude commentary and casual brutality.
"...heard she's got a dragon. Big silver one. Silverwing, they call her. Used to belong to the Good Queen herself..."
"...where's the dragon now, Princess? Why isn't she here to save you? Did your mother make you leave her behind?..."
"...smart of the queen, really. Send her Heir defenseless across the kingdoms..."
"...shame, though. Would've liked to see a dragon up close. Never seen one. My father saw Vhagar once, back during the old king's reign. Said it was the most terrifying thing he ever witnessed..."
"...they say Silverwing breathes fire hot enough to melt stone. Hot enough to turn a man to ash where he stands. Good thing she's not on that dragon now..."
More laughter. It rolls over you in waves, suffocating and inescapable. You close your eyes and try to find that place inside yourself where Silverwing waits. The bond between dragon and rider is ancient magic, deeper than blood, stronger than distance. You reach for it desperately. You cast your mind out across the leagues of countryside, searching for the familiar warmth of her presence. She is too far away. The bond is there—you can feel it, a faint thread of connection humming at the very edge of your awareness—but it is stretched thin by distance, useless. She cannot hear you. She cannot know what is happening. She is coiled on the black beaches of Dragonstone, and you are here, and there are too many miles between you.
You are a dragonrider, bonded to one of the most magnificent creatures in existence. You are your mother's daughter, raised to be a queen, and you are completely, utterly, terrifyingly powerless.
The column rides on. The shadows lengthen and darken. The sun sinks toward the horizon in a blaze of orange and pink and blood-red, and the sky darkens from blue to purple to the deep velvet black of a country night.. You are cold. The spring night air has a bite to it that cuts through the thin fabric of your gown. Your dress is torn at the shoulder where the soldiers dragged you from the carriage, the sleeve hanging by threads. The bruise on your face throbs in steady rhythm with your heartbeat, a dull, persistent ache that sharpens every time you move your jaw. The ropes around your wrists have rubbed your skin raw, and you can feel the sticky warmth of blood trickling down your fingers.
Your mind keeps circling back to the same terrible image, the same memory that plays on an endless loop behind your eyes. Ormund Hightower, standing in your mother's solar, calm and patient and utterly certain. I am prepared to wait. I am prepared to be patient.
And now the waiting is over.
The torches of the camp appear through the darkness like a swarm of fireflies scattered across the hillside, hundreds of pinpricks of orange light flickering against the black expanse of the night sky. Your body has gone numb from hours of riding—your legs aching, your shoulders screaming from the angle at which your bound arms are wrenched behind your back, your wrists raw and slick with blood where the rope has worn through the first layers of skin. The soldier behind you keeps his arm locked around your waist, and you have long since stopped struggling against his grip. There is no point. There is nowhere to run. Even if you managed to break free, you would be cut down or recaptured before you made it ten paces.
The camp grows larger as you approach, the soldiers ride directly through the heart of the camp. Men look up from their meals and their dice games and their weapon maintenance. They see you. They stare. Some of them grin with recognition. Some of them nudge each other and gesture in your direction. You catch fragments of their murmured comments—"There she is," and "The princess," and "Lord Ormund's been waiting"—and each word lands on your skin like a brand. You are a spectacle. You are entertainment. You are the prize being delivered to the conqueror.
The horse stops outside the largest tent. The soldier behind you dismounts first, and then his hands close around your waist and drag you down after him. Your legs buckle when your feet hit the ground. The muscles in your thighs and calves have gone dead from hours of forced immobility, and you crumple forward before the soldier yanks you upright by your bound arms. The pain that shoots through your shoulders is bright and electric, and you bite down hard on your lip to keep from crying out. The taste of copper floods your mouth.
"Walk," the soldier growls, shoving you forward. "Lord Ormund doesn't like to be kept waiting."
Two soldiers grip your arms and drag you toward the tent. The canvas flaps are pulled aside by guards stationed at the entrance, and then you are inside, stumbling forward into the warm, golden glow of interior light.
The tent is enormous, more like a portable hall than a simple campaign shelter. Rich carpets cover the packed earth floor in overlapping layers of crimson and gold. Oil lamps hang from the support poles on delicate chains, filling the space with soft, wavering illumination. A heavy wooden table stands to one side, covered with maps and markers and the scattered detritus of military planning. Servants move quietly around the periphery of the space—men and women in simple woolen clothes, their eyes carefully downcast, their movements silent and efficient.
And at the center of the tent, dominating everything, sits a large copper bathtub, steam rises from the surface of the water in lazy curls, carrying the faint scent of lavender oil and something else, something herbal and clean. The tub is positioned so that anyone entering the tent sees it immediately, and you see it, and you see him.
Lord Ormund Hightower reclines in the bath with his arms resting along the copper rim, his head tipped back slightly, his eyes closed in an expression of perfect, languid relaxation. The water laps at his chest, obscuring the lower half of his body but leaving his shoulders and arms bare to the lamplight. His light brown curls are damp, darkened by the water, clinging to his temples and the back of his neck. His skin gleams in the warm light, the muscles of his shoulders and arms shifting subtly as he breathes. A faint smile plays at the corners of his mouth. It is the smile of a man who has been anticipating this moment for a very long time.
Standing near the tub, holding a folded length of drying cloth, is a boy. He looks around your age, eighteen, perhaps, or a little younger. His hair is a striking shade of red, the color of autumn leaves or a fox's pelt, falling in soft waves to his upper shoulders. His eyes are blue, a pale and watery blue, and they are fixed firmly on the floor. He does not look up when you enter. He does not look at anything except the ground. There is a stillness to him, a quiet watchfulness, that suggests he sees far more than his downcast eyes would indicate.
"Our lord," the lead soldier announces, his voice gruff with deference, "we have brought the princess. Her escort has been dealt with. Killed to the last man."
Ormund's eyes open slowly, languidly, as if he has all the time in the world. His pale blue gaze finds you across the tent, and the faint smile on his lips widens by a fraction, with the slow, savoring satisfaction of a cat finally closing its claws around a mouse it has been stalking for hours. His tongue sweeps across his lower lip, slow and thoughtful. He looks at you the way a man looks at a meal he has been starving for.
"Princess," he says, and the word drips from his mouth like honey laced with poison. "No. Not a princess."
The word hangs in the warm, lavender-scented air. The soldiers holding your arms shift slightly, uncertain. Ormund lifts one hand from the rim of the tub and gestures idly, a dismissive flick of his wet fingers. Water droplets scatter across the carpet.
"Not even a lady," he continues, his voice smooth and unhurried, the voice of a man delivering a sermon he has rehearsed a hundred times. "Not even a legitimate daughter. She is a bastard. A baseborn creature of sin and deceit. Her whore of a mother spread her legs for whatever man would have her because Laenor Velaryon was more interested in pretty young men than in his own wife, and so that fat, entitled cunt, found her pleasures wherever she could get them. In stables. In storerooms. In any dark corner where a man would have her."
Your body goes rigid. The words hit you like blows, each one a slap across your already bruised face. A sound tears from your throat—a strangled noise of pure, incandescent rage.
"You lie," you snarl, straining against the hands that hold you. "You vile, lying—my mother is worth a thousand of you, you craven—"
The soldier to your right backhands you across the mouth, the blow snaps your head to the side. Pain explodes through your jaw, bright and blinding, and your lip splits against your teeth. Blood floods your mouth, hot and copper-sweet, and you stagger in the soldiers' grip. The tent swims around you, the lamplight fracturing into a thousand spinning points of gold.
"Do not interrupt me," Ormund says, and his voice has not changed at all. It is still calm, still smooth, still utterly unhurried. "You will learn. You will learn that when I speak, you listen. When I command, you obey. Your opinions are worth less than the dirt beneath my boots, and I have no interest in hearing them. Do you understand?"
You spit blood onto the beautiful crimson carpet. It lands in a bright red spray, stark against the gold patterns. "I understand that you are a coward and a monster," you say, your voice shaking but defiant. "I understand that you had to ambush a carriage full of guards to capture one unarmed woman. I understand that you are pathetic and old and so desperate for my attention that you have been obsessing over me for two years like some kind of—"
This time it is not a backhand. The soldier drives his fist into your stomach, and the breath leaves your body in a single, agonizing rush. You double over, retching, your bound arms twisting behind you at a brutal angle. The world goes gray at the edges. You cannot breathe. You cannot think. There is nothing but the white-hot pain radiating through your gut, the taste of blood and bile in your throat.
Ormund watches. He watches with that same faint smile, that same expression of patient satisfaction. When the soldier pulls your head back by your hair, forcing you upright again, Ormund's eyes trace the fresh blood on your lip, the tears streaking through the dust on your cheeks, the way your chest heaves as you struggle to draw breath.
"You are a bastard," he says, picking up the thread of his speech as if there had been no interruption. "You and your brothers are all bastards. Sins born out of wedlock. Abominations in the eyes of gods and men. You have no right to the Iron Throne. You have no right to any title or claim or pretense of nobility. You are the product of your mother's lust and your mother's lies, and nothing more. Your very existence is an insult to every law of gods and men."
He pauses. His eyes, still fixed on you, glitter in the lamplight like chips of ice. His hand moves idly through the bathwater, fingers trailing through the steam.
"And yet," he says, and his voice drops slightly, growing softer and more dangerous, almost intimate, "this bastard, this sin made flesh, this walking monument to her mother's whoredom, once thought herself above me. She mocked me. She laughed at me with her little friends. She called me old and ugly and odd. She called me a fossil, a relic, a man practically in his grave. She turned up her nose at my suit and screamed at her mother that she would rather marry a Dornish horse than suffer my touch. She made a performance of sniffing the air whenever I drew near, asking her ladies if they could smell something unpleasant."
He rises from the bath, the water sluices off his body in sheets, streaming down his chest and his stomach and his thighs. He steps out of the copper tub with the unhurried confidence of a man entirely comfortable in his own skin, and he makes absolutely no move to cover himself. He stands there, completely naked, the lamplight painting his body in shades of gold and shadow. Droplets of water cling to the dark gold hair of his chest, trace the lines of muscle down his abdomen, slide along the powerful sweep of his thighs. His body is that of a man in his prime, broad shouldered, lean hipped, the muscles of his arms and chest defined by years of sword work and riding. His cock hangs heavy between his legs, half-stirring from the heat of the bath. He does nothing to hide it. He does nothing to shield you from the sight. He stands before you utterly exposed, utterly unashamed, and the smile on his face says that he knows exactly how uncomfortable it makes you.
Your face burns. The heat rushes to your cheeks, your neck, the tips of your ears. You try to look away, try to fix your eyes on the carpet, on the tent wall, on anything but the naked expanse of his body, but the soldier's hand tightens in your hair and wrenches your head back. You have no choice but to look. You have no choice but to see all of him.
"What's the matter?" Ormund asks, his voice dripping with mockery. He takes a step closer, and then another, his bare feet silent on the thick carpets. Water drips from his body onto the crimson wool. "You seem uncomfortable. You seem... flushed. Is something wrong? You were so eager to mock my appearance before. So eager to call me old and ugly and decrepit. Take a good look. Does this look decrepit to you?"
He stops directly in front of you, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating from his bath-heated skin, close enough that you can smell the lavender oil and the clean, sharp scent of the soap he used, close enough that if you reached out your bound hands, you would touch him. He is so close that you have to tilt your head back to meet his eyes, and doing so forces you to look up the entire length of his body—his thighs, his hips, the flat plane of his stomach, the broad expanse of his chest. He knows this. He positioned himself deliberately to make it unavoidable.
"My mother will burn you for this," you whisper, your voice shaking but still fierce. "When she finds out what you've done, she will feed you to Syrax. She will reduce your precious Oldtown to ash and rubble. She will—"
His hand closes around your throat, the grip is not hard enough to choke, but it is hard enough to silence. His fingers wrap around the column of your neck, damp from the bath, warm, implacable. His thumb rests against the hollow of your throat where your pulse hammers frantically, and you can feel the calluses on his palm from sword practice, rough against your skin.
"Your mother," he says, his voice a low, venomous murmur, "is a usurper and a whore. She will be dead within the year. Aegon sits the Iron Throne now, and when this war is over, there will be no more pretenders. No more bastards claiming what is not theirs. Your mother will die screaming, and your brothers will die with her, and you—" His grip tightens fractionally, just enough to make your breath catch. "You will be here. Serving me. Learning humility. Learning what happens to bastard girls who think themselves above their betters."
He releases your throat with a small, contemptuous push. Your head snaps back, and you gasp for air, your chest heaving. "Look at you," he says, stepping back slightly, his eyes raking over you with disdain. "You are filthy. Your dress is torn. Your face is bruised. There is blood on your wrists and dirt on your hands and dust in your hair. You smell of sweat and horses and fear." His nostrils flare, and he makes a show of wrinkling his nose, a deliberate, mocking echo of the gesture you once used to humiliate him. "You reek. You are filthy inside and out—your body, your blood, your very soul. The bastard daughter of a whore princess, captured and delivered like the common criminal she is."
Behind him, the red-haired boy moves. He approaches Ormund with his eyes still downcast, still fixed on the floor, and he holds out a long green vest. His movements are practiced and deferential, the movements of someone who has done this many times before. Ormund does not acknowledge him. He does not turn away from you. He simply extends his arms slightly, and the boy slips the vest onto his shoulders with careful, efficient hands. The green fabric settles over Ormund's still damp skin, and the boy fastens it with quick, discreet movements. The vest falls only to Ormund's hips. It covers nothing below his waist. He remains exposed, unashamed, and he makes no move to rectify this. The boy steps back to his place by the tub, his gaze never once rising from the floor.
Ormund continues to stare at you. His eyes trace the lines of your face, the bruise darkening on your cheekbone, the blood drying on your split lip, the wild tangle of your hair. That faint smile remains on his lips, but there is nothing warm in it. It is the smile of a man savoring a victory long delayed, a revenge long anticipated.
"Take her," he says, and his voice carries easily through the tent. He is speaking to the servants now, to the men and women who stand waiting along the canvas walls. "Take her to the river. Strip her of those ruined clothes—cut them off her if you must—and wash the filth from her skin. Scrub her until she is raw. I want every trace of her former life washed away. She will be dressed in servants' garments—plain wool, sturdy and serviceable, appropriate to her station. Brown. Undyed. The color of dirt. The color of nothing."
He reaches out. His hand, still slightly damp from the bath, closes around your jaw. His grip is harder than before, fingers digging into the soft flesh of your cheeks, forcing your mouth into a slight pucker. His thumb presses against the edge of your bruised cheekbone, directly on the darkest part of the bruise, and the pain is sharp and immediate. You whimper despite yourself, a small, involuntary sound that makes his smile widen.
"She will serve me," he says, his eyes boring into yours. "She will wait on my table. She will clean my quarters. She will empty my chamber pot. She will perform whatever tasks I assign to her, no matter how menial, no matter how degrading. She is a servant now, a baseborn creature of no name and no house, and servants do not wear silk. Servants do not wear jewels. Servants do not speak unless spoken to, and they do not raise their eyes to their betters, and they do not—" He shakes your head slightly, a small, sharp movement. "—talk back."
"If she fights," he continues, releasing your jaw and turning away, "bind her tighter. If she screams, gag her. If she tries to run, hobble her. If she speaks a single word of defiance, strike her across the mouth. She will learn her place. She will learn humility. She will learn that a bastard does not refuse a lord. She will learn that a sin does not mock a righteous man. She will learn that the nose she mocked so cruelly will follow her scent to the ends of the earth if she tries to flee."
He gestures dismissively toward the tent flap, still not bothering to cover the rest of his body. The green vest hangs open, framing the broad expanse of his chest, the trail of dark gold hair that descends past his navel.
"The boy will accompany you," he adds. "He will ensure that the task is done properly. He is very good at ensuring things are done properly. Aren't you, boy?"
The red haired youth bows his head lower. "Yes, my lord," he says. His voice is soft, barely above a whisper. He still does not look at you. His hands are folded in front of him, his shoulders slightly hunched, his entire posture one of quiet, careful submission. There is something in the way he holds himself that suggests he is far more aware than he appears.
"Go," Ormund says. "Wash the stink of her old life from her skin. I want her clean when I see her next."
The soldiers drag you backward toward the tent flap. You twist in their grip, craning your neck to keep your eyes on Ormund, on his half naked form standing in the center of the lamplit tent, on the satisfied smile that curls his lips.
"You will never break me," you spit, blood and saliva flying from your torn lip. "You can strip me and beat me and dress me in rags, but I am still a Targaryen. I am still my mother's daughter. And when Silverwing finds me—when she burns this camp to ash—I will stand in the embers and watch you die."
Ormund laughs. It is a soft, almost gentle sound, utterly devoid of humor.
"Silverwing," he repeats, savoring the name. "The Good Queen's dragon. A magnificent creature. I've heard she's on Dragonstone. A long way from here. A very long way." He turns his back on you, walking toward the table covered in maps. "But please, hold onto that hope. Nurture it. Let it keep you warm at night. It will make it so much sweeter when you finally understand that no one is coming for you."
The soldiers drag you through the tent flap and out into the cold night air. The last thing you see before the canvas falls shut is Ormund Hightower standing over his war table, naked beneath his half-fastened vest, still smiling.
- ser gwayne hightower x rhaenyra’s daughter!reader
part one
synopsis. You are named Princess of Dragonstone and heir to the Iron Throne upon your return to the Red Keep, following months as a Hightower hostage. Ser Gwayne Hightower, your former escort and secret lover while on the road home, is captured and thrown into the dungeons of the Keep.
contents. smut, angst, reader is rhaenyra’s eldest daughter (around the same age as aegon) and silverwing’s rider, show-canon divergence, love confessions, reader lowkey gets post nut clarity and is still just as oblivious, dry humping, finger sucking, fingering, p in v
a/n. the timeline for this fic compared to the show is so off but lets just ignore that and enjoy the story PLEASE. theres also less smut than the last part so sorry in advance if thats what you were looking forward to - its still there just not as much - i wanted this part to serve as sort of an epilogue and not its own entire thing
Gwayne would like nothing more than to turn his own blade inward and let the steel put an end to his immoral life.
He would have done it weeks ago if you had not been lurking deep in the shadows of his mind—the maddening shape of you standing behind the closing gates to the Keep, forever to haunt him for giving in to the gold cloaks and their command for him to leave.
He should have laid down his sword, got down on a knee, and he should have sworn fealty to your mother. Yes, he might have been prolonging his inevitable demise—a beheading, or a hanging, or perhaps immolation by dragonfire—but anything would have been worth it if it meant he could sit with your presence for just a few moments more.
The rain had come and gone several times throughout the day. It was relentlessly pelting the top of his head now, as his men prepared to continue the march toward Tumbleton. He should not be thinking of your face, but you persist. You have only now just begun to leave him.
He cannot remember the shape of your nose well enough, nor the exact inflection of your voice. It comes to him in moments then promptly slips away. Soon, the rest of your features will be sentenced to the same fate, and if he survives the war, he will only be able to remember you as a fleeting figure deep in the crevices of his mind.
He hopes he does not survive the war.
Worst of all, he cannot escape the dream of a life with you.
You could be a sellsword, and I a scribe—I your wife, you had said. He had brushed you off thereafter, told you that you should not worry yourself with eventuality, and then he had distracted you with his mouth.
His decisions regarding you had only sealed the truth of his character. He cannot escape the fact that he is a coward, and the fact that he deeply abhors himself for what he let happen that day, and for what he did not do—but nothing will change now. He will continue the trek to Tumbleton, and he will continue the loop of war, like the dishonorable man he is.
He will continue to think about you. Of your smile, only brought on by the simplest of things and the most surprising of things, nothing in between. And of your unwavering loyalty to your mother—the thing he would never truly have for his own cause. And the fact that you loved him, you truly loved him—the fact that you said it, and the fact that he said nothing in turn.
He and his men were soon overwhelmed by enemy bannermen wearing black and red before he could cease in his reflections. And just as he had at the gates of the Keep, he had given up without a fight when they tried, letting himself be thrown to the ground without even reaching for his sword.
It had been a small ceremony, your coronation as Princess of Dragonstone. There were no high lords, and none of your siblings either. It was just your mother, her husband, and her council members, as well as the Dowager Queen and her own daughter. It was over quickly.
You begged and pleaded with your mother the day before to choose anyone but you. To choose Joffrey, as he was still young and learning—that you were too old and too overwhelmed with the war and with your duties “as a young maiden” to learn anything about ruling over the Seven Kingdoms.
They were all feeble excuses, but they were all you could think of in the moment your mother proclaimed you as heir. You never wanted to be queen of anything, and your mother knew it, which was why she had named Jace as Prince of Dragonstone despite your precedence over him.
She had apologized, and you could see sympathy in her eyes as you argued against it, but her decision was final. You were to rule as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms someday, probably with some noble house’s lord as your husband. Perhaps the son of your former betrothed—you believe his name is Benjicot. He was young, but closer in age to you than his father was.
Would you get to choose your husband? Perhaps your mother truly would force a marriage between you and one of the Dowager Queen’s younger sons as a way to secure peace. You hope not. One is mental, the other you know nothing of except that he is a Green.
The thought brings you back to many moons ago, when you had committed treachery with one of them. Not just any one of them, but the uncle of the usurper.
You find yourself thinking about him more as the nights grow restless—the day he had taken your maidenhood, the days following, and just how little you regret it. You hate yourself for worrying about him, but the heavy hum of nervousness persists. You have long already loathed yourself for your disloyalty.
The idea that Jace would understand brings you comfort in your dread only for moments before it is overtaken by the fact that he wouldn’t. Just like how your mother wouldn’t understand, nor your cousins. Not even your ladies-in-waiting.
Your kin would probably name you a traitor, and if they would not put your head to the sword, they would marry you off to some elderly lord, and your life would be squeezing out heirs until you died in the pursuit. You believe you deserve as such.
You wonder if he has already taken another lover. Perhaps he is already dead. His head rotting on a pike somewhere, body having been used as meat for hounds. You’d prefer that to it being used in pursuit of another’s pleasure.
If he is alive, he has probably forgotten all about you by now. The only thing on his mind must be survival.
“Open the gate!” a gold cloak had yelled, and the gates screeched against the gravel as they parted.
You had been called forward by your mother to view a gift from some bannermen on the roseroad. She had instructed a different gold cloak called Ser Manfred to accompany you to the King's Gate, the same spot where Gwayne had been taken from you weeks ago.
Something sudden and unfamiliar washes over you, worse than the chill—something indescribably dreadful, as if your entire life as well as your future had flashed before your eyes, and you see him for a split second behind your eyes. Him, Gwayne, the only man you have ever truly loved, there in your head and gone the next.
It comes back to you, in that moment, what you had said to him. You had told him you loved him in the haze of intimacy, and you hadn’t been in possession of your thoughts enough to see how he reacted, if he even reacted at all. Had he said it back? You cannot remember. If he did, you did not notice.
A little voice in your head whispers to you. You will see him soon enough. He will tell you then.
You squeeze your eyes shut a moment, as if to ease the voice away. It works for only a moment.
Two men on their horses amble in. You breathe a sigh, somewhat relieved yet all the more disappointed that he is not with them, and let your head drop to your chin.
He is, the voice whispers again, and your head jolts right back up.
A third horse has trudged in behind them in the time you had been recollecting your scattered thoughts. There he was—your man, Ser Gwayne Hightower, a thick rope tied around his middle and another binding his hands to each other.
He was thinner than you remember him being, and much more disheveled. Prickles of hair had begun to sprout on the lower half of his face. And his limp, restrained body was slipping off of his horse.
“He is going to fall.” You step forward, voice heightening as his frame curls further off the mount. “He is going to fall off his horse.”
At that, his body gives, and he drops to the ground with a heavy thud. It knocks the wind from his lungs and he heaves weakly, using the rest of his strength to try and flip himself over, to no avail. His throat is scratchy and you cannot make out what it is trying to say, but he attempts to speak nonetheless. All that comes out is slurred and nonsensical.
“What is this?” you ask the bannermen, who you now notice to have been letting out stifled chuckles at Gwayne’s peril with wide grins on their faces.
“Well…” one of them glances over to the other, the smile having been wiped from his face as he searches for a good enough answer for the sorry display. “It’s a Hightower, Your Grace.”
The other takes a single step forward, holding a proud finger up to get your attention. “Not just any Hightower—Otto Hightower’s eldest son.”
“And why haven’t you killed him?” you question.
The first bannerman shrugs. “We thought you might want to do it.”
You look back down at Gwayne. He has made it to his knees, torso curled toward the ground, but he cranes his neck up to look at you.
Your brows furrow and your pupils dilate, despite the sight before you. His brows are equally as downturned—more so, even, and you look away.
“I will not have him killed. Ser Manfred—” you turn to face him. “Take Ser Gwayne to the dungeons. Have him fed. I shall discuss the terms of his apprehension with my mother.”
Ser Manfred nods, moving forward to lift Gwayne up to his feet. Your eyes track the pair of them as they trudge across the yard, until they finally pass through a doorway.
“Your Grace—” one of the bannermen says. He clears his throat. “We were hoping—both of us—if there might be a… reward for our services—”
Your eyes haven’t left the doorway which Ser Manfred and Gwayne had disappeared into, and the bannermen’s speech does not draw your attention away from it.
“There shall be no reward,” you state.
You take off to re-enter the castle, heading in the direction of the small council chamber—where your mother had been meeting with her privy council.
Normally you would be with her—since you had been since being named heir—as a cupbearer for the council. You’d assumed they had been discussing something both incredibly important and incredibly confidential, and that was the reason why she had sent for you to attend to the arrival of the bannermen. Now, given who was with them when they arrived, you are unsure of her intentions.
You remember fragments of the day you returned to the Red Keep, but none of it is certain in your mind. You cannot recall the exact words you desperately uttered to your mother as you watched the gates lock you away from Gwayne, but you know whatever they were, they were much too honest. You cant remember what she said in turn, if she said anything at all.
You seem to have buried much of the last few months deep in your head. The fact that you have disappoints you, as most of it includes what happened on the roseroad with Gwayne. All you can recall is what you felt. The feelings you felt for the first time, and those you felt for the last time.
Now he is here. Here, as a prisoner of war, much like you were up until just weeks ago. Surely, you can protect him the same way he protected you. At least for a few moons. Until someone powerful enough calls for his death.
Once you make it to the small council chamber, the few of its members are already pouring out. You peek through the half-opened door, and sure enough, your mother sits at the head of the table. Judging by her strained figure that seeks to push itself further back into the chair than humanly possible, she seems vexed. You can only hope you don’t push her further.
The final council member files out, one you’ve yet to have seen before, and you slip inside. Hushed conversation dies down as the eyes of both her husband and her Mistress of Whispers fall unto you.
You step forward and replace your disconcerted expression with a calmer one. Your brows settle back over your eyes, and the corners of your lips turn up.
You offer her Mistress of Whispers a polite nod, and glance over to the man across from her. “Stepfather.” He nods back at your acknowledgement.
Your mother burns holes into you. She attempts the same, a happier face, but it comes out as a swift breath of air from her nose and a closed-mouth grin which is no doubt artificial.
It depresses with each second of silence on your end. You shake your head once to get the thoughts back to you—Gwayne—
“Gwayne,” you blurt. The faces of the White Worm and the Prince before you curl into something you can only recognize as amusement.
You lift your chin up anyway and clear your throat. “Ser Gwayne Hightower, Otto’s eldest. He has been captured by our men. He is currently held in the keep’s dungeons.”
“He escorted you from the Reach, did he not?” Daemon interjects, a finger pointed up and at you.
You look between him and your mother. She offers you a small nod, so you proceed. “That is correct, my Prince.”
“Wandering back into the dragon’s jaws, has he? The gall must run in the family.” He looks over to your mother, letting a smirk inch over his mouth. At her blank expression, he pushes himself into an upright position, intertwining his fingers together.
She exhales. “As Princess of Dragonstone, the choice is yours to make,” she begins. “The prisoner is yours to dispose of.”
“He must live, mother.” You find yourself wringing your hands together, unable to stop. Your mother leans forward. “To execute Otto Hightower’s eldest son just weeks after you did he, it serves their narrative of you, that you are cold-blooded, and merciless.”
Daemon’s mouth opens before your mother can reply. “Perhaps it serves us better to be seen as merciless—”
His words are cut off by the White Worm very loudly clearing her throat. You notice her head shake gently in his direction.
You clear your throat once more. “Lord Ormund Hightower already believes Targaryens to be a savage race. If we slaughter the Protectors of the Faith to near extinction, that would send a message to the—”
“Okay.” A tight smile strains your mother’s lips. She rises swiftly from her seat.
You think she might be leaving, so you open your mouth again. “We hold him, and let him rot in the cells under our watch, where he can be useful.” It is that last word, useful, that halts her.
Her chin drops to her chest. “If he stays in the dungeons, you will handle his confinement, and you will ensure he surrenders the…” her head shakes as she searches for a good word, “intelligence we require.”
She makes her way around the table and situates herself in front of you. Her hands rise to your arms, and then one brushes your hair from your temple, ignoring how it falls right back into place after. “Does that sound suitable to you, daughter?”
You nod, and she smiles sincerely. Her hand cradles your cheek for just a second more, and she departs. Her husband and the Mistress of Whispers disregard your presence as they follow after her.
The dungeons were empty, save for Gwayne. Your mother had all the prisoners “taken care of” throughout the week she had come back to power, you had soon discovered, the first of which being Gwayne’s own father.
Your loyal lady-in-waiting, Cissy, had told you it was a gruesome sight—one she was not even supposed to see, but she had been looking to see if you were with your mother when she had come to take back the Keep. You hadn’t seen her since the start of the war, as she had been forced to remain in the castle while you were away with your family on Dragonstone, becoming one of your cousin Helaena’s handmaids.
Cissy continued, describing in detail how your mother had been crying as she lifted Dark Sister, and first delivered a strike to his back instead of his head. The second blow had been the one to behead him, and she had ascended onto the Iron Throne, leaving footsteps of his blood on the path to it.
You had always thought your mother to be capable, and hearing the story of how it happened had left you somewhat satisfied. You were proud it was not her husband to do it.
Not only were the dungeons empty, but they were dusty all the more. Dusty, and with the stench of sweat, from the countless other prisoners held for nearly a century-and-a-half before you—the now-dead prisoners.
In spite of all you were taught as a child, even what you were told by the most exceptional of maesters in the entire realm, you cannot recall ever learning of a prisoner who ever survived the dungeons of the Keep. Or, of a prisoner who has ever escaped. Did anyone love that prisoner, though? Did they have someone to feed them hope while they rot?
Two white cloaks stand guard beside his cage. He’s been placed alone in one of the celled blocks, and thankfully not the one with the heavy steel door that truly confines you from any outside life. You recall Cissy telling you that Otto was held there.
“Leave us,” you instruct the guards. They hesitate for a moment, and share a glance between each other, but depart eventually.
Gwayne looks worse in the candlelit dim of the dungeons. He has not touched the food that has been provided to him, and it instead sits as food for insects.
His eyes are shut, you quickly find, and his head leans against the wall. You do not think he has ever looked so peaceful. But his eyelids peel open, and the natural scowl returns to him as quickly as his vision does.
You straighten your back and cease the staring.
“My princess,” he mumbles. His voice is still hoarse, but he can get the words out now. He uses seemingly all of his strength to push himself up from the ground.
You feel an urge to correct him, despite your insistence on the truth being anything but. “Your Grace.”
“Your…” His brows pull together. “What?”
Your hands are wringing again. “Jace is gone. I have been named Princess of Dragonstone. The Iron Throne is my birthright now.” The words feel like glass as they come up your throat. Your head bows to look at the dirt floor, instead of at his puzzled expression.
“I…” he mutters. “You remain my princess.”
You cannot bring yourself to look him in the eye for long. He finds it as easy as breathing. It must be why his gaze seems to pierce through you.
Your pointer finger begins picking at the skin around your thumb. “To be perfectly truthful, I’m not sure what to do with you.” On your other hand, your thumb runs against the backside of all the other fingers. You keep your eyes fixed firmly onto the floor.
He chuckles. “What does the Queen reckon you do?”
“The Queen and her council think it best that I kill you.” You inhale, and the softening of his features goes unnoticed. “Do you believe it? Me, killing you. It is madness, Gwayne.”
“If I must die, I am ready,” he murmurs, leaning his head against the cold metal of the cell.
Your hand has found a place on your sternum, rubbing back and forth, attempting to calm yourself. The thought of killing Gwayne was never certain in your mind—it would never be certain—and it brings you immediate distress. His brows knit together at the sight.
There is offense in your voice, alongside tremble. “I will not be your executioner.”
He looks up at you, genuinely pleading, as if you would not defy the stars to bring about his being. “But if it must be so, let the last thing I feel be your touch.” His fingers curl around the cell bars. “Even if it brings about my death. That is all I ask.”
You take a step closer, gently placing your hands overtop of his. “You will not meet the Stranger as long as you are down here.” Your forehead, wavering in its effort, lies against his. Gwayne shudders at the contact. “Besides, I’ve already discussed the terms of your confinement to my mother.”
You let your eyes shut, unable to look into his.
“I must go now,” you whisper, yet you do not move. Unsurprisingly, neither does he.
When you finally pull back, you see a single tear fall from the corner of his eye. Your hand comes up to swipe it away, and it lingers on his cheek for a moment longer, before you breathe a shuddery breath and push yourself away from him.
You were never particularly close to your grandsire, Lord Corlys Velaryon. You had only strayed further from him since the war begun, in both relations and distance—in fact, you do not think you have had a single conversation since long before you flew off to fight the Hightowers yourself.
It was a foolish decision. You realized that when you hesitated to rain fire upon their army, and directly after when you and Silverwing had been pelted with arrows—and as your body met the ground—and as the Hightower belligerents advanced to your position. It was certain as you watched your dragon fly away on your instruction, and as you began bleeding profusely from a shot to your shoulder.
The next few moons came and went, and throughout most of them, you were not conscious. You remember a man, a kind man, wearing green and protecting you from the danger that are men with fury. His face slips from memory. You remember all but that.
“I will not have her killed,” he had said. “I will not let her be a martyr for the Black cause.” And then you were out again.
You wonder if your sympathy for Gwayne comes only from your love for him, or also as a deeply-rooted need to requite that man for saving you. You reckon it is both. If not, he had certainly taught you something valuable about negotiation. The idea to keep Gwayne alive for such a reason wouldn’t have come to you if not.
Your grandsire was there in the Gullet when your brother was shot down a similar way. Only he did not live, and neither did Vermax. You find that the gods have a curious way of letting someone such as yourself live over someone so brave and steadfast.
Cissy tells you Corlys can be found wandering around the castle these days—that he does not seem to like it on the water very much. It is just your luck to find him in the gardens overlooking the Blackwater Bay.
“Grandsire,” you chirp, and he turns to face you. A smile washes over his face, certainly most curious as to why you are here, instead of attending to some other matters.
He steps closer to you, his hands linked behind his back. “Princess.”
You find it simpler not to correct him. “It is peaceful out here, is it not?” you look to the bay, and he mirrors you. It is not just idle talk. It truly is peaceful. It is enough to make the feigned smile on your face falter.
“Indeed,” Corlys murmurs. “I find myself out here more often than not these days.”
You take a step forward, so that you are standing next to him instead of behind. “I was pleased to hear of Ser Addam’s knighthood. It is most wondrous news.”
He nods. “The Queen does not find it suitable to acknowledge him, nor his brother Alyn, as trueborn seed.” You look to him, and there is a subtle scowl on his face.
Good, you note. You can use that.
You look back to the sea and lessen your tone. “It is a cruel thing, grandsire.” He turns his head slightly toward you. “To watch men fight and die for the throne, just to be slighted by the council in return.”
The words, treasonous to anyone but the two of you, flow naturally. You yourself have been slighted in being named heir, and so has your grandsire with his own bastards—it is foolish of you to think your mother would understand your love for someone forbidden just because she has experienced such herself.
Lord Corlys looks through you to find no traps, but unfamiliar sincerity in its place. It frightens him. “What is it you want of me, child?” he demands.
Your lips press together. There are endless risks to practically unveiling your fondness of Ser Gwayne to the Lord of the Tides. You will give the crown away—no, you will give yourself away if you have made the mistake of telling the wrong man of your necessities.
The risks, however, seem so small over the benefits. Gwayne is the benefit. Knowing you saved an honorable man—one of the few honorable men you have ever known—is the benefit. There is not much for you to lose at this point, except him.
“Ser Gwayne Hightower, the eldest son of Otto Hightower, has been captured by our men.” Your nails dig deep into your palms. “He sits in the dungeons now, where he will rot away unless I do something about it.”
His jaw twitches. “He is the enemy. The usurper’s uncle—” he stops himself, realizing the irony of his words. He does not have to feign in your presence.
“On each side of the war there exists those both principled and unprincipled,” you continue. “Most seem to lose their honor as time goes on, but he has not. I have seen it myself, for weeks on the roseroad and while in capture, and I know I am correct in saying he does not deserve to lose his life behalf of the throne.”
You let your tone soften, as to appeal to the weary man before you. “We have both known many who have died in the pursuit of war. Surely there are those on the opposing side you wish were not our enemies.” Your hand finds a place on his forearm. “If you assist me with this, grandsire, I will ensure that when the crown is mine, Driftmark will have its due.”
He looks into your eyes. Your brows are pivoted upward, and it feels as though they are touching your hairline.
What you see in his are those that have seen death—much death. The lines that etch onto his forehead in defeat have felt the pain of losing a brother, losing his children, losing his wife, losing his grandchildren, all for it to culminate in the ascent of your mother to the throne. You can sympathize with him. He can see that.
He takes your arm into his. “Walk with me, my girl.”
The two of you proceed further into the gardens, to a secluded area, where you will secure Gwayne’s fate as the first prisoner you know of to escape the dungeons of the Red Keep.
You find lingering around the dungeons as your grandsire seems to find himself around the sea. Some days you do not enter, some days you do, and stand out of view of Gwayne, instead settling to bask in his presence.
It is surprisingly difficult to lay under the weight of his heavy gaze. The last time you did, you could not handle it for long, and excused yourself before you could even speak a word to him.
You must inform him of what you have planned. It will take place just two moons from now—a commotion large enough and near to the dungeons will occur, and Gwayne’s newly-replaced guards will be called to help. Someone will guide him through the hidden passages of the Keep, and he will meet Corlys to be escorted to one of the trade vessels that will then be shipped off to Essos. He will survive, and he will live the life you had planned together, with or without you.
You do not know yet whether or not to follow them. You are unsure if you could just leave your life and your kin behind—you think you could, but in the moment, you might stray away like you had in battle.
Gwayne perks up at the sound of your voice, as you order the guards away. Your body, clad in only your shift and a cloak over it, unveils itself. Your hair has been braided—he presumes you have snuck out before bed to visit—and you smell sweet and flowery, a stark contrast to what Gwayne has been used to in the days since his capture.
In turn, he has only grown more unkempt since you have last seen him. You deeply pity him, all while you assume he has anything and everything but the stress of how he looks on his mind.
You hope the news you bring to him will ease the thoughts that must be swarming through him constantly. He is, no doubt, incredibly lonely—especially as he is being guarded by two men incredibly resolute in both silence and dedication.
“Sit.” You point to the pallet hanging by chains to the wall. He obeys almost immediately, watching you as you unlock the cell door, and as you find a place beside him.
In your hands, you hold a bowl of soap, a blade, and a small cloth. You turn your body to him, putting your leg up onto the pallet and letting the other hang, and shift closer.
“I haven’t seen you for many moons, my princess.” His voice comes out hoarse. That seems to be normal for him now.
“I apologize.” You take the cloth into hand, dunking it into the soapy water. “I’ve had many duties to attend to.” A lie. You’ve spent much of your time hovering around the dungeons and considering whether or not to enter and see him, all to decide not to.
The cloth is gentle as it passes over his jaw, which you notice to feel considerably sharper. “Have you been eating, Gwayne?” you mutter, watching as his grime dissolves onto the material.
He sighs, his head dropping and forcing your touch to cease in its ministrations. “What they give me is fit for hounds, not humans,” he murmurs, a faint smirk touching his chapped lips. “So, no.”
You bring a hand to his chin and force it back up, continuing to wipe away at the filth on his face. In spite of it all, he remains as beautiful as the day you realized it such in the flower field. You would tell him, but he seems to not want to hear it.
“You must get your strength up.” Your cloth passes over his cheek, and he winces. “You are a knight, after all.” You find a blueish bruise under all the grime, no doubt from the bannermen.
His brows knit together. “What are they going to do with me, my princess?” he questions, truly concerned and all the more desperate. His self-destructive exterior seems to have fallen.
“I’ve already told you. You will not die here, not under my command.” You swipe the cloth over the other cheek, softer this time.
“But what after?” he says.
You do not falter in your movements. “What do you mean?”
“If you manage to trade me to Ormund, what then?” he begins, voice cracking slightly. “Am I to stand in the Reach and fight a war I do not believe in? Away from you, never knowing if I will see you again?”
“Gwayne, I do not plan for you to be given back to Oldtown.” You take his hand and put the cloth into it. “Wipe your face.”
He obeys, and you ready the blade to shave the stubble from his lower face. You mix the soap and the water once more until it foams.
“What do you plan to do with me, then?” he questions, flipping the cloth over to the unsullied side to scrub his face harsher than you had. Painful as it looks, it is more effective than what you had done, and takes nearly all of the dirt off in one fell swoop.
You lather his face in the foam, and grab the blade from beside the bowl. He flinches back.
“I used to watch my brother when he would have it done by the maesters. I know enough.” You smirk, pressing the blade against his skin. He settles, letting the fine material scratch against his jaw.
“Do you remember what we talked about—escaping to Essos together?” you ask, and his eyes seem to brighten. Yours only falter at his reaction, and at your uncertainty to truly do what the two of you promised. “In two moons, you will. I have planned with my grandsire to get you on a ship headed there. You will be provided with just enough coin to live until you find a suitable trade—”
“What about you?” he interjects. You hadn’t noticed how his gaze has softened into something sad since you have continued speaking—since you have been focused on the scrape of his stubble against blade.
You pause. “As of this moment, I am more focused on your escape rather than mine.”
“I want you to come with me.” He takes your free hand into his. It makes you freeze again.
You shake your head, continuing to shave his face. “I cannot leave Silverwing.”
“She can come,” he pleads.
You scoff. “Gwayne, you’re amusing.” The blade against his skin presses harder as it drags down. “A dragon on a merchant ship—one that just so happens to carry an escaped Hightower?—”
Gwayne suddenly recoils backward, the hand that had just held yours now gripping onto the area you had just shaved down on.
You look at the blade in your grip. The tip is covered in red. “I apologize,” you mutter, nearly curling in on yourself and preparing for him to berate you.
“Nothing I haven’t felt before.” His thumb swipes the blood away. You look back up at him.
He looks like a different person, you realize, being clean and shaved with cuts and bruises all over his face. His eyes, though, are still the same. They still hold that deep, heavy sadness in them, as if he has been holding the weight of the world on his back.
Your head moves forward before you can get the sense to stop. Your lips are on his before you know it and it feels immoral, but you do not stop.
His lips are dry but pliable and they do not fight for power over yours. He lets your mouth almost entirely envelope his, and he lets your tongue find a place in his mouth. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands.
You let your cloak fall from your shoulders and onto the pallet before you, and without releasing his lips from yours, you straddle his hips.
Your linen shift has dragged up to your waist with the movement, leaving your bare cunt to rest on his clothed crotch. The noise that comes from your mouth and rings through him at the contact is humiliatingly desperate, but still, you do not waver.
Your hands come down to the edges of the cloth, and you pull it from your body, leaving yourself entirely bare before him. If the guards were to walk in, you would be in the most compromising of appearances, but it is the last thing on your mind.
You kiss him again. “I’ve missed you.” You kiss him. “So much.”
His hands finally rest on your hips, subconsciously dragging them forward to grind onto his bulge.
The two of you moan loudly together, and your hand comes up to smack over his mouth. Beneath it, he only pants harder as you take over in rocking against him. His head hits the wall once he lets it fall back, and his eyes squeeze shut as you persist.
He brings a hand up to your lips, and two of his fingers brush over the bottom one before pushing inside. You welcome them, sucking down and bobbing your head unto them. The thought of how dirty they must be—what they must be dirty with—does not even disconcert you in the moment.
Your hand covering his mouth comes to grip his wrist, using it to guide his fingers further past your lips. There isn’t much of an objective to it—you simply want to feel him everywhere, to taste him, to love him.
He watches you while you do it, blue eyes all big and glossed over, never moving from your face as you take his digits with such a desperate vitality.
The lack of physical contact you’ve experienced since returning home and the overexposure of it now with Gwayne paired together provide a brisk approach to your climax. You pull his fingers from your mouth and mash your lips onto his once more, all while rocking back and forth onto him, chasing the feeling you’ve forced yourself to forget in fear you’d never experience it again.
But you are feeling it again. And it could very well be the last time. So you let it wash over you, your unrestrained sounds being muffled by his mouth. He begins to grind up into you and you mirror his movements.
It comes over you quickly and washes away at the same pace. Like it does not want you to savor it, because perhaps it would be the last time, and you should be weaned off from his touch. Nevertheless, your body spasms and shakes overtop of his, and you can still feel bliss—even as it leaves your body and replaces itself with something similar to shame—coursing through you.
You pulled away from his mouth at some point, your lips sheen with his own saliva, and let your head drop to his shoulder. He pants against your ear all the same, trying to catch his breath, despite not even reaching his own climax. Still, he does not ask for anything in return.
“You told me Silverwing is large enough to saddle two.” His breath returns to him, slowly, though you still feel his chest jumping up and down when you push yourself from it to look him in the eye.
You shake your head after a moment’s silence. “The arrangements for your departure have already been made.” The floor is cold and rough against your bare feet, attached to weakened legs, but you do not let it show. “They will remain unchanged.”
“Then follow us,” he offers, reaching forward to tug your shift back down over your legs, letting his hands linger there for a moment before pulling back.
“It is not safe.” You grab your cloak, placing it over your shoulders.
He scoffs. “What are men compared to dragons?”
You let a heavy sigh come from your mouth, trying to communicate your weariness to him. “I shall consider it.”
“You must.” He steps forward, reaching a hand out to gently hold your wrist. “You will die if you do not flee your place here, if you do not relinquish your titles—”
“How can I be sure this is not just a ploy to weaken my mother’s rule?” you interject, and let your wrist jerk away from his grip.
His jaw clenches at your words. For a heartbeat, his brows jump to his hairline in pure disbelief. “You do not think my love for you to be genuine?”
You cannot deal with the arguing, not now—so you turn to leave, pulling your cloak hood over your head. Perhaps he can settle his own thoughts in the time you are gone. You might be gone for a long, long time. You might even be gone forever, and he may never see you again, so he’ll be able to do a lot of thinking without you there—
“I love you,” he says, and every muscle in your body hardens, rooting you to the ground which you stand.
From the corner of your eye, you see him standing there, hesitating to take even a single step further. He hesitates even to continue speaking. You notice it, when you finally look back to him, in the way his lip quivers.
“Must I say it a million times? I love you. I have loved you since your dragon fell into our encampment. I will love you until I meet the Stranger, and if there exists a life after death, I will love you there too.”
You move back slightly as you shuck your arms into the sleeves of your cloak. His fingers instinctively twitches toward your hand when it comes back down to your side.
He takes another step until he stands right beside you. “I would like you to live out the rest of your days in rest and tranquility. I shall swear myself as your protector if that is what it takes. I shall swear fealty to your mother. Whatever it is, I shall do it. Just come with me.”
You press your lips together. The glint in his eye that grows the longer you look at him is almost depressing, because you know what must happen.
It takes your entire will to break your gaze away from his, and you shake your head. “It’s too late, Gwayne.”
He does not move. Not as you look back at him just once more before leaving the threshold of his cell block, not when you close and lock the door. He does not move a single inch. His expression remains the same, blank and dissociated, even as you walk off and out of his view.
An entire day had passed since you had last spoke to Gwayne, though it felt more like an eternity. You had not been so impatient since you were a child—since you did not have to be anything but.
You did not want for that to be the last conversation the two of you would share. It very well could be, since you do not have the courage to go down there and break your vow of silence, and because he has metal bars that confine him from doing so.
You’re still unsure of what to do. You do not think you should go with him, but you want to. And you are a princess—so what you want, typically, you get.
There was a small voice in your mind telling you that you did not know him well enough, that you should not go with him, and it would be unsafe, you would not be happy after just a few months, and you would miss home with no way to get back to it—but they were all silenced whenever you were tasked with another “duty” or whenever you had to serve as a cupbearer for your mother’s council.
They were silenced when you remembered how your brothers died—young and desperate and on dragonback. If you went with him, should you even bring Silverwing? She could be killed in Essos. It wouldn’t be the first time they have killed dragons there.
You did not need to add a number to the countless dragon deaths the war has produced already. Arrax, then Meleys, and most recently Vermax. The number should be zero, but battle still rages on. And Vermax will most certainly not be the last. Listening in on your mother’s council meetings has set that fact in stone.
Murders of gold cloaks in the streets throughout King’s Landing. The occupation of Tumbleton by Lord Ormund Hightower and his men. Aemond and Vhagar’s disappearance, a bounty to pay for his head. No word of the usurper’s body. These were only the recent tellings, and your mother has her own worries and petitions to deal with—Cissy tells you that she isn’t dealing with them very well.
Would you die if you did not follow Gwayne to Essos? The odds are higher with each passing day—even higher now that you have been named as your mother’s heir. You would not be leaving just for Gwayne’s sake, but for your own too. Possibly even your mother’s. Perhaps it would ease her to know that if she does not win the war, you would not be dead.
You loved her and you loved Gwayne and you loved the Red Keep to some degree, but above all, you loved living more. Your uncertainty regarding the gods had only grown since your mother had her throne taken from her. Even if there did exist some life after death, you would certainly be cycled through the seven hells, the sins you’ve committed.
You were not interested in the idea of death. Not until you’ve had children, at the most. Until you’ve left some legacy, something other than being Princess of Dragonstone, and even then—who knows? Your name might be erased from history if Aegon takes the throne once more. There is nothing to tell what he might do.
If you died now, your legacy would amount to nothing. In Essos, you could do something. Be something. You might not be remembered in Westeros, but you would be remembered somewhere. That mattered. Gwayne mattered. Your own opinion on what you should do in your life mattered.
You should not rule over the realm. You should not inherit the throne. You should live a life of peace. The life you dreamed of as a child in the Keep.
The night before Gwayne’s departure—and yours as well, you had decided—you find yourself outside your mother’s chambers. It was beyond late, and your body was exhausted, though your mind was restless and prevented you from dreaming.
The white cloak posted outside her door nods at the sight of you and lets you enter immediately.
Ahead, you see your mother lying on her featherbed. You cannot tell if she is feigning sleep, trying to catch it, or if she is truly awake. You step forward until you are beside her, fingertips grazing the quilt lying on top of her.
“Mother?” you murmur. Her eyes shoot open, and you nearly flinch back.
Her gaze softens when it reaches yours. “What is it, sweetling?” she questions.
It takes you a moment to find the words. “I cannot sleep.” You haven’t spoken them for over a decade, not since you were a child.
Instead of sending you back to your own chambers, or fetching a maester to make you some sort of tea like you had assumed she might, she slides over to make room for you.
You scurry under the sheets, her body warm and comforting as it lingers behind you. You pull the quilt up to your chin. Her arms wrap around your middle, and you take her hand into yours, squeezing your eyes shut.
You love her more than anything, in a way that is completely different to how you could ever love a man.
Someday, she will understand why you did what you are about to do. Perhaps she will not accept that it was you who did it, and that it was not some Green belligerent seeking to pain her further. You know what she suspects, though it is up to her to acknowledge the truth.
The words slip out. “I love you, mummy.”
You are so quiet, you do not even hear yourself. It is entirely possible that you did not say anything at all, and your mind is simply playing tricks on you.
Her breathing has already returned to a calmer state. She must have fallen back asleep. Your own fatigue hits you then, enveloped in her familiar hold, and you let yourself fall into dream. When you wake, Gwayne will have already gone, and you will follow him.
You dream about him that night, of him and all his beauty. He is not unclean like he has been the last few days, but polished in such a way one could only be by living a life of peace. The sun rises slow, but it illuminates his skin, and he looks to you.
You hear your mother’s voice somewhere distant. “I love you too, sweet girl,” she says.
Her grip around your waist tightens.
You had snuck from your mother’s chambers early that morning, before Gwayne had been set to leave. The cloak that Cissy had placed unto your shoulders was heavy, but you presume it is the pit settled in your stomach that weighs you down as opposed to the cloth itself.
She had fit managed to fit numerous bags of assorted coins, golds, and jewelry up your sleeves, “in case you needed them,” she had said. Her hands had held to yours for a moment too long, and then she had hugged you so tight and so sudden it nearly knocked the wind from your lungs.
You wrapped your arms around her just as firmly. You had known her since you were just girls, and she was essentially the closest friend you ever had. She let you go at some point, or you let her go. You’re unsure which is true.
The walk to the Dragonpit was long and grueling, but you made it without being spotted. Nobody would notice the Princess of Dragonstone out so early.
Silverwing was more than joyous to see you—to feel your touch against her silver scales.
The idea finds you as you watch her and Vermithor bring their snouts together with something you can only describe as affection.
Who would not notice a dragon as beautiful and luminous as she to be flying the skies? There is nothing to guarantee her safety in Essos. Sure, she could protect you, but it would essentially be torture to force her away from her mate and from her own kind. You are her kind, too, but there would be another with the blood of the dragon, another who Silverwing would accept as hers.
Some dragonriders that had survived the Doom had come to Essos, and then their people killed them and their dragons. There is nothing to say the same would not happen the moment you set foot in their realm. You would be even more of a target if you brought her with you.
You make your choice spontaneously. With a heavy breath, you press a parting kiss to the scale over her cheek, and immediately push back.
You have never run so quickly in your life to the seaside. It reminds you of when you were a child with your brothers, racing to the end of the courtyard and back. You will never be a child with them again, but they will live in your memory. You will live for them because they could not.
Your grandsire was a blur as you ran past him, but you could see for just a heartbeat the shock on his face which froze him in place as he watched you go.
The dock was pungent with the scent of salt and fish. You could not focus on it for too long—only the thought of which ship Gwayne was on, and how you would get onto it. Would he be glad that you decided to come with him? You’re certainly disappointed you cannot bring Silverwing, but the sadness has not hit you yet. You expect it will once you are with him.
You know it is the right thing to do. She would not be safe—you and Gwayne would not be safe. It aches, the more you think about it. You wonder how it feels for her. You wonder how it will feel for your mother once she finds out you are gone. What are you doing?
You’re already on the docks, mindlessly looking around at the countless ships around you. The wind blows your cloak hood from off the top of your head. You scramble to conceal yourself back, but you hear your name from behind you and you turn.
The person calls your name again, and you look up to find Gwayne.
He has his own cloak around his head. When you make eye contact, he immediately breaks it to speak to one of the shipmen beside him. The shipman nods at his indiscernible speech, and Gwayne looks back down at you again.
And he smiles.
You do not think you’ve ever seen such pure delight on his face. As the ship’s ladder is put back over, he does not look at it. There is not anything in the world he would rather look at than you. You are the only thing in the world now. You are his world now. He will protect you with his life, and he will be your husband if you so desire it, he will give you children if it is what you want.
Above all else, you will live a life of rest and tranquility like he had promised you would. He would never break a single one to you again. He will vow anything as long you stay willingly by his side. He cannot bare to see you go—never again.
He meets you halfway, pulling you up onto the ship with him when you make it mostly up the ladder. And he holds you by the waist for just a moment—just a single moment, a heartbeat, to see if you are real, to feel if you are real—and he kisses you. Gently. With chivalry. As an honorable knight should.
Essos was more than you dreamed it would be. You were safer without Silverwing by your side, though that deep emptiness often came to you as if you weren’t your natural self without it, and you missed her so desperately.
You missed your mother, your brothers, your father, Cissy, your grandsire, your grandmother. Sometimes even your cousin Helaena and her mother too. You missed sparring in the courtyard as children, you missed living the moments that are now just stories in your head.
But they are stories. Stories you will remember and cherish forever. You wonder how you will be remembered. If your mother would spread the word that you were perhaps killed, or if her anger would prevail over her devastation and she would tell of how you betrayed her. She would never, but the shame of your disloyalty often prevails over the truth of her character, and you begin to think untrue things.
In spite of all of it, you know it was best for you to leave. You did it to rid yourself of the weight of your mother’s rightful golden crown, to prevent your own and your love’s death, and to live how you hoped you always might be able to live.
Your life now reminds you of one you dreamed of as a child. It reminds you of the songs and stories you heard then, the ones that fed your fantasies of your future—the tales of honorable knights sworn to protect fair maidens, who would fall in love with them against their own vows. They would run off together and live in peace for as long as their hearts should beat.
Gwayne had proven to you that those knights truly exist. He had proven it in his devotion, and in his affection, and in the way he would chase your pleasure before his own—like now, as the two of you stir in the early hours of the morning atop your featherbed.
His lips placed a kiss onto the nook between your jaw and your neck, hands wandering down where they had originally held your body close to his.
He pulls your shift up to your waist, letting the fabric pool there, and his fingers graze the area right below it. You shudder once they find a place on your cunt, cupping and caressing it all while he breathes heavily onto your neck.
Your hips instinctively grind back onto his, and his forehead drops to your shoulder. You crane your neck back and press a kiss to the top of his head, and he lifts it so that he can look you in the eye then join your lips together.
As his mouth mashes onto yours, a finger breaches your folds, and you breathe a sweet little mewl into him. It starts to pump, albeit languidly, back and forth, forcing out gasps and whimpers from the depths of your throat—and he adds another digit.
His other hand glides up beneath your shift to grope at your breast, and his mouth finds its way back to your neck and up to your jaw before settling near your ear.
“What would you like to do this morning?” he drawls. His pace quickens, two fingers in and out, over and over.
You can’t quite make out any words to respond with. You manage to breathe out his name, earning from him a breathy chuckle, and another kiss pressed to the highest point of your cheekbone.
His fingers suddenly curl and press against the spongy spot inside of you. “Gods,” you mewl.
“No,” he murmurs, and kisses your jaw. “It's only me.”
His fingers begin to piston in and out of your cunt and your thighs press together, but the hand you had forgotten was on your breast swiftly comes down to pry them apart.
You feel it come to you, building slowly and ready to break like a gate against a Northern army, and you can’t find the voice to warn him.
He must sense it, though. He’s grown accustomed to your body over these few weeks, just as he had on the roseroad—only this time, there is no castle to return to, no limit to how much time you would be able to spend together.
“I know, sweet girl. I know, let go—“ he says, and you obey.
You’ve felt it many times for the many moons you have already spent together, but it feels incredible nonetheless. The heat courses from your loins up to the tip of your head and back down again, past your cunt and to your feet, and you feel bliss.
You spasm and writhe beside him, and his fingers do not stop—they only slow. Your moans turn strangled as you ride it out, languidly grinding yourself down onto his digits.
You do not notice how his eyes watch you, how his lips part in awe. His brows gently furrow at the sight of you falling apart from his touch. Nothing would take you from him again. Not the gold cloaks, not the Greens, not those pesky figures they call gods.
He was yours, and you would be his. One day you should find something close to a septon, if they have those in Essos, to certify that fact.
Once your body calms, he pulls his fingers from your cunt. You whimper, and he chuckles before rising from the bed.
You reach for him. “Indulge me a moment longer.”
When he turns, you notice the bulge beneath his smallclothes.
“I must prepare us a morning meal,” he utters, seemingly oblivious to how hard he is.
You shake your head. “We can eat later.” You reach for him again, holding out a hand. “Come back to me.”
He seems to consider disobeying you for a moment, but when his hand grips your own, you know you have him.
You pull him back toward you, and smash your lips onto his. Your hands move to hold his face against yours, and his keep him upright over top of you.
He swings a leg over your waist, lowering himself to his elbows so that his body touches yours. He shifts his weight to one of his arms so that he can take your breast into his warm palm once more.
You remove your own hand from his cheek to slide down his covered torso, and beneath his undergarments, gripping the base of his cock.
He inhales sharply at that, swallowing your breaths down his throat. Your lips curl up as much as they physically can.
“I’d like you inside,” you say after you manage to break apart from his mouth. He freezes for a moment, then nods. Sometimes, to him, it is still a wonder that you are real, that you are truly asking him to do these things.
His linens are shed within moments. When he presses into you, you feel it too. Awe, and astonishment, that you are together. That you genuinely made it to Essos with him. That this is only the beginning of the long life you will live together.
It feels odd that just months ago, this was only a dream. A far-fetched and idealistic dream, one that would never come true. Though now, as he thrusts into you and you soon enough feel that familiar tight coil start to unravel inside of you, you can truly accept the fact that it is real.
You truly should marry him. The concept of it does not matter much to you any longer, not when you have this life together in exile, but it seems a nice idea.
He spills his seed inside of you, but it does not occur to you to mind. Perhaps one day you will give him children. Perhaps you wont. You will not worry yourself with eventuality.
Summary: When Princess Y/N Martell is sent to King’s Landing to negotiate on behalf of Dorne during the war in the Stepstones, she never expects to be betrayed and taken hostage. Delivered to Oldtown and placed under Lord Ormund Hightower’s custody, she quickly realizes that her captivity is not merely a political bargaining tactic. Ormund has his own plans for the proud Dornish princess—and he has no intention of letting her leave.
Warnings: kidnapping, captivity, non-consensual sexual content, non-con, sexual assault, coercion, future forced marriage, physical violence, threats, blood, injury, obsessive/possessive behavior, manipulation, degradation, misogyny, mentions of pregnancy/forced pregnancy.
requested on Kofi by the amazing mind of @patisseriie
The marble floor was cold against your knees as the guards forced you down. Your wrists ached where the rope had bitten into your skin during the journey, and the salt-stained blindfold they'd only just removed had left a mark across the bridge of your nose. You tossed your head back, sending a cascade of dark hair over your shoulder, and fixed your black Martell eyes on the man seated before you.
Ormund Hightower, he rose from his carved chair with the unhurried grace of a man who had never been refused anything, his eyes swept over you with an expression you could not immediately read.
"My lords," he said, his voice smooth as honeyed wine, "what is the meaning of this?" He stepped forward, gesturing toward your bound wrists with what appeared to be genuine distress. "You were instructed to escort the Princess Y/N with every courtesy. Instead, I find her on her knees, bound like a common criminal." He crouched before you, close enough that you could smell sandalwood and something else—ink, perhaps, or old parchment. "This is unforgivable. Release her at once."
You let out a sharp, incredulous laugh as the ropes fell away. You rubbed your wrists, refusing to break eye contact. "Every courtesy," you repeated, your Dornish accent curling around the Common Tongue like ivy around stone. "Is that what you call an ambush on the Roseroad? Being pulled from my horse at swordpoint? Three days with a sack over my head?"
Ormund straightened, his handsome face arranging itself into an expression of pained concern. "I am appalled. Truly. My men were instructed to invite you here, not—"
"Invite." You rose to your feet without permission, and several guards tensed, hands moving to sword hilts. You ignored them. "I am the daughter of Prince Qoren Martell. I was traveling under the banner of diplomacy to negotiate an end to the conflict in the Stepstones. And your invitation involved a blade to my throat and a bag of horseshit-smelling burlap over my head." You stepped closer, craning your neck upward to meet his gaze. He was so tall you barely reached his shoulder. "Tell me, Lord Hightower, do all your guests arrive in such fashion, or am I special?"
A muscle flickered in his jaw, but his smile remained fixed. "You are, as a matter of fact." He turned to the guards and waved a dismissive hand. "Leave us. All of you."
The men filed out, their boots echoing against the stone. The heavy oak doors groaned shut, leaving you alone with him in the cavernous hall. "You've kidnapped me," you said flatly. "Dorne will not forget this. My father will not forget this."
Ormund clasped his hands behind his back and circled you slowly, his footsteps unhurried against the floor. "I have not kidnapped you. You are here as a guest of House Hightower for some time. Nothing more."
"A guest." You tracked him with your eyes, refusing to turn your body and give him the satisfaction of your full attention. "Guests are free to leave, my lord. Am I free to leave?"
"No," he admitted, almost cheerfully. "But you will be comfortable. Well-fed. Treated with the honor befitting your station. That is more than can be said for our own envoy, I suspect, were he to find himself in Sunspear."
You laughed, a cold and brittle sound. "So this is what the Reach has been reduced to. The mighty Hightowers, so desperate they must kidnap a negotiator because they are losing—"
"The war is not—"
"You are losing," you pressed, turning now to face him fully, your dark eyes blazing. "The Stepstones remain contested. The Triarchy's fleets harass your shores while the dragon riders flounder against corsairs who know the coves and the currents better than any map. My father's ships sail with the Free Cities, and it burns you, doesn't it? That Dorne stands with the Triarchy while you and your overlords flail in the mud." You tilted your head, a mocking smile playing at the corners of your lips. "So desperate. So pitiful. Kidnapping a woman to gain leverage in a war you cannot win."
Something shifted in Ormund's expression. The mask of courteous concern flickered, and beneath it you glimpsed something else behind those pretty blue eyes. He stepped closer, and this time you held your ground.
"You speak of Dorne's defiance as though it were something new," he murmured, his voice dropping low. "But your people have always been unbowed. It is, I confess, a quality I have long admired." He reached up, and before you could recoil, his fingers brushed your cheek. The touch was light, almost reverent. You went rigid. "You are beautiful. Exquisite, truly. The Martell blood runs strong in you—the skin, the dark hair, those eyes like black fire. That famous Dornish beauty." His thumb traced the line of your cheekbone, slow and deliberate. "They say the sun favors your people. I see now that it's true."
Your heart hammered against your ribs, but your voice remained steady. "Remove your hand, my lord. Or I will remove it for you."
He did not remove it. Instead, his thumb continued its languid path along your skin, as though he were memorizing the feel of you. "You know, I have always been fascinated by your house. Your ancestor—the Toad of Dorne, they called her." His lips curved into a thin smile. "Meria Martell. The princess who told Rhaenys Targaryen that Dorne would never bow to the dragonlords. Unbowed, unbent, unbroken." He spoke the words slowly, savoring them like wine on his tongue. "I admired her, you know. Fiercely. She was the only ruler on this entire continent who refused to kneel before those savage foreigners, those Valyrian upstarts with their beasts and their fire. She looked a dragon in the eye and laughed."
You stared at him, momentarily thrown. This was not the direction you had expected. "Then we have common ground," you said carefully, trying to regain your footing. "You hate the Targaryens. So do we."
Ormund's smile widened, but it did not reach his eyes. "Meria Martell lacked beauty—the histories are clear on that. The Toad, they called her, for her wrinkled skin and her wide mouth and her bulging eyes. No man would write songs about her face." He leaned closer, and now you could feel his breath warm against your skin. It smelled faintly of mint. "But gods, the woman had a mind like a razor. The wit and will of a man. She faced down a dragon and lived to old age, ruling a free kingdom while the rest of Westeros bent their necks to foreign incest and foreign fire." His hand slid from your cheek to your chin, tilting your face up toward his. His grip was gentle but absolute. "I think, Princess Y/N, that you are the other side of that coin. I fear those gifts passed you by."
You wrenched your chin from his grip, fury burning away your fear. "You know nothing of me."
"I know you walked into a trap that any fool could have seen." He shrugged, unbothered by your anger, tucking his hands behind his back once more. "I know you came north with barely a guard, trusting in banners and parley and the honor of your enemies. I know you are alone, so far from your sun and your sand, in a city that answers to me." He smiled again, that horrible, pleasant smile, warm as a viper sunning itself on a rock. "What I do not know is whether you understand how thoroughly you are at my mercy. How completely you are mine."
Before you could respond, Ormund did something that made every nerve in your body scream in revulsion. He stepped closer, closing the distance between you until his chest nearly brushed yours, and then he leaned down, his face dipping toward the curve of your neck. You felt him inhale.
Deeply. Slowly. As though you were a flower in bloom, or a dish set before him at a feast, something to be savored and consumed. His nose nearly grazed your skin, and you felt the warmth of his breath against your pulse point, intimate as a lover's kiss.
"Lemons," he murmured, almost to himself, his voice a low rumble against your throat. "And something warmer. Sandalwood? No. Spices from the Summer Sea. Saffron, perhaps. Heat and sweetness together." He pulled back just enough to look at you, his blue eyes dark now, pupils blown wide. "Fascinating. You smell like the sun itself."
You stumbled backward, your composure finally cracking. Your back hit the edge of a heavy oak table, and you gripped it with white-knuckled hands, needing something solid to anchor yourself. "You are mad."
He straightened, smoothing the front of his doublet as though nothing had happened, as though he hadn't just breathed you in like a man sampling perfume. "You will be shown to your chambers, they are quite comfortable. You will find gowns in the wardrobe, as your own clothes have suffered terribly during your harrowing journey." He glanced back over his shoulder, and his eyes glittered with something you could not name—something that made your stomach twist. "You will not be harmed. You have my word as a Hightower."
"The word of a kidnapper," you spat, hating how your voice wavered.
"The word of your host," he corrected gently, settling into his chair like a king upon a throne. "Do try to remember the distinction. It will make your stay so much more pleasant."
The doors opened, and a pair of handmaidens entered, they were here to escort you to your cell, you understood. Your gilded, comfortable, inescapable cell.
You did not move. Your legs felt rooted to the stone floor, your heart still racing from the ghost of his breath on your neck. "My father will come for me," you said, your voice low and fierce. "You have made an enemy of Dorne today, Lord Hightower. We do not forget. We do not forgive."
Ormund picked up a goblet from the table beside his chair, swirling the wine within with casual elegance. "Let him come," he said, utterly unconcerned. "Oldtown has stood for thousands of years. It will stand a thousand more. Your father's spears will break against our walls like waves against the Hightower itself." He raised the goblet in a mocking toast. "But I do hope it does not come to that. I would much prefer we become... friends."
The way he said the word made your skin crawl. As the handmaidens stepped forward to guide you Ormund's voice followed you, soft and almost fond, trailing after you like a shadow you could not shake.
"Welcome to Oldtown, Princess. I do hope you'll come to appreciate its hospitality."
—
They drew you a bath, the water steaming and scented with lavender, the warmth seeped into your bones despite your best efforts to remain rigid and furious. You hated that it felt good. You hated that your body betrayed you with relief.
When you emerged, they dried you with soft linen cloths and produced a gown that made your stomach clench with fresh anger. It was a deep emerald silk that caught the firelight, cut low across the bodice in a way that would have made the septas in Oldtown blush, with sleeves that draped elegantly from the shoulder and a waist cinched tight. Beautiful, certainly. But it was not yours. They were dressing you like a Reachwoman, like a doll for their lord to admire.
The dining hall was smaller than the great hall where you had first faced Ormund—more intimate, a single table of dark, polished wood stretched before a hearth large enough to roast a boar. And at the head of the table, already seated, was Ormund Hightower.
He rose when you entered, his blue eyes sweeping over you with an appreciation that felt like a physical touch. "Ah," he said, that honeyed voice filling the space between you. "My colors suit you. I thought they might."
"I had no choice in the matter," you said flatly.
"No," he agreed, pulling out the chair to his right. "You did not. Please, sit."
You remained standing. The handmaidens had already retreated, the door closing softly behind them. You were alone with him, and the realization settled over you like a shroud. "I am not hungry."
"You must be. Three days on the road with my men—I cannot imagine they fed you well." He gestured to the spread before you: roast capon glazed with honey, crusty bread still steaming from the ovens, figs and grapes arranged on a silver platter, a wheel of sharp Reach cheese, and wine so dark it looked like blood in the candlelight. "Please. I insist."
You did not move toward the chair. "How do I know it isn't poisoned?"
Ormund laughed—a genuine, warm sound that made you want to strike him. "Poison? My dear princess, if I wanted you dead, you would never have woken from your first night on the Roseroad. Poison is a woman's weapon, and a coward's." He settled back into his own chair, lifting his goblet of wine. "I am neither."
"That remains to be seen."
He tilted his head, studying you with those unnervingly blue eyes. "You are suspicious. Good. Suspicion is a survival instinct. But I assure you, the food is perfectly safe." He gestured to the spread. "Eat. Drink. You are my guest, not my prisoner."
"Guests are free to leave."
"So you have said." His smile did not waver. "Sit, Princess. I would hate to have the guards hold you down while I spoon-feed you myself. It would be so undignified for us both."
You sat and he poured wine into your goblet himself, a gesture of hospitality that rang hollow as a funeral bell. You did not touch it. "Still not drinking?" He raised an eyebrow, taking a long sip from his own cup. "Very well. Allow me to demonstrate." He cut a piece of capon, chewed it slowly, swallowed. "No poison. The cheese is particularly good—from a dairy just outside the city. And the figs are fresh from the Arbor." He took a fig, bit into it, the juice glistening on his lips. "You see? Perfectly safe."
You watched him, waiting for him to seize up, to clutch his throat, to foam at the mouth. He only smiled at you, patient as a cat watching a mouse.
Still, you did not trust it. Not him, not this place, not anything on this table. But your stomach ached with emptiness, and the smell of roasted meat and fresh bread was maddening. After a long moment, you reached for a spoon and dipped it into the small bowl of buttery leek soup set before you. The silver was cool in your hand, the soup fragrant with herbs.
"Here," you said, extending the spoon toward him across the table. "If it's truly not poisoned, you'll share it with me."
Ormund's eyes darkened with something that made your skin prickle. He did not take the spoon from your hand. Instead, he leaned forward—slow, deliberate, never breaking eye contact—and closed his lips around the spoon while you still held it. His mouth slid over the silver, his tongue darting briefly against the curve of it, his gaze locked on yours like a physical weight. He held the contact for a heartbeat too long before pulling back, licking a stray drop from his lower lip.
"Perfect," he murmured, his voice a low rumble. "No poison. Just soup." He smiled, and there was something wolfish in it. "And now we've shared a meal, you and I. How intimate."
You dropped the spoon. It clattered against the table, splashing soup across the wood. Your skin was crawling, a cold revulsion slithering down your spine. But you were also, despite everything, desperately hungry. And he had eaten from the same dish, the same spoon. If there was poison, he would suffer it too.
Slowly, reluctantly, you began to eat. The food was excellent. You hated that too.
For a time, there was only the clink of cutlery and the crackle of the fire. Ormund ate with the easy elegance of a man accustomed to luxury, watching you all the while. You forced yourself to eat with dignity, to not wolf down the food like a starving creature despite the hunger gnawing at your belly. You were a princess of Dorne. You would not give him the satisfaction of seeing you undone.
"You wish to negotiate," he said eventually, breaking the silence. He leaned back in his chair, swirling his wine. "I can see it in your eyes. You're planning your arguments, weighing your leverage. Go on, then. Negotiate."
You set down your fork, straightening in your chair. "Release me. Return me to Dorne, and my father will withdraw his ships from the Triarchy's fleet. The Stepstones are a pointless conflict—a few barren rocks in the middle of the sea. Dorne has no stake in them beyond our alliances. Let me go, and we can end this."
Ormund considered this, tapping one finger against the rim of his goblet. "A generous offer. But I'm afraid it's not yours to make."
"It is. I am the heir to Dorne. My father—"
"Your father sent you north as a negotiator," Ormund cut in smoothly. "Which suggests he values your counsel. But let us be honest with one another, Princess. A negotiation is something men do. You were sent here because you are... a symbol. A beautiful face. A gesture of goodwill. Not because your father expected you to actually broker terms."
The condescension dripped from every word like honey from a comb. You felt heat rising in your cheeks, your hands curling into fists beneath the table. "I am perfectly capable of—"
"Of course you are," he said, in the tone one might use to soothe a fussing child. "But it is not a woman's place to wage war or make peace. Surely even in Dorne, you understand that. Your father indulges you, I'm sure—lets you sit in on his councils, perhaps even asks your opinion. But when the ravens fly and the armies march, it is men who decide the fate of kingdoms."
The condescension was so thick you could have choked on it. "Dorne is different," you said, your voice tight. "Women can inherit. My ancestor Meria—"
"Meria Martell." He said her name like a prayer. "Yes, we've discussed her. A singular woman. But even she was an exception, not the rule. And she ruled behind the safety of the Red Mountains." He leaned forward, his eyes glinting in the candlelight. "You are not Meria Martell. You are a young woman, far from home, trying to play at politics with men who have been doing it since before you were born. It is... endearing. Truly."
Endearing. The word hit you like a slap. You pushed your plate away, your appetite gone. "You think this is amusing."
"I think you are amusing." He smiled, all warmth and condescension. "A princess playing diplomat. It's charming, really."
"My family will come for me," you said, your voice low and fierce. "When they learn what you've done—when they learn I've been taken—they will come. Dorne will go to war for me."
Ormund's smile faded, just slightly. He set down his goblet and studied you with new interest. "Will they? Against the dragons?"
The word hung in the air between you, heavy as a stone. Dragons. You had seen one once, years ago, flying high over the Sea of Dorne—a speck of darkness against the blue, trailing fire. You had felt its heat even from the ground.
"The Targaryens—" you began.
"The Targaryens have dragons," Ormund said simply. "Caraxes, the Blood Wyrm. Vhagar, the largest beast alive since Balerion's death. Syrax. Meleys. And more eggs hatching every year." He ticked them off on his fingers like a merchant counting coins. "Tell me, Princess—what would your father's spears do against dragonfire? What would your sand ships and your desert scouts do against a beast that can melt stone and boil rivers?"
You opened your mouth, but no words came. Because he was right. You both knew it.
"Dorne survived the dragons before," you managed finally. "They never conquered us."
"They did not conquer you because your ancestors were clever," Ormund said, nodding slowly. "They hid. They vanished into the mountains and the sands. They fought with ambush and poison and assassination—not with armies in the field. Not with spears against fire." He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his voice dropping to something almost intimate. "The Dornish survive by hiding and waiting. They do not march to war against dragons. We both know this. Your father would never commit his armies to an open war against the Iron Throne. He would rage and bluster and demand your return, and then... he would wait. He would hope for a diplomatic solution. He would pray to his gods that his daughter is clever enough to free herself." His smile returned, sharper now. "Because sending an army would mean watching it burn."
Your hands were shaking. You clasped them in your lap, hidden beneath the table, and forced your face to remain still. He was not entirely wrong—and that was the worst part. Your father was a pragmatic man. He loved you, but he also loved Dorne, and he would not sacrifice one for the other.
"You know nothing of my father," you said, but the words sounded hollow even to your own ears.
"I know men," Ormund said simply. "And I know rulers. They make the same calculations, always. One daughter—even a beloved daughter, even an heir—against the lives of thousands. Against the survival of a kingdom." He shrugged. "It is not a difficult sum."
"You are despicable."
"I am a realist." He took another sip of wine, utterly unruffled. "It is a cruel world, Princess. I did not make it so."
You wanted to throw your goblet at his head. You wanted to flip the table and watch the fine Reach crystal shatter against the stone floor. Instead, you sat frozen, your heart pounding, your mind racing through escape plans that all ended in failure before they began.
"I would like to return to my chambers now," you said, your voice flat and cold as a blade.
"We haven't finished supper." He gestured at your half-eaten plate. "And you've barely touched the wine. It's Arbor gold—very fine. Much better than the Dornish swill you're accustomed to, I'm sure."
"I have lost my appetite."
"What a shame." He set down his goblet and leaned back in his chair, studying you with those predatory blue eyes. "You know, Princess, I must confess I am somewhat disappointed. The stories one hears about Dornish women... they paint a very particular picture."
You stiffened. "What stories?"
"The usual tales." He waved a hand lazily. His eyes slid over you, slow and deliberate, lingering on the low cut of your borrowed gown. "They say Dornish women know how to get what they want. That when they need something—freedom, favor, a man's allegiance—they do not negotiate like common merchants. They seduce." He drew out the word, savoring it. "They use their beauty, their charm, their... considerable talents. And men, being men, are helpless to resist."
Your jaw tightened. "Is that what you expect? For me to bat my lashes and spread my legs in exchange for my freedom?"
"I expect nothing." But his smile said otherwise. "I merely observe that you have not tried. You sit there, stiff as a septa, arguing politics like a man. It's... effective, in its way. But not what I anticipated. Not what I've seen before."
"Before?"
"I have met my fair share of Dornish women," he said, his voice dropping to something almost silky. His eyes met yours, dark with something you could not name. "They tried. All of them. And they all failed."
"Failed to seduce you?" The words came out sharp as broken glass. "How tragic for them."
"Isn't it?" He was still smiling, but there was a tension beneath it now, a coiled hunger that made your skin prickle with revulsion. "I have always wondered if there was a Dornish woman who could succeed where they failed. A woman of true skill. True passion." His gaze dropped to your lips, then lower. "You are the heir to Dorne. Surely you have some of that famous fire in you. Surely you know how to... persuade a man."
You pushed back from the table, your chair scraping against the stone. Your whole body was trembling now—with rage, with disgust, with the overwhelming urge to claw those pretty blue eyes out of his skull. "I would sooner bed a scorpion."
"A scorpion." He laughed, a rich, delighted sound. "How very Dornish of you. But scorpions are small, Princess. Easily crushed beneath a boot." He rose from his seat, and even from across the table, his height was intimidating. "I am not a scorpion. I am the man who holds your fate in his hands. And I am offering you an opportunity."
"You are offering me an insult."
"I am offering you a chance." He stepped around the table, and you stepped back, keeping distance between you. "You are clever enough to recognize your situation. You are alone. You are far from home. Your father cannot save you with spears, and your brothers might not want you saved at all. Your only assets in this game are your beauty and your blood." He stopped, tilting his head, that wolfish smile still playing at the corners of his mouth. "I am not an unreasonable man. I could be persuaded to... improve your conditions. To treat you less as a hostage and more as a guest. Perhaps even to speak of release, in time." His voice dropped to a murmur. "If you gave me reason to."
The silence stretched between you, taut as a bowstring. The fire crackled in the hearth, casting shadows that danced across his face, making him look like something out of a nightmare—beautiful and monstrous all at once.
"You want me to seduce you," you said, your voice barely above a whisper. "You kidnapped me. You dragged me across the Reach in chains. You dressed me like a doll and threatened me over supper. And now you want me to seduce you."
"I want you to try," he corrected, his eyes glittering. "I want to see if the stories are true. I want to see if the heir of Dorne has the fire her ancestors possessed—or if you are merely a pretty face, beautiful and empty, the other side of Meria's coin."
Revulsion coiled in your stomach like a snake. But beneath the revulsion, cold and sharp as a blade, was clarity. He had shown you his hand. He wanted you. Or rather, he wanted the game of being wanted—the chase, the conquest, the validation of having a Dornish princess debase herself for him. It was pathetic. It was disgusting.
"Then I am afraid you will be disappointed," you said, your voice steady despite the storm inside you. "I am indeed beautiful and empty. The other side of the coin. You said so yourself." You curtsied, a mocking gesture that made his smile flicker. "Now, if you will excuse me, Lord Hightower, I would like to return to my chambers. Unless you intend to force me further tonight."
Something flickered in his eyes—frustration, perhaps, or renewed interest. It was hard to tell. But he stepped back, granting you passage to the door.
"Of course," he said smoothly, recovering his composure. "You must be tired from your journey. We will continue this conversation another time." He raised his goblet in a mocking toast. "Sleep well, Princess. Dream of Dorne."
You did not look back as you walked to the door. Your legs felt like water, your heart hammering so loudly you were certain he could hear it. The guards were waiting outside—of course they were—and the silent handmaidens materialized from the shadows to escort you back to your gilded cage.
Only when the door to your chambers closed behind you, when you were finally alone, did you let yourself breathe. You sank onto the featherbed, your hands still shaking, the taste of soup and revulsion lingering on your tongue.
He was a monster. A handsome, smiling, courteous monster. And you were trapped in his tower, far from the sun and the sand, with nothing but your wits to protect you.
You closed your eyes and thought of Dorne—of the blazing sun, the cool fountains, the scent of lemons and spice. You thought of your father, your brothers, the sand ships racing across the desert. You would see them again. You would find a way out of this tower, out of this city, out of this nightmare.
—
You had been in the Hightower for a fortnight when you realized you could not remember the last time you wore a color other than green. Emerald silk. Forest velvet. Seafoam linen. Every gown the silent handmaidens laid out for you was some shade of it—sometimes deep as pine needles, sometimes pale as seafoam, but always, always green. The color of him.
You had asked, once, for something else. "Red," you had said, your voice sharp. "Gold. Orange. The colors of my house. Surely there must be something."
The handmaiden had only stared at you with those blank, empty eyes and offered you a gown of olive silk. You had worn it. What choice did you have?
It was not just the clothes. It was everything. The bath oils they used on you each morning—jasmine and something sweeter that clung to your skin for hours afterward. The perfume they dabbed behind your ears and at your wrists. The way they brushed your hair with scented oils until it gleamed like polished ebony. At first you had thought it was simply the Hightower way, some Reach obsession with fragrance and finery.
Then you noticed his nose. It happened on the third morning. You had been brought to the small solar where he insisted on breaking his fast with you. You had barely sat down when Ormund leaned toward you, his eyes fluttering half-closed, and inhaled deeply.
"They've changed the oil," he murmured, almost to himself. "Lavender. Good. The jasmine was overwhelming." His blue eyes opened, fixing on you with that unsettling intensity. "Don't you agree?"
You had frozen, a piece of bread halfway to your lips. "I hadn't noticed."
"No, I don't suppose you would." He smiled, settling back into his chair. "You Dornish are accustomed to strong scents. Spices, perfumes, the salt of the sea. But here in the Reach, subtlety is an art form. I prefer a lighter touch." He gestured to your plate. "Eat. You're growing thin."
You ate, because refusing meant an argument, and arguing with Ormund Hightower was like wrestling smoke. He never lost his temper. He never raised his voice. He simply smiled and smiled and got his way regardless.
The meals were mandatory. Every single one. If you tried to refuse, the handmaidens would not force you—but they would stand in your doorway, silent and waiting, until you relented or until Ormund himself appeared with that pleasant smile and that hard glint in his eye. "Princess," he would say, offering his arm. "You must keep your strength up. I insist."
You had tried refusing three times. On the third, he had stood in your doorway for nearly an hour, leaning against the frame with casual ease, making idle conversation while you sat on your bed and ignored him. Eventually, your stomach had growled loudly enough for him to hear, and his smile had widened. "There," he had said, as though you were a fussing child who had finally seen reason. "The body does not lie."
Now you simply went. It was easier. Less exhausting.
And he smelled you. Constantly. A pause when he leaned close to point out some feature of the garden, his breath stirring the hair at your temple. But as the days wore on, he grew bolder. He would take your hand to help you over a cobblestone and hold it a moment too long, his nostrils flaring almost imperceptibly. He would adjust the drape of your sleeve and duck his head, inhaling. He would stand behind your chair at supper, his hands resting on the carved wood, and you would feel the warmth of his breath against the crown of your hair.
You began to understand, with a dawning horror, why the servants bathed you so diligently. Why they oiled and perfumed you each morning. Why the gowns were always fresh, always scented with dried lavender from the tower's stores. It was not for your comfort. It was not for propriety.
It was for him. For his sensitive nose. For his enjoyment.
That night, you lay awake in your chamber, staring at the canopy above your bed. Sleep had become elusive since your arrival—your mind too restless, your body too alert to every creak and whisper of the ancient tower. The moonlight spilled through the tall windows, painting silver patterns on the stone floor.
You heard the door open. It was a soft sound, barely louder than a breath—the gentle click of the latch, the whisper of well-oiled hinges. Your body went rigid beneath the blankets, every instinct screaming at you to move, to shout, to do something. But terror held you still, and some deeper instinct whispered that it was safer to feign sleep. To not let him know you were aware.
Footsteps. Slow and deliberate, crossing the room with the easy confidence of someone who belonged there. Someone who had every right to be there, in the darkness, in your chamber, while you slept.
You kept your breathing steady. In and out. In and out. Your eyes were closed, your face slack, your body arranged in the loose sprawl of deep sleep. You had learned to fake sleep as a child, when you wanted to stay up past your bedtime and listen to the adults talking in the corridor. You had never thought the skill would save your life.
He stopped beside your bed. He was close, so close, leaning over you in the darkness. You felt the warmth of his body, the displacement of air as he moved, and then you felt his breath on your neck.
He inhaled. Long and slow and deep, as though he were drinking you in, savoring the scent of your skin, your hair, the perfume the servants had applied hours ago. He did it again, closer this time, and you felt the faint brush of something—his nose, perhaps, or his lips—against the curve of your throat.
You did not move. You did not breathe. You lay frozen in the darkness while the Lord of Oldtown stood over you and smelled you like a hound scenting prey.
It lasted an eternity. It lasted only moments. Time had ceased to have meaning in that dark room, with his breath on your skin and his shadow blocking the moonlight.
Then he straightened. You heard him exhale, a soft and almost wistful sound, like a man setting down a glass of fine wine he wished he could finish. "Sleep well, Princess," he whispered into the darkness.
The footsteps retreated. The door clicked shut. And you were alone again, trembling beneath your blankets, the ghost of his breath still warm on your throat.
You did not sleep that night. You lay awake until dawn, staring at the door, your heart pounding a frantic rhythm against your ribs. When the grey light of morning finally crept through the windows, you rose and dressed yourself and went to break your fast with the man who held you captive.
He was already seated when you arrived, looking fresh and handsome and utterly untroubled. "Princess," he said warmly, rising to greet you. "You look tired. Did you not sleep well?"
You met his eyes and saw no trace of guilt. "Strange dreams," you said, taking your seat. "This tower is full of shadows."
"Old places often are." He poured your tea himself, the steam curling between you. "But you are safe here, I promise you. Under my protection, no harm will come to you."
—
You had been planning it for days, a knife slipped from the supper table while Ormund was distracted by his own voice, hidden in the folds of your gown before the servants cleared the plates.
The evening had been unbearable. Ormund had been insufferable—his hand creeping onto your thigh beneath the table during the roast course, his breath hot and damp against your ear when he leaned in to murmur some pointless observation about the wine. He had pressed his nose to the curve of your neck before dessert and inhaled like a man drowning, right there in front of the servants, who stared at the floor with dead eyes. You had smiled. You had laughed at his witless jokes. You had let him smell your wrist when he demanded it, presenting it like a gift, watching his eyes flutter closed in that sickening ecstasy that made your bile rise.
By the time you reached your chambers, your heart was a war drum in your chest. You closed the door behind you and stood in the darkness for a moment, listening. The guard outside your door shifted his weight, his armor creaking softly.
You began to undress. The emerald silk of your bodice was fastened with a dozen tiny buttons, impossible to reach on your own—a design choice you now understood was entirely intentional, another thread in the web he had woven around you.
"Ser Gyles?"
A pause. "Princess?"
"I need help." You let your voice go soft, uncertain. "My bodice—the buttons—I cannot reach them. The handmaidens have retired, and I..." You let a tremor enter your voice. "I would be so grateful for your assistance."
Another pause, longer this time. You could hear the war inside his head—the impropriety, the danger, the lord's orders, and beneath it all, the lure of a princess in distress, a beautiful woman asking for his help. Men were so predictable.
"Princess, I... Lord Ormund would—"
"Lord Ormund is abed," you said, turning your back to the door as you heard it creak open. You gathered your dark hair over one shoulder, baring the elegant line of your neck, the vulnerable curve of your spine where the buttons waited. "He need never know. It's only a few buttons. Surely a knight of the Reach is not afraid of a few buttons?"
That stung his pride. Good. Pride made men stupid.
His footsteps crossed the room. His hands were shaking as they found the buttons, fumbling with the delicate silk loops. You could hear his breathing, quick and shallow, could smell the sour note of his nervous sweat beneath the armor polish. Poor, stupid boy. He probably thought he was about to get something far more interesting than button duty.
"You're very kind," you murmured. "So much kinder than the other guards. They look at me like a prisoner. But you..." You glanced over your shoulder, letting your dark eyes meet his. "You look at me like a woman."
His Adam's apple bobbed. His fingers stilled on the buttons. "Princess, I... I have admired you since you arrived. The way Lord Ormund treats you, it isn't—"
"Shh." You turned fully, and your hand slid beneath the loosened bodice. "I know."
The knife emerged silver in the candlelight. Ser Gyles had time to register the cold purpose in your eyes—the shift from simpering captive to something far older and far deadlier—before you buried the blade in his throat. Ser Gyles made a wet, choking sound—glrk, glrk—his hands flying to his neck, his eyes wide with the stunned disbelief of a man who had never truly believed he could die.
You caught him as he fell, lowering him to the ground with the gentleness you would have shown a wounded animal. His blood pooled beneath him, black in the candlelight, spreading across the stones like spilled wine.
"I'm sorry," you whispered, and you almost meant it. Almost. "You should have chosen a different lord to serve."
You ran.
The corridor stretched before you, dark and endless. Left at the tapestry of Hugor of the Hill. Down the narrow servants' stairs. Through the empty kitchens where the great hearth had burned to embers, past the hanging carcasses of tomorrow's meat, past the neat rows of copper pots. Your bare feet made no sound on the cold stone. The stolen knife was still clutched in your hand, the guard's dagger tucked into your belt..
The delivery yard opened onto the lower bailey, and beyond that, the gates. The main gates were heavily guarded, but there was a postern—a small door used by servants and merchants, set into the eastern wall. You had spotted it during your walks, noted the single guard who manned it during the night shift. One guard. One tired, bored, unsuspecting guard.
You could handle one guard. You crossed the bailey in a crouch, keeping to the shadows, your blood-soaked gown clinging to your legs. The postern gate was ahead, a dark archway lit by a single flickering torch. The guard was there—slumped against the wall, chin drooping toward his chest, his spear propped beside him. You tightened your grip on the knife.
You were almost there. Almost free. You could smell the salt air, could feel the wind on your face, could almost hear your father's voice welcoming you home—the hand closed around your arm like a vise of iron.
More hands seized you, dragging you backward, and you fought like a cornered wildcat, clawing and kicking and biting. Your nails raked across someone's face, tearing furrows in his cheek. Your elbow caught another guard in the throat, and he staggered back choking. Your teeth found the fleshy part of a hand and bit down until you tasted blood that wasn't your own.
But there were too many of them. Four guards in Hightower grey, their faces hard and merciless, and then six, and then more, pouring out of the darkness like rats from a sinking ship. Someone wrenched your arm behind your back until you felt something in your shoulder scream. Someone else tangled a fist in your hair and yanked your head back so hard your vision went white.
"Let me go!" you shrieked, still fighting, still clawing. "I am—release me at once, you filth, you dogs, you—"
A hand clamped over your mouth. You bit it. The owner cursed and struck you across the face—not hard enough to knock you out, just hard enough to stun. The world tilted and blurred.
You knew where they were taking you before the door appeared. The heart of the beast's lair. The doors slammed open with enough force to crack the wood. Ormund Hightower was standing in the center of the room, and the sight of him made something cold and primal slither down your spine.
He was still fully dressed despite the late hour but his appearance was... wrong. His curls were disheveled, as though he had been running his hands through them over and over. His eyes were wild, rimmed with red, the pupils blown so wide they nearly swallowed the iris. His cravat was undone, hanging loose around his neck, and his hands were shaking at his sides. He had been pacing—you could see it in the scattered papers on the floor, the overturned inkwell bleeding black across his desk, the chair kicked into the corner.
He looked, you realized with a chill, like a man on the edge of a very high precipice. "So," he said, and his voice was wrong too—too soft, too calm, the voice of a man holding himself together by the thinnest of threads. "The little Dornish viper finally shows her fangs."
The guards threw you forward. You stumbled, catching yourself on the edge of his desk, your bloody hand leaving a crimson print on the scattered parchment. One of the guards began to speak—"My lord, she killed Ser Gyles, she nearly made it to the postern—" but Ormund silenced him with a single raised hand.
"Leave us."
"My lord, she's dangerous, she—"
"I said leave us." His voice cracked on the last word, a fissure in the calm, and the guards fled like rabbits before a wolf. The doors slammed shut.
You were alone with him. The silence stretched between you, taut as a hanged man's rope. The candle on his desk guttered, casting wild shadows across his face. He was staring at you—not at your face, but at the blood soaking your gown, the dark stains on your hands, the wild tangle of your hair. Taking inventory. Understanding what you had done.
"You killed Ser Gyles," he said quietly. Almost conversationally.
"He was in my way."
"He was a good man. Loyal. He served my house since he was a boy." Ormund took a step toward you, and the floorboards creaked beneath his weight. "And you slit his throat like a pig at slaughter."
"He was your creature." You straightened, meeting his eyes with all the defiance you still possessed. "If you wanted him to live, you should not have put him in my path."
Something flickered in his expression—a spasm, a tic, the mask cracking and reforming in the span of a heartbeat. "You tried to leave me."
"I tried to escape. There is a difference."
"No." He shook his head slowly, his wild curls falling into his eyes. "No, there isn't. Not for you. Not for us." He took another step closer, and now you could smell him. "After everything I have given you. After everything I have done for you. This is how you repay me?"
"Done for me?" The words burst from your throat like a curse. "You've done nothing for me. You kidnapped me from the Roseroad. You dragged me to this gilded prison and parade me around like a pet—"
"I have given you everything!" His voice rose to a roar, echoing off the stone walls. The candle flame shuddered. "Fine gowns! The best chambers! Food from my own table! I have treated you like a queen, like a goddess, like—" He broke off, his chest heaving, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. "I have been good to you."
"You have been a monster," you spat. "A sad, pathetic monster who cannot tell the difference between hospitality and captivity. You keep me here because you are obsessed with me—obsessed with the way I smell, the way I look, the way I defy you. It eats at you, doesn't it? That I don't want you. That I will never want you."
"Stop." The word was barely a whisper.
"You are a jailer, a man so desperate for a woman's attention that he has to steal one."
"Stop."
But you were beyond stopping. The fury of weeks—of months—was pouring out of you, a river of venom that had been dammed too long. You stepped toward him, closing the distance, your bloody hands clenched into fists at your sides.
"Do you want to know why you're still unmarried, Ormund? Why every match your uncle Otto tries to arrange falls through? Why the noble ladies of the Reach find excuses not to visit Oldtown?"
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, but I do." You smiled, and it was a cruel smile, a Scorpion's smile, full of poison and barbs. "The servants talk, you know. They think I don't hear them, but I do. The maids whisper about it in the corridors. The guards joke about it in the yard. The Lord of Oldtown, they say. So handsome, so wealthy, so powerful—and still no wife. Still alone."
"Shut your mouth—"
"They say Lord Tyrell refused to let his daughter visit after what happened last time. They say the Hightower maids draw lots for who has to attend you, because none of them can stand you." You tilted your head, your eyes glittering with malice. "They say you have a reputation. And not the kind a lord wants."
He lunged. His hands seized your shoulders, fingers digging in hard enough to grind muscle against bone. He shook you violently, your head snapping back and forth until your teeth clacked together and the world dissolved into a blur of candlelight and shadow.
"You ungrateful whore!" he screamed, his face inches from yours, his spittle flecking your cheeks. "I gave you everything! I would have given you more! I would have made you the Lady of Oldtown! I would have put the Hightower itself at your feet!"
"Made me your prisoner for life, you mean!" you shrieked back, clawing at his hands, your nails drawing blood from his wrists. "Locked me in your tower like a bird in a cage and called it love! Is that what you told yourself? That if you just kept me long enough, just dressed me pretty enough, just smelled me often enough, I would eventually want you?"
He threw you backward. You crashed into the desk, sending papers flying, the inkwell shattering against the floor. Pain lanced through your spine, but you pushed yourself upright, your blood-slick hands gripping the edge of the desk, your chest heaving.
"I would rather bed the lowest, filthiest beggar in Flea Bottom than spend one more night under your roof pretending to tolerate your disgusting attentions." you hissed.
His whole body was trembling, vibrating with a rage so profound it seemed to consume him from the inside out. "You think me disgusting?" His voice had dropped to a whisper, somehow more terrifying than the screaming. "You think I'm some pathetic creature to be mocked and pitied?"
"I think you're a joke," you said, your voice steady despite the terror clawing at your throat. "I think you're a sad, lonely, pathetic excuse for a man who has to kidnap women because no one would ever choose to be near you. I think your obsession with scent and perfume is revolting—do you know that? The way you sniff at me like a dog at a bitch in heat? The way you come into my room at night and stand over my bed and breathe me in while you think I'm sleeping?"
He froze.
"You are a deviant. No woman will ever want you. No woman will ever choose you. You will die alone in this tower, surrounded by your beautiful things and your sensitive nose, and no one will mourn you."
"You bitch—"
"Even now, even after all of this, a part of you still wants me. A part of you is still hoping that if you just keep me long enough, I'll eventually yield. That's why you never touched me, isn't it? Not really. Not the way you wanted to. You were waiting for me to want it. To want you. Because forcing me would mean admitting defeat. Would mean admitting that the only way you can have a woman is by force."
The slap cracked across your face like a thunderclap, snapping your head to the side and sending you sprawling to the floor. Your palms hit the stone first, then your knees, and for a moment, the world was nothing but white light and ringing silence. Your cheek burned where his palm had connected. You tasted blood—your own, this time—welling from a split in your lip.
You lay there on the cold stone floor of his study, your hair pooled around you like a dark halo, your torn gown tangled around your legs. The fire had died almost entirely now, and the room was sinking into shadow. Above you, Ormund stood frozen, his hand still raised, his chest heaving with ragged, uneven breaths.
When he spoke again, his voice was strange. Hollow. Almost distant. "Look what you made me do." You could feel the imprint of his hand still burning on your cheek. You could feel the weight of the tower pressing down on you from all sides. You could feel the gates closing, not just the iron ones at the tower's base but something deeper, something inside you, something that had been open a crack and was now slamming shut.
"You think you are a prisoner?" He took a step toward you, and the floorboards groaned beneath his weight. "You think I have treated you poorly? You, who have dined at my table and worn my silks and walked in my gardens? You, who have wanted for nothing since the moment you arrived? You think this is how prisoners are treated?"
You tried to push yourself up, but your arms were shaking too badly. Your whole body was shaking, a fine tremor that ran from your scalp to the soles of your bare feet. The adrenaline that had carried you through the escape had gone now.
"I have been patient," he continued, and his voice was rising, cracking at the edges like ice under pressure. "I have been so fucking patient with you. I have given you time, space, every opportunity to see that I am not your enemy, that I am not the monster you have painted me as in your mind. And how do you repay me?" He was standing directly over you now, so close you could see the way his hands were trembling, the way a vein pulsed in his temple. "You steal a knife from my table. You seduce one of my guards and then you run. You run from me."
"Because you kidnapped me." The words scraped their way out of your throat, hoarse and defiant despite the terror that was coiling in your belly.
"Get up."
When you did not move—could not move, your legs had turned to water, your body had betrayed you entirely—he reached down and closed his hand around your upper arm. His fingers were iron, and he hauled you to your feet with a single brutal motion that made your shoulder joint scream in protest. You stumbled, your bare feet tangling in the shredded hem of your gown, and you would have fallen again if his grip had not held you upright, your face inches from his doublet, the scent of him—sandalwood and wine and the sharp, metallic tang of fury—flooding your senses.
"You want to be a prisoner?" His free hand came up and fisted in the front of your gown, right where the torn laces left the silk gaping open, right where your chest rose and fell with panicked, shallow breaths. "You want to know how a prisoner is treated? you want to scream about chains and cages and the cruelty of your captor?" His fingers tightened, twisting the silk, and you heard something begin to tear. "Fine. You want to know what happens to women who murder my men and try to flee from me in the dead of night? I will show you. I will fucking show you."
There was a sound and then your gown was coming apart in his hands. The fabric, already torn and loosened from your earlier run, gave way like wet parchment. He pulled, and the bodice split down the front, and the sleeves slid from your shoulders, and the skirts that had billowed so dramatically as you fled through the corridors now fell away in shreds and tatters, pooling at your feet in a wreckage of silk. The cold air of the study hit your bare skin and you gasped, your arms instinctively crossing over your chest, your hands trying to cover what the ruined gown no longer could.
"Stop." Your voice came out wrong—high and thin, a pleading voice. You hated it. You hated yourself for it. But the word was out before you could catch it, and once it was out, more followed. "Ormund, stop. Please. Please, I will not run again. I swear it. I swear it on my ancestors, on my house, on the sun and the spear, I will not run again. Just please, please stop—"
"Please?" He laughed, and the sound was jagged and broken and utterly without humor. It was the laugh of a man who had been holding something back for a very long time, and who was no longer interested in restraint. "Now you say please? Now you find your manners? After you stood in my own study and laughed at my loneliness, mocked my solitude, threw every insecurity I have ever confessed to you back in my face like it was a weapon?" His hands found your waist—bare now, the skin hypersensitive to every texture, every callus, every point of contact—and he pushed, and you were stumbling backward, and your spine hit the edge of his desk with a force that drove the air from your lungs in a single, explosive gasp. "You were wrong about that, my sweet. There is one woman who will have me. There is one woman who is mine, whether she likes it or not, whether she fights or not, whether she bleeds or not. You are that woman. You have been that woman from the moment you opened your eyes in my tower, and you will be that woman until I decide otherwise."
The desk was cold against your bare back, "I'm sorry." The words tumbled out of you, desperate and broken, tripping over each other in their rush to escape. "I am sorry, I should not have said those things, they were cruel and they were unkind and I did not mean them—I did not mean any of them—I was angry, I was frightened, I had just—I had just killed a man, there was blood on my hands, I was not thinking clearly. Please, Ormund, please, if you ever cared for me at all, if any of those words you spoke to me over the past weeks were true, if any of those touches were real, please do not do this. I am begging you. I am begging you."
"Shut up."
The command was quiet now and that calmness, was somehow more terrifying than the shouting had been. He straightened up—still standing between your legs, still pinning you to the desk with the weight of his presence if not his body—and his hands went to his belt. You heard the clink of the buckle, the whisper of leather sliding through loops, the soft thud as the belt fell to the floor.
"Please." You were crying now. You had not even realized when the tears started, but they were streaming down your face, hot and shameful, tracking through the dried blood on your cheek and the salt of your sweat. You hated them. You hated the weakness they betrayed, the vulnerability they advertised. But you could not stop them. "Please, Ormund, please do not do this. I will be good. I will be so good. I will do everything you have ever wanted. Everything. Just please, please do not—"
"I said shut up."
His hands were on you again, and this time there was nothing gentle about them. He flipped you onto your stomach as if you weighed nothing, as if all those weeks of fine dining and measured portions had left you light enough to maneuver like a doll. Your cheek pressed against the cold wood of the desk, and your hands scrabbled for purchase, finding nothing but smooth, polished surface, and his hands were everywhere now, rough and proprietary, mapping the territory he had claimed by force. One hand pinned your wrists together at the small of your back, his grip hot and unyielding. The other traced a slow, deliberate line down your spine, over each vertebra, into the dip of your lower back, across the curve of your hip.
"You wanted to know if my adoration was real." His voice was in your ear now, his breath hot and damp against the sensitive skin of your neck, and you could feel the weight of him behind you, the solid mass of his body pressing you into the desk. "Let me put your mind at ease. It was never a game. It was never a farce. I have wanted you from the first moment I saw you, in my solar, still covered in the dust of the mountain road. I have wanted you every day since. I have wanted you at breakfast and at supper and on every walk through every garden. I have imagined, in great and elaborate detail, exactly what it would feel like to finally, finally—"
His fingers dug into the soft flesh of your arse, and you squeezed your eyes shut so tightly that stars burst behind your lids, you tried to go somewhere else with your mind but his fingers were digging bruises into your hip, and the desk was hard and cold beneath your stomach, and his breath was hot against the back of your neck, and you could not escape. There was only this room, this man, and the sound of your own voice saying please, please, please into the polished wood until the words lost all meaning and became nothing but a rhythm, a prayer, a desperate incantation against the darkness.
"Shh." His hand left your hip and came up to stroke your hair, the gesture so incongruously tender that it made your stomach lurch. "Shh, my sweet. My beautiful Dornish rose. There is no need for tears. This was always going to happen. From the moment you arrived, this was always where we were going. You had to know that. Deep down, in that clever mind you are so proud of, you had to know."
The hand that had been stroking your hair suddenly clamped down on the back of your neck, shoving your face hard against the polished wood of the desk. The impact jarred your teeth, and the scent of old ink and beeswax filled your nostrils, grounding you in the horrific reality of the room..
You whimpered, your fingers clawing uselessly at the wood, trying to find some purchase, some way to push yourself away, but he was a wall of muscle and malice. He reached down, grabbing your thighs and wrenching them apart with a brutal strength that made your joints pop. You were wide open, exposed and trembling, the vulnerability of your nakedness making the terror spike in your chest.
"Look at you," he hissed, his voice a low growl in your ear. "Trembling like a frightened bird. Do you feel it? The inevitability of it?"
You didn't answer. You couldn't. You tried to retreat back to the deserts of Sunspear, to the smell of salt and spice, but the sensation of his thick, turgid cock rubbing against your outer lips dragged you back. He wasn't using any oil, no gentleness, no preamble. He wanted you to feel every bit of the intrusion.
With one sudden, violent thrust, he drove himself inside you. A scream tore from your throat, muffled by the desk, as he ripped through your tightness. The pain was a white-hot blade, slicing through your center, stretching you beyond your limit. You felt yourself tear, the sharp sting of friction and force making your vision blur. He didn't pause to let you adjust; he didn't care that you were sobbing, your breath coming in ragged, broken gasps.
He began to fuck you with a rhythmic, punishing intensity. Each slam of his hips against your ass sounded like a wet slap, echoing through the room. He was driving deep, his cock hitting your cervix with a force that made your entire body shudder. You felt the coldness of the desk beneath your chest and the searing heat of him inside you, a contrast that made you feel as though you were being split in two.
"Please," you gasped, the word a broken shard of glass. "Please stop..."
"You're so tight," he groaned, his fingers digging back into your hips, bruising the skin as he anchored you for deeper thrusts. "I can feel you shaking around me."
He shifted his grip, reaching forward to grab your breasts, squeezing them hard enough to leave marks, pulling your torso back against him while he continued to hammer into your pussy. The friction was becoming an agonizing burn, the lack of lubrication making every stroke feel like sandpaper against raw nerves.
He accelerated, his breathing becoming heavy and erratic. The pace became frantic, a blur of motion and pain. He was no longer just taking you; he was trying to break you, to erase everything you were and replace it with the memory of this violation. You felt the wetness of your own tears dripping onto the wood, mixing with the sweat and the scent of sex and fear.
With a final, guttural roar, he lunged forward one last time, burying himself as deep as he could possibly go. You felt the hot, pulsing jet of his cum erupting inside you, filling your womb with a thick, searing warmth that felt like a brand. He held you there for a long moment, his weight crushing the air from your lungs, his heart hammering against your spine.
When he finally pulled out, the sound was a wet, sickening pop. You collapsed onto the desk, your limbs heavy and useless, your pussy throbbing and leaking his seed across the polished wood. You lay there in the silence, the green light of the tower still watching, while the ghost of the desert wind whispered a lie of freedom in your ear.
He stayed where he was for a long moment, his weight heavy on your back, his breath slowly steadying against your shoulder. One of his hands was still tangled in your hair, the other still gripping your hip with a possessiveness that seemed to go beyond conscious thought. You could feel his heartbeat through the velvet of his doublet—he had not even bothered to fully undress, you realized, not even that small concession—and it was fast, rapid, like a hunted thing.
Then he straightened. He adjusted his clothing with practiced, efficient movements. He smoothed down his doublet and ran a hand through his disheveled curls. And then, very gently, very carefully, he reached down and pulled you upright.
Your legs would not hold you. They buckled immediately, and you would have fallen if he had not caught you, one arm around your waist, pulling you against his chest. He held you there for a moment, one hand cradling the back of your head, pressing your face into the crook of his neck. His skin was damp with sweat.
"There now," he murmured into your hair. His voice was hoarse, almost reverent, and his hands were trembling slightly as they stroked down your back. "There now. That was not so terrible, was it? You see? You are mine. You have always been mine. And now you know it. Now there is no more doubt. No more confusion. It is real. You are real. This is real."
You said nothing. You stared over his shoulder at the wall. Your mind was very far away, floating somewhere up near the painted stars, and it did not seem inclined to return.
He pressed a kiss to your temple. His lips were warm. Gentle. The contrast made your stomach heave. "I will have the servants draw you a bath," he said, pulling back just enough to look at your face. His eyes traced over your features with that same cataloging intensity, checking for damage, assessing the state of his possession. His thumb came up and brushed away a tear from your cheek, and the gesture was so tender, so utterly at odds with what he had just done, that you felt something inside you splinter. "A hot bath. The jasmine oil, I think. The orange blossom is clearly not agreeing with your temperament. And fresh sheets on your bed. And something to eat—you have not eaten properly in days, and you will need your strength."
He said this as if nothing had happened. As if you were still a guest who had merely had a difficult evening. As if he had not just dismantled you piece by piece on his desk.
He called for the guards. Two of them this time, not one, and they appeared in the doorway with expressions carefully blank, their eyes sliding away from your ruined gown and your bare shoulders and the bruises already blooming on your arms. He gave them instructions in a low voice—the bath, the jasmine oil, the fresh sheets, the tray of food—and then he draped his own cloak over your shoulders, settling it around you with the same care he might have shown a child. The velvet was heavy and warm, and it smelled of him, and you wanted to tear it off, to burn it, to scream. But your body would not obey you. Your body was no longer yours to command.
"Take her to her chambers," he told the guards. "And if anything happens to her—if she is harmed in any way, or if she is allowed to escape—I will hold you both personally responsible. Do you understand?"
They understood. They took your arms and they led you out of the study and into the cold stone corridor.
—
They had put you to bed like a child. They had pulled the covers up to your chin and doused the candles and left you alone in the darkness with the scent of jasmine and the distant crash of waves and the memory of his hands, his weight, his breath on your neck. You had lain there for what felt like hours, staring at the ceiling, watching the shadows shift and flicker as the green flame of the Hightower cast its sickly light through the windows. Sleep would not come. You did not think it ever would again.
And then the door had opened. You knew it was him before you saw him. You knew it by the way the air changed, by the sudden sharp tang of sandalwood that cut through the jasmine like a blade. You knew it by the soft click of the latch, the whisper of bare feet on stone, the slow, measured breathing of a man who was in no hurry because he knew there was nowhere for his prey to run. Your body went rigid beneath the covers. Every muscle locked. Every nerve screamed. But you did not move. You did not turn your head. You stared at the ceiling and you waited.
The mattress dipped as he climbed onto the bed beside you. His weight settled into the feather mattress, tilting your body toward him, and then his hand was on your shoulder, turning you onto your back, and his face was above you in the darkness, pale and beautiful and utterly, terrifyingly serene.
"Ormund." His name came out of you like a breath, like a surrender. You did not have the strength to fight.
"Shh." His fingers found your cheek in the darkness, tracing the line of your jaw with that same false tenderness he had shown before. "Do not speak. There is no need for words between us now. Not anymore."
He flipped you onto your back, your body stark against the rumpled sheets. He seized both of your wrists in one hand, pinning them violently above your head, stretching your torso taut. He didn't waste time with foreplay; he simply spat into his palm, smeared the slime over his turgid cock, and slammed back into your pussy with a force that knocked the wind from your lungs. You felt your walls stretching, the raw friction of his thick shaft sliding in and out of you, the wet, slapping sound of his balls hitting your ass echoing through the room. He leaned down, his teeth grazing the shell of your ear, his breath a hot, humid fog. "You were made for this," he hissed, his hips hammering into you with a rhythmic, punishing intensity that made your head toss from side to side.
When he finally spent himself inside you, leaking hot cum deep into your womb, he didn't let you recover. He rolled you onto your side, his heavy arm wrapping around your waist like a shackle, pulling your arse flush against his chest. He entered you from behind, his cock sliding into your slick, swollen pussy with a sickening squelch. You felt the blunt head of his dick hitting your cervix over and over, a dull, aching thud that vibrated through your entire pelvis. You tried to curl away, to protect yourself, but he only gripped your hip harder, his fingers digging bruises into your skin as he drove himself home, filling you completely until you felt like you were being split open from the inside.
Then he shoved you face-down, your cheek pressed hard into the pillows, the scent of expensive linen mingling with the smell of sex and sweat. He grabbed your hair, yanking your head back to expose the nape of your neck while he entered you once more. This time, he didn't stop at your pussy. He shifted his aim, the broad head of his cock probing the tight, virgin heat of your ass. You shrieked into the pillow as he forced his way in, the sudden, searing stretch of your sphincter making your vision go white. He didn't slow down; he fucked your tight hole with a brutal, mindless greed, each thrust ripping through you, stretching your rectum to the breaking point. Your fingers clawed uselessly at the sheets, ripping the fabric as he hammered into your backside, his cock sliding deep into your bowels.
By the time the first grey light of dawn began to bleed through the curtains, your body was a ruin. The silk nightgown lay in shredded ribbons on the floor, and the sheets were stained with a mixture of sweat, blood, and thick, white seed. You lay there, trembling and hollow, the feeling of his cock still ghosting inside you, unable to tell where your own broken body ended and his violation began.
When he finished, he rolled onto his side and pulled you against him, your back to his chest, his arm draped possessively across your waist. His breath was warm and damp against the nape of your neck, and you could feel his heart beating, slowing now, settling into a rhythm that was almost peaceful.
"You know," he said, his voice conversational, as though you had just shared a pleasant meal rather than a night of forced violation, "I've been thinking."
You did not answer. You could not answer. Your voice had abandoned you somewhere around the third time.
"About us. About the future." His fingers traced idle patterns on your collarbone, feather-light, almost affectionate. "You're a princess, you know. The heir to Dorne. That's not nothing. That's a significant... asset."
You stared at the canopy.
"And I'm the Lord of Oldtown. One of the oldest, wealthiest, most powerful houses in the Reach. Possibly in all of Westeros." He smiled down at you, and in the grey dawn light, he looked almost handsome again. Almost sane. "We would make quite a match, you and I."
Your heart stopped. "What?"
"I'm going to marry you." He said it simply, as though it were already decided, as though your consent was a formality he had no intention of waiting for. "I've been thinking about it for weeks, but tonight... tonight confirmed it. You're perfect. Beautiful. Highborn. And now..." His hand slid down your body, coming to rest on your stomach. He pressed down gently, possessively. "Now you're mine. Truly mine. In every way that matters."
"You're insane." The words came out as a croak, barely audible. "I will never marry you. Never."
His smile didn't waver. "You will. You don't have a choice, Princess. You lost the right to choices when you killed Ser Gyles. When you tried to run from me." His thumb traced small circles on your stomach. "Besides, it might already be too late to refuse. After tonight... who knows? You could already be carrying my heir."
The word hit you like a physical blow. Heir. His heir. His child, growing inside you, tethering you to him forever.
"No," you breathed. "No, no, no—"
"Yes." His voice was almost dreamy now, lost in some fantasy you could not see. "Think of it. A child of Hightower and Martell. The blood of the Reach and the blood of Dorne, united in one perfect heir. Your father would have to accept the match then. He couldn't deny his grandchild. He couldn't deny the alliance it would bring."
"My father will kill you." Your voice was shaking, but it was growing stronger, fueled by a desperate, clawing rage. "When he finds out what you've done to me, he will burn Oldtown to the ground. He will—"
"Your father will do what's best for Dorne." Ormund cut you off with the casual confidence of a man who had already won. "And what's best for Dorne will be an alliance with House Hightower, secured by a marriage and a grandchild. He's a practical man, you said so yourself. Pragmatic. He'll see the sense in it."
He leaned down and pressed a kiss to your forehead, chaste and almost tender, and you wanted to bite him. You wanted to claw his eyes out. You wanted to do all the things you had failed to do with Ser Gyles's butter knife, but your body was too broken to move, and his weight was still half on top of you, pinning you to the mattress.
"I'll give you beautiful children," he murmured against your skin. "Strong sons. Clever daughters. They'll have your dark hair and my blue eyes. They'll be perfect—the best of both houses. The future of the Reach. The future of Dorne. All of it, united in one bloodline."
"Stop." Your voice cracked. "Please, just stop."
But he didn't stop. He was lost in his own world now, his hand still pressed to your stomach as though he could already feel the life he imagined growing there.
"We'll raise them here,they'll have the best tutors from the Citadel. The best swordmasters. The best of everything. And you'll be their mother—the beautiful Dornish princess who gave me the heirs I've been waiting for." His voice softened, taking on a strange, almost reverent quality. "Do you know how long I've waited for this? For someone worthy? All those Reach girls, all those simpering lords' daughters—none of them were good enough. None of them were you."
"You're a monster."
"Perhaps." He pulled back to look at you, and his blue eyes were serene, utterly at peace with themselves. "But I'm the monster who's going to give you everything. A title. A home. Children. A purpose. You'll want for nothing, Princess. Nothing at all."
"I want to go home."
"This is your home now." He settled back against the pillows, pulling you with him, arranging your broken body against his side like a child arranging a doll. "Oldtown. The Hightower. My bed. You'll learn to love it. You'll learn to love me. In time, when you stop fighting, when you accept what you are to me—you'll see that this was always where you were meant to be."
You said nothing. There was nothing left to say. He was beyond reason, beyond argument, beyond anything you could reach with words or pleas or threats. He had constructed an entire fantasy around you—a future, a family, a life you had never consented to—and nothing you said would shatter that delusion.
"We'll announce the betrothal soon," he continued, his voice drifting toward sleep. "Once you've had time to... adjust. Once you're not so angry. It wouldn't do to have you screaming and spitting at the ceremony." He chuckled softly, as though the image was amusing rather than devastating. "No, we'll wait until you're ready. Until you understand how good this will be. For both of us."
His breathing was slowing now, evening out. His arm was still wrapped around you, heavy and inescapable, and his nose was still pressed to your hair, inhaling your scent with each slow breath.
"Sleep now," he murmured. "You'll need your strength. We have a long road ahead of us, you and I. A lifetime."
He was asleep within minutes. You could tell by the way his body relaxed, the way his grip loosened just slightly, the way his breathing deepened into the steady rhythm of unconsciousness.
You lay awake in the grey dawn light, his arm around your waist, his seed drying on your thighs, his promises of marriage and children and forever ringing in your ears like a death knell.
Survive, you told yourself. Survive today. Survive tomorrow. Survive until you find your chance.
Showing similar signs of infertility as her mother, her father, King Viserys allowed her to live her life unmarried, fearing her death as well. To escape the court's prying eyes, she moved to Old Town with her younger half brother Daeron. There she met Gwayne, the perfect man. With a worried stricken mind, she was scared that he wouldn't accept her due to her struggles.
Once war breaks out, she felt stuck, in between the loyalty she has to her blood sister and the love of her life.
no name nor descriptions of looks so can be read as an x reader or x oc. whatever you choose
I do not read the books. I am basing most of the fic off of own personal beliefs of his character, and what I have seen so far in the show. (i do a bit of research here and there though.)
Chapter Word Count: 2,673
⤺ Previous
❩❤︎☾ ⩥❇︎⩤ ☽❤︎❨
It was an excruciatingly long ride from Kings Landing to Old town. Especially when she knew she could have cut the time down exponentially if she had merely traveled on dragonback. But with Daeron, and the other help that were moving to Old Town with them, they had to use horses instead.
After spending months in the small confines of the carriage with Daeron and Tessarion, she couldn’t wait to arrive at the home of the Hightowers. Before they could arrive to The Tower, they had to stop at an abandoned Sept right outside of the town.
As there was no dragon pit, the two young dragons would be residing there for the time being, along with the dragonkeepers that had come with them. Knowing she wouldn’t have the time she normally would have, she spent some extra time with Fafnyr.
“I know my boy.” She cooed softly into the white scales of the dragon. “I will come back as soon as I can. Then we can take to the skies once more.”
Fafnyr nudged her. Almost as if to say ‘you better’. With a kiss to his snout, she walked toward Daeron. Fafnyr tried following, but the dragonkeepers were quick to stop him, which broke her heart further.
“Come on Daeron. Say goodbye to Tessarion.” She said while grabbing the young boy.
“Bye bye Tess.” He happily chimed.
As he was still so young, the bond between him and the blue dragon wasn’t as strong as hers and Fafnyr’s, so leaving wasn’t as sad for him.
With Old Town in sight, the ride was short. They were welcomed at the door by the Hightowers, marking the end of their long journey.
She exited the carriage with Daeron in her arms, greeting the members of house Hightower cordially. Even though she didn’t have the best opinions of the Hightowers that resided within the castle walls, she knew she couldn’t judge the whole family off of the two’s actions.
This was a new start, and she intended to try her hardest to be a good guest and get along with them. But it was immediately thrown out the window. Ormund Hightower, the head of the household turned away from the two Targaryens, covering his nose in disgust.
She knew that the two of them didn’t smell the best, they had been on the road for months, and were just cuddled up with their dragons, which smelled strongly. But to make his disgust obvious was an insult.
With a deep frown, she awaited to be addressed. While his head was turned, Ormund motioned for the maids to come closer, heading for Daeron.
“I hope your journey went well, princess.” Ormund responded strenuously, as though he didn’t even want to be courteous.
“It went as well as it could for a three month trip.” Her tone was harsh, as to remind him of his manners.
“Yes.” He said plainly. “I will leave the two of you to get settled and bathed before dinner.”
The maids walked up to her, trying to grab Daeron out of her arms. She was quick to move Daeron out of the way, glaring at the maid for daring to rip her baby away. With the way she was being treated, her guard was raised, and the last thing she wanted to do was leave Daeron while she felt unsafe.
Daeron’s nursing maid from Kings Landing stepped in, trying to diffuse the situation. “Princess, they need to take him so they can get him settled in the new home.”
Still refusing to give Daeron over to a stranger, she instead passed him over to the nursing maid she was used to. “Don’t leave his side.”
“I won't." the nursing maid promised with a slight bow.
Most of the Hightowers followed Daeron into the house. They made it clear, she wouldn’t be treated with the same respect as she would have been in her own home. It was a strange feeling for her. Being raised as a princess in The Red Keep, she was used to everyone being respectful, even if they had their own qualms about her.
Minus the queen of course. But that was because a queen outranked a princess. Here, she outranked all of them.
She was on edge, feeling unwelcomed and having Daeron taken away from her. But one Hightower stayed behind, walking up to her with more warmth than the rest combined.
He had bright ginger hair that reached to his jaw. As he bowed before her, he kept eye contact, letting her see his bright green eyes. Holding his hand out, he expected her to place hers in his grasp.
With her being uncomfortable by the way the others treated her, she normally wouldn’t accept. But there was something about him. Something so gentle, it lulled her into security. Accepting him, she placed her hand in his warm grip.
He placed a gentle kiss on her knuckle. His lips were soft, causing her mind to race. It was most inappropriate for her to think of such things as kissing this man she had only just met, but she couldn’t help it.
Maybe it was because he was the first person to show her kindness since arriving, or it was just from enjoying his looks. When he let go of her hand, raising from his bowed position, she missed the feeling, wishing to chase after him, but minded her manners.
“Welcome to Old Town, princess. I am Gwayne Hightower.” He introduced himself. “I can show you around.”
She immediately recognized the name. Gwayne was one of Otto Hightower’s sons, the brother of Queen Alicent. By all means she should hate him, dislike him for what his father and sister had done to her family. But at the same time, she found it hard when he was the opposite of the two, gentle and kind.
“I thought I was to go to my room and bathe.” She said, recalling Ormund’s harsh words. “I wouldn’t want to walk around smelling awfully.”
While she didn’t appreciate Ormund’s insults, she also didn’t want to explore the castle smelling. She would most definitely be making a poor impression on many people she would be meeting for the first time.
“You do not smell awful.” Gwayne calmed her worries. “Ormund is just sensitive when it comes to smell.”
Gwayne began to walk into the castle with her walking beside him, allowing him to direct her around the unknown place.
“It doesn’t help that he was raised in a place that smells so beautifully.” She commented. It was one of the first things she noticed about Old Town: The smell of citrus. “I am used to the smell of feces that fills Kings Landing.”
Gwayne chuckled. “Yeah, it is overwhelming, isn’t it?”
His words made her realize that this wasn’t their first meeting, even though it was the first time they had spoken to each other. Many years ago, Gwayne made his way to Kings Landing for the tournament her father threw in Baelon’s honor.
“That's right.” She said, “We’ve seen each other before.”
“Yes we have.” Gwayne nodded his head. “It was so long ago, I didn’t think you’d remember.”
She could remember every detail about that day, the last time she had seen her mother, when she got the news of Aemma birthing her younger brother, and their inevitable, tragic passing.
“That day was not the best.” She responded sadly. “It's kind of hard to forget.”
Gwayne had walked them to the gardens. He didn’t mean for things to take such a turn, so he tried changing the subject. “It isn’t as grand as the royal gardens. But I like to think it's just as beautiful.”
“I think its smaller size makes it better.” She agreed. “I know I will spend many hours out here.”
“Whenever I have free time, I like to come out here as well.” Gwayne informed her. “Maybe we will see each other.”
She smiled at the thought of seeing him again. Even though it was inevitable, they were going to be living together for quite some time, the thought of him wanting them to talk again made her giddy.
“We most likely will.” She agreed with a smile. “I am very grateful for the tour, but I have been traveling for a long time and would love to just settle down.”
While she wished to continue, the exhaustion of travel had finally kicked in. All she wanted to do was bathe and lay down before dinner.
“I understand.” Gwayne said sweetly. “Your room is this way.”
The room was smaller than what she had imagined. Being so used to royal treatment in Kings Landing, she expected for everything to be the same for her here as well. The sheets were green, a reminder that she was with the Hightowers, that the closest thing she had to her family there was the young boy that looked nothing like a Targaryen.
✿
As it was her first night in the Tower, she had been invited to a dinner with the other Hightowers. Part of her felt as though Ormund was forced to invite her out of courtesy, not because he genuinely wished for her to be there as a guest.
Thinking it would be best to dress nicely, she wore her best silks and jewelry, believing it would make a better impression than the wrinkled clothes and the smell of months of travel. But she was deeply incorrect.
Everyone looked at her as though she had been turned into a dragon as she entered the room. The other people at the table were dressed in basic clothes, nothing too fancy. It was embarrassing, feeling so out of place.
They had the decency to place her at the head of the table, opposite of Ormund, which honestly made things worse. She could get over those things, but what she didn’t appreciate was Daeron being seated next to Ormund, on the complete opposite side of the table.
It was clear what they were trying to do, to separate Daeron from his Targaryen roots. From her and her family. It upset her, especially as her father sent her with him for the specific reasoning of making sure he had ties to his history.
The only thing she was enjoying about this dinner was that Gwayne had been seated next to her. It gave her relief that one person was nice to her, and he stuck close. It was almost as if he knew exactly how his family acted, how they would treat her, and he wanted to be a buffer.
“Let’s pray.” Ormund announced as everyone brought their hands together and hung their heads low.
She looked around confused. Never before had she ever prayed before her meal. But she had to remember she was in Old Town now. A place that follows the Faith of the Seven closely.
Not wanting to cause any more issues than there already were, she lowered her head, pretending like she was joining them. All she could think about was how weird Ormund's words were as they prayed.
The food was served afterwards. Most of the family members took to discussing with each other, leaving her to eat in silence. She wished to say something to Gwayne, to strike up a conversation with him, but her mind drew a blank.
Every once in a while, when Gwayn was discussing with one of his brothers, his eyes would dash over to her, only for a moment, not wanting to be caught. Yet she saw it every single time.
To keep herself entertained, she watched Daeron eat his food as properly as he could. Still being so young, he normally needed assistance. Normally she would take up helping him, making sure his food was cut small enough or feed it to him when he couldn’t. Help that Ormund wasn’t giving.
Inevitably, Daeron spilled some of the food on himself, staining his clothes. She was quick to jump into action, working purely off of instinct.
“Oh no, Daeron.” She said to him from across the table, drawing the attention of everyone.
Standing up from her seat, she made her way over to the small boy. Crouching between him and Ormund, she used the dining cloth to rub off the food. Ormund was clearly irritated, as the room settled into an uncomfortable silence. Ignoring it, she continued to check on Daeron like nothing was happening.
“I had him seated over here for a reason.” Ormund seethed out.
Standing to her feet, she towered over Ormund’s sitting form. “Well maybe I wouldn’t have to walk over here if you knew how to take care of him properly.”
His facial expression hardened, not appreciating being talked back to in his own home. “Remeber whose house you now reside in.”
Normally she wouldn’t be rude, she would've minded her manners and been thankful. But she wouldn’t stand for any more disrespect. Especially in front of so many people.
“While I am forever grateful for you accepting me into your home.” Her tone was condescending, clearly trying to show power over him. “I would like you to remind you of your ranking, my lord.”
She truly didn't understand why he had hated her so deeply. Never before had they met before that day. Was it because she invited herself along with Daeron? Did she insult him in some abstract way from many miles away? Or did he have an issue with the Targaryens themselves?
Whatever it was, she wouldn’t back down. She was a princess, not some random noble lady he could push around and make do his bidding. Walking around the table she announced: “I am tired, I must return to my chambers.”
She wanted to leave, not liking being judged by everyone around her. But she couldn’t just say she wished to run and leave without a word. As she passed Gwayne, heading for the door, he was quick to stop her.
“Do you wish to be escorted back?” He whispered, not wanting the others to hear.
She thought about it for a moment, thinking if it would be the right move to make. While it could make her look weak, at the same time, she didn’t have the castle memorized, and roaming around aimlessly would most definitely make her look bad.
“I wouldn’t mind, if you are offering.” She agreed to his assistance.
Gwayne was quick to put his silverware down, following her out of the room. He was silent at first, wishing to get away from the door and prying ears before saying what he had on his mind.
“That was bold of you to talk to Ormund in such a way.” He chuckled at what had occurred a few moments prior.
“I don’t like using my status as princess against people.” She huffed honestly. “But I do not appreciate him speaking down to me in such a manner. I have had enough of that in Kings Landing with Alicent.”
“Hm.” Gwayne hummed in response.
She was quick to remember his relationship to her. Internally she scolded herself for saying something so embarrassing to the only person who was treating her nicely since she arrived.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to speak ill of your sister to you.” She said apologetically.
“Do not worry about it.” Gwayne spoke truthfully. “I understand why things could be tense between the two of you.”
Every moment they spoke to one another, the more she liked him. Not only was he handsome, but he was kind, understanding, and soft spoken. Maybe it was because he was the only person being nice to her, but she could feel her heart strings being tugged by him.
“Here you are.” Gwayne said as they arrived at her room. “Just call for me if you need anything.”
“I definitely will take you up on that offer.” She said with a smile.
“Sleep well princess.” Gwayne gave her a small bow.
“Have a good night.” She responded before closing her door.
❩❤︎☾ ⩥❇︎⩤ ☽❤︎❨
Next ⇝
Thank you all so much for the love and support you have shown me already for this fic!! I really appreciate it! I am so excited to continue it!
I am mixing parts of the book and the show together for this fic. SO gwayne isn't the only son like in the books, but like in the show he is the first son. He's a year younger than alicent (instead of 8 years younger in the book and a few years older in the show). It won't ever really come up in the fic but i thought yall might like to know!
I am almost to 1,000 followers on here (only ~100 more followers to go.) To celebrate, once I reach the milestone, I am going to host a oneshot giveaway where one lucky winner will be able to give me almost any prompt to write of any character or pairing of their choosing (I will have some preramaters ofc and a few things I will refuse to write)
But if you want to be notified of when this is happening, follow me, or you can join my Discord Server! (all of it will be handled on there)
Thank you again for reading!! ❤︎
Taglist: (comment or dm me to be added or removed)
synapse: y/n brings loki to work at the diner, where burnt coffee, rude customers, and one act of unwanted attention push the prince of asgard to his limit
pairing: loki odinson x female reader
contains: slow burn, harassment, humor
a/n: i published my loki imagine just three days ago and it immediately got so many likes, thank you! so in return i hotboxed under my blanket and wrote this for three hours at one a.m.
. . .
Y/N woke to sunlight burning directly across her face.
She groaned, rolled toward the wall and pulled the blanket over her head.
For several blissful seconds, she forgot everything. The diner. The flash in the sky. The crater. The unconscious man tied to her skateboard. The naked god standing in her kitchen.
Her eyes opened beneath the blanket. “Oh, shit.”
Y/N threw it aside and sat up too quickly. The room tilted. She braced one hand against the mattress until the dizziness passed, then grabbed her phone from the nightstand.
12:08 p.m.
She had slept for nearly seven hours. More importantly, she had willingly slept for nearly seven hours with a self-proclaimed god loose in her apartment.
A god who had threatened to turn her into something unpleasant. A god who could stop objects in midair. A god who, unless she had hallucinated from exhaustion, possessed absolutely no sense of modesty.
Y/N listened.
The apartment was quiet. No crashing furniture. No screams from the neighbors. No ominous chanting.
She slipped out of bed and opened the bedroom door cautiously. “Loki?”
No answer.
Y/N stepped into the hallway.
The bathroom door stood open. His armor was no longer spread across the floor where she had left it to dry. The towels had been folded and stacked beside the bathtub.
She continued toward the living room. Then stopped.
Her apartment was clean.
Not simply cleaner than she remembered.
Clean.
The throw blankets had been folded into neat squares over the back of the couch. Her discarded shoes had been paired beside the wall. The pile of textbooks on the coffee table had been arranged from largest to smallest, with her loose papers stacked beneath them. Even the abandoned laundry basket had disappeared.
Y/N looked slowly around the room. The empty mugs from earlier were gone. The cushions had been straightened. The floor had been swept. Her laptop sat closed in the center of the table with its charger carefully wound beside it.
“What the hell?”
“You’re awake.”
Y/N spun around.
Loki sat near the window in the armchair, one ankle resting across the opposite knee. He had managed to put on most of his repaired clothing, though the heavier armor remained absent. The black and green layers fit closely around him, the fresh stitches visible near one shoulder and along his side. He held one of her textbooks open in his lap.
The sight of him there, dressed, composed and entirely at ease made the events of the previous night feel even more surreal.
“You…cleaned.”
His eyes returned to the page. “I restored a small degree of order.”
“You cleaned my whole apartment…”
“I found continued exposure to its condition intolerable.”
Y/N stared at him.
Loki turned another page. “You live like a Midgardian slob.”
Her mouth dropped open. “A what?”
“A slob.”
“I know what you said.”
“Then why did you ask?”
Y/N crossed the room and smacked him lightly on the upper arm.
Loki looked down at the place she had struck.
Then slowly up at her.
The expression on his face suggested no one had dared do such a thing in several centuries. “You struck me.”
“You called me a slob.”
“It was an observation.”
“It was rude.”
“It was the truth.”
She raised her hand again.
Loki caught her wrist before she could hit him, his fingers closing around it with effortless speed.
Y/N froze.
His grip was not painful.
If anything, it was remarkably careful.
Loki glanced from her hand to her face. “You have a troubling habit of assaulting those who could destroy you.”
“You have a troubling habit of insulting the person letting you sleep on her couch.”
“I did not sleep.”
“That explains why you reorganized my books like a serial killer.”
“They were arranged without regard for subject, size or language.”
“They were arranged by where I dropped them.”
“Precisely.”
Y/N tugged her wrist.
Loki released it immediately.
She rubbed the spot more from awareness of his touch than discomfort.
Then a thought struck her.
Her eyes widened.
“Wait.”
Loki watched as she turned toward the television stand. “What?”
“Did you touch my bag?”
“Which bag?”
“The little plastic one.”
“That does not narrow the possibilities.”
“The one with the funny-smelling flowers.”
His brow furrowed.
Y/N hurried across the room and dropped onto her knees beside the low wooden stand supporting the television. She reached beneath it, fingers feeling along the hidden space between the bottom shelf and the wall.
Nothing.
Her stomach dropped. “No, no, no.”
She leaned farther down, nearly pressing her cheek against the carpet.
Loki closed the textbook. “What have you lost?”
“My weed.”
“Your what?”
“My bag.”
“You have several.”
“The flowers, Loki.”
“I found no flowers.”
“They don’t look like regular flowers. They’re dried and green and kind of—” Her fingers brushed plastic. “Oh, thank God.” She glanced Loki. “Or Gods…”
Y/N dragged the small bag from its hiding place and held it against her chest.
Loki stared at it.
She quickly checked that it was still sealed and that the contents appeared untouched.
Everything was there.
She released a breath.
“You hid vegetation beneath your viewing apparatus?” Loki asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s illegal.”
Loki’s expression changed from confusion to interest. “You conceal forbidden substances inside your home.”
“It sounds worse when you say it like that.”
“What purpose do these flowers serve?”
Y/N tucked the bag back beneath the television stand. “They help me relax.”
“You consume them?”
“Sometimes.”
“By eating them?”
“No.”
“You brew them?”
“…Not usually.”
His eyes narrowed. “Then how?”
Y/N stood and brushed the dust from her knees. “I smoke them.”
Loki was silent for a moment. “You set the plant aflame.”
“Basically.”
“And inhale the fumes?”
“Yeah.”
“Intentionally?”
“Yes, Loki.”
He leaned back in the chair, considering this new information. “Midgardians are even stranger than I believed.”
“You’re the one who fell out of space.”
“That was not intentional.”
“Neither was me needing stress relief during college.”
Y/N wandered into the kitchen, opening cabinets as she went.
Her stomach felt hollow, and the scent of the eggs she had made earlier lingered faintly in the room.
She checked the refrigerator. There was not much to work with. Bread. Cheese. Half a package of deli turkey. A tomato that needed to be used before it became a biological hazard. Grilled sandwiches, then.
Loki appeared in the kitchen doorway behind her.
She looked over her shoulder. “You’re moving better.”
“I am recovering.”
“Your ribs?”
“Satisfactory.”
“That means they hurt.”
“It means they are satisfactory.”
Y/N retrieved a frying pan. “Sit down before you fall down.”
“I have already explained that I do not fall.”
“You fell through the sky.”
His expression darkened.
She winced. “Right. Sensitive subject. Sorry.”
Loki moved toward the small table but did not sit. Instead, he watched as she laid slices of bread on the counter. “What are you preparing?”
“Lunch.”
“It is barely morning.”
“It’s noon.”
“That is an absurd hour to rise.”
“I worked all night rescuing a dramatic alien.”
“God.”
“Alien god.”
“Do not call me that.”
Y/N placed cheese over the bread. “You’re from another planet.”
“Asgard is not a planet in the crude manner you understand such things.”
“Different world, realm, floating space kingdom. Alien enough.”
Loki looked offended by every option.
Y/N added turkey to one sandwich. “…Do gods eat turkey?”
“Do you possess anything more substantial?”
“No.”
“Then apparently we do.”
She smiled and assembled the second sandwich.
Loki’s gaze drifted back toward the living room. “These forbidden flowers…”
Y/N sighed. “What about them?”
“They’re meant to help you relax?”
“Yes, they can help you relax or help you deal with pain.”
“They help with pain?”
“They can.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. They make your body relax. Everything feels less intense.”
“They alter the mind.”
“Yes.”
“Like wine.”
“…Kind of, but different.”
“More potent?”
“Depends.”
“Dangerous?”
“It can be if you’re stupid, but it’s not like you’re going to drop dead from smoking a little.”
“You hid it as though possession invites execution.”
“It doesn’t. I could get arrested, though.”
“For possessing a plant.”
“Welcome to America.”
Loki considered that with visible disdain.
“Your rulers forbid it, yet you keep it within your dwelling.”
“Quietly.”
“You admitted its existence to me.”
“You already know I dragged a stranger home from the desert. I think we’ve skipped the normal trust-building process.”
She buttered one side of each sandwich and placed them in the pan.
One landed slightly crooked.
Loki’s eyebrows rose.
“Elegant.”
“Shut up.”
His mouth curved faintly.
Y/N looked at him over her shoulder. It was the first time she had seen him appear genuinely relaxed. Only slightly, and only for a moment, but the sharpness around his eyes had eased.
He noticed her watching and the expression vanished. “Why do you look at me so?”
“I’m checking whether you’re about to pass out.”
“A transparent falsehood.”
“You ask too many questions.”
“And you avoid half of them.”
“I answer all of them.”
“With simplicity intended to make further inquiry difficult.”
“That’s because most things aren’t as complicated as you want them to be.”
“Everything is complicated.”
“Grilled cheese isn’t.”
Loki glanced toward the pan. “You have added flesh to it.”
“Turkey.”
“Therefore, it is no longer merely grilled cheese.”
Y/N stared at him. “You’ve been awake for less than a day, and you’re already correcting my sandwich terminology.”
“It required correction.”
She plated the food and slid one toward him.
Loki finally sat.
He inspected the sandwich.
Y/N sat across from him and picked up her own. “You eat it with your hands.”
“I had gathered as much.”
“Just making sure, Your Highness.”
He lifted it with obvious reluctance and took a bite.
Y/N waited.
Loki chewed.
His expression remained carefully neutral.
“Well?”
“It is adequate.”
“You like it.”
“I said it was adequate.”
“You ate half of it in one bite.”
He ignored her and took another.
Y/N smiled into her sandwich.
For a few minutes, they ate in relative silence.
Then Loki spoke again. “Would the flowers affect me?”
Y/N looked up. “What?”
“Your illicit vegetation.”
“I don’t know.”
“You claimed it’s meant to relax and eases pain.”
“In humans.”
“I resemble one closely enough.”
“You also fell through space, caught a towel with your mind and called yourself a god.”
“All accurate.”
“So I’m not using you as a science experiment.”
His eyes narrowed. “I require no protection from your minor mortal intoxicants.”
“Last night, you couldn’t walk across the room without holding onto something.”
“I was injured.”
“You’re still injured.”
“I am significantly improved.”
Y/N studied him.
He did look better, but there was still strain around his mouth whenever he shifted. The bandage beneath his clothes pulled slightly across his ribs.
“If the pain gets bad again,” she said, “maybe I’ll let you try some.”
Loki’s eyebrows lifted. “You will let me?”
“It’s my weed.”
“You presume authority over what I place within my own body.”
“No. I presume authority over whether you smoke my limited supply.”
His gaze sharpened with amusement. “You would deny a prince relief?”
“If the prince is annoying, yes.”
“I could just simply take it.”
“You’d have to find the hiding spot again.”
“I watched you retrieve it.”
Y/N stopped chewing.
Loki smiled.
Slowly.
Smugly.
“You said you didn’t touch it.”
“I did not.”
“But you know where it is.”
“I possess eyes.”
She pointed at him with the remaining half of her sandwich. “You better leave it alone.”
“I have no desire to inhale burning shrubbery.”
“Good.”
“…Unless curiosity compels me.”
“Loki.”
“Or pain.”
“You don’t even know how to smoke.”
“A skill I am certain I could master.”
Y/N narrowed her eyes.
He took another bite of his sandwich, looking unbearably pleased with himself.
“You know,” she said, “I liked you better when you were unconscious.”
“A lie.”
“See? This is why people hit you.”
“So far, only you.”
“Give it time.”
Loki regarded her across the table.
The apartment was bright with midday sun now, and the tension that had filled it hours earlier had faded into something stranger.
Not comfort.
Not yet.
But the beginnings of familiarity.
He had cleaned while she slept.
She had woken and made him lunch.
He insulted her home.
She threatened to withhold illegal flowers.
It was absurdly domestic for two people who had met beside a crater less than twelve hours earlier.
Y/N finished her sandwich and stood to rinse her plate.
Behind her, Loki spoke. “Why keep something that places you at risk?”
She turned on the faucet. “Because I like it.”
“That is your entire justification?”
“…Uh-huh. Pretty much.”
“No elaborate philosophy?”
“Nope.”
“No rebellion against your rulers?”
“I’m not starting a revolution, Loki. I just like getting high sometimes.”
He appeared disappointed by the lack of deeper meaning.
Y/N glanced back at him. “You really do make everything complicated.”
“And you make everything simple.”
“Someone has to.”
Their eyes met.
For a moment, Loki said nothing.
Then his attention lowered to the sandwich still in his hand.
“Yes,” he murmured. “Perhaps someone does.”
“Exactly.”
. . .
Y/N had exactly forty-three minutes before she needed to leave for work.
Which should have been plenty of time.
It was not.
She stood in front of her bathroom mirror with a toothbrush between her teeth, attempting to pull her hair into something resembling an intentional style while Loki occupied the hallway directly outside the door.
“Do you always prepare for labor with such urgency?” he asked.
Y/N spat toothpaste into the sink.
“I overslept.”
“You rose at midday.”
“I work late.”
“You also slept late.”
“Thank you for explaining how sleep works.”
Loki leaned one shoulder against the wall, arms folded across his chest. He had put his repaired clothing back on, though he had left most of the armor stacked neatly beside the couch.
The dark fabric and leather made him look slightly less out of place than the full green-and-gold armor had, but only slightly.
He still looked like he had wandered out of a medieval war and into a second-floor apartment in New Mexico.
Y/N wiped her mouth and reached for her makeup bag.
Loki watched her pull out a tube of mascara. “What is that?”
“Makeup.”
“For what purpose?”
“To look less tired.”
“You remain tired.”
“Yes, but now people might not know.”
He considered that. “So it’s deception.”
“It’s mascara.”
“A cosmetic deception.”
Y/N twisted around to look at him. “Do you have to classify everything I do as some form of manipulation?”
“You conceal exhaustion by altering your appearance.”
“I’m putting black stuff on my eyelashes, Loki. I’m not overthrowing a government.”
“Not with that attitude.”
She stared at him for a moment.
Then she turned back to the mirror before he could see her smile.
It was strange how quickly his presence had begun to feel less alarming.
Not normal.
There was nothing normal about having a god watching her get ready for a closing shift.
But familiar, somehow.
He had been in her home for less than a day and already behaved as though every decision she made required examination.
Y/N applied mascara to one eye.
Loki continued watching.
Y/N lowered the mascara in her hand. “You’re making me nervous.”
“I have done nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“I am observing.”
“That’s staring.”
His reflection regarded hers in the mirror. “You alter only the area surrounding your eyes.”
“I’m going to work, not a wedding.”
“What has marriage to do with it?”
“Nothing. It means I’m not doing full makeup.”
“And your employers require this?”
“No.”
“Then why bother?”
Y/N lowered the mascara wand. “Because I like how it looks.”
He seemed almost disappointed by the uncomplicated answer. “That’s all?”
“That is all.”
His gaze remained on her reflection. “It is pleasing.”
Her hand stopped.
Y/N looked at him through the mirror.
Loki’s expression revealed nothing. He had delivered the compliment as though offering an objective assessment of the weather.
“What?”
“The darkening around your eyes,” he said. “It suits you.”
“Oh.” She turned back toward the sink, suddenly more interested in returning the mascara to its tube than necessary. “Thanks.”
Loki tilted his head slightly, studying the warmth rising in her cheeks.
Y/N immediately changed the subject.
“So, about tonight.”
His expression sharpened.
“You’re welcome to stay here while I’m at work.”
“I require no permission.”
“You do when it’s my apartment.”
His lips pressed together.
Y/N stepped around him and returned to her bedroom. Loki followed as far as the doorway while she pulled on her diner uniform shirt.
“You can stay,” she continued, buttoning it, “or you can leave. I’m not holding you prisoner.”
“We established that I am presently unable to depart this realm.”
“I meant the apartment.”
“I am aware.”
She tucked the shirt into her pants and glanced toward him. “But there are rules.”
Loki’s brow lifted. “You propose rules for me?”
“Yes.”
“A prince of Asgard.”
“A prince of Asgard who is sleeping on my couch.”
His expression cooled.
Y/N began counting on her fingers. “You’re not allowed to touch my weed.”
“I have no interest in your foul-smelling vegetation.”
“You were asking a lot of questions about it.”
“Curiosity is not desire.”
“Good. Then leaving it alone should be easy.”
She lifted a second finger. “And you’re not allowed past the kitchen entryway.”
Loki stared at her.
“What?”
“Kitchen, living room and bathroom are fine. My bedroom is off-limits.”
“You left me unattended in your dwelling, yet fear I may enter one particular chamber?”
“I don’t fear it. I’m telling you not to.”
“What do you conceal there?”
“My stuff.”
“A compelling mystery.”
“It isn’t a mystery. It’s clothes, homework and laundry.”
“Then why prohibit entry?”
“Because it’s private.”
Loki’s expression remained unreadable.
Y/N narrowed her eyes. “…You already went in there, didn’t you?”
His silence answered her.
Her mouth fell open. “You did.”
“I sought to determine whether you had been truthful.”
“You opened my door while I was sleeping?”
“You might have been plotting against me.”
“I was unconscious.”
“Yes. I discovered that.”
Y/N stared at him in disbelief. “And you didn’t think to mention this?”
“It appeared unnecessary.”
She grabbed a hairbrush from her dresser and pointed it at him. “No bedroom.”
“I have already seen it.”
“That doesn’t mean you get to go back.”
“I could enter without your knowledge.”
“You could also not be creepy.”
The word seemed to offend him more than any threat had. “I was not being creepy.”
“You watched me sleep.”
“I confirmed that you slept.”
“From the doorway?”
Loki hesitated for half a second.
Y/N’s eyes widened.
“You came inside?”
“I took several steps.”
“Loki!”
“You were unharmed.”
“That’s not the point!”
“It is very much the point.”
She lifted the hairbrush as though considering throwing it.
Loki’s eyes flicked toward it. “Do not.”
“You’d catch it.”
“I would.”
“That would somehow make me angrier.”
Y/N set it down with deliberate care. “No weed. No bedroom. Don’t answer the door, don’t touch the stove, and don’t use my phone to call another realm.”
“Your device is incapable of such communication.”
“Good. One less concern.”
Loki remained in the doorway while she gathered her purse and searched for her keys. “And if I elect not to remain here?”
Y/N looked up. “Then come with me.”
“To the establishment where you serve food?”
“The diner.”
“I recall.”
“You’d have to sit there for several hours, though.”
“I have endured longer periods in less dignified locations.”
“Great. Then you can keep me company.”
His gaze sharpened slightly at the words.
Y/N did not notice. She was too busy searching beneath a stack of papers.
“Where are my keys?”
“Beside the entry.”
She stopped. “How do you know?”
“I placed them there.”
“Of course you did.”
She walked into the living room and found them centered neatly on the small table beside the door.
Loki followed.
Y/N glanced over his repaired Asgardian clothing.
“You can’t wear that.”
His expression turned dangerous. “Why not?”
“Because everyone will stare at you.”
“They already do.”
“More than usual.”
“That is hardly my concern.”
“It becomes my concern when my manager thinks I brought a fantasy convention performer to work.”
Loki looked down at himself. “These are the garments of Asgardian royalty.”
“And they’re very nice.”
“Nice?”
“Beautiful. Majestic. Extremely prince-like.”
He eyed her suspiciously.
“But you’ll look insane in a roadside diner.”
His mouth tightened.
Y/N opened the small closet by the front door and searched through several jackets. “I might still have some of my ex-boyfriend’s clothes.”
Silence fell behind her.
Y/N continued digging. “He left a box here after we broke up. I told him to pick it up, but he never—”
“You intend for me to wear another man’s castoffs?”
She glanced back.
Loki stood perfectly still.
There was something almost affronted in his expression.
“They’re just clothes.”
“They belonged to a man who shared your affections.”
“Past tense.”
“That alters little.”
“It alters the entire situation.”
“I will not wear them.”
Y/N shrugged and turned back toward the closet. “Then stay here.”
“I did not say I would remain.”
“You can’t go to work dressed like that.”
“Your realm places an astonishing amount of importance upon unremarkable fabric.”
“Says the man offended by the idea of wearing jeans.”
“I’m offended by the idea of wearing his jeans.”
The emphasis was unmistakable.
Y/N slowly looked over her shoulder. “Are you jealous of a guy you’ve never met?”
Loki’s expression became glacial. “Don’t be absurd.”
“You sound jealous.”
“I possess no reason to envy a Midgardian foolish enough to lose your favor.”
The words landed between them.
Y/N blinked.
Loki appeared to realize what he had said at the same moment she did.
His posture stiffened.
She tried not to smile. “That almost sounded like another compliment.”
“It was an insult directed toward him.”
“Sure.”
“I will not wear his clothes.”
“Then what are you going to wear?”
Loki looked at her for a long moment.
Then green light shimmered across his body.
Y/N stumbled backward into the closet door.
The magic moved over him like water, dissolving the repaired Asgardian layers and replacing them piece by piece.
Dark trousers appeared first, fitted cleanly through the legs. A pale striped dress shirt formed over his chest, buttoned neatly to the throat beneath a black tie. A patterned scarf settled around his neck before a long, dark overcoat swept over his shoulders.
The glow faded.
Loki stood before her dressed as though he belonged in an expensive office in some colder, more sophisticated city.
His hair had changed too, no longer hanging loose around his shoulders. It was swept back neatly, leaving his sharp features fully exposed.
Y/N forgot what she had been saying.
The outfit should have looked too formal for a diner.
Instead, it made him look effortlessly elegant.
The coat broadened his shoulders, while the fitted shirt and trousers emphasized the lean lines of his body. The scarf gave the entire appearance something polished and strangely modern without making him look ordinary.
Nothing could make Loki look ordinary.
He adjusted one cuff.
“This should satisfy your realm’s arbitrary expectations.”
Y/N continued staring.
His gaze lifted to hers.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“A lie.”
She looked him over again before she could stop herself.
The dark coat.
The narrow tie.
The pale shirt against his skin.
The sharp sweep of his hair.
He looked less like someone she had dragged from a crater and more like the sort of man who walked into a room already knowing everyone would turn to look.
And they would.
They absolutely would.
“You look…” Y/N stopped.
Loki’s eyebrows rose. “I look?”
“…Normal.”
His eyes narrowed. “That was poorly delivered.”
“No, I mean—” She gestured toward him. “You look good.”
A trace of satisfaction entered his expression. “I am aware.”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course you are.”
“You were staring.”
“I was checking the clothes.”
“With your mouth open.”
Y/N immediately closed it. “It was not.”
Loki stepped closer.
It was only one step, but the small living room suddenly felt much smaller.
His eyes moved over her face, openly amused now. “You find this form pleasing.”
“This form?”
“The attire.”
“Oh.” She cleared her throat. “It’s fine.”
“Fine?”
“Appropriate.”
“You called it good moments ago.”
“I changed my mind.”
“No, you became embarrassed.”
“I am not embarrassed.”
His gaze dipped briefly toward the color in her cheeks. “You are.”
Y/N grabbed her purse from the table and pushed past him.
“We’re going to be late.”
“I was unaware gods were required to obey your work schedule.”
“You are when you’re riding in my car.”
Loki followed her toward the door, looking far too pleased with himself.
Y/N unlocked it and stepped onto the landing.
Behind her, he paused. “You have neglected one matter.”
She turned. “What?”
“Your restrictions.”
“What about them?”
“If I accompany you, I cannot violate them.”
“That’s the point.”
“Then perhaps your insistence upon my presence was a calculated maneuver.”
She stared at him. “I gave you two choices.”
“And clearly preferred one.”
“I did not.”
Loki stepped outside and pulled the apartment door closed behind him.
“You offered another man’s clothing knowing I would refuse.”
“I didn’t know you’d get weirdly territorial.”
“I am not territorial.”
“You called his clothes castoffs like they personally offended your bloodline.”
“They did.”
Y/N locked the door.
When she looked up, Loki was standing beside her beneath the harsh afternoon sun, dressed in his dark coat as though the New Mexico heat had no authority over him.
She gave him another involuntary once-over.
He caught it immediately. “Again.”
“Walk.”
Loki smiled. It was small, smug and infuriatingly attractive.
Y/N headed toward the stairs before he could see her smiling too.
. . .
By the time the afternoon rush began, Loki had decided that the diner was an insult to nearly every one of his senses. The coffee smelled burnt. The lights hummed overhead. The vinyl seats stuck faintly to the backs of his thighs. And the small metal bell beside the register made an irritating chime every time someone struck it, despite the fact that Y/N was almost always standing close enough to hear them speak.
He sat on the counter near the register with one polished shoe resting against the cabinet beneath him, looking far too elegant for the faded diner around him.
Y/N placed a white ceramic mug beside his hand and filled it from the coffee pot. “Here.”
Loki glanced down at the black liquid. “This is the same substance you consumed last night.”
“Technically.”
“It smells worse.”
“That’s because this pot’s been sitting for an hour.”
His expression sharpened with distaste. “Then why have you offered it to me?”
“Because you’ve been asking what every single thing is, and I’m trying to keep you occupied.”
Loki lifted the mug by its handle, inspecting it before taking a cautious sip. His face immediately tightened.
Y/N laughed. “You don’t have to drink it.”
“This is coffee?”
“Diner coffee.”
“That distinction appears significant.”
“It is.”
He took another sip anyway.
Y/N reached beneath the counter for a stack of clean menus. “And do not smash the cup when you’re finished.”
Loki slowly looked at her. “Why would I smash it?”
“You already did it at my apartment.”
“That vessel was empty.”
“So?”
“In Asgard, one casts down the cup and calls for another.”
Y/N stared at him. “You threw my favorite mug on the floor.”
“You had several.”
“It said World’s Okayest Student.”
“I spared you further humiliation.”
She slapped a menu against his knee. “Do not smash this one.”
Loki glanced at the mug. “And if I desire another?”
“You ask.”
His mouth twisted. “Simply ask?”
“Yes.”
“No dramatic declaration?”
“No.”
“No raised voice?”
“No.”
“No destruction?”
“Definitely no destruction.”
He appeared almost disappointed. “…Well, that’s no fun.”
Y/N pointed at him. “You say, ‘May I have another cup of coffee, please?’”
Loki regarded her with the wounded dignity of a king being taught table manners by a child. “I am familiar with courtesy.”
“You nearly threw a knife at my toaster last night.”
“It startled me.”
“It popped bread.”
“Without warning.”
She shook her head and walked away before he could defend himself further.
Loki watched her cross the diner. She moved quickly between the tables, pouring coffee, collecting plates and offering the same bright smile to every person who entered, regardless of whether they deserved it.
Most did not.
A man at the counter complained that his eggs were not over easy. Y/N apologized and sent them back. A woman in the corner snapped her fingers at her for more syrup. Y/N brought it without comment. A family allowed their child to scatter crackers across the floor, then left without attempting to gather them. Y/N swept them up.
Loki’s irritation grew with every interaction. They spoke to her as though her presence was beneath acknowledgment, yet expected immediate obedience from her.
And she continued smiling.
When she passed the counter again, Loki caught her wrist lightly. “Why do you permit them to speak to you in this manner?”
She followed his gaze toward the man still complaining about his replacement egg. “Because I’m working.”
“That does not answer the question.”
“It does here.”
“They behave as though you belong to them.”
“They’re customers.”
“That word does not improve them.”
Y/N pulled her wrist free and gathered a fresh pot of coffee. “They pay for food. I bring it to them. At the end of the week, I get money.”
“You endure disrespect for coin?”
“Pretty much.”
Loki frowned. “Your realm is poorly arranged.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You could refuse.”
“And then I could get fired.”
“Then your employer is a fool.”
“My employer likes customers more than employees.”
“Another fool.”
She smiled. “Agreed.”
Loki watched her refill a cup. “What would occur if you simply commanded them to leave?”
“I don’t command anyone.”
“That is evident.”
Y/N gave him a look. “You’ve been here an hour. Try not to overthrow capitalism before dinner.”
“I know not what that is.”
“Good. Stay innocent.”
She walked away again.
Loki’s attention followed her despite himself. She looked tired. Still, she remembered every order. She asked an elderly couple whether they wanted more coffee before they had to call for her. She carried a heavy tray for another server who had briefly stopped by. She laughed when a child offered her a crayon drawing as payment.
The ease with which she offered kindness to strangers was as baffling as it had been the night before. Perhaps more so.
Loki had assumed her mercy toward him had been an exception born of unusual circumstances. Watching her now, he began to understand that it was simply how she moved through the world.
She helped because someone needed help. She smiled because hostility would cost her more energy. She endured because, as she had said, she needed the money.
Loki disliked that last part immensely.
The bell above the front door chimed.
A man entered alone and chose a booth near the back. He was perhaps twice Y/N’s age, broad through the shoulders and wearing a dusty work shirt with the sleeves cut away. His gaze found Y/N almost immediately.
Loki noticed.
Y/N approached with a menu. “What can I get you to drink?”
“Coffee.”
“Cream or sugar?”
“Just you, sweetheart.”
Y/N’s smile tightened, though it did not disappear. “I’ll bring the coffee.”
Loki lowered his mug.
The man watched her walk away. Not idly. His eyes remained fixed on her in a manner Loki recognized immediately.
Possessive without cause. Hungry without invitation.
When Y/N returned with the coffee, the man knocked a wrapped fork from the edge of the table. It landed near her feet.
“Sorry about that,” he said.
Y/N bent to pick it up. The man leaned sideways in the booth, openly staring at her backside.
Loki’s fingers tightened around the mug.
Y/N placed the silverware back on the table. “Anything else?”
“Not right now.”
She turned away.
The man waited until she had taken three steps, then swept a napkin from the table. It fluttered to the floor. “Miss?”
Y/N stopped.
He pointed downward. “Dropped something.”
Loki’s expression went cold.
Y/N looked at the napkin. Then at the man. She knew. That much was obvious. But she walked back anyway, crouched and picked it up without comment.
The man grinned as she straightened.
Loki set his mug down. Carefully. He had been explicitly instructed not to smash it.
Y/N returned to the counter and shoved the napkin into the trash.
“You’re aware,” Loki said.
She wiped down the coffee pot. “Of what?”
“Do not insult me.”
She sighed. “Just ignore him.”
“He is intentionally dropping objects so that he may observe you.”
“I know.”
“And yet you comply.”
“He’s going to leave eventually.”
“That’s not sufficient.”
“It has to be. For now.”
Loki looked toward the booth. The man was still staring.
“No,” Loki said quietly. “It does not.”
Y/N pointed the cleaning cloth at him. “Do not do anything.”
“I have done nothing.”
“That’s why I’m saying it now.”
“He’s an idiot, not an enemy soldier.”
Loki’s eyes remained on the man. “The distinction appears narrow to me.”
“Loki.”
He looked back at her.
“Stay here.”
The command made one eyebrow rise. “I beg your pardon?”
She sighed. “Please stay here.”
The addition appeared to satisfy him only marginally.
Y/N picked up a pitcher of water and returned to the floor. Loki watched.
The man found another reason to call her over moments later. Ketchup this time, despite there already being a bottle at the end of his table.
Y/N brought him another.
He smiled up at her. “You got a boyfriend?”
“Nope.”
Loki’s gaze sharpened.
“Pretty girl like you?” the man continued.
“I’m busy, sir.”
“I can see that.”
His eyes traveled down her body again. Y/N stepped away from the table.
As she passed him, the man lifted his hand and struck her backside.
The sound carried across the diner.
Y/N froze.
So did Loki.
For one perfect second, the entire room seemed to stop.
Y/N turned slowly.
The man laughed, raising both hands. “Come on. Just playing around.”
Loki slid from the counter. Not even flinching from the pain in his side from standing.
There was no dramatic motion. No visible magic. One moment he was seated near the register. The next, he was walking across the diner with such deliberate calm that the absence of anger in his face became far more frightening than rage would have been.
Y/N saw him approaching. “Loki.”
He did not stop.
The man glanced past her. “What’s his problem?”
Loki stepped beside Y/N. Up close, he seemed taller than he had from the counter. The dark coat sharpened the line of his shoulders, and the fluorescent lights caught the green of his eyes.
“You will remove your hand,” Loki said.
The man looked down at his own lap, confused. “From what?”
“From your body.”
Y/N’s eyes widened. “Loki.”
The man laughed uneasily. “What the hell is this?”
“You touched her without permission.”
“Relax, Dracula. It was a joke.”
Loki leaned slightly closer. Nothing in his posture appeared hurried. That made it worse.
“I have heard jokes,” he said. “They are generally intended to inspire amusement.”
The man’s smile faded. “Back off.”
Loki’s gaze dropped briefly to the man’s hand. “I could remove the offending limb. I have several blades to choose from—“
Y/N grabbed Loki’s sleeve. “No.”
The man shoved himself upright in the booth. “Did he just threaten me?”
“Yes,” Y/N said. “But he’s leaving.”
“I am doing no such thing.”
She tugged his arm. “Loki, go sit down.”
His head turned slowly toward her. The look he gave her might have frightened armies.
Y/N did not release him. “Now.”
“He struck you.”
“I know.”
“And you would have me ignore it.”
“I would have you not dismember a customer during my shift.”
“He is fortunate that is all I proposed.”
The man stood. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
Loki turned back toward him.
Y/N stepped directly between them. “Nope.”
His gaze dropped to her. She placed one hand against his chest and pushed. Loki did not move. Naturally. But he looked down at her hand as though the contact itself had surprised him.
“Go sit at the counter,” she said.
“He has not apologized.”
“He’s not going to.”
“Then I will provide encouragement.”
“No magic,” she whispered to him.
“I require none. Just a blade will do.”
Behind her, the man scoffed.
Y/N felt Loki’s body tense beneath her palm. She pressed more firmly against his chest and lowered her voice. “Please.”
That stopped him.
Not immediately.
His eyes remained fixed over her shoulder, cold with the promise of consequences. Then his attention returned to her face.
“You ask me to tolerate this.”
“I’m asking you not to make it worse for me.”
The anger in his expression shifted. Not vanished. Shifted. He understood the distinction.
If he hurt the man, Y/N would be blamed. She could lose the money she needed. Perhaps the employment itself.
Loki looked once more at the customer. “You will not touch her again.”
The man rolled his eyes, though he did not seem willing to answer.
Loki took one step forward.
Y/N pushed both hands against his chest. “Loki. Seat. Counter.”
His jaw tightened.
“Now.”
For several seconds, neither moved.
Then Loki allowed her to guide him backward.
It was not obedience, he told himself.
It was a strategic withdrawal made solely because she had requested it.
Y/N kept a hand around his arm until they reached the register. “Sit.”
He looked at the counter stool. Then at her. “I am not an animal to be commanded.”
“Then stop acting like a guard dog.”
“That man placed his hand upon you.”
“I noticed.”
“And you expect no consequence.”
“I expect him to tip badly and die alone.”
Loki stared at her.
Y/N lowered her voice. “I appreciate that you wanted to defend me.”
“Defend you? I intended to punish him.”
“That’s still defending me.”
“It is not.”
“Yeah-huh.”
He looked back toward the booth. The man had returned to his coffee, though he now kept both hands clearly visible on the table.
Y/N nudged Loki toward the stool. He finally sat.
She picked up his mug. It was empty. “You finished this.”
“I did.”
“And you didn’t smash it.”
His eyes moved to hers. “I exercised remarkable restraint.”
“You really did.”
Y/N lifted the coffee pot. “Would you like another?”
Loki glanced toward the rude customer one final time. Then back at her. His expression remained severe, but when he spoke, the words were controlled. “May I have another cup of coffee, please?”
Y/N smiled. “See? You’re learning.”
She poured it for him.
Loki watched her replace the pot. “He should consider himself fortunate.”
“He should.”
“Had you not intervened—”
“I know.”
“…I would not have killed him.”
“…Probably.”
Y/N raised an eyebrow. “Loki.”
“What?”
“You don’t sound convincing. At all.”
He wrapped one hand around the warm mug. “I would merely have ensured he remembered the encounter.”
“How?”
Loki took a sip.
Y/N waited.
His eyes gleamed above the rim.
“Drink your coffee,” she said.
A faint smile touched his mouth.
Across the diner, the customer signaled for his check. He did not ask Y/N to pick up anything else.
Y/N left Loki at the counter with a pointed look. “Behave.”
Loki lifted the mug toward her in a gesture of solemn agreement. “I have done nothing.”
“Yet.” She narrowed her eyes at him before turning away to carry the customer’s check toward the register.
Loki waited until her back was turned.
The man in the booth was muttering beneath his breath as he dug through his wallet, casting irritated glances toward the counter. His coffee sat near the edge of the table.
Still steaming.
Loki’s fingers shifted subtly around his own mug. A faint ripple of green passed between them, invisible to every mortal eye in the diner.
The man’s cup tipped.
Hot coffee poured directly into his lap.
He gave a strangled shout and shot upright, knocking his knees against the underside of the table. “What the hell?”
Coffee streamed from his jeans and spread across the vinyl seat before splashing onto the tile below.
Y/N spun around from the register. “Oh, my God.”
The man stumbled out of the booth, swearing loudly as he tried to brush the scalding liquid from his pants. His boot landed directly in the puddle.
The sole slipped.
His arms flew outward.
For one brief, magnificent moment, he remained suspended between standing and falling, his face twisted in horrified realization.
Then he hit the floor.
Hard.
The crash rattled the table.
Y/N pressed both lips together.
Loki took a slow drink of coffee.
The man groaned and rolled onto his side, clutching the edge of the booth as he attempted to drag himself upright. “What is wrong with this place?”
Loki’s gaze remained fixed on the window. A deeply satisfied smile curved across his mouth.
Y/N hurried over, though she made no attempt to conceal how little sympathy she felt. “Are you okay?”
“Does it look like I’m okay?”
“It looks like you spilled your coffee.”
“I didn’t spill it. It just fell over!”
Loki’s smile widened behind his cup.
Y/N glanced toward him.
He immediately smoothed his expression into one of innocent disinterest.
She looked back at the customer. “Cups don’t usually do that on their own.”
“That’s what I’m saying!”
The man managed to stand, keeping one hand pressed against the table for balance. His face was red from pain and humiliation, while the front of his jeans was soaked dark.
Y/N retrieved a stack of napkins from the neighboring table and offered them.
He snatched them from her hand. “I’m not paying for that coffee.”
“I’ll take it off the check.”
“And I want to speak to your manager.”
“They’re not here.”
“Of course they’re not.”
The man roughly wiped at his pants, then shoved several bills onto the table. He had left enough for the meal.
No tip.
Naturally.
He limped toward the exit, muttering about lawsuits.
As he passed the counter, Loki inclined his head. “Do take care.”
The man stopped. He looked at Loki’s composed face, then at the coffee in his hand. Something suspicious flickered across his expression. “You.”
Loki raised one eyebrow. “I?”
“You did something.”
“With your coffee?”
“My coffee.”
Loki looked toward the abandoned booth before chuckling. “…Your clumsiness is hardly my responsibility.”
“I wasn’t clumsy!”
“Your current position suggests otherwise.”
The man stepped toward him.
Y/N immediately moved between them again. “Okay. You’re leaving.”
“I want him out too.”
“You don’t own the diner and he didn’t do anything.”
Loki’s eyes slid toward her.
Y/N avoided meeting them.
The man pointed at Loki. “He was staring at me.”
“I assure you,” Loki said, “there was little worth observing.”
Y/N covered a cough with her fist.
The customer glared at both of them before storming toward the door. His wet shoes squeaked across the floor with every step.
The bell above the entrance gave one final cheerful chime as he shoved it open and disappeared into the parking lot.
Y/N watched through the window until he climbed into his truck. Then she turned slowly toward Loki.
He sat exactly where she had left him, holding his cup with both hands as though he had spent the entire incident peacefully enjoying his drink.
She walked back to the counter. “What did you do?”
Loki looked up at her. “I have been sitting here.”
“Not what I asked.”
“I drank my coffee.”
“Loki.”
“It remains as unpleasant as the first.”
She planted both palms on the counter. “Did you knock his cup over?”
His green eyes widened with expertly manufactured offense. “From here?”
“You do magic.”
“So you have repeatedly observed.”
“And then he happened to slip.”
“Well that was because the floor was wet.”
“…Because his coffee spilled.”
“A sequence of unfortunate events.”
Y/N stared at him.
He met her gaze without flinching.
A tiny smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
She saw it. “You did.”
“I have admitted nothing.”
“You look way too pleased with yourself.”
Loki took another sip. “The man received an important lesson regarding unwanted advances and proper balance.”
Y/N shook her head.
She should have been angry. He had used magic in the middle of her workplace after she explicitly told him not to make the situation worse. The customer could complain. Her manager could review the incident. Something could have gone wrong.
But then she remembered the hand striking her backside.
The laughter afterward.
Just playing around.
Her annoyance weakened. “Did you burn him?”
“Nothing lasting.”
“Did you make him fall?”
“I merely allowed gravity to complete what his own incompetence began.”
“That means yes.”
“It means your realm possesses reliable natural laws.”
Y/N stared at him for another second. Then she picked up a cleaning cloth and headed toward the spill.
“Okay, well, I’m not cleaning the whole thing alone.”
Loki looked toward the puddle. “You cannot possibly expect—”
“You caused it.”
“Allegedly.”
“Bring the mop.”
“I am a prince.”
“And I’m a Midgardian slob. Get the mop.”
His eyes narrowed.
Y/N held his gaze.
Eventually, Loki slipped down from the counter with a look of profound offense. “…Where is this instrument?”
“Supply closet beside the bathrooms.”
He walked away with the stiff dignity of someone marching toward an execution.
Y/N waited until he disappeared around the corner before allowing herself to smile.
The guy had deserved it. Maybe not the hot coffee. Maybe not the fall. But something.
A few minutes later, Loki returned carrying the mop as though it were a weapon too primitive to deserve his touch.
Y/N took it from him. “Thank you.”
“You are enjoying this.”
“A little.”
“I defended your honor.”
“You spilled coffee on a creep.”
“A distinction without consequence.”
She crouched to gather the fallen cup.
Loki stood beside her, watching the diner door through which the man had departed.
Defended her honor.
The phrase lingered.
A memory surfaced before he could dismiss it.
Asgard. After he had just killed Laufey. Thor standing in front of him, changed by his brief exile to Earth. Softer, Loki had thought. Weakened by sentiment and mortal affection.
He remembered circling his brother with cruel amusement, eager to find the source of that transformation.
What happened to you on Earth that turned you so soft? Don’t tell me it was that woman.
Thor’s silence had been answer enough.
Oh! It was! Well, maybe, when we’re finished here, I’ll pay her a visit myself!
At the time, Loki had enjoyed the threat for what it did to Thor’s face. He had regarded his brother’s attachment to a Midgardian woman as another weakness, proof that Thor had lost the resolve required of a king.
And now Loki stood in a roadside diner, dressed in Midgardian clothes, holding cleaning supplies because a mortal woman had commanded him to do so.
Worse, he felt satisfied.
Not merely because the man had been humiliated.
Because Y/N had been defended.
Her pride restored in the smallest possible measure.
Loki’s mouth flattened.
The realization was deeply inconvenient.
Y/N rose with the broken pieces of napkin holder in one hand. “You’re doing the face again.”
His attention returned to her. “What face?”
“The one where you disappear into your own head and get mad at whatever you find there.”
“I am not angry.”
“Brooding, then.”
“I do not brood.”
She glanced at his dark coat, swept-back hair and severe expression. “You’re dressed like the physical embodiment of brooding. You’re a brooder.”
Loki took the mop from her with more force than necessary. “Attend to your duties.”
She smiled. “Yes, Your Highness.”
He pushed the mop through the puddle, sending a thin wave of coffee across the tile.
Y/N watched him struggle with the handle. “You’ve never used one of those, have you?”
“I understand the concept.”
“You’re making it worse.”
“The instrument is poorly designed.”
“Let me—”
“I said I understand.”
“Loki. You’re holding it upside down.”
Loki looked at the mop. Then at her.
Y/N bit the inside of her cheek.
He silently turned it around.
She walked away before she laughed in his face.
Loki watched her return to the counter, smiling to herself as she reached for the coffee pot. His irritation should have returned.
Instead, he found himself watching the easy movement of her shoulders, the looseness that had replaced the tension from earlier.
She knew what he had done.
She had chosen not to condemn him for it.
Perhaps Thor’s softness had not been weakness after all.
The thought was intolerable.
Loki shoved the mop across the floor with unnecessary force.
Still, when Y/N glanced back at him and smiled, he smiled too.
You wake up and realize you are now a character in a story authored by you. Reblog and write in the tags how concerned you are about what’s likely to happen to you based on the author’s past work.
You accidently teleport into a book- not knowing it's smut and come face to face with Loki who is very much convinced on keeping you from returning home
💬 17 🔁 15 ❤️ 274 · Like You Mean It (Loki Love Story) Ch.1 · Summary: You accidently teleport into a book- not knowing it's smut and come
synapse: after falling from the shattered bifrost, a wounded loki awakens in the home of an ordinary midgardian whose simple act of kindness begins to challenge everything he believes about trust, honesty, and humanity
a/n: saw my man in the doomsday trailer and had to write for him
. . .
By eleven-thirty, Y/N had wiped down every table in the diner twice.
The chairs were flipped upside down over the booths and tables, the coffee machines had been cleaned, and the neon OPEN sign in the front window had been switched off nearly an hour ago. Outside, the empty highway stretched through the desert in both directions, illuminated only by the occasional passing headlights and the pale glow of the moon.
It was the kind of road people used to get somewhere else.
Few ever stopped unless they needed gas, coffee, or a bathroom.
Y/N had been working at the diner long enough to recognize the different types of travelers who came through: exhausted truck drivers, families with screaming children, couples who had clearly been arguing for the past fifty miles and college students attempting road trips in cars that looked one pothole away from collapsing.
Tonight had been unusually quiet.
Her manager had left shortly after closing, trusting Y/N to finish counting the register and lock up. The cook had disappeared through the back door ten minutes after that, leaving behind a cloud of cigarette smoke and a reminder not to forget the lights over the grill.
Now the diner belonged entirely to her.
She had claimed the booth nearest the counter, one leg tucked beneath her as she stared at the open laptop in front of her. A half-finished cup of coffee sat beside it, cold enough that the thin layer of creamer on top had begun to separate.
Three paragraphs remained between her and freedom.
Technically, five pages remained between her and freedom, but she had decided not to think about that.
Y/N leaned closer to the screen, squinting at the sentence she had rewritten four separate times.
The significance of—
She deleted it.
The historical importance of—
Delete.
“This is stupid,” she muttered.
Her professor had given the class two weeks to complete the assignment. Naturally, Y/N had spent thirteen days thinking about starting it and was now attempting to finish the entire thing during closing shifts at the diner.
The cursor blinked mockingly at her.
Y/N reached for her coffee, took one sip, and immediately grimaced.
“Disgusting.”
She drank it again anyway.
A faint rumble rolled somewhere in the distance.
At first, she assumed it was thunder.
The monsoon clouds had been gathering along the horizon since sunset, though they had yet to offer anything beyond a few flashes of lightning and enough humidity to make her hair cling to the back of her neck.
Y/N returned her attention to the laptop.
The significance of Norse mythology—
A blinding streak of light flashed past the diner windows.
She barely had time to lift her head before something struck the earth outside with a tremendous crash.
The windows rattled in their frames.
Silverware clattered inside its plastic trays. Her coffee tipped over, spreading across the table and soaking the corner of her notebook.
Y/N jumped from the booth with a sharp cry.
“What the hell?”
The lights flickered once.
Twice.
Then steadied.
Y/N remained frozen beside the booth, staring through the darkened windows.
For several seconds, there was nothing.
No second impact. No explosion. No vehicle skidding across the pavement.
Only silence.
The coffee continued dripping from the edge of the table and onto the floor.
Y/N slowly closed her laptop before the spreading liquid could reach it. Her pulse beat hard against her throat as she stepped away from the booth.
Maybe a transformer had blown.
Except the diner still had power.
Maybe someone had crashed nearby.
That possibility forced her feet into motion.
She hurried behind the counter and crouched, reaching beneath the register until her fingers closed around the wooden baseball bat her manager kept there.
He had claimed it was for protection.
Y/N had always thought it was more likely to get them sued.
Tonight, however, the weight of it in her hands felt reassuring.
She moved toward the front door and stopped with her fingers wrapped around the lock.
Calling the police would be the sensible thing to do.
She pulled her phone from the pocket of her apron.
No Service.
“Of course.”
She raised it over her head as though six additional inches might convince the nearest tower to acknowledge her existence.
Nothing.
The diner sat in one of those inconvenient dead zones where calls only went through if someone stood near the old vending machines outside and held their phone at exactly the right angle.
Y/N considered remaining inside.
Whatever had happened could wait until she found service.
Then she imagined someone trapped inside a wrecked car while she stood ten yards away debating whether it was safe to investigate.
She swore softly and unlocked the door.
Hot desert air rushed inside.
Y/N tightened both hands around the bat as she stepped into the parking lot. Gravel crunched beneath her sneakers. The overhead lights buzzed faintly, attracting moths and small flying insects that threw shifting shadows across the asphalt.
“Hello?”
No answer.
She looked toward the highway.
The road was empty.
There were no headlights, no tire marks and no wreckage scattered across the pavement. Whatever had caused the impact had come from somewhere else.
Y/N’s eyes shifted toward the stretch of desert behind the diner.
A faint haze of dust hung over the ground.
Beyond the last row of parking spaces, something had carved a shallow trench through the sand and scattered rocks in every direction. Sparse bushes had been flattened along its path.
Y/N stared at it.
“Nope.”
She took one step backward.
Then she heard it.
A low, strained sound coming from somewhere beyond the edge of the parking lot.
It might have been a groan.
The bat lowered slightly in her hands.
“Hello?”
Still no response.
Y/N approached the disturbed ground with careful steps. The diner lights grew dimmer behind her as she followed the shallow trench into the darkness.
Her sneakers sank into the loose sand.
At the end of the trail, a dark shape lay crumpled between two desert shrubs.
Y/N stopped.
It was a person.
A man, she realized as she moved closer. He lay facedown in the sand with one arm bent unnaturally beneath him and long black hair obscuring most of his face.
His clothing caught the moonlight in brief flashes of green, black and gold.
Not clothing, exactly.
Armor.
Y/N’s grip tightened around the baseball bat.
For one absurd moment, she wondered whether the nearby Renaissance festival had started early.
Then she saw the blood.
It stained the side of his face and soaked through torn fabric beneath the metal plating around his shoulders. One of his hands was scraped raw, his fingers still curled as though they had been holding something moments before.
The bat slipped lower.
“Oh, shit.”
Y/N hurried the remaining distance and dropped to her knees beside him.
“Hey.”
She placed the bat within reach and cautiously touched two fingers to the side of his neck.
His skin was cold.
Not cool from the night air. Cold enough to make her instinctively pull her hand back.
Panic shot through her.
Then she felt it.
A pulse.
Slow, but present.
Y/N released a breath she had not realized she was holding.
“Okay. You’re alive.”
The stranger did not respond.
She leaned closer, watching for the movement of his back. His breathing was shallow and uneven, but he was breathing.
That was good.
Breathing meant not dead.
She could work with not dead.
Y/N pulled out her phone again and dialed 911 despite the empty bars in the corner of the screen.
The call immediately failed.
She stood and walked several paces away, raising the phone toward the sky.
“Come on. Come on.”
No service.
She tried closer to the diner.
Nothing.
Near the edge of the highway.
Still nothing.
Y/N looked back at the man lying motionless in the dirt.
The nearest hospital was at least forty minutes away. The nearest place she could reliably make a call was probably the gas station fifteen miles down the road.
She could drive there and call for help.
She could also return to find that he had stopped breathing while she was gone.
“Why did you have to land in the one place without a signal?” she demanded.
The unconscious man offered no explanation.
Y/N paced once across the gravel, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes.
She could not lift him.
Even from several feet away, she could tell he was tall. Lean, perhaps, but tall enough that attempting to carry him would end with both of them injured.
Dragging him across the sand would worsen whatever damage he had already suffered.
She stared at him, then at her car parked near the side of the diner.
An idea began to form.
It was not a good idea.
In fact, it was objectively one of the stupidest ideas she had ever entertained.
But it was technically an idea.
Y/N hurried toward her car and yanked open the back door. Fast-food wrappers, textbooks and an emergency sweatshirt occupied the seat. She pushed them aside before opening the trunk.
Her skateboard was buried beneath a reusable grocery bag and a case of bottled water.
She had not used it in months. The scratched deck was covered in faded stickers, and one of the wheels squeaked whenever it turned, but it remained mostly functional.
“Please don’t break,” she whispered, pulling it free.
Y/N carried the skateboard back across the parking lot and into the desert.
The stranger had not moved.
She placed the board beside him and crouched.
“Okay. Here’s what’s going to happen.”
He remained unconscious.
“I’m going to get you into my car, drive until I have service and call an ambulance. You’re not going to wake up and murder me.”
Nothing.
Y/N nodded.
“Great. Glad we agree.”
She rolled him carefully onto his back.
His face turned toward her.
Y/N paused.
Despite the blood streaking his temple and the bruises beginning to darken beneath his pale skin, he was—
Well.
He was unfairly attractive.
His features were sharp and almost elegant, from the high curve of his cheekbones to the severe line of his nose. Dark lashes rested against his skin. His long hair spread across the sand around him.
Y/N stared for one second too long.
Then she caught herself.
“Not relevant.”
His armor was unlike anything she had ever seen up close. The gold pieces were scratched and bent, while the green fabric beneath them had been torn in several places. It did not look like plastic or cheap costume metal.
It looked real.
Heavy, too.
That explained part of the problem.
Y/N slid her hands beneath his shoulders and attempted to lift him.
His upper body rose perhaps two inches before her arms began to shake.
“Oh, come on.”
She lowered him again and repositioned the skateboard closer.
The first attempt ended with one of his arms sliding from the board and dropping limply into the sand.
The second ended when the board rolled away from her.
On the third attempt, Y/N wedged one foot behind a wheel, hooked both hands beneath his arms and pulled with everything she had.
His shoulders landed across the deck.
The rest of him did not.
Y/N dropped onto the sand beside him, breathing heavily.
“Fuck. You could’ve been shorter.”
The stranger remained serenely unhelpful.
She climbed back to her feet, grabbed him beneath the arms again and dragged him another few inches onto the board. His legs extended far beyond the end, boots scraping lines through the sand.
It was not dignified.
It was not medically advisable.
It was, however, progress.
Y/N stepped back and examined her work.
His torso rested across the skateboard while his arms hung over either side and his heels remained on the ground.
She pulled off her apron, threaded it beneath his arms and tied it loosely across his chest to keep him from rolling off.
“There.”
He looked like the world’s most elaborate piece of luggage.
Y/N grabbed the front of the skateboard and began pulling.
The wheels sank immediately into the sand.
She stopped.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Y/N moved behind the board and pushed instead. It rolled several inches before catching on a rock and nearly throwing the stranger sideways.
She lunged forward and caught his shoulder.
“Absolutely not. I did not do all this just for you to crack your head open again.”
She dragged the board around the rock and continued.
. . .
Y/N unlocked the apartment with one hand while keeping one foot planted against the skateboard to stop it from rolling backward. Then she dragged him inside, kicked the door shut and leaned against it, breathing heavily.
Her living room was small.
A worn couch occupied one wall, facing a television balanced on a low wooden stand. Books and college papers covered the coffee table. A laundry basket sat abandoned near the hallway, half-filled with clean clothes she had not bothered folding.
It was not the setting in which one expected to receive a mysterious armored man.
It would have to do.
Getting him onto the couch took another ten minutes.
Once he was finally stretched across the cushions, Y/N stood over him with both hands braced against her lower back.
“There.”
He looked uncomfortable.
His legs extended beyond the armrest, and one of the metal pieces at his shoulder pressed awkwardly against his neck.
Y/N frowned.
The armor had to come off.
She hesitated.
Removing someone’s clothing without permission felt wrong.
Leaving blood-soaked material pressed against open injuries also felt wrong.
She crouched beside him and examined the clasps.
“I’m only doing this because I don’t want you to die. Not to be a pervert.”
The armor did not appear designed for easy removal.
Each piece overlapped another, secured with unfamiliar fastenings and narrow strips of dark leather. Y/N began with the gold shoulder plates, testing every buckle until one finally released.
The metal was colder than it should have been.
She placed each piece carefully on the floor beside the coffee table. Beneath the outer armor, the fabric was torn and damp with blood. A long cut ran beneath his ribs, while smaller abrasions covered his shoulders and arms.
Y/N swallowed.
“Okay.”
She found scissors in the kitchen and cut through the fabric where it had stuck to the wounds. When she reached the fitted leather around his waist, she paused again.
There was no way to clean everything properly without removing the rest.
Y/N looked at his face.
His breathing remained steady.
“You’re unconscious,” she reasoned quietly. “This is medical.”
She pointed at him.
“And you do not get to be weird about this later.”
She worked as quickly and respectfully as she could, keeping her eyes on the injuries rather than the man beneath the clothing.
That became more difficult when she discovered he wore nothing beneath the final layer.
Y/N immediately grabbed the throw blanket from the back of the couch and covered his lower half.
“Great.”
She stared at the ceiling for a moment.
“Of course.”
Once her face stopped burning, she returned to the task.
She cleaned the blood from his skin with warm water and the softest cloth she owned. His body was marked with bruises that had already darkened to deep shades of purple and blue, especially along his ribs and shoulders. None of his bones appeared obviously broken, though Y/N knew that meant very little.
His skin remained unnaturally cold.
She placed the back of her hand against his forehead.
No fever.
The opposite, if anything.
Y/N wrapped the worst cuts with gauze and secured the bandages with medical tape. She put antibiotic ointment on the shallower scrapes, covered the torn skin across his knuckles and cleaned the blood from his hairline.
At one point, his brow furrowed beneath her touch.
Y/N froze.
His eyes did not open.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
She finished the wound near his temple more gently.
Afterward, she washed his armor in the bathtub.
The water turned pink, then red, then gradually clear. Up close, the pieces looked even less like a costume. The metal was dense and beautifully worked, carved with patterns too intricate to have been manufactured cheaply. Even damaged, it seemed valuable enough to pay her rent for years.
Y/N left the armor to dry on towels across the bathroom floor.
The cloth and leather beneath it required more work.
Several seams had torn apart during his fall, and one sleeve had nearly separated from the shoulder. Y/N retrieved the small sewing kit she used to repair buttons and uniform hems, then sat cross-legged on the floor beside the couch.
The material resisted an ordinary needle.
She broke one attempting to push it through the thicker section.
“You are extremely inconvenient,” she told him.
The stranger did not respond.
She eventually found a heavy needle in the back of the kit and used black thread to close the worst tears. Her stitches were not elegant, but they held. Where the fabric had been too badly damaged, she reinforced it from the inside with pieces cut from an old black shirt.
It took nearly two hours.
By the time she finished, her eyes ached and the sky beyond the windows had begun to lighten at the edges.
Y/N placed the repaired clothing with the rest of the armor in the bathroom. Then she returned to the couch.
The stranger had not moved.
The blanket still covered him from the waist down, though one side had slipped low enough to expose his hip.
Y/N quickly pulled it back into place.
“There. Modesty.”
She added a second blanket over his chest, partly because of how cold he felt and partly because she did not want to walk into the living room later and discover that the first one had fallen away entirely.
She left a glass of water on the coffee table and moved the baseball bat within easy reach of the armchair.
Only then did she allow herself to breathe.
The apartment was quiet.
Too quiet.
Y/N checked the lock on the front door, then checked it again.
She did not think she could sleep.
Instead, she went into the kitchen and filled a kettle.
Tea seemed like something a normal person would make after finding an unconscious man in a crater.
Tea was calming.
Tea was harmless.
Tea did not ask why there was alien-looking armor drying in her bathroom.
Y/N leaned against the counter while the kettle heated, rubbing both hands over her face.
What was she going to do when he woke?
Ask his name.
Ask what happened.
Ask whether there was anyone she could call.
Then, depending on his answer, either drive him to the hospital or lock herself in the bathroom and climb out the window.
The kettle began to whistle.
She turned off the burner, poured the water over two tea bags and tried not to notice how badly her hands shook. One mug was for her. The other was for him, in case he woke and wanted something warm.
She had just added honey to the second cup when she heard movement in the living room.
A rustle of fabric.
Then silence.
Y/N went still.
The baseball bat was in the other room.
Excellent planning.
She reached for the largest kitchen knife instead.
A floorboard creaked.
Then another.
Slow footsteps approached the kitchen.
Y/N tightened her fingers around the handle.
A tall figure appeared in the doorway.
She looked up.
Her breath caught.
The stranger was awake.
He stood with one hand braced against the frame, dark hair falling loose around his shoulders. The bandage at his temple remained in place, though the one wrapped around his ribs had shifted slightly with his movement.
His eyes were sharp and startlingly green.
They swept across the kitchen in a single, assessing glance before settling on her.
He looked disoriented.
Not frightened.
Not confused in the helpless way she had expected.
He looked like an animal waking inside a trap and calculating how many people stood between him and the exit.
Y/N lowered the knife slightly.
“Hi.”
His gaze dropped to the blade.
Then returned to her face.
“Where am I?”
His voice was low and rough from disuse, but the words carried a precise, commanding weight that made her stand straighter without meaning to.
“My apartment.”
His expression hardened. “What realm?”
Y/N blinked. “New Mexico.”
His eyes narrowed.
“That was not my question.”
She stared at him. “Uh…Earth?”
A slight shift passed over his features.
“Midgard.”
He spoke the word as though confirming something unpleasant.
Y/N studied him more carefully.
He was pale and unsteady, but there was something unmistakably regal in the way he held himself. Even injured and wrapped in bandages, he looked as though he expected the room to accommodate his presence.
He took one step forward.
The movement drew her attention downward.
Y/N immediately turned toward the counter.
“Oh my God.”
The stranger stopped. “What?”
“You’re naked.”
Silence.
Y/N kept her eyes fixed on the tea.
Completely fixed.
She could still see him at the edge of her vision, which was far more than she wanted to see while attempting to have a conversation with him.
“You’re just—” She made a vague gesture with one hand. “You left the blanket.”
The stranger looked down at himself.
There was a pause.
Not embarrassment.
Merely acknowledgment. “As it would seem.”
Y/N glanced at him by accident.
Her gaze dropped.
She immediately snapped it back to his face and then away again.
“Could you please cover yourself?”
“Why?”
The question sounded genuine.
Y/N looked toward the ceiling.
“Because you’re standing naked in my kitchen.”
“I am aware.”
“You weren’t until I said something.”
His mouth tightened. “I was otherwise occupied.”
“With what?”
“Determining where I have been taken.”
“No one took you anywhere.”
His eyes sharpened. “You expect me to believe that I arrived here of my own will?”
“I found you outside my job.”
He watched her in silence.
“You were unconscious,” she continued. “In the desert. You were bleeding, and I couldn’t get service to call an ambulance, so I brought you here.”
She gestured toward the hallway without looking directly at him.
“Your clothes are in the bathroom.”
“My clothes?”
“The armor or whatever.”
His gaze moved over her face, searching for some indication of deception.
“You removed them.”
Y/N’s cheeks warmed again. “They were covered in blood.”
“You disrobed me while I was insensible.”
“To clean your injuries.”
His expression became unreadable.
Y/N finally looked at his face.
Only his face.
“I covered you with a blanket.”
“Which appears to have been of greater concern to you than to me.”
“Yes, because I’m the one being traumatized right now.”
One of his eyebrows lifted.
The reaction was subtle, but unmistakably offended. “You speak boldly for one who claims not to be my captor.”
Y/N stared at him.
“You are naked, bleeding in my apartment and threatening me while butt-naked. I think we’re past formal introductions.”
The corner of his mouth shifted.
Not quite a smile.
More the distant memory of one.
It vanished before she could be certain.
“Where is the latrine?”
“Bathroom? Down the hall. First door on the left.”
He turned.
Y/N accidentally caught another glimpse of him from behind.
She spun back toward the counter so quickly that tea sloshed over the rim of her mug.
“And take the blanket with you!”
He paused in the doorway.
“What blanket?”
“The one on the floor in the living room.”
“I have no need of it.”
“I do.”
He looked over his shoulder at her.
For a moment, his eyes traveled across her face, taking in the flush in her cheeks and the determined way she refused to look below his shoulders.
Something knowing entered his expression.
“You are embarrassed.”
“I’m trying to be respectful.”
“An unusual concern, considering you have already seen me.”
Y/N’s mouth fell open. “For medical reasons.”
“So you claim.”
“I saved your life.”
“That remains to be determined.”
She turned fully toward him then, irritation momentarily overpowering embarrassment.
“You know what? Fine. Walk around naked. I don’t care.”
His eyes flicked downward briefly, following the line of her gaze before it shot back to his face.
“No,” he said softly. “I can see that.”
Y/N grabbed a dish towel and threw it at him.
His hand rose.
The towel stopped in midair.
Y/N froze.
It hovered between them for one impossible second before floating neatly into his waiting palm.
The kitchen fell silent.
Her grip tightened around the knife.
The stranger glanced at the towel as though nothing remarkable had occurred.
Then he looked at her.
Fear must have shown on her face, because his expression changed.
The amusement disappeared.
His shoulders drew back, despite the pain the movement caused him, and the regal coldness returned all at once.
“You would be wise to lower the blade.”
Y/N swallowed. “…You just stopped that in the air.”
“A minor feat.”
“That is not minor.”
“To you, perhaps.”
He stepped toward her.
Y/N raised the knife again.
He stopped.
For the first time since entering the kitchen, he appeared to truly see her, not merely as part of the strange room in which he had awakened, but as the woman who had found him, tended his wounds and was now plainly frightened of what stood before her.
His gaze moved to the bandage wrapped around his hand.
Then to the repaired cut along his side.
“You treated these.”
“Yes.”
“Without knowing what I am.”
“I still don’t know what you are.”
His expression hardened faintly at the wording.
Y/N noticed.
“Who,” she corrected. “I don’t know who you are.”
He studied her for a long moment.
Then, with visible reluctance, he wrapped the dish towel around his waist.
It covered almost nothing.
Y/N stared at it.
“That is a hand towel.”
“You demanded I cover myself.”
“Not with something the size of a napkin.”
His patience visibly thinned.
“I have survived the void between worlds. I will not be scolded over your household linens.”
“Then go get the blanket.”
His eyes flashed.
Y/N pointed down the hallway.
“Or your clothes.”
There was a tense pause.
Then he turned away with what remained of his dignity and walked toward the bathroom, one hand holding the towel closed at his hip.
Y/N waited until he disappeared from sight before setting the knife down.
Her knees felt weak.
She pressed both palms against the counter.
He had caught a towel without touching it.
He had called Earth Midgard.
He had asked which realm he was in.
Y/N looked toward the hallway.
The bathroom door opened.
Then silence.
A moment later, his voice carried through the apartment.
“What have you done to my garments?”
Y/N closed her eyes.
“I cleaned them.”
“You stitched them.”
“They were ripped.”
“With Midgardian thread.”
“It was that or dental floss.”
Another silence.
Then, colder, “Where are the remaining pieces?”
“On the floor beside the bathtub. I didn’t know how they attached.”
The bathroom door opened again.
He emerged wearing only the lower half of his clothing, the repaired leather sitting low on his hips while he carried the torn tunic in one hand.
Y/N made a concentrated effort to focus on the stitching.
His fingers traced one of the repaired seams.
The work looked crude beneath his touch, especially compared to the original construction.
“I know it isn’t perfect,” she said defensively. “The material broke two of my needles.”
His gaze lifted to hers.
“You repaired it yourself.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Y/N frowned. “Because it was damaged.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
He continued watching her.
There was suspicion in his face, but something else beneath it. Something less certain.
Y/N gestured toward the second mug on the counter.
“I made tea.”
His eyes shifted toward it.
“You prepared it for me.”
“In case you woke up.”
“You did not know whether I would.”
“No.”
“And yet you prepared it.”
Y/N shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable beneath the weight of his attention. “You looked like you needed something warm.”
His expression became distant.
For a fleeting moment, the arrogance slipped.
He looked tired.
Not merely from his injuries, but from something deeper, something that had begun long before he struck the earth outside the diner.
Then the mask returned.
“What is your name?”
“Y/N.”
He repeated it quietly, testing the sound.
She waited.
“And you are?”
His chin lifted.
The change in him was immediate. Even half-dressed and bandaged in a stranger’s kitchen, he gathered himself as though standing before a royal court.
“I am Loki of Asgard.”
Y/N stared at him.
He continued, each title delivered with wounded, practiced pride.
“Son of Odin. Prince of the realm. God of Mischief.”
The kitchen fell silent.
Y/N looked at his repaired clothing.
Then at the unfamiliar armor visible through the open bathroom door.
Then at the man who had stopped a flying towel in midair.
“Oh.”
His eyes narrowed. “That is all you have to say?”
“What do you want me to say? I’m processing.”
“You doubt me.”
“I watched you do magic, so I’m trying very hard not to.”
“Magic.” His tone suggested the word was inadequate.
Y/N picked up the second mug and held it out to him. “Tea?”
Loki looked at it as though unsure whether it was an offering or a test.
Then he approached.
He took the mug from her hand, his fingers brushing hers.
His skin remained cold.
Y/N tried not to react.
Loki noticed anyway.
His gaze dropped to their hands.
Then rose slowly to her face.
She withdrew first.
“You should sit down,” she said. “Before you fall down.”
“I do not fall.”
Y/N glanced toward the living room. “You literally fell out of the sky.”
His expression went still.
The remark landed harder than she intended.
His fingers tightened around the mug.
Y/N watched the humor vanish from his face and immediately regretted it.
“I didn’t mean—”
“You know nothing of what occurred.”
His voice had lost its rough amusement. What remained was cold and sharp enough to cut.
“No,” she said carefully. “I don’t.”
He looked away.
For several moments, he said nothing.
The silence felt heavier than anger.
Y/N studied him, noticing the tension in his jaw and the way his eyes fixed on some distant point beyond the kitchen walls.
Whatever had brought him to Earth had not been an accident.
Or, if it had, it was not the part that troubled him most.
She did not ask.
Instead, she nudged the honey closer across the counter.
“It might need more of that.”
Loki glanced down.
His grip on the mug gradually loosened.
“You are a peculiar creature.”
“I get that a lot.”
“You should be afraid of me.”
“I am a little.”
His gaze returned to hers.
The honesty appeared to surprise him.
Y/N folded her arms.
“But you’re hurt, and you haven’t done anything except insult my sewing and refuse to wear a blanket.”
A faint breath escaped him.
Almost a laugh.
“Your sewing is appalling.”
“And yet your clothes aren’t falling apart anymore.”
He examined the repaired seam once more.
“No,” he conceded quietly. “They are not.”
Y/N lifted her own mug.
“Drink your tea, Your Highness.”
Loki’s eyes narrowed at the title, uncertain whether she was mocking him.
She was.
But only a little.
He raised the mug to his lips.
The tea was still hot enough that he paused after the first sip, surprise briefly crossing his face.
Y/N hid a smile behind her own cup.
There, half-dressed in her kitchen with his armor drying beside her bathtub and black thread closing the tears in his princely garments, Loki of Asgard took another cautious drink.
For the first time since waking, he did not look toward the door.
. . .
By the time Loki finished eating, the clock above the stove read 4:57 a.m.
Y/N stared at it for several seconds, as though willing the numbers to rearrange themselves into something less offensive.
They did not.
The remains of his meal sat on the plate in front of him: a smear of egg yolk, one corner of toast and nothing else. For someone who had initially regarded the food as beneath him, Loki had eaten with impressive efficiency.
He had also asked seventeen questions.
Y/N had counted.
Most of them had concerned Midgard, her home, the diner, the glowing box mounted above the stove and why humans stored food in cold cupboards only to heat it again moments later.
Several had concerned her.
Those had been harder to answer.
She gathered the empty dishes from the small table and carried them to the sink.
Behind her, Loki remained seated with his repaired tunic draped around his shoulders but not properly fastened. He looked marginally better than he had an hour earlier. There was more color in his face, and the trembling in his hands had stopped.
He still looked exhausted.
Y/N suspected she looked worse.
She turned on the faucet and rinsed the plate.
“I’m going to bed.”
The chair shifted behind her.
“Now?”
Y/N looked over her shoulder.
“Yes, now.”
His brows drew together faintly.
“You intend to sleep.”
“That’s usually what going to bed means.”
“In my presence.”
She shut off the water. “You can stay on the couch.”
“That was not my concern.”
Y/N dried her hands on a dish towel. “What is your concern?”
Loki studied her as though the answer should have been obvious.
“You know nothing of me.”
“I know.”
“You have admitted that you believe me dangerous.”
“Potentially.”
“I possess abilities you do not understand.”
“Definitely.”
“And still you would render yourself unconscious within the same dwelling.”
Y/N leaned back against the counter.
“I have been awake for almost twenty-four hours.”
“That does not explain your lack of caution.”
“It explains most of it.”
Loki’s expression suggested that it did not.
Y/N rubbed both hands over her face, then pointed vaguely toward the hallway.
“My bedroom is through there. The bathroom is the first door on the left. You already found that. There are extra blankets in the basket by the couch, and the tap water is technically safe, even if it tastes weird.”
“You speak as though I am a guest.”
“You’re not exactly paying rent.”
His gaze sharpened. “Yet you leave me unattended.”
“I’m too tired to supervise a god.”
“You should not require supervision to ensure your own survival.”
Y/N considered that.
“Fair.”
She pushed away from the counter.
“If you do decide to kill me, could you try to do it before my next shift?”
Loki went completely still.
Y/N walked past him toward the living room.
“I have to be back at the diner tomorrow afternoon, and I’d rather not make them find coverage at the last minute.”
His chair scraped sharply against the floor as he stood. “You jest.”
“Mostly.”
“You believe I might murder you, yet your concern is your place of employment?”
“I hate inconveniencing my coworkers.”
“This is absurd.”
“I’ve been told.”
She reached the edge of the living room and bent to retrieve the blanket from the floor, tossing it over the back of the couch.
Loki followed more slowly, one hand briefly bracing against the table before he caught himself.
Y/N pretended not to see.
“I have more questions,” he said.
“I figured.”
“And matters I wish to discuss.”
She looked at him.
There was a strange insistence beneath the words. Not command, exactly. Something closer to reluctance, as though he had only just decided he wanted the conversation to continue and resented time for attempting to end it.
Y/N yawned.
“You seem like a talker.”
His expression tightened.
“I do not talk excessively.”
“You’ve interrogated me about my microwave, my job, college, why people put ice in drinks, and whether the mailman is an official agent of the government.”
“He wears a uniform and enters the grounds of every residence.”
“He delivers coupons.”
“A convenient explanation.”
Y/N smiled tiredly.
“My point stands.”
Loki folded his arms carefully, avoiding the bandage around his ribs.
“You dismiss me.”
“I’m postponing you.”
“You assume I will remain until you wake.”
She stopped.
The apartment fell quiet around them.
The first gray traces of morning had begun to appear through the blinds, striping the carpet and the side of Loki’s face with pale light.
Y/N looked at him for a moment.
There it was again.
That expectation hidden beneath the arrogance.
That everyone eventually left.
Or perhaps that he always did first.
She nodded toward the couch. “You said you can’t leave yet.”
“My circumstances may change.”
“Then they change.”
“And if I am gone?”
“I guess I’ll know you felt better.”
His eyes searched her face.
“You would not pursue me.”
“I don’t even know where Asgard is.”
“That would not prevent some.”
“I also have homework.”
Loki’s mouth flattened, but the answer seemed to settle something in him.
Y/N took another step toward the hallway.
He spoke before she could leave. “You have not answered.”
“Answered what?”
“Whether I may continue my questions.”
“When I’m awake.”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“You expect me to wait.”
“I believe in you.”
The words came out so casually that Y/N almost missed the way he reacted.
Loki stared at her.
The guarded amusement vanished from his face.
“What did you say?”
“I said I believe in you.”
“You cannot.”
“Why not?”
“You have known me for only hours.”
“True.”
“You know nothing of my character, my history or my intentions.”
“Also true.”
“Then upon what do you base such belief?”
Y/N blinked at him.
“I believe you can wait until I wake up before asking more questions.”
Silence.
Loki’s face changed with the realization.
Y/N pressed her lips together. “Oh.”
He looked deeply offended. “You were not speaking of me.”
“I was speaking of you. Just in a very specific, low-stakes way.”
“You made it sound—”
“More meaningful?”
“I did not say that.”
“You thought I was giving you an emotional affirmation.”
“I thought no such thing.”
His answer came too quickly.
Y/N smiled despite her exhaustion.
“Sure.”
Loki’s jaw tightened.
She pointed at the couch.
“You can do it. A few hours without interrogating me. I believe in you.”
“You are insufferable.”
“You can tell me all about it when I wake up.”
She turned toward the hallway.
“Y/N.”
She glanced back.
Loki stood in the middle of her living room, half-dressed in damaged royal clothing, black thread visible along the seams she had repaired. The dawn light made him look less like a man who had fallen from the sky and more like something the night had reluctantly surrendered.
He seemed poised to ask another question.
Instead, he said, “How long?”
“How long what?”
“Will you sleep?”
Y/N glanced at the clock again.
“Hopefully until noon.”
His expression suggested that six hours was an unreasonable disappearance.
“You’ll survive.”
“That remains to be seen.”
She smiled. “See? You already understand my sense of humor.”
“I do not.”
“You will.”
Y/N continued toward her room.
At the door, she stopped and looked back one final time.
“Oh, and don’t use the stove.”
Loki lifted his chin. “I am not a child.”
“You stared at the toaster like it was going to challenge you to combat.”
“It made a sound without warning.”
“Exactly. No stove. I can’t afford another home.”
She stepped into her room. “And Loki?”
“What?”
“Thanks for not killing me tonight.”
His expression became unreadable.
“You presume restraint on my part—“
“Good night.”
Y/N closed the door before he could answer.
She did not lock it.
Loki remained where she had left him, staring at the thin wooden barrier between them.
A lock would not have stopped him.
They both knew that.
But she had not even tried.
From the other side of the door came the quiet creak of the mattress, the rustle of blankets and, after only a few minutes, silence.
Loki listened.
No hurried breathing.
No attempt to escape through the window.
No weapon being moved beneath a pillow.
She had simply gone to sleep.
He looked toward the front door.
He could not leave.
Not yet.
That was the only reason he remained.
Loki repeated this to himself as he returned to the couch and lowered himself carefully onto it.
The blanket Y/N had offered lay folded over the back. He regarded it with disdain before pulling it across his legs.
On the coffee table sat the glass of water she had prepared earlier, along with two white tablets and a note written on the back of a diner receipt.
For pain. Human dose, so maybe only take one. Please don’t die. I have work.
Loki read it twice.
Then a third time.
A faint, unwilling smile touched his mouth.
“You believe in me,” he murmured.
From the bedroom, Y/N gave a muffled snore.
Loki’s smile disappeared.
He settled deeper into the couch, prepared to wait until she woke.
He lasted eleven minutes before thinking of another question.
Loki lasted thirty minutes.
For the first ten, he sat upright on the couch with the blanket draped across his legs and his attention fixed on the closed bedroom door.
For the next five, he examined the objects scattered across the coffee table.
A stack of textbooks.
Several pens.
A half-empty package of gum.
The note she had left beside the tablets.
He read it once more, though there was nothing within it he had not already understood.
Crude.
Irreverent.
Strangely considerate.
Loki placed the note precisely where he had found it.
Beneath the coffee table, partly hidden by one of her discarded shoes, he found a small red ball. It was rubber, worn smooth in places and small enough to fit comfortably in his palm.
He leaned back against the couch and tossed it toward the ceiling.
The ball rose, slowed, then dropped neatly into his waiting hand.
Again.
Up.
Down.
Catch.
The rhythm occupied him for perhaps another seven minutes.
Then it became insulting.
Loki sent the ball higher, allowing it to nearly touch the ceiling before catching it without looking.
He had endured diplomatic councils that moved faster than this.
He had waited through Thor’s endless speeches, Odin’s silences and entire feasts during which no one said anything of worth. Yet somehow, waiting for one sleeping Midgardian to awaken felt uniquely unreasonable.
She had said noon.
He looked toward the clock.
Barely half an hour had passed.
Absurd.
Loki tossed the ball again.
Perhaps she was not asleep.
The thought arrived quietly.
He caught the ball.
Perhaps the entire display had been a deception.
She had been too calm. Too willing to leave him unattended. Too quick to accept his presence within her home.
No one behaved so carelessly without reason.
She might have retreated to the bedroom to contact someone through another device. She might be recording him. She might be waiting for armed men to arrive.
Midgard possessed organizations devoted to unusual threats. Loki knew enough of the realm to understand that much.
The woman had claimed her device could not reach anyone from the diner.
That did not mean the same was true here.
He glanced toward the narrow hallway.
The apartment remained silent.
Too silent.
Loki threw the ball once more and caught it with sharper force.
She may have been plotting against him from the moment she found him.
The skateboard could have been part of the indignity.
He placed the ball on the table.
Pain pulled beneath his ribs as he stood, but he ignored it. His strength had begun to return, though far more slowly than he would have preferred. The fall through the void had drained him in a way battle never had.
He crossed the living room without sound.
The bedroom door waited at the end of the hallway, closed but not secured.
No lock.
That, too, could have been deliberate.
An invitation designed to convince him she felt safe.
Or a test.
Loki rested his hand against the handle.
He listened.
Nothing.
No whispering.
No movement across the floor.
Only the faint hum of the air conditioner and a quiet, uneven breath from the other side.
He turned the handle slowly.
The door opened without a creak.
The room beyond was dim, lit only by the pale morning light slipping through the blinds. Clothes had been draped over the back of a chair. More books were piled beside the bed, one lying open facedown across the carpet.
A small lamp remained on.
Y/N was asleep.
Truly asleep.
She lay on her side beneath a tangled comforter, one hand tucked beneath her pillow while the other rested loosely against the mattress. Her hair had spread across the pillow in complete disarray, and the exhaustion that had been visible in her face earlier had softened into something peaceful.
There was no phone in her hand.
No weapon nearby.
No concealed accomplice waiting in the shadows.
She had told him she was going to sleep.
Then she had done exactly that.
Loki remained in the doorway.
The simplicity of it unsettled him more than deception might have.
She had been truthful from the moment he woke.
Painfully so.
She did not soften her answers to preserve his pride. She did not flatter him when he offered his titles. She admitted when she feared him and mocked him in the same breath.
She had not pretended that bringing him home was wise.
She had not claimed some noble destiny compelled her.
She had simply found him injured and decided not to leave him there.
Because she did not want bad karma.
Because she did not wish to be an asshole.
Loki nearly scoffed at the memory.
Nearly.
He stepped farther into the room.
Y/N did not stir.
She had no idea he stood there.
No awareness of how vulnerable she had made herself. One movement of his hand and he could silence her before she ever opened her eyes.
The thought brought no satisfaction.
Instead, Loki found himself noticing the faint crease between her brows, as though even in sleep some small concern followed her. The edge of the blanket had slipped from one shoulder, revealing the worn shirt she had changed into before bed.
There was nothing regal about her.
Nothing practiced.
No carefully arranged hair, jeweled gown or painted smile meant to secure favor.
She was simply herself, even when no one was meant to see.
Beautiful.
The word entered his mind without permission.
Loki’s expression tightened.
He looked away from her face.
That was foolish.
She was mortal. Ordinary. Exhausted from a night spent serving strangers and completing scholarly work in a roadside diner.
And yet—
He looked back.
There was something beautiful in the softness of her sleeping face.
More than that, in the honesty of it.
She had no mask.
No performance.
She had seen him injured, confused and stripped of every visible mark of rank, and she had still spoken to him as though he were neither monster nor king.
Only a man who needed help.
Loki disliked how much that pleased him.
Y/N shifted slightly beneath the covers.
He went still.
Her lips parted around a quiet breath. One hand moved across the mattress, searching absently until her fingers caught the edge of the comforter and pulled it closer.
She did not wake.
Loki released a breath through his nose.
He should leave her to rest.
Not because she had asked.
Certainly not because she had said she believed in him.
He simply had no further reason to remain in the doorway.
That was all.
Loki reached for the handle and began to draw the door closed.
Before it shut, Y/N murmured something into the pillow.
He paused.
The words were indistinct.
Then, more clearly—
“No stove.”
Loki stared at her.
She remained asleep.
His eyes narrowed.
Even unconscious, she apparently considered him incapable of navigating her crude cooking apparatus.
A faint smile threatened at the corner of his mouth.
“Insufferable creature,” he whispered.
He closed the door until only a narrow gap remained, leaving enough space for the light from the hallway to reach the room.
Then he returned to the living room.
The red ball still rested on the table.
Loki lowered himself carefully onto the couch and picked it up again.
This time, when he tossed it toward the ceiling, he did so more slowly.
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