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FATHER'S JUDGMENT, MOTHER'S MERCY

summary: when your marriage to gwayne hightower can't produce the heir you need, you decide to strike a bargain with his cousin ormund instead, by convincing him that breeding you is holy work instead of sin. (9k)

characters: ormund hightower / fem!reader, gwayne hightower / wife!reader, very brief mentions of gwayne hightower / criston cole, daeron targaryen

contents: arranged marriage/lavender marriage, slow burn, enemies to lovers, infidelity, found family core, gay!gwayne, canon divergent, heavily inspired by scenes from game of thrones season 2 cw for manipulation, religious manipulation, smut 18+ (MDNI) unprotected sex, breeding kink, slightly dubcon

gif creds: pissbataille

You’d learned long ago that conviction was the true secret to any good performance. A thing done halfheartedly will always betray itself, but a thing done boldly enough is never questioned. This is the prophecy you’re sent to Oldtown with — a girl of a half-forgotten house, wed to one of the wealthiest in Westeros, for no better reason than to smooth a debt your father was owed. You’d learned the skill of performance quite well; long before you declared your vows at the Starry Sept in a dress of Hightower green and gold.

You were the dutiful daughter, the biddable bride, the docile wife — roles you played to perfection.

Your performance is not yet done when the heavy door groans shut on its hinges behind you, sealing you into the bedchamber with your new lord husband — whom you’ve only ever met between council meetings and crowded feasts. Beyond the candlelit walls, the wedding celebration rolls on with you — the drone of a hundred conversations, a burst of drunken song, a sea wave crashing cliffside.

All day, you’ve been a thing to be gawked at; to be dressed and undressed and dressed again; to be led down a sept of Hightower banners like livestock bought and sold. But now there is only the candlelight, and the sighing sea, and Gwayne Hightower watching you with an expression you can’t quite place.

“You look… beautiful,” is the first thing he thinks to say; and there is no air of performance in the words at all. Whatever else could be said of him, Gwayne Hightower has never been a cruel man — and, as he sees it, it would be far too cruel a thing to begin a marriage with a lie. “Perhaps I’m a bit partial on the matter, but… Hightower green does suit you, my lady.”

He flashes you a kind smile over his shoulder beneath the glugging of the dark violet ale he pours into a jeweled chalice. It sounds much louder in the quiet, along with that of your slippers whispering against the cobbles as you walk further into the unfamiliar chambers — the place you’ll likely spend the rest of your days, like a vast and gilded tomb.

“Thank you, my lord,” you say with a smile as your hands reach for the gold tie at your waist. It unlaces with one soft pull, and your fingers head next for the button keeping you wrapped in the emerald fabric. “Though… I must say… I think it looks much better like this—”

The gown pools to your feet with a soft thud, leaving you suddenly bare above the waist before him. A thin silver chain sits across your belly, holding your pale underskirt in place around your hips. The dancing firelight kisses through the thin fabric to reveal the shape of your body underneath it — the curve of your inner thighs, and the shadow of hair just between them.

“—Don’t you?” you wonder, eyes widening in a faux-innocent sort of look.

Gwayne’s chest rises with a slow inhale as his pale eyes move slowly over the sight of you — not with desire, perhaps, but with reverence. The quiet appreciation a man might have for a fine piece of art, to be admired at from a careful distance.

“Well…” the man hums lowly, lips curling upward into an unsure smile. He abandons the untouched goblet on the table behind him and closes the remaining distance between you, lest you see the uncertainty hidden in his eyes. “You certainly do not need it, my lady…”

His pale hands are cold when they smooth around your waist, just above the thin chain of your underskirt; fingers long and calloused from decades of swordwork. You tip your chin back to meet the man halfway when he ducks softly down to kiss you.

His pink mouth is soft and plush against yours, tasting of wine and mint and the honeyed remains of dinner.

When your hands reach for his broad shoulders, you can feel the tension coiled in his muscles as he attempts to summon a hunger all men should surely possess for a woman like you. You feel the trying within him without having to search for it — you’d been patient with men your whole life, been told of what your mouth did to them before you were old enough to truly understand the words, and how little urging men typically required for you to do so.

Though it seems to require a great deal more of that urging here now.

You kiss him deeper, licking into his parted mouth in a way that has made every man before him surrender to his knees. Gwayne exhales a heavy sigh through his nose, breath fanning warm along your cupid’s bow as his hands grip tighter at the plush of your waist. You let yours slide down the front of his emerald coat until they reach the leather of his belt. You cup him gently there just below, expecting to find him some of the way hard, but find him soft under the trousers instead.

Gwayne pulls off your mouth with a soft smack. His panted breaths fan across your cheek as he rests his forehead against yours. “Forgive me…” he laughs breathlessly, tongue darting to lick your spit from his mouth. “Must be the wine…”

Your mouth curls upward into a sympathetic smile. “Shall I fetch Ser Criston?”

Gwayne goes rigid against you in a blink. Horror floods his pale blue eyes and wrinkles the pale skin between his brows. “…What?”

“Perhaps he could join us— I truly wouldn’t mind,” you tell him, peering at the man with eyes wide in earnest when he steps back from you. “He could help you get started until you’re—”

His chest shudders through a trembling breath as the heat of humiliation prickles beneath his skin like burning embers. “I— I don’t know what you’re talking about...”

Gwayne turns away from you completely then. He puts the entire breadth of the chamber between you as he makes way for the balcony, inhaling deeply to drag the starry, summer night air into his tightening lungs. You watch him go as a cold feeling surges through your chest; not quite anger, and not quite hurt. You slip back into the crumpled wedding gown with a heavy sigh, fastening the emerald fabric closed once more.

“We are husband and wife now— There is no need for us to play games here,” you remind him, tying the gold lace around your hips as you step onto the balcony with him. The silken breeze ripples in your skirts as the whole of Oldtown stretches before you in flickering torchlight and salty air. Your hand settles gently over his spine, and he tenses beneath the soft weight of your tenderness on instinct. “Save that energy for the rest of court, my lord— You’re going to need it.”

Gwayne turns slowly to face you. His blue eyes have gone a paler shade from the unshed tears hiding in the very backs of them, glittering gold in the firelight. You meet his look of uncertainty with a surer smile.

“I don’t care if you want men and women equally, or if you prefer the company of men alone,” you mutter lowly with your head bowed close, words meant for his ears alone. “We can try again later, however you’d like— with a friend present, perhaps, if that eases things. Whatever you want. But for my sake, it must be done.”

The shadow of his adam’s apple bobs in his throat through a thick swallow. “And if I cannot?” he whispers on bated breath, light eyes swimming as they dart back and forth between yours. “Do it at all, I mean?”

Your smile does not waver in the face of his doubt. You simply shake your head at him in return. Your hand drifts up his spine until your fingers thread in the short auburn hair at the nape of his neck.

“Before you took me in, my lord, I came from a far lesser house. Where bread was counted— actually counted, so that my brothers might eat their fill and I might learn to want less… I had a father who reminded me daily what I cost to feed and clothe and keep unmarried. I wore gowns made out of scraps from my brother’s clothes before I came here,” you confess through a teary sort of laugh. “I know what it means to manage hard things, my lord. And I know there is always a way through them, if only you’re clever enough to find it.”

Gwayne’s furrowed features loosen into a look of kinship and distant admiration. Whatever grievance he’d carried onto this balcony moments ago seems to slip from his tense shoulders entirely. As the quiet swells between you, the crowd below notices your presence on the balcony above. They call up at the two of you like barking hounds — all of them hungry for a story they might tell their children one day, of the night they watched a girl from nowhere marry among the richest and most handsome in Westeros, like a fairytale come to life.

“Smile, Ser Gwayne,” you lilt with an artificial grin of your own. You hold onto his arm with one hand while your other lifts to wave at the crowd gathering in the city below. “They’ve waited for this part all day…”

Gwayne inhales a deeper breath; one that comes more easily to him this time. His smile seems to sit more effortlessly on his mouth, too, right before he ducks softly down to kiss you once more. Distant applause rings through the starry night when your lips meet — though there is little desire in it now, at least, not the kind the townsfolk below surely imagine there must be.

There is only relief. The quiet alleviation of a burden finally being laid to rest; the final bow before the curtain is drawn.

The Hightower was a city built atop itself. Dungeons beneath kitchens, kitchens beneath halls, halls beneath solars, and solars beneath beacon fire that never died out. You feel more like a ghost haunting the torchlit halls than a bride of three weeks past wandering the passages of her own home.

You slip into the kitchens on the whim of a sleepless night and come away with a square of honeyed lemon cake the cooks keep in stock specifically for you. A small theft, you think, as you take graceless bites on the walk back to your room — letting the sponge scatter in dry crumbs along the chest of your pale nightgown.

You’re three turns away from your chambers when you round another twisted corner and run directly into Lord Ormund Hightower — Gwayne’s eldest cousin of a few years or more, who stands a few inches or more taller in comparison too. He smells perpetually of the lavender-sandalwood incense from the silver pomander chained to his belt; still dressed for the day despite the late hour, with his doublet buttoned to the throat. His short dark-auburn curls are slightly mussed as though he’d been raking his hand through them, suggesting a quiet worry somewhere inside of him that he otherwise keeps hidden.

“My lady…” the man greets in a low melodic voice, and with a polite smile that shows mostly in the deepening creases beside his eyes.

With half of the cake still wadded in your cheek, you give the man a wordless look in return. One you’ve perfected over weeks of these exact encounters — a practiced, cynical, not-quite glare that makes you look half-dead behind the eyes.

You, to put it plainly, did not care for Ormund Hightower. Gwayne had told you once, in the short way he often spoke of his cousin, that the man had a cruel streak he hid under all that piety. “He’s worn the mask of righteousness for so long…” he’d whispered under his breath, at a particularly unforgiving feast. “It isn’t any wonder how it fooled the man wearing it.”

And you believed your husband, for he had never once given you reason not to.

So it was rather dreadfully unfortunate that Ormund is, by any honest measure, an extraordinarily handsome man. More unfortunate still is how exceedingly difficult it has proved to hate such a handsome man — even as he falls into step beside you down the dimly lit corridor without invitation. Though his long legs match your even pace with an ease that irritates you more than it probably should.

“Sweets? At this hour?” he squints, nodding toward the nearly finished cake still pinched between your fingers. He flashes you a curt grin when you give him no immediate response in turn. “Though it makes sense, I suppose— that a thing as sweet as you would so often crave for them…”

You pluck the rest into your mouth with an unyielding glare. “I am perfectly capable of finding my own room, Ser Ormund,” you tell him, swiping your palms together as you swallow down the mouthful. “There is certainly no need to trouble yourself escorting me—”

“Your room?” he echoes, brows lowering until a deeper shadow is cast over his pale eyes in the dying torchlight. “Not our room?”

He flashes you a playfully confused look that you meet with nothing at all, features as still and as pleasant as smooth waters — a tentative expression you’ve grown to wear like armor, in these restless weeks at court.

“Is that because my cousin snores too loudly, my lady?” Ormund pries at your silence. “Or do you just have a taste for solitude?”

“I do enjoy a bit of time to myself, yes…” you answer lightly with a single nod, arms folding neatly at the base of your spine. “Though I’m sure the concept must seem foreign to a man as desperate for company as you seem to be.”

“Well— desperate is a strong word,” he laughs somewhat bitterly, not missing the hidden insult in your words. “I am simply curious, my lady. Three weeks married and I have yet to hear so much as a whisper of your wedding night. Usually, there is some talk, as you know— between handmaidens, septas, and the like… And yet, there has been no word… Almost as if there were nothing to speak of…”

You keep your eyes forward and your pace steady, even when you feel Ormund’s pale eyes searing into your profile. “You seem quite interested in my marriage, Lord Ormund,” you quip lightly.

“Your marriage is quite interesting,” Ormund chuckles. “Not only to me, of course, but to the realm… It isn’t every day a lady of so small a house weds into one so great… That sort of thing always breeds interest… if nothing else.”

You turn slowly to face him, eyes narrowing with a feigned curiosity. “You’ve never married, have you, my lord?”

He falters briefly at the sudden question. The corners of his smug grin flicker slightly at the edges, as his adam’s apple bounces through a slow swallow. “No,” he answers finally and clears his throat. “I have been… unlucky in my affections, unfortunately.”

You nod to yourself and slow to a stop just outside your chamber door. Your nightgown whispers at your ankles when you turn to look at him properly for the first time since you collided in the corridor. You trade your usual glare for an artificially sweet expression — a softness where there had only been steel, a warmth where there had only been bitter cold. An expression you learned how to counterfeit over the years, though it seems to come a bit easier to you now.

You spot the exact moment he notices how differently you look upon him. The fleeting furrow of his brows; the way his gaze drops for half a second to your mouth before he catches himself again; the way his nostrils flare faintly, as though he cannot help but breathe you in. He can smell the bathing oils clinging to your skin and the floral perfume threaded in your hair from the proximity between you.

“That is unfortunate,” you murmur gently, stepping close enough towards him that it forces him to look down at you rather than past you. “Though perhaps it’s for the best— the whole notion of marriage seems to confuse you, so allow me to explain it.”

Ormund’s gaze hardens in a flicker. The dancing shadows from the dimming torchlight catch the clenching of his jaw as his ringed fingers curl into loose fists at his sides. But even still, your pretty smile never wavers.

“Your cousin is my husband by law— sealed by septon and signature and the whole weight of your family’s name behind it, so… Whatever we prefer in the privacy of our own chambers is no business of yours. Nor the realm’s. Nor anyone’s but his and mine,” you tell him with a polite grin despite the hidden venom in your words. “A woman does not require her husband’s appetite to match her own in order to be his wife, does she?”

“I feel The Seven would disagree with you, I’m afraid,” Ormund hums lowly, with the same artificially sweet tone threaded through his words. “The Father charges the husband to provide, and the Mother to nurture what is provided… The Faith is quite clear on what a dutiful marriage is for, my lady— And it is not... natural for a bride to remain a maiden three weeks past her wedding.”

The smile you give him then verges on sympathetic.

“You assume a great deal, my lord, about what you state you think I remain in,” you mutter quietly, and watch the weight of your words — the ambiguity within them — settle across his chiseled face. You tilt your head to your shoulder and drop your voice into a gentler tone. “But since you are obviously so fond of quoting scripture, perhaps you’ll recall what the Mother teaches of mercy— that even a sinner's body may yet serve a holy purpose, so long as the intention behind it is pure."

The words strike him harder than a whip across the spine. He tips his shaven chin upward, peering down at your faux-innocent stare from the bridge of his nose.

You can see him wrapping his head around it all: a woman sinful enough to have known men before her husband, yet still somehow pious enough to wield the scripture like a sword of her own. It is unlike any expression you’ve seen from him before — a mixture of both fluster and acclaim. Your stomach twists with the sheer excitement of having put it there at all.

“Good night, Lord Ormund,” you say with a smile before slipping through the heavy door of your chambers. You shut it behind you with a soft click before he can think of the words to respond, and don’t spare a single look back at him before abandoning him in the empty corridor.

The bed you share on rare occasion with your husband is a wide, absurdly ornate thing — carved with Hightower lighthouses and shrouded by heavy velvet curtains designed to conceal the indecencies of the marriage bed; though there would be no indecencies to hide here. It was Gwayne’s room alone most nights, and on the few you actually shared it, it held nothing more scandalous between you than idle talk and innocent touches of fleeting affection.

You share one silken cushion between each other now, with your arms tucked beneath your heads and your breaths entwining on every exhale. Your legs tangle subconsciously together under the blankets like school children sharing a bed — the sort of closeness that meant nothing and expected even less.

“Do you know what Lady Merrell asked me today?” you mutter aloud into the silent bedroom, filled only by the crackling hearthfire and your shared breaths.

Gwayne exhales hard through his nose in place of a laugh; the tip of it almost brushes the bridge of yours as he shakes his auburn head against the pillow. “I hesitate to pry…”

“She wanted to know whether I’d seen the maester about my courses,” you deadpan. “Very delicately, of course— as if she weren’t truly asking about whether or not I was capable of bearing children at all.”

Gwayne’s brows furrow. “And what did you tell her?”

“That my blood was a matter between myself, my maester, and the fucking Seven— and that she was more than welcome to bother the other two for further detail, should her curiosity prove so desperate…” you scoff and roll onto your back. Your tired eyes trace the painted stars on the ceiling, where the gold leaf flakes slightly around the edges from time gone by. “Yesterday it was Lady Woodwright, the day before that it was your father… We’re six moons married, Gwayne, and no belly to show for it— The whispers will only get worse from here.”

“Aye… I imagine they will,” Gwayne huffs distantly, jaw flexing through a thick swallow. His soft eyes trace the outline of your profile, made weary from the long day and the particular mercilessness of court. “What about Ser Adrian?” he offers suddenly. “He’s been rather obvious about his admiration for you as of late… I daresay he’d be a rather— willing participant, should a thing be asked of him.”

Your head turns slowly until your cheek brushes the silk cushion below. Your brows lower as your eyes search his face for any hint of uncertainty or sarcasm, and find only sincerity swimming in his pale blue eyes instead.

Your lips curl into an amused smile. “Are you offering to lend out your wife like a common whore, dear husband?”

He scoffs. “Of course not! I’m only saying that you have options, is all. If only you’re clever enough to find them— isn’t that what you said?” Gwayne quips with a sly smile, eyes narrowing in a playful look. “Though, I confess, I don’t much care for the idea of Ser Adrian’s hands on you at all… I’ve known the fool too long; and I know too well where they’ve been…”

You exhale a quiet laugh. “Careful, my lord. I’ll start to think you’re jealous…”

“I’m only trying to be efficient, dear wife,” he quips, lifting his fingers to muss idly at the lace frills along the chest of your nightgown. He goes quiet for a long moment thereafter, gaze going distant in thought before he mutters suddenly aloud. “…What about Ormund?”

Your eyes narrow. “What about Ormund?”

“He’d certainly be the best match, wouldn’t he?” Gwayne shrugs. “He’s unmarried. And of mine own blood— Close enough in kin that whatever child came of it would surely favor the Hightower look, regardless of the getting…”

You keep your face carefully arranged into a look of mild surprise, as if the man’s name had not already been living in the back of your head for weeks now already.

You hadn’t expected Gwayne to arrive at the conclusion on his own, to be sure — you had assumed you would need to steer him slowly there, the way you had steered so many men to so many unconscious decisions before now. You had been circling Ormund for weeks, carefully cultivating a rivalry with just enough fire behind it to keep it warm for later use; though you hadn’t been entirely sure what that use would look like until now.

“That wouldn’t trouble you?” you mutter softly.

Gwayne considers for a long moment before shaking his head against the pillow, auburn tendrils set aflame beneath the emerald silk below.

“No,” he answers, pink lips jutting softly. “I only very much doubt we could manage it… He is not so easily led as other men, my cousin. He’s like to think it a mortal sin twice over— adultery and deceiving his own blood besides… I’d only worry that his piety, if that’s what he so wishes to call it, isn’t like to bend for something as simple as a pretty face. Even yours.”

He smiles tiredly and lifts his hand to pinch your chin between his thumb and forefinger. The slow smile you give him in turn borders on devilish in an instant. “Leave that part to me, dear husband.”

You lay awake long after Gwayne’s breathing had evened beside you, mapping out every possible avenue of subterfuge available to you. All men were similar in their own ways; they each had specific buttons to press or levers to pull that brought them down to their knees without trying — there was an air of gentle submission in all of them, should you know where to look. And Ormund’s, you figured, lay somewhere in his conviction, which he used as a sword most days. Or a shield.

There was no use in arguing a seemingly pious man out of his faith, you realized, but there was every bit of it in arguing him into believing his faith required precisely what you needed from him.

So you find the man the following afternoon, where you know he takes his lunches in solitude on the balcony overlooking the eastern gardens. The air smells of washed linens strung to dry on the balustrade down below and the perfumed scent of lemon trees planted in a long line across the lawn. A warm breeze blows in from a cloudless blue sky, and Ormund smells you before he sees you — the sweet, musky concoction of bathing oils he’s come to associate with you alone.

He glances up from his plate of sliced bread, soft cheese, and ripe figs a half second before you turn the corner. He stills at the sight of you with his fork and knife still in hand — it was a rare sight, really, you coming to meet him on your own. Rarer still is the forlorn look etched upon your features now, that you try hopelessly to hide.

“My lady…” Ormund hums lowly, equal parts confused and delighted as he jokes, “To what do I owe the interruption of my solitude?”

“I wasn’t aware solitude required your permission to be interrupted, my lord,” you quip in response, eyes narrowing in his direction as you walk further onto the sun-bleached stone. The sharp smile you give him in turn is heavy with a sadness you do not entirely feel but let show regardless. “I believe you taught me that one, actually.”

Ormund swallows down his mouthful. The humor drains slowly from his chiseled features at the strange sound of your voice, having seemingly lost all the bite he’s come to cherish. “You are troubled,” he says to himself, neither a question nor a firm statement.

You scoff as though to dismiss him, hands folding over the back of your rustling skirts. “I’m perfectly well. Thank you for noticing.”

“You are not,” Ormund insists with a shake of his head and gestures with his cutlery for emphasis. “Your comebacks want for their usual bite, I’m afraid. And you only argue with me when you’re in proper spirits— I’ve come to look forward to it, really, so… something must surely be amiss.

You let your averted gaze drift slowly from the greenery of the garden to his attentive eyes. You peer at the man from beneath your lashes, letting your composure crack just slightly — just enough to allow him to believe that he’s the only man in the entire realm perceptive enough to have noticed it.

You let your sheepish smile waver at the edges as you assure him with a shake of your head, “It’s nothing that concerns you, my lord. I assure you—”

“Everything at Oldtown concerns me,” he scoffs as though the statement were as obvious as any other. “Curse of the tower, I’m afraid…”

He sets his silver cutlery to his plate with two quiet clinks and gestures to the seat across from him. “Sit,” he tells you. “Tell me what’s soured you, sweet girl.”

The nickname is not a rare one from his lips, though it strikes you warm somewhere deep in the chest as though it were the first time you’ve ever heard it. You inhale sharply through your nose, ribs straining slightly against your corset, and close the remaining distance between you. Ormund gives you the whole of his attention as you smooth down your skirts and descend into the opposite seat — the same unwavering devotion you imagine he must give to his prayers.

“It’s only the throes of marriage, I suppose,” you attempt to joke, though the humor dies somewhere in your heavy exhale halfway. Your gaze turns back to the garden below instead. “Your cousin, he… He still hasn’t…”

“Touched you?” Ormund finishes when you trail off, with very little reservation in comparison. He scoffs in amusement to himself and cuts into his fig without looking up. “Of that I’m well aware. My cousin has always lacked the appetite for finer things, my lady… But it isn’t a failing of the meal, I assure you.”

You flash him a weak smile in return.

“I have tried... so hard to be patient with him… It’s what the Crone teaches, isn’t it? That wisdom is only ever earned in the waiting?” you tell him, hands twisting into a knot in your lap. “But I fear that I am running out of time here before the whole court decides that I am either— barren or unwanted, and either way I am ruined for it… I will have no house to run back to if this fails, Ormund— No one wants a spoiled bride.”

“Come now, my lady,” the man croons with a teasing grin. “A rich husband who asks nothing of you in bed would sound like a mercy to most wives—”

The quip dies in his throat when you reach across the round table between you, grasping at the hem of his coat with pleading hands. Yours are smaller compared to his larger, sun-kissed ones. His knuckles are rough against the delicate skin of your palms as you hold him gently there.

“I have nothing, Ormund, but this marriage,” you tell him, voice trembling. “And it is— slipping through my hands no matter how tightly I hold onto it.

Ormund tenses at the sudden contact, pale gaze flitting from your fingers caging his wrist to the teary look in your eye. “What is it you’re asking of me?” he wonders lowly.

“Nothing,” you chuckle with a teary laugh. “I guess I have simply no one else to speak to here… I try to talk to the Gods, but… The skies have not yet answered me, and I… I figured that— no one speaks for Them as well as you do… I suppose I’m only asking for a little guidance, is all…”

Ormund’s chiseled features loosen slightly, as though pleased by the words — by the obvious compliment woven inside of them. His adam’s apple bounces through a swallow as his chin tilts slightly with pride. His hand turns slowly beneath yours, until his larger, warmer fingers engulf your own.

“Guidance I can offer,” he assures you gently, with a sincere smile pulling at the corners of his plush pink mouth. “You should not go without simply because your husband cannot provide.”

The words strike you deep in the chest.

“I only wondered whether—” you continue, letting a small stammer catch in your tiny voice as your gaze turns to your entwined hands. “Whether you believed the Seven would truly begrudge a woman a child. When the only alternative is her ruin… Whether mercy might permit what… what duty would otherwise forbid.”

A flicker of fleeting confusion furrows at Ormund’s strong brow. His eyes narrow briefly when the weight of your words finally hits him — of what you seem to be asking so suddenly of him. He inhales slowly and shifts in the cushion seat below, but never once lets go of your hands.

“Do you… Are you asking— if I…” He swallows hard, eyes glancing over your shoulder as if to check for any wandering passersby that might hear him. “If I might give you a child?”

You meet his squinted gaze with a pair of heavy, teary ones. “No one would have to know…” you whisper to him, half-choked by a manufactured emotion. “I would be in your debt forever. Gwayne, more so, perhaps— A debt I assure you will be paid in full, however you see fit.”

He falters briefly at your words, broad chest inflating with an inhale he forgets to let go. It is a rather beautiful thing to witness, you realize — to watch a man of conviction search the seams of his faith for a fault inside it; one that may warrant an answer he so desperately wants to provide.

His calloused hands squeeze gently at your fingers, and you think for a moment you have him.

“…I cannot,” he answers finally, and then clears his throat when the words nearly strangle him. He swallows and pulls back from you again, spine tensing straight in his chair. His hands ache with the urge to hold yours the moment he lets you go, but he curls them into fists instead. “It is not— holy, what you’re asking of me. Whatever mercy might excuse. And whatever animosity exists between my cousin and myself… And whatever— feelings I might have for you.”

When his eyes lift from his half-gone plate to your pleading gaze, you let the silence sit between you for a long moment. You let him feel the full weight of having disappointed you — let the tears gathering like dew upon your lashes strangle him like two fists around his throat before blinking them away again.

You flash him a wavering smile in turn. “Of course,” you nod, drawing further away from him with a deliberate hesitance. “I should not have asked it of you. Forgive me, my lord, I— I shouldn’t have come at all.”

You rise suddenly from your seat, and Ormund follows quickly in suit. He tries desperately to catch your eyes when you turn away from him, and feels a deep panging in his chest when he fails.

“I am sorry I cannot help you more, my lady,” he calls after your retreating figure, and only catches himself in his palpable desperation when you pause in the doorway. You spare him a weary glance over your shoulder — and fight back your own pleasure at the wounded look on his face.

“I only hope the Seven prove half so forgiving, my lord,” you smile weakly and leave him there with his forgotten meal, letting his faith and conscience wrestle with one another in the unforgiving silence you leave behind.

Ormund finds himself at the gallery window more often than he would admit to in the days that follow.

It’s an idle habit, he tells himself — that this window simply happened to overlook the yard, and that the yard simply happened to hold you most afternoons, laughing over a cyvasse board with his nephew. You and Daeron had seemingly taken to each other with a strange sort of ease; two people planted in Oldtown soil by different hands and tasked to grow there the best you could on your own even still.

Ormund tells himself he’s watching the boy, just as he has always watched the boy, though not even his conscience can convince himself of such a glaring half-truth.

“She’d make a fine mother, wouldn’t she?” Gwayne’s low voice comes suddenly from just behind him.

Ormund’s head whips to the side to find his cousin crossing the dim hall towards him, silent on the approach when he joins him at the stony sill. The younger man’s arms fold over his long emerald coat as he scans the bustling yard below — an instinctive fondness softens his features at the sight of you that Ormund struggles to make sense of.

“Yes…” the older man sighs and turns away, looking down at the yard from the bridge of his nose. “If only the Gods had given her a husband capable of making her one…”

“Bold words there, cousin, from a man with no heirs and no marriage yet to speak of,” Gwayne croons with a low laugh, flashing his cousin a narrow-eyed look. “Stones, glass houses— isn’t that what your beloved scripture says?”

Ormund nods. “Aye… The scripture also says a man should attend the beam in his own eye before troubling himself with the mote in his brother’s,” he argues smoothly back with a squinted look of his own. “Strange, isn’t it? How convenient scripture can be?”

“Mm…” Gwayne hums and turns back to the window. From down below, he vaguely hears you fling a theatrical accusation of cheating at Daeron, who argues the offense through a fit of boyish laughter — the sort of laugh he rarely allows himself with Ormund around. Gwayne watches the exchange with a proud sort of smile as he wonders suddenly aloud, “Do you remember that game we used to play when we were boys? Where we’d race each other to the top of the beacon?”

“Run the Tower?” Ormund answers. “Yes, I recall quite a many number of triumphs where that’s concerned.”

“Aye. Because I let you win,” Gwayne confesses through a faint laugh. “I reckon there was no game any of us played as children that was not arranged for your victory, cousin. You were a thin-skinned twat even then.”

Ormund’s mouth curls into a slow smile, despite the fury prickling like embers in the pit of his chest. Gwayne can see the withheld rage squinting at the edges of the older man’s pale eyes, which, of course, is the exact response he’d been attempting to goad him towards.

“Well... How fortunate for me, then,” the man croons, resting his elbows on the edge of the stony sill. “That I still seem to be winning. And this time without your help at all, it would seem…”

“Yes…” Gwayne sighs heavily through his nose, gaze turning to the open window. “For once, you might be capable of doing something that I cannot. I’d have thought you’d quite like to hold something like that over my head, to be true… And honestly, I think you’d rather enjoy it, if you let yourself.”

It’s far different, Ormund finds, to hear the words fall from Gwayne’s mouth instead of yours. It fills him with a different sort of pride that he can feel swelling in his chest just now; a victory well-earned.

“So it’s true, then?” Ormund presses and turns to face his cousin fully, with amusement glowing in his chiseled features. “You want me… to fuck your wife… because you aren’t man enough to do it yourself?”

Gwayne shrugs with jutted lips to feign an air of apathy, though he cannot deny that the words pierce him somewhere deep. “In so many words, I suppose—”

“No,” Ormund snaps, pale eyes freezing over. “Say it.”

Gwayne licks his lips and tips his chin back. His adam’s apple bounces slowly in his throat through a hard swallow as he chokes on the humiliation crawling up his chest. “I want you to fuck my wife,” Gwayne says evenly, though it takes a world of strength in him not to flinch away from the words. “Because I am not man enough to do it myself.”

Ormund softens with warmth a moment later. His smug smile returns as he gives him a satisfied nod. “Well, since you asked so prettily, dear cousin,” he croons, patting Gwayne a little rougher than necessary on the shoulder as he walks by him, without another word shared between them.

Gwayne watches him go with his jaw clenched tight. His tense limbs relax through a slow breath through his nose. When he turns back to the window, he finds your eyes already lifted from the cyvasse ahead of you. A silent current seems to pass between the two of you as you speak without words — your brows raise in question, Gwayne’s chin lifts with a small nod to answer it, before he walks off from the window entirely.

You return to your game, and to the pleasant afternoon which has grown much heavier with a reckoning you know is waiting for you when the sun goes down.

You’re washing the long day from your skin when night falls over the Beacon. Swirls of steam rise from the soapy water, adding to the growing humidity in the room, and smelling of the rich, musky oils you’d had Gwayne deliver from the maester’s quarters — amber, jasmine, and vanilla straight from Dorne — a most sensual concoction, especially for men with keen noses.

“Your mind is a wonder, dear wife. Truly,” Gwayne had laughed as he watched you drop equal amounts of each liquid into the bath. “God, I would put a baby in you myself right now if I could.”

“High praise there, husband…” you crooned, tapping at the vial of rich vanilla.

“And I mean it as the highest compliment I can offer,” he grinned.

Your body still glimmers with the remnants of the perfumed oil worked into your skin when you rise from the bath. The knock that arrives at your door in that moment is nearly lost in the water trickling from your body in shimmering rivulets — three slow raps from a slow but firm hand; soft but still slightly impatient, as though the sheer courtesy to knock took more strength than required.

You step out onto the cold cobbles below and reach for the thin robe hanging just beside the tub. “Come,” you call into the quiet as you slide your arms into the sleeves with a deliberate leisure. The heavy door creaks open across the room; Ormund passes the threshold and gets a brief flash of your bare skin — the curve of your shoulder, the line of your back, the edge of your hip — right before you tug the pale silk over your shoulders.

He falters a step as he shuts the door behind him, and clears his throat into his fist when he feels half-strangled by the sight.

“I-I hope I’m not… interrupting,” he says in lieu of a greeting. It takes a great deal of strength from him, he finds, to keep your stare when you turn to look at him over your shoulder — as the ivory fabric clings to the wet spots of your freshly bathed body.

He can still smell it in the air — the rich, vanilla spice. He can nearly taste it on his tongue, something delicious enough to devour. His jaw tightens through a hard swallow as he chokes down the instinct watering over his tongue just now.

“Of course not,” you grin as you tie the thin sash of your robe. The frilly fabric rushes at your ankles when you turn to face him fully. “To what do I owe the… what was it you said? ‘The interruption of my solitude?’”

Ormund huffs a faint laugh, though it comes out a bit more artificial than he intended. “I’ve just… been thinking…” he starts slowly. “About our… previous conversation.”

“Have you?” you lilt, utterly unreadable. You reach for the towel hanging over the bath and drag the nettles across the exposed skin of your damp chest. “I thought the matter already settled, my lord. You made your feelings on it quite clear, if I recall.”

“Aye, I thought so, too—” Ormund nods, though the words catch in his throat when you bend at the waist to run the towel over your dripping legs, reaching beneath the slit of your thin robe. The plush of your breasts peek out over the low neckline, glittering with oils and kissed warm by the bath. He has to remind himself to breathe.

“And yet I find I have thought of little else since… If you truly believed what you said— if the Seven would truly call something a mercy and not a sin, if it were to save someone from their own ruin…”

You rise slowly to full height again, eyeing the man from across the room. He arrived here as though to collect some sort of debt, some sort of winning, but stands now before you asking for permission to believe what he presumes was his own doing.

“I believe…” you start slowly, bare feet padding along the cobbles as you close the distance between you like a predator to prey. “That a man like you would not have knocked on my door unless you had already searched the answer within yourself, and found something there worth trusting.”

Ormund tips his chin with a slow inhale through his nose, as though your words have smoothed out something taut within him.

“If you have to come to this conclusion on your own, entirely through your own faith, then… How could this be anything but right?” you wonder aloud with a meek shrug, curling the pale towel against your chest. “Surely, the Gods would not have sent you here if it were wrong.”

“Mm…” Ormund hums, pink mouth lifting into a soft grin as though it were meant to be a laugh. “I told myself as much the entire way here, but… I suppose I didn’t truly believe it until you said it back to me.”

You flash him a kind smile in return. “I suppose even the most pious of men need something physical to believe in… Something they can hold in their own two hands and know for certain a thing is true.”

Ormund’s body leans into your words, as if instinctively taking them as an invitation to hold you. He balls his hands into fists instead, trying to will himself into believing that this was an act of the Gods and not his own desires towards you. He steps past you, headed for the flagon of wine on the table beside the balcony doors.

“The scripture tells us that a man’s faith is only as good as what he’s willing to do with it,” he tells you, beneath the faint glugging of ale as he pours himself a goblet. “That words alone matter naught. That the gods judge us by what we build with our hands, not merely with what we believe in our hearts.”

His eyes catch the tub as he brings the goblet to his mouth, warm water soaking with oil and soap and remnants of filth from the day. He imagines tasting it instead of the wine that pools in his mouth, which he very nearly chokes on when your hand splays suddenly across the shoulder of his emerald coat.

“Then build me something,” you say, you plead. “Give me something the gods themselves have not, in all my prayers and patience. Give me a child, Ormund. It is the godliest thing a man can do.”

Ormund sets the goblet down and turns fully to face you. His mouth glimmers with the remnants of wine not yet licked away. You lift the towel to his chin and dab the nettles across the plush of his mouth in a slow, deliberate touch that Ormund leans hopelessly into. He turns his head and buries his nose into the towel, inhaling the scent of you upon it — the rich musk, the earthy soap, the raw smell of your skin from where you dragged the fabric between your legs moments ago.

His eyes flutter shut as his broad chest inflates with a slow breath. When they open again, the pale blue of them is aflame with an emotion you haven’t quite seen from him before.

“Tell me to leave,” he says, as though to give you one more way out before the point of no return. “And I assure you I will.”

You shake your head. “I will not,” you answer, breath catching at the flicker of desire that passes over Ormund’s features a second later.

“Then get on the bed,” he commands in a low voice. “And take off your clothes…”

Your eyes glaze over as your body submits instinctively to his order. You walk slowly to the bed, dropping the towel on the floor as your hands work at the tie in your robe. You slide the thin fabric from your shoulders and let it pool at your feet, leaving the expanse of your glimmering body on display for him.

Ormund tips his chin back as he watches you climb onto the lush mattress, donned with Hightower green and gold — colors which his children will wear when you bear them for him, he thinks distantly to himself, and feels pride swell in his chest accordingly.

He goes to take another sip of wine, but stops short when you mean to plant yourself on your hands and knees by the pillows. “On your back,” he calls into the quiet, then smiles at the quietly shocked look you give him over your shoulder in return. “I will look upon your face when I put a babe inside of you.”

His words wrap around your throat and strangle you as you twist yourself upon the blankets. Your naked chest heaves with wanting breaths while you watch the man approach you. He lingers at the foot of the bed, working deliberately at the buttons of his coat and then the tie of his tunic underneath it. He lays them both neatly along the edge of the bed and smiles when your thighs squeeze together in anticipation.

“Tell me, sweet thing…” Ormund says, peering at you from the bridge of his nose as he tugs at the tie of his trousers. “Have you let a man fuck you before now?”

You shake your head with your bottom lip caged between your teeth, to conceal the vividity of the smile pulling at the corners of them. “Man would be too strong a word for who I’ve let touch me, I’m afraid.”

His bare chest, toned from years of knighthood, inflates with a slow breath of pride — the affirmation that he was going to be the first man to touch you the way you needed, the first man who deserved to.

He clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Good answer,” he deadpans and shoves his pants to his ankles. His cock hangs heavy between his scruffy thighs, favoring the left one as it twitches stiff, untouched.

He’s not quite as long as Gwayne’s, of which you’ve seen on the rare occasion you’ve tried and failed to make children of your own, but he is quite a deal thicker. The thought of taking his girth alone makes your drooling cunt clench around nothing as Ormund climbs slowly abed, mattress dipping beneath his hands and knees. His body is lean and warm as it ascends on top of yours; you long to be crushed beneath the weight of him when he props himself upon his muscular forearm.

His free hand caresses you with a softness you didn’t think possible before now. His calloused palm smooths gently over your jaw until the edges of his fingers thread in your hair. He tips your chin up with the pad of his thumb.

“I do hope they’ll have your eyes. Our children,” Ormund hums on bated breath.

A delirious grin lifts the edge of your mouth as you reach for his shaven jaw. “You mean my children?” you quip, sliding your finger within the short curls gathered at the nape of his neck.

“No…” Ormund shakes his head with a breathy chuckle. “I mean mine.”

Your smile flickers faintly when his hand leaves your cheek to slide between your bodies. He gathers his hard cock in his fist and slots the weeping tip between the velvety folds of your pussy. Your breath hitches at the feeling of him; your hips twitch despite yourself. Ormund laughs through a groan in his chest.

“Whatever the court believes... Whatever anyone else calls them…” he continues lowly, wetting himself with your slick. “It’ll be my blood running through them… Wouldn’t that be beautiful? Us being the only people in the world who know the truth of our children?”

He meets your weary look with a soft, lopsided smile.

“Yes…” Ormund hums to himself, answering his own question as his head tips to the side to smear a kiss to your palm. “Gods, you will look heavenly with my children growing inside of you.”

He pierces you slowly then. You feel his bulbous tip pressing into your cunt, and the meandering veins of his cock as he slides further in. A distant stinging blooms within you when he mounts you fully — your strangled whine is swallowed by his guttural groan as he leans down over you again. Your back arches into his chest, and he feels your stiff nipples graze his skin. His broad nose smushes into the side of yours, lips brushing in a not-quite kiss.

“Forgive me,” he pants against your mouth. “I— I should’ve started with my fingers first, I know, but I— I couldn’t wait— Dreamt of you too long for that… And my fist only works so well, I’m afraid…”

“Just fuck me,” you plead into the candlelit room, when the distant ache in the pit of your stomach ebbs into a warmer, fuller feeling. Your thighs squeeze at either side of his waist, hips bucking in a quiet desperation.

Ormund pulls just far enough away to smile lazily down at you, eyes glassy and glittering.

“As you wish,” he mutters and rolls his hips back, until only the tip of his cock is caged within your clenching confines. He waits until you whimper at the cold, empty feeling before pressing back into you again — to the very hilt, with the coarse thatch of trimmed hair above his cock nestled just against your sensitive clit.

He finds a steady rhythm thereafter, the slow drag followed by the firm push. The bedroom fills with the sound of it — the crackling candlelight, the creaking bedframe, the slapping of skin, the sounds of entwining pleasure.

Your legs wrap around his lean waist, preventing him from pulling too far out, though your hips continue bucking wildly against his — as if you were both chasing and running from the unwavering pressure on your clit simultaneously.

“I know… I know, sweet girl,” Ormund coos half-muffled into your neck, then inhales a lungful of sweet musk and sex clinging to the air. “No one’s ever fucked you this good before, have they?”

You answer him with a strangled whine and nails that dig crescent shapes into the skin of his broad shoulders.

“You don’t even know what to do with yourself, do you? Look at you— twitching underneath me,” he teases with a drunken chuckle. “You just can’t wait for my cum, can you? Can’t wait for me to paint that cunt with my seed— To give you my child?”

“Yes,” you whine, nodding your wild head against the pillow beneath you. “Please cum in me— I need it so bad, Ormund, please—”

He falters instantly at your words — at the very image of your submission beneath him, which before now, only ever existed inside his head. He buckles hopelessly down over you, losing all his rhythm as your pussy clenches around his twitching cock. “Gods—” he spits as he hides his face into your neck again.

One hand curls into a fist beside your head while his other grips the plush of your thigh to keep you spread open for him. You hear a whimper sound in the pit of his throat when your weeping cunt clenches around him.

“Put a baby inside me,” you plead in a high voice, mouth brushing the shell of his ear. “Let me carry your legacy, Ormund, please— Cum inside of me.”

“Fuck—” His voice breaks halfway through as he tenses on top of you, suddenly and without warning.

You hear him hold his breath for a long moment and then release it with a grumbled moan as a warm feeling blooms in the pit of your stomach. He groans, hips jerking through every rope he spits into your pulsing cunt. You cum around him at the feeling of it alone. Your hands grasp hopelessly at his back as your body twitches underneath his larger one.

“That’s it…” you hear him praise through gritted teeth, fighting his own sensitivity while you milk his softening cock. “There you go, sweet girl… Take it… That’s it…”

Your bodies are slow to relax from the remnants of your entwining orgasms. His bare, sweat-slick one sticks with yours — melting together in the blooming heat of the room. Your stomach is full with a mixture of gratitude, and dread, and his cum seeping slowly out of you. And with his body pressed so ardently against yours, you couldn’t run from any of it if you tried.

“…Do you think it took?” Ormund wonders aloud when he finally finds the breath to speak again, lips smearing across your thrumming pulse.

“Yes…” you sigh through heavy breaths, hands drifting down the sweaty expanse of his spine. “If the Gods are willing…”

You feel him breathe out a faint chuckle in response, right before he pulls finally out of your neck. His chiseled face is flushed red with sex. His eyes are lidded and glassy; his mouth rosy and swollen as it curls into a smug grin.

“If the Gods are willing, sweet girl, they’d allow me at least a few more nights of this before they gave you my child,” he hums and ducks down as if to kiss you. Your mouth parts for his on instinct, though he only nudges the bridge of your nose with the tip of his instead. A teasing, knowing grin spreads across his mouth accordingly.

“But… when They do…” he starts slowly, warm breath fanning across your mouth with every word. “I do intend to know my children… Whatever anyone else is told… Do you understand?”

A sick feeling twists in the pit of your stomach, where his cum is still warm in your depths, and you nod.

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