literally….the idea that having your father’s last name is ~just as bad~ as having your husband’s last name has always been wacky as hell to me because regardless of where it came from, that’s the name I’ve been called since birth. it’s not any less “my” name than it is my brother’s name just because I’m female. I reject the idea that I don’t truly belong to my family of origin just because of my gender. If anything, that reinforces the idea of daughters as expendable possessions to be sold into marriage.
and it’s not that there’s no valid critique to be made of patronymic traditions, but it should be obvious why many women prefer to keep the identity they were born with instead of taking on their husband’s identity upon marriage. It’s almost like we have decades of life experiences, relationships, and self-conception tied to our names.
PLOT! the five times Egg realizes his father was in love with his aunt and the one time he realized how truly doomed they were.
pairing: maekar targaryen x reader
word count: around 5.4k
a/n: NO TARGCEST. this is the first time i wrote in a while, so might not be my best (i also wrote the first part and the ending first and then got lazy writing the middle)
SOME LOVES ARE LOUD ENOUGH TO SHAKE KINGDOMS. Others live and die in stolen glances, in half-finished sentences, in the spaces between what is felt and what is never allowed to be spoken.
The first time Egg realized his father was in love with his aunt, it came to him as most truths did in his childhood: carelessly and from the mouth of someone who should have known better.
The afternoon was hot, with the sun beating down hard on Egg's back, slicking it with hot droplets of sweat. It felt unbearable. Dust was also clinging to the air, to his skin and to the back of his throat.
He thought that squiring would be something finer than this. Something worthy of the stories and songs. Instead it was just weight. It was sweat. It was the sour, lingering scent of wine that followed Daeron everywhere he went.
"Seven save me," Daeron muttered, swaying as Egg struggled with the fastening at his shoulder. "Did they give me a squire or a stableboy?"
"I can do it," Egg said eagerly.
"You always can," Daeron replied, listing his cup. "And yet..."
He did not finish his thought. Egg bit down on his tongue and tried again. His fingers slipped. Until by chance or pure stubbornness, the buckle caught.
Egg stepped back and looked up at his perfect work, waiting for some well deserved praise. But recieved nothing. Egg groaned and looked up ready to complain to Daeron but the older boy was no longer looking at him.
His gaze had gone elsewhere, beyond the yard, beyond the garden hedges, fixed on something Egg could not yet see.
"What is it?" Egg asked, rising onto his toes, as though the height might grant him some assistance with the high hedge. It did not.
Daeron did not answer at once. He drank what remained in his cup, slow and unhurried.
"Have you ever noticed the way Father behaves around her?"
Egg frowned. "Around who?" (the boy was now jumping up and down to try and gain some view beyond the hedges).
"Our aunt. (Y/N)"
Egg blinked. "No?"
Daeron hummed softly. "It's nothing. Less than nothing."
Egg wracked his brain trying to come up with some possible answer to what Daeron was insinuating. "Does Father have some problem with her?"
Egg was worried then because you as well as your family were meant to come to Summerhall before coming with them to Ashford for a tourney.
"Quite the opposite." Daeron turned to Egg and wiggled his brows. Egg frowned, knowing what that meant. "That doesn't mean anything."
"No, it doesn't."
"She's married. To Prince Baelor."
Daeron hummed.
"Father wouldn't-" Egg stopped, the rest of the thought refusing to settle into something. "He loved Mother."
At that, something in Daeron's experession shifted.
"He did."
The words hung there, unfinished. Egg waited for more but none came. "She's our aunt."
"And he's our father."
Egg shook his head. "You're wrong."
"Perhaps." Daeron set his empty cup aside and crouched slightly, bringing himself nearer to Egg's height. "Just watch him. You'll see it, or maybe you won't. These sort of things aren't meant to be seen at all."
He straightened, clapping a hand against Egg's shoulder. "Come on. I'll need another drink before I pretened to be a knight again."
Egg followed, though more slowly. He told himself there was nothing. Daeron was just drunk and imagining things.
The second time Egg noticed, no one said a word at all.
It happened in the Great Hall, in the lull between courses, when the noise softened just enough to hear the quieter things. The scrapes of a cup against the table, the half whispers of conversations and all that. The portion of the night where everyone was relaxed.
Egg had not meant to watch. He told himself he wasn't. But Daeron's voice had settled somewhere in the back of his mind and it was impossible to ignore it. So he took Daeron's words to heart. Watch him.
So he did. Egg watched his father from his place at the dinner table next to Aemon (who had his head buried in some large textbook. Egg was slightly concered over his brother's potential future neck problems).
His father sat at the end of the high table by his brother and Egg's uncle. His posture was straight and his expression was carved hard. He spoke when spoken to, nodded whe required and drank very little. There was little to nothing strange about it.
Until, his Aunt (Y/N) laughed.
It was not loud, nothing that would turn heads or draw attention to it. (Y/N)'s laugh was a lovely one and a familiar one to Egg. (The laugh came from a joke that Matarys told her but Egg did not hear what it was. From what he knew of his cousin, Egg didn't think it was a funny joke and his aunt was just being polite).
But Egg saw it. The way his father had stilled. Not entirely or in a dramatic way. But it was as if the statue had been shooken. A breath that was being held onto for a second too long.
Egg frowned. His father did not turn, did not look, his gaze remained fix on Baelor as the two were in a conversation. Maekar did not speak right away. Baelor carried on, asking a question that was answered by some lesser lord sitting next to Maekar. His paused moment slipped past, unoticed by all except for Egg.
It meant nothing, Egg told himself. Less than nothing.
People paused all the time. People lost their places. It was not uncommon. Afterall some people just get lost in their thoughts. It was not-
His father's hand tightened slightly around his cup. So slight it might have been imagined. Egg watched however, as he took a measured drink and set it back down with too much attention than it required.
Still, he did not look. Not at you. Egg found his gaze looking upon you instead. Looking radiant in the red silks that were probably made in Dorne. You had now reached your hand over to your husbands to get his attention, and leaned in to speak with a soft smile.
Prince Baelor and Princess (Y/N). Future King and Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. They looked right. They looked happy. The very pitcture of what Egg thought a loving marriage would look lile. As though the world had placed them exactly where they were meant to be. Egg was content knowing they loved each other.
So Egg went back to his food and started to shift his peas from his plate to Aemon's instead. Content to pretend that he was overanalyzing his father's behaviour.
The third time Egg noticed, it was close enough to touch.
It happened in the gardens, where the air was softer and world felt far away from the Seven Kingdoms. Egg had not meant to follow. At the time it had felt like nothing at all. He was just wandering paths he knew well, doing his best to avoid the maesters and his lessons.
That was until he saw them. He stopped before he could be seen and hid behind a tree.
They stood beneath the shade of an overgrown arbor, where the light filtered through in fragments painting them in gold. It was rather close. Not close enough to be indecent or improper. Just, closer than what was necessary.
(Y/N) was speaking, though it was too soft that the words could not reach Egg. Instead he had to settle on watching the shape of them. As (Y/N) was speaking his father did not interrupt, did not look away. Just gazed at your face.
From the looks of it, you had finished speaking and there was a moment of silence between the two of you. Then, your hand had lifted.
It wasn't anything dramatic. Just brushing your hand against his sleeve. It should have been nothing because it was nothing. But again, his father had stilled. The way his breath seemed to catch, the way his hand at his side tightened just slightly.
He did not pull away, did not reach back, did not move at all. The two of you stood there, closer than what one would expect, with your hand on his arm. To Egg, it looked like a different sort of painting. One he had not seen at the dinner the other night.
Then you stepped back and distance returned. Whatever had just been there, slipped neatly back into place.
His father inclined his said, said something Egg could not hear but it was probably something drab (his father was a rather blunt speaker). Whatever it was, it resulted in a smiling (Y/N). Your smile was smaller and softer and gone quicker than normal.
And then it was all over again.
Egg did not move from where he stood, though he knew he should. He felt as if he was intruding on something. His thoughts felt tangled. Nothing had occured.
With that, he took a step back and starting walking back into the castle.
The fourth time Egg noticed, it nearly did not remain theirs alone.
It was not meant to be a moment at all. That was what made it dangerous.
The corridors were quieter at that hour, the castle settling into itself as the evening wore on. Voices dulled behind closed doors. Footsteps softened. Even the torches seemed to burn lower, their light unsteady against the stone. Everyone was preparing for bed.
Egg had been sent on some errand he no longer remembered.
It did not matter. He would forget it entirely, later.
What he would remember, what would stay, was this:
The turn of a corner. The sound of a voice, too low to make out. And the way he stopped before he understood why.
This time, from behind a corridor, Egg saw them at the far end of the passage, half-shadowed, as though the castle itself meant to keep their secret.
They were close. Too close. Much closer than before in the garden.
Once again you were speaking. Or not. Even in the dimmed hallway, Egg could see you were loosing your composure. The normal picture perfect you seemed frazzle in the dark corridor. Words were spilling out quick but quietly. As if it was something that had been held back for too long.
Egg could not hear them, only feel the shape of them in the air, sharp and unsteady. (He was thinking to himself that he should really work on his sneaking abilities so he could somehow find himself closer so he could properly eavesdrop).
His father said nothing. He only watched you. Not as a prince might. Not as a brother should. As though the rest of the world had fallen away.
Egg’s breath caught, though he did not know why. He should not have been there. He knew that. And yet he did not move.
You stopped speaking. The silence that followed was not empty. It pressed in, taut, waiting.
His father took a step forward. It was small, measured and hesitant. Enough to close what little distance remained between you.
Egg felt it then, that strange, tightening awareness, like a thread pulled too thin. Something was about to happen. Something that could not be undone.
Your hand lifted, hesitant, uncertain, as though you had not meant to do it at all. His father’s followed. Not touching. Never touching.
But close enough that the space between them felt like something real. Something fragile. Something one breath away from breaking.
And for a moment, the two of you didn't move.
Footsteps echoed from the far end of the corridor. And the spell shattered. Your hand dropped at once. His father stepped back just as quickly, the distance snapping into place as though it had never been crossed at all.
By the time the servants turned the corner, there was nothing to see.
It was just a prince standing where he ought to stand. A lady composed, untouched. Silence, neat and proper, where something else had been moments before.
Egg pressed himself back against the wall, heart beating too fast for something he did not understand.
No one noticed. No one said a word. And yet, Egg knew.
That it had almost—
He swallowed, the thought slipping from him before it could take shape.
It had been nothing.
A step taken. A hand lifted. A moment that came too close to becoming something more.
The fifth time Egg noticed, nothing threatened to happen at all.
There was no interruption waiting in the wings. No footsteps. No tension poised to break. Only certainty.
It happened in a corridor (the same one as before) and he was not meant to linger in, though he had long since stopped believing that mattered. The castle had begun to feel less like a place one moved through, and more like something that simply contained him.
He heard your voice first. And then his father’s.
Egg stopped before he saw you.
You stood facing one another, not hidden, not secret, simply… there. As though there had never been anything to conceal.
Your hands were folded neatly before you, composed and contorlled. The opposite of what you looked like the previous night he had seen the pair of you.
“I leave with Baelor at first light,” you said. Your voice did not tremble. It did not need to.
His father nodded once. “I know.”
No hesitation. No question. Only acknowledgment.
Egg watched the way you held his gaze for a moment longer than was necessary. Not lingering. Not resisting. Just, steady.
“As it should be,” you added quietly.
It was not said like a comfort. It was said like a truth that had already been lived. His father’s expression did not change. But something in him did.
Not outward. Not visible in any way that would matter to anyone else. Only Egg saw it.
The smallest tightening at the corner of his mouth. The faintest pause in his breathing. As though something had been set down carefully, something heavy, something once held too close.
“You will be well,” he said. It was not a wish. It was a fact he had chosen to believe.
You gave a small nod. “As will you.”
And that was all.
No step forward. No reach. No fracture in the space between you. Only distance, held deliberately in place. As if it had always belonged there.
You turned first.
Not away from him in avoidance, but toward what was waiting for you beyond the corridor. Beyond the castle. Beyond this moment entirely.
Duty, already ahead of you.
His father did not watch you leave. Not when it mattered. Not when it might have changed anything.
He simply stood there until your footsteps faded completely, until even the echo had gone soft enough to disappear.
Then he turned away as well.
Egg remained where he was. Not because he was unseen. But because there was nothing left to witness.
Only something he finally understood in full:
Not all loves ended in ruin. Some ended in choice. And in that choice, quiet, certain, unspoken they had already lost each other long before either of them ever reached for anything at all.
The one and probably last time Egg understood how truly doomed they were, it was at Ashford Meadow.
Some loves are loud enough to shake kingdoms.
Others live and die in stolen glances, in half-finished sentences, in the spaces between what is felt and what is never allowed to be spoken.
The tourney had turned the world bright again.
Colour returned in banners and gowns, in the gleam of armor beneath the sun, in laughter that carried too far across the fields as though nothing in the world had ever been wrong.
For a moment, Egg believed in that brightness.
He had never seen so much life. Never felt so far from the boy he was meant to be. He had lost Daeron somewhere in a tavern’s chaos and shaved his head in reckless relief, as though shedding identity might make him freer. He had even met a hedge knight, Ser Duncan, before the crowd swallowed him whole.
Then the royal family arrived. And everything began, quietly, to fall into place.
Egg hid among skirts and passing legs as he watched them take their places. His aunt stood near the pavilion.
The wind caught at her dress, lifting it in soft, unsteady motion, and for a moment she looked less like a princess and more like something imagined, something almost too gentle for the weight of her name.
She smiled more easily now. Baelor lived. And so she could, too.
He stood beside her with easy warmth, speaking to those who approached them, his hand resting at the small of her back as though it had always belonged there.
She laughed at something he said, turning toward him, bright and unburdened.
It should have been enough. It was enough.
And still... Egg knew, somewhere deep and unspoken, that in another life, in another shape of the world, it might have been his father standing there instead.
Behind them, Maekar stood at a careful distance, speaking with a lord he was not truly listening to. His attention kept returning, again and again, to where it should not.
There was no grief in it. No rupture. No visible wound.
Only something quieter. Something held too tightly to be named.
Their eyes met once. His father’s. Hers.
It lasted no more than a heartbeat. And yet Egg felt it as something entire. A silence stretched between them, thin, precise, almost reverent.
Until Baelor spoke her name.
She turned. And the moment was gone. The world continued exactly as it should have. But Egg did not move. He watched.
Later, Baelor was called away. And Maekar stepped into his place beside her. It looked like nothing. It was nothing.
A conversation between in-laws. A passing exchange. A courtesy sustained by courtly habit.
But Egg saw too closely now. The ease that should not have been ease. The closeness that should not have existed at all. A handmaiden passed. Words were spoken too quietly to catch.
And then, Maekar offered his arm. She took it with no hesitation. It was a simple thing.
And yet the way her fingers settled there, the way his arm did not move away, the way neither of them corrected the distance. It felt like recognition. Like something remembered instead of chosen.
Too familiar to be coincidence. Too natural to be allowed. A blush rose faintly at his father’s neck. Gone as quickly as it came.
And for a moment, it felt almost right.
Until Valarr came running, bright and alive, breaking everything open again. The spell did not shatter. It simply… dispersed. Like smoke.
The world ended at Ashford Meadow.
It did not, of course.
The sun still rose over Ashford, pale and indifferent. The wind still moved through the fields, stirring banners that now hung heavy and dark. People still spoke, still walked, still breathed.
But something had ended all the same.
Baelor died.
The bells had tolled for what felt like hours, their sound low and unrelenting, echoing through the castle and out across the tourney grounds. Even now, standing among his family, Egg swore he could still hear them, like something lodged deep inside his chest.
They had chosen to burn him at Ashford. Egg wasn’t sure why that made it worse, but it did.
This place had been bright, only days ago. Full of laughter and colour and life. He could still remember it, the banners snapping in the wind, the roar of the crowd, the way everything had seemed so large and full of promise.
Now everything felt hollow.
Egg stood stiffly beside his father, his hands clasped too tightly in front of him. He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He wasn’t sure he could.
His thoughts wouldn’t stop circling back. If only he hadn’t left Daeron. If only he had stayed. If only—The pyre crackled. Egg forced himself to look.
Flames climbed steadily, consuming what remained of Baelor’s body. The heat pressed against his face, sharp and unbearable, and still he couldn’t look away.
His gaze shifted. His aunt stood closest to the fire. She did not weep. She did not speak.
She stood as though carved from stone, her face pale, her expression empty in a way that frightened him more than tears ever could.
Valarr stood before her, shaking. Egg could see it even from where he stood. The way his cousin’s shoulders trembled, the way his head bowed forward as though the weight of it all might crush him.
Her hand rested gently in his hair. Not moving. Just there.
Behind them, Kiera stood still and silent, her presence quiet, almost ghostlike.
Egg swallowed hard. He had heard what happened. Everyone had.
Whispers had spread quickly, slipping through corridors and between servants like smoke.
They said she had been the first to reach him. That she hadn’t believed it. That she had demanded a maester, again and again, as though saying it enough times might undo what had already been done.
They said she had knelt beside his body, hands pressed to him, begging the Seven to give him back.
That she hadn’t seemed to notice the blood. That it had soaked into her sleeves, her hands, her skin.
Egg squeezed his eyes shut briefly.
They said Ser Duncan had tried to pull her away. That she had fought him. That she had screamed. Not words, just sound. Raw and broken.
And then his father came.
Maekar had been the one to pull her back. They said she had struck him. That her fists had hit his chest, over and over, as though he were something she could break. That she had cried into him like the world was ending.
Egg opened his eyes. He looked up at his father now.
Maekar stood beside him, unmoving. Rigid. Every line of him held tight, controlled, as though he had locked something inside himself and thrown away the key. Every line of him held tight, controlled, as though he had locked something inside himself and thrown away the key.
Egg wanted to say something. Go to her.
He didn’t know if he would have said the words aloud or not. He only knew the thought pressed against his throat, desperate and insistent.
Go to her. She shouldn’t be alone. Not now. Not like this.
But Maekar did not move.
He stood where he was meant to stand. He did what was expected of him. Nothing more.
Egg felt something twist inside him.
But he had learned, by now, where to look.
So he looked closer.
He saw the way his father’s hands were clenched at his sides, knuckles pale beneath the skin. He saw the tension in his shoulders, in his jaw, in the stillness that was not calm but restraint stretched too thin.
And then it happened. Briefly.
So brief Egg might have missed it, if he hadn’t been watching.
His aunt lifted her head, just slightly. As though something had pulled her attention away from the flames. Her gaze crossed the distance between them. And found his father.
Maekar looked at her. Not as a prince. Not as a brother. Just as a man.
Everything was there. Egg felt it, even from where he stood.
Grief, sharp and consuming.
Longing, familiar, aching, unrelenting.
Regret, heavy, suffocating, endless.
All of it, laid bare in a single look that lasted no more than a heartbeat. It was too much. Too intimate.
Her gaze dropped. Maekar’s jaw tightened. And just like that… It was gone.
The fire crackled. The wind shifted. The world went on.
And whatever might have been… didn’t.
Egg shouldn’t have followed her. He knew that.
Even so, he slipped from the hall, keeping to the edges where torchlight thinned and attention softened. He was careful, quiet and was left unseen.
He told himself he would stop at the doorway. He didn’t.
The hall was dim when she entered, curtains drawn heavy against the day. It felt smaller than it had before. Quieter in a way that pressed at the ribs.
She moved slowly, like each step had to be chosen in advance. Egg lingered just beyond the threshold, half-hidden in the corridor’s shadow.
She crossed to the high table to Baelor’s seat and sat down. For a long moment she did nothing at all. Then, carefully, she lifted her hands. Baelor’s rings caught what little light remained.
Egg’s throat tightened before he could name why. She turned one of them between her fingers. Over and over. Not fidgeting, holding on.
As though stillness might undo something. The door opened again. Egg went rigid. His father stepped inside.
There was a pause in him that Egg did not recognize. Not fear, exactly. Not hesitation either. Something closer to awareness. As though the room had become uncertain ground.
As though he was not sure he was allowed to cross it.
She did not look up. Did not acknowledge him. Did not move. For a moment, he only stood there. Then he crossed the room and sat beside her. Not close. Never close.
Silence gathered between them, dense and unyielding.
“I do not know where to begin,” Maekar said at last.
His voice was quieter than Egg had ever heard it.
She let out a breath that almost broke on its way out. “I do not know either.”
“I’m sorry.”
The words felt too small the moment they left him.
They stayed anyway. Unanswered.
“You know,” she said after a while, still looking at the ring, “my mother once told me not to love anyone more than my children.”
Maekar did not speak.
“I loved my children,” she continued. “And I loved my husband.”
Something in him shifted at that, barely visible, but real.
“And I loved you.”
The silence that followed did not feel empty. It felt held.
Carefully. Like something fragile that neither of them trusted to fall.
“(Y/N),” Maekar said at last, roughened, “there are no words—”
“You know,” she cut in, not unkindly, but with something steadier beneath it, “in a way, I wish you had meant to kill him.”
The air changed.
Maekar’s head turned slightly, as if the words had weight enough to move him. “How could you say that?”
“It would make things simpler,” she said. “For me. As selfish as that sounds.”
He did not answer. There was nothing to answer. A long pause. Then—
“Do you remember,” she asked, quieter now, “when Baelor and I were betrothed?”
A breath left Maekar that might once have been laughter. It wasn’t now. “Of course I do.”
A faint sound from her. Almost agreement. Almost nothing.
“You said you would burn your entire house down before you let it happen.”
His mouth tightened at the memory, something old and unguarded passing through him and gone again before it could settle.
“I was young,” he said.
“We were all young,” she replied.
Silence returned, softer this time. Less sharp. No less heavy.
Then she moved.
Slowly, she took one of the rings from her hand. Turned it once between her fingers. Twice.
And placed it in his palm.
“Here.”
Maekar looked down at it.
“I cannot take this,” he said. “He was your husband.”
“And he was your brother.”
That landed cleanly. Without argument. Maekar closed his fingers around the ring anyway. Not tightly.
Egg stepped back before either of them could notice him there, retreating into the corridor as quietly as he had come. He did not run. He did not linger.
Some things, he understood, were not meant to be seen all at once. Or spoken.
He understood then that some things were never meant to be spoken. Just simply known and lived with.
ok: i did a very stupid comic put it up on bluesky and immediately got embarrassed and deleted it BUT: im puttin it up again here so u guys cannot judge me
In the kitchens of the Red Keep, a young maid from Duskendale is sent to deliver meals to the withdrawn Prince Daeron Targaryen, only to discover she shares his troubling gift of foresight. While he is haunted by visions of fire and fallen crowns, she senses smaller moments before they unfold. As court duty and prophecy close in around him, a quiet bond forms between them—one that may change both their fates.
Word Count: 4.8k
[One Shot]
Slight angst and fluff. A little hope for my hopeless prince. Will this have a part two? Who knows. Maybe it'll come to me in a dream.
›
The first thing she learned about the Red Keep kitchens was that everything burned.
Not just the ovens — though those roared from before dawn until well past moonrise — but hands, tempers, bread, reputations. Steam clung to the ceiling beams. Cooks shouted over one another. Boys ran with baskets of onions and nearly collided with girls carrying tureens slick with grease. The air was always thick with smoke and salt and something on the edge of ruin.
She had never seen so much food in her life. Back home, her mother boiled linens in lye until her knuckles cracked and her shoulders bowed. Here, whole haunches of venison turned slowly over flame. Honey was poured as if it were water. Oranges and Lemons from Dorne sat in bowls just for the looking, sitting in the warmth of summer just to rot.
“Girl, don’t stand there gaping,” snapped Bessa, the undercook with arms like hams. “If you want to keep the place, you move.”
It was her third day, and she still didn’t know which corridor led to which tower without guessing. She had learned the rhythm of chopping and stirring, the hierarchy of who shouted and who was shouted at, but the castle itself was another beast. It swallowed girls like her and spat them out thinner.
“Tray for Prince Daeron,” called a voice near the hearth.
A series of annoyed murmurs ran through the scullions. “Again?” Bessa muttered. “He’ll not eat it. It’ll be such a waste.”
The tray was assembled with little care. A heel of bread, a wedge of cheese sweating at the edge, a slice of cold capon. And a silver flagon of wine — more than the rest of the tray was worth.
“Who’s closest?” asked the steward’s boy. No one answered quickly enough.
“You,” he said, pointing at the new girl. Her stomach dropped. “Me?”
“You’ve legs, don’t you? Take it to his chambers. And mind you, but do knock twice. I’d personally advise you to not stand directly in the middle of the doorway—if he throws something, duck.”
There was hearty laughter from everyone in the kitchen at that. She wiped her hands on her apron, lifted the tray, and followed the boy’s directions through two narrow passages and up a winding stair that seemed to grow quieter with every step. The noise of the kitchens faded behind her, moving to the quiet corridors of the keep. At the end of a corridor hung with faded tapestries, she thinks she had found the door.
She knocked twice on the wooden door gently, only to be met with silence. Her hands shifted the weight of the tray when she felt it slipping, then knocked again.
“Go away,” came a voice from within, sounds like it’s muffled.
She hesitated. “My prince, your food.”
“Leave it.”
There was no narrow side table set outside his door, oddly enough, no waiting page to relieve her of the weight in her arms. Only the heavy oak door banded in black iron, its hinges dull with age and faintly rusted at the seams. The corridor itself felt too quiet compared to the kitchens below—the air cooler, touched with a draft that carried the distant salt of Blackwater Bay and something sour beneath it. She shifted the tray against her hip, fingers already aching, and glanced at the hinges as though they might offer any kind of instruction.
“I’ve nowhere to leave it, my prince.”
For a heartbeat there was no answer. Then a muffled thud from within—a heavy item slowly being dropped to the floor, it seems, followed by the faint scrape of something dragged across the floor.
After a pause, his voice came, roughened at the edges even after a cough to clear the airway. “Enter, then.”
The smell met her before she fully crossed the threshold. Wine. Stale and sharp, soaked deep into rushes and fabric. Not the bright sweetness of a freshly poured cup, but the thick, fermented reek of it left standing too long in warm weather. It clung to the air, to the curtains, to … him.
The chamber was dim despite the hour. Candles had burned low in their holders, wax spilling over in pale rivulets, wicks bent and guttering. The curtains were half-drawn across the tall window, allowing only a thin wash of afternoon light to spill across the floorboards in tired streaks. Dust drifted lazily through it.
Books lay scattered across the floor and along the hearth — some open, pages splayed as if abandoned mid-sentence, others facedown with their spines strained. A chair had been nudged askew. Near the hearth, a silver goblet lay on its side, a dark stain spreading through the rushes beneath it, seeping in uneven circles.
The room did not look ravaged. It looked neglected.
Prince Daeron Targaryen sat near the window in a high-backed chair carved with twisting vines. One boot lay discarded a few feet away; the other remained half unlaced. His shirt hung loose at the throat. His pale hair fell unbound around his face, catching the weak light like spun silver. He did not look toward her as she entered, only stared at something beyond the glass—or perhaps at nothing at all.
She had seen princes before, from a distance—the new girl is not yet allowed to serve any member of the royal family, they said. They rode past in procession, armor gleaming, cloaks bright as banners, hands raised in easy acknowledgment of cheering crowds. They glittered like something made for songs of glory. But this one looked like a man who had not slept properly in days.
Careful not to disturb the fallen goblet, she crossed the chamber to find an empty table, her steps soft against the wood. Up close, the smell of wine was stronger still, threaded with smoke from the hearth and the faint metallic tang of cold ash. She set the tray on a small table within his reach, steadying the rattling cups before they could betray her nerves. “Shall I pour, my prince?”
A breath of laughter left him, it was humorless but not unkind. “It’s already poured.”
She followed the direction of his gaze to the goblet bleeding into the rushes by the fire. “Yes, my prince, my apologies.”
At that, he turned his head.
His eyes were clearer than she expected — violet, though shadowed at the edges, like bruises fading under pale skin. He studied her as though she were an unfamiliar object placed before him without explanation.
“You’re new.”
“Yes, my prince.”
“From where?”
“Duskendale, my prince.”
His gaze lingered a moment too long for her to feel at ease. It was not a leer, nor was there any condescending cruelty in it. He did not look at her as some highborn men looked at servant girls—as though they are nothing but walking flesh and target practice. This felt more like scrutiny.
“They’ve sent children now,” he murmured at last. “Have I grown so fearsome?”
“No, my prince.”
One pale brow lifted slightly. “No?”
She hesitated, heart knocking against her ribs, and reached for the first honest word that came to her. “Only a little bit untidy..”
Then, unexpectedly, the corner of his mouth curved. “Untidy,” he repeated, as though testing the shape of it. “That is rather merciful than what some others would say, I believe.”
The silence that followed felt like stepping blind from a ledge and waiting to see if the ground would meet her. Heat flooded her face. She dropped into a hurried curtsy she should have made upon entering. “Forgive me—forgive me, my prince, I did not mean to be—” For one terrible breath, she thought she had overstepped in a way that could not be mended.
Relief made her knees feel unsteady.
“For what?” he went on, leaning back in his chair, the carved wood creaking softly beneath his weight. He tipped his head against it and closed his eyes. “Speaking truth?” A faint exhale left him.
“If the kitchens send you again, tell them I’ve no appetite.”
“Yes, my prince.”
She remained where she was, uncertain whether she had been dismissed or merely answered. The candles crackled faintly in their holders. Somewhere beyond the thick door, footsteps passed along the corridor and faded into quiet.
After a long pause, without opening his eyes, he said, “You’re still here.”
“I must collect the tray, my prince. If you will not eat.” His eyes opened then, sharper than before, settling fully on her. In the low light, their violet seemed darker — deepening toward indigo.
“You assume I won’t.”
“They said you wouldn’t.”
“They,” he echoed softly.
“The other servants, my prince.”
He studied her for another long moment, as though turning over something unseen in his mind. Then, without breaking her gaze, he reached for the bread. He broke it cleanly in half and took a bite. She did not mean to stare—but there is a certain way in which he ripped the piece in two equal pieces precisely. He swallowed and gave a faint, almost boyish shrug. A crumb caught briefly at his lip before he brushed it away with the back of his hand.
“Well,” he said, mumbling with the bite still in his mouth, “now they’ll have to think of something else to be right about.”
The next day, she was sent again, clutching the tray as though it were heavier than the day before, the stew sloshing slightly with every careful step she took through the maze of corridors. “Why me?” she whispered to Bessa as they passed the boiling cauldrons and stacks of rolling pins, steam curling in lazy spirals around their heads, sticking to the stray wisps of hair that had escaped her braid.
Bessa only shrugged and shoved the bowl of thick barley and herb stew into her hands, the heat radiating through the wood and ceramic, rich and savory, mingling with the scent of salt pork and onions. “Because at least he took something other than the wine,” Bessa said, her tone matter-of-fact, “and because you didn’t come back crying. First after six.”
The tray before her smelled of warmth and something faintly sweet, the bread still warm and dusted with flour, the wine flagon catching the light of the low-burning torches in the kitchen, glinting like dark glass as if warning her of the prince’s possible temper. She wound through narrow corridors, past arches carved with creeping vines, past the sloped stairwell that smelled faintly of cold stone and soot, still trying to memorise the twist of the walls as she went, the sound of her slippers against the floorboards echoing softly in the otherwise silent hallways.
At the door, she knocked twice, lightly, almost timidly, but sharply enough to announce her presence. “Enter,” his voice called, more impatient and clipped than the day before, and she hesitated only a heartbeat before pushing the door open, stepping inside.
The room was darker much now, the curtains fully drawn across the tall window, blotting out the pale afternoon light and leaving the space lit only by the flickering red glow of the hearth embers, which seemed to pulse like a heartbeat in the dim room. Shadows pooled thickly in every corner, swallowing books scattered haphazardly across the floor and half-burned candles whose smoke curled upward like wraiths against the rafters. The smell of wine struck her once again, still the same sharpness and sourness, soaked into the carpeted rushes and heavy velvet curtains, mingling with the smoke and the faint metallic tang of the hearth.
Prince Daeron stood near the fire this time, sand-colored hair catching the ember-light and turning copper at the edges, hands clasped loosely behind his back as he stared into the coals as though they might reveal something hidden, something he was waiting for. She set the tray down on the small scarred table carefully, the wood worn smooth from years of use, and as she did so, he spoke without turning.
“I did not ring,” he said, flat and even. “No, my prince,” she answered softly, aware of how her voice sounded in the thick air.
“Yet you came.”
“Yes,” she said, and he turned to face her, pale violet eyes shadowed beneath lids heavy with exhaustion, a faint dark line tracing beneath them.
“Why?” he asked, and she blinked, uncertain, and whispered,
“Because it is the hour for supper.”
“Is it?”
“Yes, my prince,” she said, and he considered her, tilting his head as if weighing her honesty against some invisible measure, before crossing the room and collapsing into the chair near the hearth with a groan of fatigue.
She lifted the ladle from the bowl, steam curling in thin wisps around her fingers, and poured the thick stew into a small dish, noticing for the first time the fine tremor of his hands. Not enough to make him drop the spoon, but enough that the surface of the stew quivered faintly when he grasped it. She lowered her eyes and tried not to stare, to pretend the tremor had gone unnoticed, but it persisted, subtle and unnerving.
He took the spoon without a word and ate slowly—one bite, then another, three—before his gaze drifted toward the flagon of wine. Instinctively, she reached for it, but his hand shot out faster and caught her wrist. She jumped slightly at the contact, the pressure neither painful nor light, and their eyes met, holding for a strange suspended moment, the silence heavy and almost sacred. For a heartbeat, she felt as though she had stepped into something already in motion, a current of inevitability that neither of them had named. Daeron released her wrist and waited, watching her pour the wine into the goblet as he drank slowly, the deep liquid sliding down his throat, leaving a faint sheen on the pale skin of his neck as he swallowed.
The firelight flickered across his face, catching in the violet of his eyes and the sharp line of his jaw, illuminating the small, quiet motions of a man who had lived much and slept too little, whose world was both heavy and fragile. Outside the drawn curtains, the Red Keep continued on unaware, corridors and kitchens filled with noise and smoke and the smell of bread, but in this dim chamber, she watched him, memorizing the set of his shoulders, the way the light hit his hair, the tremor of his hands and the stillness of his gaze. And for the first time, the act of carrying a tray, of pouring a bowl of stew, of standing in a quiet room beside a prince, felt so monumental and fragile all at once.
The next morning, she woke before dawn, the room still dark and the air cool against her skin, with the taste of honey lingering on her tongue. Not real honey—the memory of it, sweet and sticky, clinging to the corners of her mind like a dream she could almost reach. She dressed quietly, sleeves tugged down over her wrists, shoes soft against the stone floors, and made her way to the kitchens while the household still slept. Steam rose from pots and cauldrons, filling the room with the scent of bread and onions and roasting meats. She moved among the cooks and scullery girls without thought, following some instinct she could not name, and when the trays were being prepared, her fingers reached out before she realized what she was doing, dipping into a small pot of honey and spooning it into his tray.
Bessa’s hand slapped hers sharply, thinking she had wanted a taste for herself. “That’s for the king’s table.”
Bessa grunted but said nothing further, letting the honey remain.
When she carried the tray up, the castle still hushed in the pre-dawn gloom, he was already there, seated at the window, the weak light washing over his pale hair, fully dressed and alert.
“You’re early.”
“So are you, my prince,” she replied, balancing the tray carefully.
He glanced down at the food, eyes sliding over the bread, the stew, the wine—stopping at the honey. Silence stretched like a living thing between them.
“I did not ask for that,” he said finally, low and almost careful.
“No,” she admitted, gaze still lingering on the floor.
“Why is it there?”
“I thought—”
He rose slowly, the chair scraping faintly against the floor, and stepped closer. The air seemed to thicken, charged, as though they were standing on the edge of something that might snap at any moment.
“Thought what?”
“That you would want something sweet,” she said.
He held her gaze for a long, quiet moment. Then, almost delicately, he dipped a finger into the honey and tasted it. His shoulders eased, just barely, the tension in him softening in the faint light.
“I dreamt of honey, for once.” he said, voice soft and distant, almost to himself. “Strange.”
She swallowed hard, unsure what to say, feeling the warmth of relief and the odd shock of intimacy wash over her all at once. She couldn’t possibly tell him that she woke up with the taste of honey on her tongue, can she not?
One evening, the rain fell hard enough to hammer the castle windows, masking even the distant roar of the sea. She carried a tray of stew thick with onions and salt pork, the aroma felt very strong in the close room, but he did not touch it. He sat hunched over the hearth, staring into the fire as though it held all the answers he sought.
“I saw a great structure burn,” he said without preamble, voice low, almost a whisper. She stood uncertainly near the table, hands clenched around the tray’s edge, watching the way the flames flickered across his face. “Dragons above it,” he continued, “screaming. And the men beneath were screaming much louder. A crown fell into the fire but it did not melt.”
“I see them every night,” he went on, “things that have not happened. Things that may never happen. And they sit in my skull like rot. I do not know which one would happen and which one would not. I do not even know if I am understanding any of them correctly or not.” He turned his head slowly toward her, violet eyes catching the firelight. “And you.” Her breath caught.
“You brought honey when I dream of sweetness. You could have brought me other desserts and sweets. But I dreamt of honey, and you brought me honey.” Her heart pounded, loud enough that she felt certain he could hear it.
“They are nothing, my prince,” she said quickly. “Just foolish things.”
“Nothing?” He rose to his feet, the room seeming to shrink around him, heavy and urgent. “Tell me,” he said softly, “right now. What do you know?” She shook her head. “Nothing.”
He came closer, deliberate and careful. “Look at the table,” Daeron instructed. She obeyed, eyes scanning the scene: candles burning low, stew steaming gently, his untouched wine gleaming dark.
“What happens next?” he asked. “I don’t—” “What happens?” Her throat tightened, fear pressing at her chest. She saw the candle gutter, the flame flicker uncertainly, the stew cool untouched, and he would drink and say something cruel and regret it. The knowing settled over her like cold water.
“The candle,” she whispered. “It will go out.” They watched the tiny flame quiver, once, twice, then die, curling smoke into the still air. Silence followed, pressing against her ears and chest. Her gaze lingered at the wick as though she herself had extinguished it by will. “It is nothing,” she said again, but the words sounded distant, hollow even to her own ears. “The candle was short and it already seemed like it w—”
He moved toward the table slowly, like approaching some altar of reckoning. “What else?” he asked, quiet but insistent. She shook her head, backing away. “I don’t want to.” “What else?” His voice needed no volume to command attention. Her eyes burned as she realized the truth.
She did not move toward the table. She did not lift the cup. She remained where she was, hands folded before her, as though she were reciting something already written.
“You will not drink,” she said softly. Prince Daeron looked up. “You will sit there and stare at it,” she continued, eyes steady, voice calm, “as if it might change its mind and become something else. Water. Medicine. Anything but what it is.”
He studied her now; knowing the truth that now only the two of them know. “And then?”
She hesitated, only a breath. “Then there will be three knocks,” she said. She lifted her hand and tapped twice against the window frame, then another one that came a second too slow. Tap. Tap … Tap.
He did not smile. “And who will it be?”
“Two guards,” she replied. “From the eastern passage. One with a scar on his chin. The other will not look directly at you. I could not remember his name.”
His brows drew together. “Something like … ‘Prince Daeron. His Grace commands your presence in the solar. At once’, they would say.”
They stood still, straining for the sound of approaching footsteps. Daeron’s eyes were fixated towards the door, wanting to test the words he just heard. Though his hand would reach out for a goblet within his arm’s reach, but halfway through, he stopped and set it back. Silence pressed in around them for another minute before it finally came.
Three knocks, measured and certain. Tap. Tap … Tap. Daeron’s breath stilled.
“Prince Daeron,” a man called through the wooden door. “His Grace commands your presence in the solar. At once.”
“Impressive,” he murmured, though whether he meant her or the timing of the knock was unclear. The guards knocked again, more firmly this time.
“Yes, yes, I know. Give me a moment.”
Instead, he turned back to the other side of his chamber, to where his wardrobe is—one would expect to be dismissed when the Prince had his fingers fiddling around the buttons around his collar. The moment he shifted, she dropped her gaze at once, as though caught staring at something forbidden. A flush crept swiftly up her neck and into her cheeks, warmth blooming beneath her skin. She pivoted instinctively toward the hearth, giving him her back in a gesture that was half decorum, half self-preservation.
Behind her, she heard the soft rustle of fabric. He crossed to a carved wardrobe near the wall. The scent of stale wine that had lingered in the room was disturbed briefly, then overlaid by something cleaner—linen and faint cedar.
She fixed her gaze determinedly on the dying embers in the hearth, fingers idly messing with the fabric of her apron. Daeron noticed that through the silence.
“Should I be offended,” he asked mildly, “that you will not look at me?”
Her breath caught. “It would not be proper, my prince.”
There was the faintest sound of amusement in his exhale. “You were quite bold a moment ago.”
She felt the heat in her cheeks deepen.
“I spoke only what was true.”
“As did I,” he replied.
She could hear him moving—cloth shifting, the sound of sleeves pulling over arms. When she dared a glance sideways despite herself, she saw only the edge of pale linen as he drew a fresh shirt over his shoulders.. He fastened it with steady fingers and shrugged into a dark doublet trimmed in black, its lines clean and sharp. The faint scent of cedar gave way to something subtler now—lavender oil, perhaps, or simply clean skin. When he tied his hair back properly at the nape of his neck, the transformation was almost startling. The man who had sat among spilled wine and guttering candles was gone; in his place stood someone composed, like a true prince this time.
“You may turn around,” he said at last.
She did so carefully, and her eyes lifted only as high as his collar before retreating again. He noticed.
“If you keep staring at the floor,” he added lightly, adjusting his cuffs, “the guards may begin to think I have you here for punishment.”
Her head snapped up in mortified alarm before she could stop herself. He caught the movement and, just for a moment, allowed himself a proper smile—small, but unmistakably pleased with the effect, as it is not something that happens to him too often.
“I jest,” he said, though the warmth in his expression lingered. “You need not look so stricken, I am not my brother.” She swallowed and composed herself as best she could, folding her hands again to still their nervous fidgeting.
By the time he reached the door, he did not immediately open it. Instead, Daeron rested his palm flat against the wood, feeling the faint vibration of waiting presence on the other side. For a brief second, he allowed the stillness to settle once more.
Instead of opening the door, he turned back into the room.
She had not moved from where he had left her. Her hands were folded neatly before the apron on her waist, fingers laced together as though to keep them from trembling, eyes lowered to the rush-strewn floor. There was something in her stillness, as if she feared that meeting his gaze too boldly might disturb whatever fragile understanding had just taken shape between them. A servant girl looked smaller in that moment, not because she was slight, but because the room itself seemed to press inward, straight to her chest.
For a long while, he simply watched her.
There was no sharpness in his expression now, no searching suspicion, no guarded doubt. What settled across his face was quieter than that—quieter and more uncertain. It was the look of a man who had stumbled upon something he had long believed impossible and did not yet know whether to trust it.
“You knew,” he said again, and his voice had softened. “Before I did. Did you dream of them? Did you see it too?”
She lifted her eyes at that, though only just enough to meet his. The movement was cautious, almost reluctant, but there was no falsehood in her gaze. “I do not dream, my prince,” she murmured. “It’s just … there. I just seem to know it.” The words were simple, inadequate to the weight of what had occurred, yet they were the truest she could offer.
He inclined his head once, a small, thoughtful gesture, as though her answer aligned with something private and long-held. Outside the chamber, the guards still waited; their presence could be felt like a pressure against the door. The world demanded its prince in councils and corridors, in matters far larger than a guttered candle and a little bit of honey.
Yet he did not move.
“You know things,” he said slowly, as if testing each word before allowing it to exist. “Things that have not happened.” A faint curve touched his mouth—not quite a smile, but not bitterness either. “So do I.”
Her breath caught, soft and nearly soundless, but the shift in her expression betrayed it. Until that moment, she had not known whether his visions were metaphor, memory, or just her mind slowly trying to drive herself to madness. To hear them named so plainly unsettled something deep within her.
“For years,” he continued, his voice low and even, “I thought it was a curse meant to rot me from the inside.” His fingers tightened briefly against the door, the wood creaking faintly beneath the pressure. “To be alone with it.”
When he looked at her then, the intensity in his eyes was no longer interrogative. It was searching in another way—almost vulnerable in its steadiness, or perhaps it is comfort to know that he is not the only one.
“And now, you walk in carrying bread and honey, and suddenly I am not.”
The knock came again, sharper and more insistent than before, splintering the stillness between them. The world would not wait forever. He drew in a slow breath and finally turned the handle. The door opened inward, admitting a sliver of brighter corridor light that cut across the dim chamber floor.
But before stepping through, he paused and glanced back over his shoulder.
“Next time,” he said, in a tone so light it might have belonged to a conversation about supper or weather, “you will tell me what happens after.”
“Yes, my prince,” she replied, her voice steady despite the quickened beat of her heart.
He hesitated there in the doorway, the faintest flicker of something unspoken crossing his face.
Then, very softly, he added before closing the door, “And you will come yourself. No need to come under the disguise of supper.”
She remained where she stood, the room settling slowly back into silence around her. Her heart felt unsteady in her chest, as though it had been struck and was still reverberating from the blow.
When the four Pevensies returned to this world, Lucy couldn’t bear to call herself “English”. While they were still at the Professor’s house, she could pretend they were still in Narnia; the trees didn’t talk, and the rivers didn’t babble, and she couldn’t bring herself to call the birds’ chipping a Song, not when she had heard true Bird Song. The woods were tame, and the grass was short, and the animals vanished wherever she went, but it was still Nature. If she sat still for long enough and closed her eye, she could almost imagine she was back in Narnia. That she was back home.
For Lucy had lived in Narnia for longer than she lived in England. All her siblings did. But Lucy was the only one who had only ever belonged to Narnia.
The others remembered, vaguely, that they had come from some place else. They had gone to School and been given Responsibilities. They had understood the news reports on the radio and why Mother had sent them to the Country. England had left its mark upon their minds, and a mere fifteen years in Narnia could not erase it, even as it faded it. They could call themselves Peter Pevensie or Susan Pevensie or Edmund Pevensie and remember what it meant to be a Pevensie from Finchley. Vaguely they could recall who their parents were and what they did, their friends and relations and the family down the road who they couldn’t stand.
A few years more, perhaps, and the lingering traces of Pevensie in their minds might have faded beyond recognition. A few more years and Peter and Susan and Edmund might have belonged to Narnia without a trace of England left in them, as Lucy did. For she had grown up in Narnia and could only ever think of herself as Lucy of Narnia.
Her mother had not raised her; her father had not raised her; she had not gone to School, had not begun to learn the History of England and its Empire. She had not yet learned that “English” was an adjective which applied to her, nor understood all that came along with it, so she eagerly attached “Narnian” to herself with none of the struggle her siblings endured.
Even Peter and Susan had not raised her. For they were busy with the affair of Ruling Narnia, of protecting and nurturing their nascent country.
It had been the Trees who raised her, the Rivers and Wells, the Talking Animals. They had all raised her. She grew up running wild through the halls of Cair Paravel, along the shore of her Eastern Sea, among the trees in the surrounding woods.
She had sat at the feet of ancient Trees and learned the History of her new home; she had learned dancing from the Dryads, with all its looping circles and windswept grace, and music from the Fauns, their mesmerising fluting that commanded crowds, and storytelling from the Birds, with its captivating sharpness and melody. And she had learned bladework from the Dwarves, who had taken one look at the small child with too many enemies to count and known that the fauns and the centaurs wouldn’t be able to teach her anything of use for years, and so had taken her and taught her how to turn her short stature into an advantage, to fell towering adults of every race as easy as she plucked flowers for her hair.
She learned rhetoric and strategy and spellwork from the Centaurs alongside her siblings, and suspicions and deception, politics and lawmaking, from the councilors and tutors flooring into Narnia, desperate to gain influence in the nascent court of the child monarchs of a country marked for great influence. They instilled within her a fierce protectiveness of her own mind and opinions.
And somewhere during those early years she learned math and geography and needlework, Calmoren and Galmen, Teribinthian and the languages of the Seven Isles, along with their history and culture and laws.
She learned grace from Susan, and justice from Edmund, and command from Peter. She learned love and loyalty from them all, joy and happiness and pure incandescent rage. By the end of their fifteen years in Narnia, Lucy had been happily molded and shaped by Narnia, she had happily been Narnian; she had magic in her bones and wildness in her blood; she could no more be called English than she could be called a child.
A/N: I am absolutely in love with @idksmtms's fics of Maekar having a young wife whom Dunk confuses with his daughter, and I just kept thinking about how Baelor would react if it happened to him 😭 so I wrote this. Special thanks to @vhagars-dementia for constantly blessing this fandom with her ideas!!! I dedicate this to you <3 And to all my Baelor enthusiasts.
— summary: ser duncan the tall thinks you're just a beautiful girl close to his own age, but his innocence is his undoing when he mistakes you for just another targaryen cousin. the only problem? you are actually the lady of dragonstone and baelor’s wife.
— pairing: baelor targaryen x wife!reader
— word count: 2k
— content: controversial young wife!reader, age gap, humor, mentions of reader's hair length, jealous!baelor, implicit sexual references, pda.
The hedge knight spends more time than ever with the family, forever trailing after Aegon like a loyal hound, laughing, jesting, and, above all, eating.
It was only to be expected that the prince would invite his dear friend to the feast held at Dragonstone for the celebration of your name day. Your husband, Baelor, had prepared a banquet worthy of you, with an enormous cake and hundreds of servants rushing frantically through the castle, adorning the halls with flowers and colors chosen to your liking. He knew you exceptionally well, so it had been easy for him to decorate precisely how you'd like.
You had told him, of course, that such splendor was unnecessary, that a small supper with the family would have more than sufficed. Yet Baelor delighted in spoiling you, for you were the finest blessing he had been granted in a lot of time.
Whenever Ser Duncan the Tall found himself in your presence, he devoted most of his time to watch you from afar—seeing you laugh beside Baelor, play with Egg, or even speak comfortably with Prince Aerion. Your presence was nothing short of glorious, a magnet for eyes and devotion wherever you went. Your nature was exquisite—kind, gentle, and so unbearably sweet that at times Dunk thought you could scarce be of the same blood as the rest of them.
And your beauty… that was another matter entirely. You were the loveliest sight the humble eyes of a hedge knight had ever beheld. Your form was wondrous, your face celestial, your long hair falling over your shoulders like a silken cascade, and your smile... it stole the very breath from his chest every time. Each time you entered his sight, a sigh would just escape out of him, soft and helpless, like a boy hopelessly in love.
“Do not even think it, Dunk,” Egg warns him, as he had more than once before, quick to notice the besotted look upon his big friend’s face as they sat together at the table. “That's out of your power to reach, Ser.”
But Dunk does not answer. He is far too intent upon you as you appear in the great hall’s doorway.
Today you wear a gown of red, dazzling, adorned with pearls and white embroidery that spreads across your bodice, climbs your shoulders, and trails down the length of your spine, where darker crimson stitching forms the likeness of dragon scales. Your hair lies loose down your back, softly waved, gleaming in the candlelight.
All rise at your entrance.
Dunk is the last. He nearly stumbles over his chair in his haste, its legs scraping loudly against the stone floor as he shoves it back. That alone—and you—turn him red as a summer apple.
Valarr, seated at his other side, watches his brutish motion with poorly hidden amusement.
“My love,” Baelor calls first, his face gentle as drifting clouds, fondness curving his lips as he comes to greet you properly. “Happy name day.”
You accept his embrace, smiling as he presses a tender kiss to your hair.
After him, the others come in turn, forming a line to offer their wishes, their thanks, their gifts—small tokens and letters placed into your hands.
Egg flings himself into your arms, making you laugh and sway back a step beneath the force of him. Baelor, standing close at your side, smiles at the sight. Ever tender are you with the younglings, and for that, he loves you all the more. You shower his children with a devotion so maternal and steadfast that one would never guess they did not spring from your own womb.
“Thank you, my sweet Aegon,” you tell him, stroking the fine, pale silver-gold hair already sprouting upon his head. The boy had even brought you a flower—one of those you cherished most, a silent token of his affection.
Duncan feels painfully out of place when his turn comes. Standing empty-handed while his stomach twists into a tight, miserable knot.
He is already flushed when you lift your gaze to him, your eyes sparkling with amusement at the familiar effect you have upon him—his trembling hands, his stammer, his shy smiles. He's so cute!
“Ser Duncan. I hope you would be here,” you greet him warmly, you know well the bond he shares with Aegon; to have him present is a comfort to your heart. “Aegon speaks wonders of you. It does not surprise me to see you have become each other's shadow.”
“My lady,” Dunk answers you, his voice no louder than a mouse’s squeak. His gaze, much against his better judgment, betrays him, making a swift, helpless journey over the length of your body.
And Baelor notices, of course; his smile fades, slow and certain, as he watches the knight’s every movement like a hawk perched upon your shoulder. A single brow lifts slightly, and a deep, thoughtful furrow begins to cloud his brow.
Duncan clears his throat and casts your husband an apologetic glance before daring to look at you again. “I— I beg your pardon. I would not wish to be an intrusion upon your name day. Your father was kind enough to grant me to attend.”
The hall falls into sepulchral silence. The small conversations that bloom among the Targaryens die at once when Dunk’s words echo through the great chamber, their meaning plain, their offense unmistakable and unashamed. Even the youngest cease their play, and the servants stand frozen right where they are.
All turn to stare at Duncan now, and they look upon him with mortified eyes, as though none dare breathe.
Somewhere, someone fails to smother a laugh—most likely Aerion.
Egg’s mouth falls open in mortification. He looks up at his friend, his expression stricken, willing him to understand—to see—that what he has just said is wrong. Very wrong.
Duncan looks down at him when his small squire gives his shin a furtive kick, meant to draw his notice without the others seeing. He frowns, bewildered, not understanding what offense he has given now to deserve such a blow.
And when he looks back to the grown folk, he finds you watching him with an expression poised in perfect balance between horror and amusement. There is even the faintest hint of a smile at the corner of your lips, one you must press away when you turn your head toward your prince.
Baelor does not look pleased as you do.
His face is uncommonly stern, his brow drawn tight, his lips pressed into a hard, unforgiving line, he is trying to gather every shred of his restraint to keep from striking the foolish knight upon your name day.
“She is my wife, Ser Duncan,” he clarifies, his patience stretched thin, drawn so taut it borders upon offense. His hand comes to curl around your waist as you lean into him, lifting one hand to his chest in quiet reassurance.
You are still trying to hide that treacherous, amused smile.
“Oh—Seven—” Dunk breathes, realization striking him at last. He drops at once to his knees, bowing his head in reverence and shame. “I beg your forgiveness, Your Grace. I—I did not know. My manners are poor—you must understand, I never m–meant offense.”
“Of course not, Ser,” you reply kindly, looking down at him, still leaning against your husband’s chest. He lets out a soft sigh beneath your touch, your hand rising and falling with the steady motion of his breath.
Baelor makes a sharp, dismissive gesture for him to rise. “See that it does not happen again.”
“Of course!” Dunk scrambles to his feet at once, his face burning red with shame. “I only meant that she is so young and beautiful, and you—”
His frantic blue eyes fall upon Valarr, standing just behind his father. The prince shakes his head swiftly, his mismatched eyes widening in urgent warning, bidding him to hold his tongue.
Dunk obeys at once and his jaw snaps shut so hard it almost snaps apart.
“You witless boy,” Maekar rebukes him, his face twisted with disgust and disdain when the hedge knight dares glance his way, standing at your side like some old, ill-tempered hound. “That should cost you your fucking tongue.”
Your soft laughter breaks through the tension of the moment, and all turn to look at you, the heavy air easing when they all realize this offends you not half so deeply as it does them.
“I am certain Ser Duncan meant no malice, Maekar,” you say, seeking to soothe them—most of all your husband. “And I should not like to see any tongues torn out upon my name day, please.”
Baelor’s gaze remains fixed upon the mortified knight, his hand coming to rest upon the pommel of his sword—a blade he carries in quiet defiance of your pleas to remain unarmed this day. He thinks, perhaps, that he shall have a use for it against Ser Duncan.
“... shall we eat at last, then?” Comes Daeron’s unmistakable voice from somewhere within the hall. “I am hungry. And thirsty.”
“Of that, none have any doubt,” Maekar mutters, rolling his eyes as he returns to the table.
The others follow in his wake, granting you and your husband a moment alone.
Ser Duncan gives you another quick, apologetic bow before hastening out from beneath your husband’s gaze.
You cannot hold it any longer.
A breath of laughter escapes you, soft and bright, and you turn in Baelor’s arms to face him fully.
He is still watching the place where Duncan stood, his jaw tight, his shoulders rigid beneath your touch, as if the insult lingers in the air like a foul smell.
Your fingers curl more firmly into the front of his doublet to call for his attention.
“My prince,” you whisper with a smile when his two-toned eyes finally meet yours. “My heart...”
You rise onto your toes and press a gentle kiss to his cheek, his beard tickling against your skin. His body noticeably softens beneath your warm affection.
Another kiss follows, softer still, at the corner of his mouth.
And one more, sweet and lingering, upon his lips.
“Peace,” you plead humorously against his mouth, your fingers toying idly with the Hand of the King’s badge on his chest. “You look as though you mean to challenge the poor knight to single combat over a slip of the tongue, my love.”
“I am not amused,” he manifests, his tone remarkably sullen, yet you press another loving kiss to his lips to chase away his pettish little pout.
“No?” You lean closer, your voice drops into something more playful and teasing, “is it because he thinks you're old, husband?”
His lips tremble at your words, holding back an ironic smile, and his hands tighten at your waist, pulling you closer against him.
Baelor clicks his tongue, and your gaze falls to his lips as he does. “I am not old.”
“Well, considering my own age... truthfully, you are a bit older,” you continue to tease him, biting back a small laugh at his startled reaction. “Should I begin calling you father now, hm?”
His beautiful eyes narrow.
You grin—and steal another quick kiss before he can protest.
“Do not push your luck, wife,” he warns all the same, a playful little smile curving his lips. His hand slides down to the small of your back before he delivers a sharp, scolding swat to your backside, making you jolt lightly against him.
His brow arches slightly. “You are the only one left breathless and trembling like some frail, ancient little thing. Or must I remind you how you clung to me the other night and begged me to—?”
Your hand flies to his mouth, covering it before he can utter another word.
“My prince,” you hiss under your breath, though laughter trembles in your voice, your eyes wide with scandalized amusement. “You grow bold. We are in a hall full of eyes, and your sons sit but a stone's throw away.”
His lips move against your palm, pressing a lingering, heated kiss there that sends a shiver down your spine. Baelor gently pulls your hand away, though he does not let go of your fingers, his thumb stroking your knuckles with a slow, possessive rhythm, grazing your betrothal ring.
“Let them look,” he dismisses, leaning into you to kiss your lips properly, claiming them. And claiming you.
The heated kiss, at last, forces Duncan’s eyes away from you, and Baelor smiles against your mouth as he watches him behind you, finally closing his own eyes to savor the honeyed sweetness of your kiss.
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