Summary: Everyone knows that Pope Cody's girlfriend is a real sweetheart. What they don't know is that, behind closed doors, you're a real fuckin' freak, too.
Warnings: +18 explicit content MDNI, porn without plot, established relationship, shy!reader, unspecified age gap, size difference, pope teaches you how to shoot a gun and touches you at the same time, face slapping, face fucking, reader has hair that can be styled, messy blowjob, reader helps complete a job, praise, car sex, readers makes out with pope over a mask so masked sex, restrained hands, creampie, overstimulation kinda, only barely lightly edited
Note: take that p w/o plot tag seriously cause uh....yeah. this is just me wanting to fuck pope cody bad
WC: 2.3k
[masterlist] [AO3]
Everyone thought Andrew Cody was a pervert.
And, really, how could they not?
They see him; all big and brooding, with wrinkles around his eyes and rough hands. And beside him stands you; soft and innocent, all shy smiles and quiet words. A sweetheart by every definition of the word.
He's older than you. Bigger than you. Meaner than you. All it takes is one glance at your manicured fingers around his broad bicep and your cheek pressed to his shoulder to know that, yeah. He's probably (definitely) taking advantage of you.
A girl your age doesn't know any better. Naive little thing. All you see is the handsome man that stands in front of you, who foots the bill when he takes you out to a nice restaurant or on a shopping spree. You see the way he stares down a guy who looks in your general direction a little too long and the way he walks just a step in front of you in a public setting, clearing a path of safety.
What young girl wouldn't want a man like that?
But what they don't see is the way you don't even flinch when you're riding shotgun in his truck and Andrew sets his pistol in your lap. They don't see the blade he'd bought for youāsharp and small, wedged right between your breasts every time you leave the house without him.
They don't see the way your skin prickles when he teaches you the proper way to shoot a gun, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, pointing the barrel at your reflection.
His hands are at your hips, thumbs resting at the elastic band of your pretty, red panties. Andrew's voice is low and slow in your ear. "Mm. Tuck your elbow in. Squeeze the handle a little harder. Yeah, there you go. Now put your finger on the trigger, baby. Just like that. And when you're ready, you just gotta pull it."
You breathe in slowly, and your finger presses down on the exhale.
The gun clicks.
"Yeah, that's it," he says, sliding his hands lower, beneath the crimson fabric. What he finds is unsurprising to him, of course. Arousal pooling between your thighs, your clit slick and swollen and desperate to be touched. He circles it slowly, tentatively, lovingly. "Again, sweetheart."
Andrew doesn't speak much on the rumors that go around about the two of you. He's sure even his brothers believe some of them.
It's to be expected, really, with that mousy demeanor of yours.
You put your hair up a different way one day and when Craig compliments you on it you get all shy, hiding behind Andrew's shoulder with your cheeks flaming.
He thinks it's real cute. The way you act all timid in front of them, murmuring a thank you with that soft voice of yours, unable to meet Craig's eyes all because he complimented you.
But only an hour later, Pope's undoing the clips in your hair while you look up at him from down on your knees, sayingābegging, "Hit me."
And Pope does. Smacks you hard, one good time with his palm against your cheek. The sound is like lightning through the open air. He doesn't do it because he wants to, he does it because of that misty look in your eye, because of the way you moan at the impact.
Because of the way you look up at him through your lashes and smile real wide, giggles falling off your kiss-swollen lips, like there's no place you'd rather be.
He gives you just what you need, fucking your mouth until you're crying for it, burying himself at the back of your throat.
Each little gasp for air you make pushes him closer and closer to release, but what really does him in is the way your hand finds his thigh, tracing a little heart-shape into the denim of his jeans while you choke on his length.
Andrew finishes at the back of your mouth without warning, filling you until his release spills from the corners of your plush lips.
His cock still aches when he pulls himself out of you. Your pretty makeup that you spent all that time doing this morning runs down your cheeks now, and sticky webs of saliva and cum connect his cock to your tongue.
"You look so pretty, swallowing me down like that. My beautiful girl. Say it."
Your eyes are bloodshot and watery but filled with love as you look up at him. "I'm your beautiful girl," you say, smiling wide, sticking out your tongue to show him the mess he's made of you before swallowing hard.
"Yeah you are," he murmurs. "My sweetheart."
You've even got Smurf fooled.
They're having a family meeting one afternoon, planning out the details on how to rob a marijuana dispensary that pays its employees exclusively in cash.
While you're moving around easily in the kitchen, Smurf watches you from the living room with a drink in her hand.
Craig and Deran are bickering, trying to figure out a way to distract the night shift security guards that stand watch at the front entrance.
And then Smurf suddenly says, pointing with the rim of her crystal glass, "Her."
Pope shakes his head. "No. Not happening."
"Think about it," Smurf says. "You go in right as the last employee walks out. She walks up, begging to be let in, and says she'll pay extra. Girl like her? They won't expect anything. Just a pretty sweetheart looking to end her day with a little indica."
His brothers are quiet, looking between you and Pope, toeing the line of choice.
In the end, Andrew lets you choose. Makes it clear that if working a job with them makes you feel uncomfortable in any way, they'll figure something else out. He lays out the risks and the reward and reminds you to be honest about your feelings.
But you agree almost immediately and no amount of talking on Andrew's part sways you. It's over the moment you take his big hand, press his palm to your cheek and say, "I love you, Andrew. Even this part of you. Especially this part."
It melts his heart and fills him with this almost uncomfortable level of tenderness. He would kill for you, die for youāall to keep you here by his side.
The job goes perfectly. Andrew and his brothers are able to slip through the ceiling vents unseen, all because you're batting your eyelashes and making your shy little jokes to the guards out front.
They leave the warehouse with duffel bags full of cash and get away clean and undetected.
You're waiting three blocks away in Pope's truck, sitting casually behind the wheel, coating your lips in that pretty lipgloss while looking in the rearview mirror. But your phone is clutched tight in your hand waiting on a text of confirmation.
Pope makes Deran drop him off so he can set his eyes on you sooner rather than later.
And the moment you see him, your eyes light up in this way he knows all too well. Pope nods, adrenaline high as he lifts the clear plastic mask over his face just enough to set it on the top of his head. "We're good," he says.
The hesitant look on your face turns into a grin, soft giggles flitting off your tongue. You slide back across the cab to make room for Pope behind the wheel. You look past him, to Craig and Deran in the car with no plates full of stolen cash. "We'll see you at home," you tell them.
And maybe they don't understand at first, but Pope does. Of course he doesāhe can feel the way that wanting, lustful energy buzzes beneath your skin.
He puts the truck in drive and pulls out of the lot, but he doesn't make it two blocks before you're wrapping those sharp, painted nails around his bicep.
Pope just smiles as you kiss his shoulder repeatedly, nuzzling the cords of muscle through the fabric of his black hoodie. It seems like such an innocent, sweet touch. But he knows the truthāknows it's not only sweetness in your heart, it's hunger.
"Hang on, baby," he says, hand resting on the inside of your thigh, squeezing tightly. "Lemme pull over."
He finds a secluded alleyway that offers just enough darkness to remain undetected. And the minute he puts his truck in park, you're climbing into his lap.
Pope welcomes the taste of your hungry tongue. Lets you slide it into his mouth, over his teeth, licking and sucking like your life depends on it. He's already half hard in his jeans, but the second you tilt your hips, grinding yourself down against his bulge, he's done for.
"You lookāgod, you look so good," you whimper, hands around his neck. You don't squeeze, but rather just rest them there, thumbs feeling the quickening beat of his pulse through his jugular.
"Did such a great job today," Andrew says, fingers flexing hard around your hips. "My perfect girl. Such a sweetheart."
You whimper at the namesake, a term he'd coined just for you, his shy, gentle girl. "Andrew, please."
He knows what you're asking for. And who is he, after all, to deny a girl like you? Someone good and soft and so very desperate.
He reaches beneath you, between your legs to find the buckle of his belt. In one swift movement, he undoes it with a clink, and pushes his jeans and boxers down.
"Wait."
Andrew freezes.
At first he fears he might've done something wrong. Assumed wrong or maybe gone too far or pushed too hard. Like usual. Like usual.
His mind starts to spiral, because who could ever hurt you if not a monster? Sweet girl. Sweet heart.
He's a monster. He's a fuckingā
And then you smile, and those invasive thoughts disappear as quickly as they'd manifested.
You bat your eyelashes at him with this innocent look on your face, and tug the plastic mask on the top of his head down.
Pope understands then. Of course he doesābecause you're his filthy, sweet girl. His.
Your clit pulses and he can feel it against his cock, even through the cotton barrier of your underwear.
Andrew tilts his head, watching you through slightly plastic-obstructed vision. He waits for you to move first.
And you do so by leaning forward and laying a wet, open-mouthed kiss against the mask, right over his lips.
It's the most erotic thing Pope has ever experienced.
Because he knows you want himāthe awkward, quiet Andrew.
But right now, you're asking for a different version of him. A much more violent version of him; you want Pope.
The part that thieves and breaks and kills. The very worst of him. And not only do you want it, you're twitching for it. Breath coming out like a sigh, hands clutched tight, pussy aching for him.
And the realizationāGod. He could die. He could fucking die from how much he loves you.
He takes you right then and there. Pulls your underwear to the side beneath your skirt and sinks his cock into you in one hard, claiming thrust.
Pope holds your wrists together tightly behind your back and makes it hurt, because he knows good and well that's what you want. All the while your tongue laves against the plastic of his mask, breath fogging up the surface, a sick, perverted indulgence that drives him insane.
He circles your clit with his free hand, reveling in the way it throbs beneath his rough hands.
It doesn't take long. It never does. He feels the slick velvet of your center squeeze his cock like a vice. Pope doesn't let up, rubbing your clit until you lean back with your eyes squeezed tightly closed, chasing the release you've needed since the moment he'd asked you to help them on this job.
"Look at me," he demands. It's not a request but an order.
You do, mouth open to make room for the cute moans that echo in the cab of his truck. "I'm gonnaāgod, please please I'm gonna fucking cumāfuckā"
He doesn't say anything. Just tilts his head and watches you.
It hits a second later, and it's beautiful. The way you fall apart in his lap, thighs shaking, fingers flexing beneath his hold, fighting desperately to keep your brain tethered to the earth.
Andrew fucks you through it. Circles your clit until you're squeezing your thighs together, running from the sensitivity.
He finishes inside you a moment later, cock twitching as his orgasm settles low in his belly. And when he's finished, spasming with the aftershocks, you lift the plastic mask from his face and discard it on the floor of the passenger seat.
You smile and kiss him softly and say, "Let's go home. I'm hungry now."
Andrew knows the two of you will take one step into that house and they'll all know what you've gotten caught up doing. They'll see the mess of his curls and the flush on his face. They'll see your swollen lips and the spit drying at the corners and they'll think, 'Jesus, Pope. You can't get off that poor girl for even ten minutes?'
And he won't say anything, of course. He'll just let them go on believing the rumors, believing that he's the one who's insatiable for the shy girl who's gotten caught up in his gravitational pull.
Pope will let them keep on believing you're just a sweetheart.
Gael GarcĆa Bernal invented a wrestling hold for Bad Bunny "as an excuse to show it to him, get closer to him, and entertain him a little" he says with a smile. He called it "the Vicente Guerrero. [...] I would say, it's a magic hold," he adds with a laugh. x
Summary: āFirst, you get a swimming pool full of liquor, then you dive in itā Halloween night at Tannyhill isn't what you hoped for. Inspired by "Swimming Pools" by Kendrick Lamar.
Warnings (read these): DV, NON CON, PHYSICAL ABUSE, extremely toxic & abusive relationship. physical violence, alcohol abuse & addiction, emotional abuse, drug use, if any of this triggers you or isn't your thing, scroll away. This is fiction. Dead dove, do not eat.
An: heyyy guys sorry ive been goneā¦ pls donāt be madā¦ also the night is meant to be in fragments like ur super drunk. Thinking about making this a series. Lmk what u thinkļæ¼
MINORS DNI
The first thing that registers is the ache between your legs, raw and used, like you got fucked for hours. Your head pounds, mouth dry and sour with vodka and bile. Youāre sprawled across Rafeās massive bed in nothing but the torn fishnet stockings from your Harley Quinn costume, the red-and-black corset ripped open down the front. Bruises are already setting in, fingerprints on your hips, a handprint blooming across your ass, a split inside your bottom lip.
Morning light stabs through the half-drawn curtains. Downstairs, the cleanup crew is probably already dealing with the wreckage of last nightās party.
You donāt remember half of it.
Rafe is leaning against the dresser, still half in his Joker costume, the purple coat discarded, white face paint smeared across his jaw and neck like war paint, green hair wild and sweaty. His knuckles are split open again, fresh blood crusted over old scars. Heās watching you with that flat, dangerous stare he gets when the coke and rage are still simmering.
āYou look like shit, baby,ā he says, voice low and rough. āTold you not to go so hard.ā
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yesterday
Time: 9:38 PMĀ
You were getting ready.
Heād handed you a fresh bottle of that cheap vodka you like, the one that burns going down and makes everything soft and loud at the same time.Ā
āHere. So you donāt have to sneak off to the Cut and let some dirty Pogue pour you drinks all night. Stay pretty for me.ā
You laughed, already buzzing from the first few sips, twirling in the mirror in your Harley shorts and pigtails. The insecurity was still there, whispering that you were just the girl Rafe kept around because you let him, but the alcohol drowned it out fast. You felt like a bad bitch, hot, reckless, untouchable.Ā
āYouāre the Joker, Iām Harley. Weāre supposed to be crazy tonight.ā
He grinned that unhinged grin, smearing red lipstick on your mouth with his thumb.
Ā āDamn right.ā
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Time: 12:35 PMĀ
Tannyhill was packed. Bass thumping, Kooks in expensive costumes, a few Pogues whoād snuck in as the drinks got stronger and the door got looser. You were six shots deep and feeling invincible. The vodka made your blood hot. You climbed onto the coffee table in the living room, dancing like the music owned you, hips rolling, pigtails swinging, shorts riding up so everyone could see the curve of your ass. Some random Kook in a lame vampire costume grabbed your waist from behind, laughing, grinding back. You didnāt stop him. Why would you? You were Harley tonight. Wild. Wanted. The insecurity was gone; you were the hottest girl in the room, and everyone knew it.
Rafeās eyes from across the room were already narrowed and dark.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Time: 12:42 PMĀ
He dragged you upstairs by the wrist, grip bruising. The hallway spun. You were giggling at first.
Ā āBaby, it was just dancing, donāt be a fucking psycho,ā until he slammed the bedroom door so hard the frame cracked.
āYou think Iām stupid?ā His voice was that low, shaky rage you knew too well. āGrinding on that piece of shit in front of everyone? In my fucking house? On Halloween? You trying to embarrass me?ā
You were reckless, drunk, careless.
āMaybe I wanted attention since youāre always too busy doing lines in the bathroom to notice me.ā
Wrong thing to say.
He laughed once, sharp and ugly, then backhanded you across the face. Not full force, but hard enough to split your lip and send you stumbling into the dresser. The sting was immediate. You tasted blood.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Time: Unknown
The room tilts. Heās on you, shoving you face-down onto the bed, yanking your shorts down with one hand while the other fists your pigtails. āYou wanna act like a slut? Fine. Iāll fuck you like one.ā
He didnāt prep you, just spat on his hand and pushed in raw, one brutal thrust that made you scream into the sheets. He fucked you like he was punishing the whole island, deep, mean strokes, hand around your throat from behind, squeezing until spots danced in your vision.
āYouāre here for me. You hear me? Not some party whore.ā
Every thrust jolted pain and pleasure together. You came hard, crying, thighs shaking, while he kept going, calling you a drunk mess, a worthless bitch who couldnāt even handle her liquor without embarrassing him.
You blacked out somewhere in the middle, flashes of him flipping you over, forcing your legs wider, coming inside you with a groan that sounded like it hurt him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today
Time: 9:17 AM
You sit up slowly, wincing. The bruises on your thighs are dark, the ones on your throat obvious even in the low light. Your lip is swollen.
Rafe pushes off the dresser and walks over, crouching so heās eye-level.Ā
āYou donāt remember shit, do you?ā He sounds almost amused, but his eyes are cold. āYou were all over that guy. Had to drag your drunk ass upstairs before you let him fuck you in front of all my friends.ā
You swallow, the sober clarity hitting like ice water. āNo. I remember.ā
His face changes, just a flicker. āBullshit. You blacked out. Slurring, crying, begging like always. Donāt try to rewrite it now that youāre sobering up and feeling sorry for yourself.ā
āI remember you hitting me.ā Your voice is quiet but steady. The words hang there, ugly and real. āYou backhanded meā¦.andā¦ Split my lipā¦Then you threw me on the bed.ā
Rafeās jaw tightens. He stands up fast, starts pacing again, boots heavy. āYou always do this shit. Get wasted, act like a whore, then wake up and play victim so I feel like the bad guy.ā
āIām not playing.ā You slide off the bed, legs shaky, and stand in front of him. āI remember the sting. I remember tasting blood. I remember you saying I āearned itā.ā
He stops pacing. Turns slow. His eyes are dark, dangerous. āEven if I did, you fucking deserved it. Grinding on some guy? In my house? You wanted me to snap. You always push until I do.ā
The room feels smaller. Your chest tightens, the insecurity roaring back now that the vodkaās gone. āSo you admit it?ā
He steps closer, towering. āWhat do you want me to say? You always do this.ā
Tears burn your eyes, but you donāt let them fall.
Ā āYou handed me the bottle. All night. You kept pouring. Then you get mad at me for drinking it?ā
You ask, not understanding his logic.
He laughs, bitter.
Ā āOh, now itās my fault? Youāre the one who doesn't know how to stop. Youāre the one who turns into a sloppy mess every time you touch that shit. I give you what you ask for, and you throw it back in my face.ā
You shake your head, voice cracking.Ā
āI remember everything this time, Rafe. You hit me. You fucked me while I was crying. And youāre standing here lying about it.ā
His hand shoots out, grabs your jaw, not hard enough to bruise more, but hard enough to make you freeze.
Ā āWatch your mouth. You donāt get to throw that in my face after you embarrassed me in front of everyone.ā
You stare up at him, tears finally spilling.Ā
āThen why do you keep getting bottles if you hate it so much?ā
Rafeās lip curls, that familiar sneer twisting his mouth.
Ā āBecause you beg for them, baby. Every single time. You whine, you cry, you say you need it to feel anything. Iām just giving you what you asked for. Donāt act like Iām forcing the shit down your throat.ā
The words hit different this time, sharper, because theyāre true enough to sting. You do ask. You do beg when the sober quiet gets too loud. You wrench your face out of his grip anyway, stumbling back until your ass bumps the dresser. Your voice comes out smaller than you want.Ā
āI remember you hitting me. I remember the blood. I remember you saying I earned it.ā
Rafe takes one slow step forward. His voice drops, calm in the way that makes your stomach drop.
Ā āEven if that happened, and Iām not saying it did, you think yelling about it changes anything? You think screaming āhe hit meā makes you the victim here? You were grinding on some random dick in the middle of my living room, dressed like a slut, while everyone watched. You wanted a reaction. You got one.ā
You shake your head, tears dripping onto your collarbone.Ā
āYou're fucking lying, you thought I blacked out.ā
āI think you were fucked up. Which you were.ā He shrugs, casual, cruel. āClose enough.ā
The room feels too small. You glance at the door, freedom maybe, or at least air that doesnāt smell like him and last nightās sex and violence. Your legs move before your brain catches up. You take a half-step toward the hallway.
His arm shoots out, slams flat against the doorframe, blocking you. The impact rattles the whole frame.Ā
āWhat are you doing?ā
You freeze, heart hammering. āI just need air.ā
āNo.ā His other hand catches your elbow, not hard enough to bruise fresh, but firm enough to remind you he can.
āYouāre not leaving this room until you calm the fuck down. You go out there looking like this, bruised, crying, mascara everywhere, and what? You gonna run to Sarah? Tell her big bad Rafe hit you? Like sheāll believe you? Or maybe youāll stumble down to the Cut, find some Pogue to cry to. Theyāll fuck you once, maybe twice, then leave you passed out in a ditch when the high wears off. You think theyāll stay? You think anyone else is gonna put up with your alcoholic ass the way I do?ā
Your breath hitches. The threat isnāt even veiled. Itās the one thing that always works: the fear of being cut off. Not just from him, but from the bottles he keeps stocked in the cabinet under the sink, the ones he replaces without you ever having to ask. You canāt afford your own habit. Not really. Not without selling shit, stealing shit, or worse. And the thought of waking up tomorrow with nothing, no buzz, no buffer, just the screaming quiet and the mirror showing every flaw, makes your knees weak.
āI canātā¦ā The words come out choked. āI canāt do sober right now.ā
Rafeās grip on your elbow loosens, but he doesnāt let go. His voice goes softer, almost coaxing, the switch he flips when he knows heās winning.
Ā āThen stop acting like you want to leave. You know what happens when you try to run. You end up right back here anyway. Crying. Begging. Promising youāll be better.ā
He turns you slowly, backs you up until your spine hits the door. His body cages you in, one hand braced above your head, the other sliding up to cup your jaw, gentle now, thumb brushing the split in your lip like heās sorry.
āLook at me,ā he murmurs. āYouāre not going anywhere. Youāre gonna stay right here, sober up, take a shower, and when youāre done feeling sorry for yourself, youāre gonna come downstairs and act like my girl. Because thatās what you are. I'm the only one who gets to touch you, fuck you, hurt you, fix you. Nobody else wants the mess.ā
Tears slip down your cheeks, hot and silent. You hate how the words settle in your chest like truth. How part of you believes them. How the alternative, empty bottles, empty bed, empty everything, feels worse than the bruises.
āI hate you sometimes,ā you whisper.
He leans in, lips brushing your temple. āYeah. But you love me more.ā
He doesnāt move away. Just stands there, breathing you in, waiting for the fight to bleed out of you like it always does.
And it does.
Your hands come up slowly, trembling, and fist in his shirt. Not pushing this time. Holding. Clinging. Because even after the slap, the lies, the way he twists every truth until it points back at you, heās still here.
Still feeding the addiction he pretends to hate.
Still, the only thing standing between you and nothing.
He exhales against your hair, almost a laugh. āThere she is.ā
You close your eyes. Let him pull you away from the door. Let him guide you back toward the bed. Let the silence swallow the rest of the fight.
Because leaving would mean facing the mirror alone.
Dark!Valarr Targaryen X Blackfyre!Reader (Baelor x Reader at the end)
Summary: You belong to your husband, and he reminds you of it in every room, at every hour.
TW: Rape/Non-Con, Dubious Consent, Forced Marriage, Abusive Relationship, Extreme Power Imbalance, Psychological Manipulation, Sexual Coercion, Degradation, Objectification, Non-Consensual Public Acts, Voyeurism, Predatory Behavior, Emotional Trauma, Explicit Sexual Content, Dark Themes, Reader has silver hair and purple eyes (plot related)
WC: 6K
Two weeks had passed since you surrendered your chambers.
Two weeks of waking in his bed, surrounded by the scent of sandalwood and smoke. Two weeks of his arm wrapped around your waist like an iron band, his breath hot on your neck, his body a constant, uninvited presence. Two weeks of learning to sleep through the night without being woken by a knock at your door, because there was no door to knock on anymore. There was only him.
The servants had moved your things with quiet, contemptuous efficiency. A few gowns in Targaryen red and black, none of the silver and purple you had worn as a Blackfyre. A brush for your hair, its bristles worn. A small mirror that had belonged to your mother, one of the few possessions you had been permitted to keep. They had been placed in his chambers like afterthoughts, folded into the corners of his wardrobe, arranged on his dressing table as if you had always been there. As if you had never existed anywhere else.
The whispers had spread exactly as you knew they would. Lady Jeyne's cutting remark had been delivered with a smile so sweet it could have curdled milk. "How wonderful that you and the Prince have grown so close. The entire castle speaks of it. The wife, finally learning her place." You had said nothing. There was nothing to say. She was right. You were learning your place. It was beneath him, on your back, with your legs spread and your mouth open for whatever he chose to give you.
That was what you were now. You understood it with a cold, bitter clarity that settled into your bones like frost. You were not a wife. You were not a princess. You were a conquest, a trophy, a warm body that happened to wear the name Targaryen. He had told you he loved you, but his love felt like a collar around your throat, pretty and jeweled and impossible to remove.
Something had shifted in Valarr since the night you begged to stay. Something had loosened behind his mismatched eyes, some final restraint that had kept his possessiveness contained within the walls of his chambers. Now that you had surrendered your space, now that you had acknowledged your need for him, he seemed to believe that you had surrendered everything. Your dignity. Your autonomy. Your right to say no.
Not that you had ever truly had that right.
But now he did not even pretend to ask. Now he simply took, wherever and whenever he wanted, and you learned to let him.
ā
It started in the gardens.
The spring air was warm, fragrant with the scent of blooming roses and nightshade. You had been permitted to walk, escorted of course, by Ser Alan and two other guards who trailed at a respectful distance. Your ladies in waiting had pleaded headaches and other ailments, leaving you blessedly alone for the first time in days. You had found a stone bench beneath a flowering cherry tree, its petals drifting down like pink snow, and for a few precious moments, you had almost felt at peace.
Then you heard his footsteps on the gravel path. Your stomach clenched. Your hands tightened in your lap. You did not turn around. You did not need to. You knew the rhythm of his walk now, the way his boots crunched on the stones, the way the air seemed to change when he entered a space, growing thicker, heavier, harder to breathe.
"My wife."
His voice was pleasant. It was always pleasant. That was the worst part. If he had been cruel, if he had sneered or mocked or struck you, you could have hated him cleanly. But he was never cruel. He was gentle. He was considerate. He was a monster wearing the skin of a devoted husband, and no one could see the rot beneath but you.
"Your Grace." You kept your voice flat, your eyes fixed on the cherry blossoms drifting down around you. "I was enjoying the gardens."
"Were you?" He moved closer, close enough that you could smell him, sandalwood and smoke and the faint, bitter undertone of something you could not name. "Alone?"
"My ladies were indisposed."
"How fortunate." He sat beside you on the bench, his thigh pressing against yours. His hand found your knee through the silk of your gown. "I have been thinking about you all morning."
You said nothing. Your jaw tightened. You stared at a cherry blossom as it drifted past your face, watching it spiral down to rest on the gravel path.
"Look at me."
It was not a request. You turned your head and met his mismatched eyes. The blue one was cold. The brown one was hungry. Both of them saw too much, knew too much, understood exactly what he was doing to you.
His hand slid higher, gathering the silk of your skirts. His fingers found your bare thigh, and you flinched. You could not help it. The touch was too intimate, too exposed, here in the open air where anyone could see.
"Valarr." Your voice came out strained. "The guards."
"Are at a distance." His fingers traced patterns on your skin, slow and deliberate. "They see nothing. They know to see nothing. And even if they did see, what would they do? You are my wife. This is my right."
Your right. The words tasted like bile in your throat. He spoke of rights as if you were a piece of property, a horse to be ridden, a field to be plowed. And perhaps that was all you were to him. Perhaps that was all you had ever been.
"Someone could come," you tried again, hating the desperate edge in your voice.
"Then you had best be quiet."
His mouth found your throat, and you closed your eyes. You did not want to see the cherry blossoms. You did not want to see the sky. You did not want to see anything at all.
He shifted you on the stone bench, the rough surface digging into your back through the thin fabric of your gown as he hiked up the skirts around your thighs. His hands were firm, unyielding, parting your legs with a knee pressed between them. You twisted, a futile push against his chest, but he pinned your wrists above your head with one large hand, his grip like iron. "Shh," he breathed against your skin, his free hand yanking at the ties of his breeches. His cock sprang free, thick and rigid, the head already glistening with pre-cum in the dappled sunlight filtering through the blossoms.
You shook your head, a silent plea, your purple eyes wide with the fear of exposure, the guards' footsteps crunching gravel not far off, the rustle of leaves that could hide nothing from prying ears. But he didn't care. He never did. His fingers delved between your legs, roughly shoving your smallclothes aside to expose your pussy to the warm air. You were dry at first, your body rigid with resistance, but he rubbed the blunt tip of his cock along your slit, coating himself in the faint moisture he forced from you with insistent strokes.
"No," you whispered, the word barely audible, choked by the lump in your throat. But your voice cracked, and he silenced you with his palm over your mouth, his mismatched eyes locking onto yours burning with that possessive fire that made your stomach twist.
He thrust in without warning, his cock stretching your tight walls in one brutal slide, burying himself to the hilt. The burn made you gasp into his hand, tears pricking at the corners of your eyes as your body adjusted to the invasion. He was huge, filling you completely, the veined length pulsing inside your unwilling heat. You clenched around him instinctively, not in pleasure but in a desperate attempt to push him out, but it only drew a low groan from his throat.
"Good girl," he murmured, his voice a dark caress against your ear as he began to move. His hips snapped forward in a steady rhythm, each thrust dragging his cock along your inner walls, the head bumping against your cervix with punishing force. The bench scraped against your skin with every jolt, cherry petals fluttering down to stick to your sweat-dampened hair and gown. You bit down on the fleshy part of his palm to muffle your whimpers, the shame burning hotter than the friction building low in your belly.
He released your wrists only to hike your legs higher, draping one over his arm to open you wider, allowing him to plunge deeper. His other hand stayed clamped over your mouth, fingers digging into your cheek as he fucked you methodically, his balls slapping against your ass with wet, obscene sounds that seemed to echo in the garden. You could hear the guards laughing distantly, their voices a cruel reminder of how close discovery was, how your degradation could be laid bare to the world.
Tears slipped free now, tracing salty paths down your temples into your silver-gold hair. You hated him, hated the way your pussy began to slicken around his pistoning cock, betraying you with reluctant arousal. Each drag out pulled a shiver from your core; each slam back in ground against that sensitive spot inside, forcing sparks of unwanted pleasure through your veins. Your hips jerked involuntarily, not to meet him but to escape the overwhelming fullness, yet it only made him thrust harder, his free hand sliding down to pinch your clit between thumb and forefinger.
"That's it," he growled softly, his breath hot and ragged. "Quiet and obedient. Learning to take my cock wherever I want to give it." He rolled your clit under his fingers, the pressure sharp and insistent, and your body arched against your will, a muffled sob escaping into his palm as the coil tightened despite the rage churning in your chest.
He didn't rush, drawing it out like a lesson etched into your flesh. His thrusts varied, slow and deep to let you feel every ridge, then fast and shallow to tease your entrance, his cock throbbing with restraint as he watched your face contort in conflict. Petals clung to his streaked hair, the spring breeze carrying the faint scent of your arousal, mingling with the blossoms. The guards' boots grew louder for a heart-stopping moment, then faded, but the fear lingered, sharpening every sensation into something razor-edged.
Your climax built against your protests, a traitor wave crashing over you as he rubbed your clit faster, his cock swelling inside you. You came with a stifled cry into his hand, your walls spasming around him, milking his length in rhythmic pulses that pulled a hiss from his lips. He followed immediately, burying deep and flooding your pussy with hot spurts of cum, his body shuddering as he ground against you, ensuring every drop stayed locked inside.
He held you there, impaled on his softening cock, until your tremors subsided, his hand easing from your mouth to stroke your tear-streaked cheek. Only then did he pull out, a trickle of his seed leaking from your abused folds as he righted himself.
When it was over, he straightened your gown with tender care. He tucked strands of your silver gold hair back into place. He brushed cherry blossom petals from your shoulders. He looked at you with those mismatched eyes, soft now, almost loving, and pressed a kiss to your forehead.
"See?" he said gently. "That was not so difficult. You did well, sweet wife."
You did well. Like a child who had recited her lessons correctly. Like a whore who had satisfied a client. The praise made your skin crawl.
He left you there, on the bench, surrounded by fallen petals and the lingering scent of him. You sat motionless for a long time, staring at nothing, feeling the dampness between your thighs and the cold, hollow ache in your chest. The guards' faces remained carefully blank when you finally rose and returned to the Keep. Of course they did. They knew what had happened. Everyone knew. You were the Blackfyre whore, and the Prince took what was his.
That was the first time. It was not the last.
ā
The empty corridor came next, a stretch of hallway between the library and the royal sept. You had been returning from lighting a candle for your brothers at the Wall, praying for strength you did not possess, when his hand closed around your arm and pulled you into the shadows.
"Valarr, please." The words came automatically now, a reflex, meaningless. "Not here."
"Here. Now."
He pressed you against the cold stone wall, and you let him. What else could you do? Fight him? Scream? Who would come to your aid? The guards who watched you with contempt? The servants who whispered "Blackfyre whore" behind their hands? The ladies who pulled your laces too tight and smiled at your bruises?
There was no one. There was only him. He had made certain of that.
He took you against the wall, your skirts bunched around your waist, your fingers digging into his shoulders because you needed something to hold onto, something to keep you from shattering entirely. His hands gripped your thighs, hoisting one leg up to hook around his hip, exposing your pussy to the chill air of the corridor. You felt the rough stone bite into your back as he freed his cock from his breeches, the thick shaft already hard and leaking at the tip. He rubbed the head along your folds, parting them without preamble, and you bit your lip to stifle the gasp, your body tensing in futile resistance.
"No," you whispered, but it came out weak, your purple eyes darting to the shadows where footsteps might echo at any moment. He ignored it, pressing forward until the blunt crown breached you, stretching your entrance with a slow, inexorable push. Your walls clenched around the intrusion, dry at first from the tension coiling in your gut, but he didn't stop thrusting deeper in measured strokes, his veined length forcing your body to yield inch by inch. The burn spread through your core, a mix of ache and unwelcome heat as he bottomed out, his balls pressing against your ass.
He watched your face the whole time, his mismatched eyes gleaming in the dim light locked on yours with that predatory intensity. His hips pulled back slightly, then snapped forward, embedding himself fully again, the motion grinding his pubic bone against your clit.
"You are so beautiful when you try not to feel it," he breathed, his voice low and rough as he set a punishing rhythm, each plunge dragging along your inner walls, the head nudging deep inside. His free hand pinned your wrist above your head, while the other kneaded your breast through the fabric, pinching the nipple until it hardened traitorously. You twisted your hips to dislodge him, but it only seated him deeper, drawing a low grunt from his throat as your nails raked his shoulders in frustration.
You hated him. You hated him so much it stole your breath. And you hated yourself more, because he was right. Your body did want him. Your body responded to his touch even as your mind screamed in protest your clit throbbing under the friction of his thrusts, your walls fluttering around his invading shaft. He angled his hips to hit that spot inside you repeatedly, the pressure building against your will, forcing soft, unwanted moans past your clenched teeth, as the corridor's echoes amplified every wet slap of skin on skin, every ragged breath you couldn't fully suppress.
He leaned in, capturing your mouth in a bruising kiss, his tongue thrusting in time with his cock, claiming every part of you. You turned your head away, but he gripped your chin, forcing you back, swallowing your protests as he fucked you harder, the stone wall scraping your spine with each jolt. Your leg trembled around him, muscles straining, and you felt the coil tighten low in your belly, betrayal flooding your veins as pleasure crested unbidden.
Your orgasm ripped through you silently, your pussy spasming around his cock, squeezing him in rhythmic waves that milked him deeper. He groaned into your neck, biting down lightly as he chased his own release, slamming in one final time before spilling hot cum inside you, pulse after pulse flooding your depths until it leaked down your thigh. He held you there, still buried, his forehead against yours as he caught his breath, the warmth of his seed a mocking reminder of your submission.
When it was over, he kissed your forehead and smoothed your skirts and sent you on your way, as if he had done nothing more than share a pleasant conversation. You walked back to his chambers on trembling legs, and you did not weep. You had learned not to weep. Weeping changed nothing.
ā
The storage room off the kitchens. The shadowed alcove behind a tapestry in the great hall. The royal library after the maesters had retired. He found you, or summoned you, or simply appeared at your side with that look in his eyes, and you learned to recognize the signs. The way his gaze would linger on your throat. The way his fingers would brush yours beneath the table at dinner. The way his voice would drop, low and intimate, when he spoke your name.
You learned to anticipate him. You learned to dread him. You learned that resistance was futile, that refusal was not permitted, that your body belonged to him in ways your mind could not control.
And always, always, he watched you. His eyes never left your face, cataloguing every reaction, every gasp, every involuntary arch of your body. He wanted to see your pleasure. He needed to see it. Not because he loved you, you understood now, but because your pleasure was proof of his power. Proof that he could make you feel things you did not want to feel. Proof that you were his, completely and utterly, in ways that went deeper than any marriage vow.
The council room was different only in its audacity.
You had been summoned there by a servant, a nervous young girl who had delivered the message in a trembling whisper. "His Grace requests your presence in the council chamber, my lady. At once."
The Tower of the Hand. You had never been inside before. The room was vast and imposing, dominated by a long table of dark oak surrounded by high backed chairs. Windows lined one wall, offering a sweeping view of the city below. The walls were hung with maps and tapestries, and the air smelled of old parchment and candle wax and the faint, lingering scent of the men who ruled the realm from this room.
This was where they had decided your fate. This table. This room. The lords of the realm had sat here and debated whether to execute you or spare you, whether to send you to the Silent Sisters or marry you to a man who would use you as a vessel for his pleasure and his heirs. They had chosen the latter. They had given you to him like a gift, wrapped in silk and duty.
Valarr stood at the head of the table, his back to you, studying a large map of the Seven Kingdoms that had been unfurled across the dark wood. He did not turn when you entered, but you saw his shoulders tense, saw the way his head tilted slightly, listening to your footsteps on the stone floor.
"You summoned me, husband."
"Close the door."
Your hand hesitated on the heavy oak. "The council chamber is not a place for..."
"Close the door." His voice was harder this time, the pleasant mask slipping. "Now."
You closed it. The latch clicked into place with a sound that seemed far too loud in the silent room. You stood with your back against the door, your heart pounding, your palms pressed flat against the wood.
"Valarr, this is the Tower of the Hand. Your father's chambers are above us. The guards patrol these corridors. Anyone could walk past. Anyone could hear."
"I am aware." He turned then, and the look in his eyes made your stomach drop. It was the same look he always wore before he took you. Hunger. Possession. The cold, clinical assessment of a man examining his property. "Come here."
"Valarr."
"Come. Here."
You walked toward him because you had no choice. Your legs moved without your permission, carrying you across the vast chamber to where he stood at the head of the table. The map of the Seven Kingdoms spread out before you, its careful lines and borders a mockery of the boundaries he had already crossed.
He did not touch you at first. He simply looked at you, his mismatched eyes traveling over your body with that slow, deliberate thoroughness that always made you feel like a thing rather than a person. His gaze lingered on the swell of your breasts, on the curve of your hips, on the place between your thighs that he owned.
"Do you know what this room is?" he asked.
"The council chamber."
"This is where they decided to let you live." He reached out and caught a strand of your hair between his fingers, rubbing it gently. "The lords of the realm sat at this table and debated your fate. Some of them wanted you dead. Some wanted you sent to the Silent Sisters. And some, the wise ones, saw your value. They saw that you could be useful. That your blood could be absorbed into ours. That your beauty could serve a purpose."
He released your hair and let his hand fall to your shoulder, his thumb tracing the line of your collarbone through the silk of your gown.
"I argued for you," he continued. "I told them that you were too beautiful to waste. That your blood was too pure to spill. That you would make a fine wife, a fine mother, a fine vessel for Targaryen heirs. And they listened to me. They gave you to me."
His hand moved to the laces of your bodice, working them loose with practiced ease.
"And now I am going to take you on this table. On the very spot where your life was decided. And you are going to let me. Because that is what you are for. That is what you have always been for."
"Valarr." Your voice was barely a whisper. "Please. Not here."
"Why not here?" The bodice loosened, and he pushed it down, baring your breasts to the cool air of the council chamber. His eyes darkened at the sight, but there was no tenderness in them. Only hunger. Only the satisfaction of ownership. "Is there a place in this castle that is not mine? Is there a part of you that is not mine? You gave yourself to me, sweet wife. You begged to stay in my bed. You surrendered your chambers. You surrendered your pride. What is left to surrender?"
Nothing, you thought. There is nothing left.
He lifted you onto the table, settling you on the edge with your legs dangling. The map crinkled beneath you, the parchment cool against your thighs through the thin silk of your gown. The Seven Kingdoms spread out under your body, and you thought of your brothers at the Wall, your sisters in the Silent Sisters, your mother alone in Tyrosh. All of them gone. All of them lost. And you were here, on this table, about to be used like a common whore in the heart of your enemy's power.
"Someone will come," you said, but your voice was hollow. You did not believe it anymore. No one ever came. No one ever helped you. There was no help to be had.
"Let them." His hands found your skirts, pushing them up around your waist. "Let them see what you are. Let them see what I have made of you."
He freed himself from his breeches, and you looked away. You did not want to see. You did not want to watch. But his hand caught your chin and turned your face back to his, forcing you to meet his mismatched eyesāone brown, one blueāburning with that unyielding possession.
"Look at me," he commanded, his voice a low growl that vibrated through your chest. "I want to see your face. I want to watch you accept what you are."
His fingers tightened on your jaw, holding you in place as he aligned his cock with your entrance. The thick head nudged against your folds, already slick from the unwanted heat pooling in your core despite the rage twisting your gut. He thrust into you without preamble, without gentleness, the veined shaft stretching your pussy in one forceful slide, burying himself to the hilt. You gasped at the sudden fullness, your walls clenching around the intrusion, the burn of his girth forcing your body to adjust even as your mind rebelled.
He moved with deep, deliberate strokes, pulling out until just the tip remained, then slamming back in, his hips grinding against yours with each plunge. The table creaked under the force, the edge digging into your ass as he pinned you there, your skirts shoved up around your waist, legs spread wide to accommodate him. His cock dragged along your inner walls, the ridge of the head catching that sensitive spot deep inside, sending sparks of unwanted pleasure shooting through your limbs. You felt every inch of him as he set a rhythm that rocked your body, your silver hair spilling across the torn parchment beneath you like spilled moonlight.
His eyes never left your face, cataloguing every flutter of your lashes, every parting of your lips, every sound you tried to swallow. One hand braced on the table beside your hip, the other slid up your thigh, gripping the flesh hard enough to leave marks, thumb pressing into the soft skin as he held your leg open. He leaned closer, his breath hot against your neck, the scent of him filling your senses. "Do not fight it," he said, his voice strained with pleasure, hips snapping forward to bury his cock deeper, the wet sounds of your pussy taking him echoing in the chamber. "I know you want to. I know you hate yourself for feeling this. But you cannot fight it. Your body knows who it belongs to. Your body knows its master."
The words were a blade, and they cut deep. Your body did know. Your body responded to him even as your mind recoiled, the way your clit throbbed against the base of his shaft with each grind, the way your nipples peaked under your bodice, aching for touch you despised. He reached down between your bodies, his rough fingers finding your clit, circling it with firm pressure that made your hips buck involuntarily. Pleasure built despite your hatred, despite your shame, despite everything you did to suppress it. Your back arched off the table, pressing your breasts against his chest, your fingers digging into the edge of the wood until splinters bit your skin. The map tore beneath you, the Seven Kingdoms splitting apart under your weight, inked lines smearing from the sweat on your back.
He fucked you harder then, his thrusts turning erratic, cock swelling inside your tightening pussy as he chased his dominance. His free hand yanked at the laces of your bodice, exposing one breast to the cool air, and he bent his head to suck the nipple into his mouth teeth grazing, tongue lashing drawing a choked whimper from your throat. Your purple eyes locked on his, unable to escape the intensity, the way his gaze stripped you bare. The coil in your belly wound tighter, betrayal flooding your veins as your walls fluttered around him, sucking him deeper with each withdrawal.
"That's it," he breathed, releasing your nipple with a wet pop, his fingers pinching it instead while his thumb flicked your clit faster. "That's my girl. My perfect, obedient girl. Come for me. Come for me now."
You did. Gods help you, you did. The climax crashed over you like a wave of filth, your pussy convulsing around his cock in fierce spasms, milking him as waves of heat ripped through you. You cried out, a sound of pleasure and shame and self-loathing all tangled together, your body shuddering beneath him, thighs quaking as you clenched and released. He followed a moment later, groaning against your throat, his body shuddering against yours as he drove in deep one last time. Hot spurts of cum flooded your depths, pulse after pulse coating your walls, leaking out around his shaft to trickle down your ass onto the ruined map below. He stayed buried inside you, hips jerking with aftershocks, his weight pressing you down as he nuzzled your neck, breath ragged.
For a long moment, neither of you moved. You lay on the council table, surrounded by the torn remnants of the Seven Kingdoms, his weight pressing you into the ruined map. The windows showed the afternoon sun beginning its descent toward the sea. The city sprawled below, indifferent.
He withdrew from you and straightened his clothing with the same casual efficiency he might use after a meal. He did not help you down from the table. He did not offer you a cloth to clean yourself. He simply looked at you, sprawled across the torn map with your skirts bunched around your waist and your breasts bare, and smiled.
"Clean yourself up and return to our chambers. I will expect you tonight."
The door opened and closed. He was gone.
You lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling, feeling the dampness between your thighs and the cold, hollow ache in your chest. The map was ruined beneath you. The Seven Kingdoms, torn apart. It seemed fitting. You were torn apart too. There was nothing left of the girl who had arrived at the Red Keep a moon ago. There was only this. A body to be used. A vessel for Targaryen heirs. A Blackfyre whore who had learned her place.
Slowly, you sat up. You pulled your bodice back into place with trembling fingers. You smoothed your skirts. You slid off the table and stood on unsteady legs, gripping the edge for support.
You did not weep. Weeping changed nothing.
ā
In the shadows of the stairwell, hidden in the curve of the stone wall, Baelor Targaryen watched.
He had come to the Tower of the Hand to retrieve a document, a report on harbor tariffs that he needed for his meeting with the Master of Coin. The sounds had reached him before he reached the door. A woman's voice, muffled but unmistakable. A gasp. A moan. His son's name, spoken like a curse.
He had moved closer. Silent as a shadow. Until he could see through the narrow gap between the door and the frame.
And there she was.
The Blackfyre girl. His son's wife. Spread across the council table like a feast, her silver gold hair pooling around her, her violet eyes wide and dark, her face flushed with a pleasure she clearly hated herself for feeling. His son was buried inside her, taking her with the casual entitlement of a man who believed he owned her. And she was letting him. Because she had no choice. Because he had broken her.
Baelor watched. He watched the way her back arched, the way her lips parted, the way her fingers clawed at the table. He watched the way she fought herself, the way she tried to suppress her pleasure, the way she failed. He watched the moment she shattered, the moment her face twisted with ecstasy and shame, the moment she cried out his son's name like it was being torn from her throat.
She was magnificent.
She was everything a Targaryen should be. She looked like a goddess. She looked like the bloodline that had conquered Westeros, pure and perfect and utterly untouchable. And she was being fucked on the council table by his son.
The irony was not lost on Baelor. It tasted sweet on his tongue.
His son, who had inherited his own coloring and nothing of the Valyrian beauty, except that one silver gold streak, that should have been his birthright. His son, who had clearly spent his entire life aching for what he could never have. And now he had it. He had the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms and he was using her like a common whore.
Baelor understood. He understood perfectly. He understood the hunger that drove his son. The need to possess something so beautiful, so pure, so utterly beyond his reach. The need to break it, to claim it, to make it his own. The need to prove that he was worthy of the bloodline that had been denied him.
And as Baelor watched the girl lie motionless on the table after his son had finished with her, as he watched her slowly sit up and pull her clothing back into place with trembling fingers, he felt something stir in his own chest.
He felt hunger.
She was beautiful. She was everything his son was not, everything he himself was not. She was the blood of the dragon made flesh, and she had been given to a man who did not appreciate what he had. His son used her like a vessel, a warm body to take his pleasure from. He did not worship her. He did not revere her. He simply took what he wanted and walked away.
Baelor would not make that mistake.
He watched her slide off the table and stand on unsteady legs. He watched her grip the edge for support, her knuckles white, her face tear streaked. He watched her take a shuddering breath and smooth her skirts and lift her chin with the last, desperate remnants of her pride.
She was not broken. Not yet. She was cracked, damaged, worn down. But there was still something in her that resisted. Something in her violet eyes that had not yet surrendered completely.
Baelor wanted to be the one to break it.
And he would. In time. When the moment was right. When his son's carelessness had worn her down to nothing, when she was desperate for anyone who might treat her as something more than a warm body, Baelor would be there. He would offer her what his son could not. He would make her his.
The thought sent a pulse of heat through his body. He did not suppress it. He savored it.
The Blackfyre girl walked toward the door, her steps slow and unsteady. She passed within feet of where he stood hidden in the shadows, close enough that he could smell her. Lavender soap and sweat and the faint, musky scent of what had just been done to her. She did not see him. She did not look up. She simply walked past, her violet eyes fixed on nothing, her face a mask of hollow composure.
Baelor watched her go.
When she had disappeared down the corridor, he stepped out of the shadows and walked to the council table. The map was torn, the Seven Kingdoms split apart, the careful lines of borders and rivers destroyed. He ran his fingers over the ruined parchment, feeling the places where her body had pressed into it, where her pleasure had torn it apart.
He smiled. Baelor Targaryen straightened the torn map with careful hands and left the council chamber, his face a mask of calm composure, his heart a cold, patient thing that knew how to wait.
Summary: A conquered daughter of House Blackfyre is given to the Prince of Dragonstone as both peace offering and prize. Each night, at the hour of the wolf, she is summoned in his chambers.
TW: dubious consent (dubcon), noncon, power imbalance, forced marriage, captivity, possessive behavior, obsessive dynamics, emotional manipulation, coercive intimacy, isolation, unhealthy relationship dynamics, explicit sexual themes, reader has valyrian features (plot relevant), skintone ambiguous, blackfyre reader, valarr targaryen has an inferiority complex, fixation on appearance and legacy, political marriage, post-war setting, targaryen vs blackfyre tensions.
WC: 10K
The knock came at the same hour it always did.
Three sharp raps against the iron-banded door of your chamber. Not loud enough to wake the dead, but loud enough to wake you. The rhythm was burned into your bones now, two quick strikes, a pause, then a final blow that seemed to reverberate through the cold stone walls like a death knell. It was the knock of a man who took no pleasure in his task but performed it with the grim efficiency of one who had long ago learned not to question the orders he was given.
Ser Alan of the Kingsguard. A broad shouldered Reachman with a face like weathered granite and eyes that had seen too many horrors to be surprised by anything anymore. He had been assigned to you the day you arrived at the Red Keep, a silent shadow who followed you everywhere and nowhere, appearing only when you were summoned to your husband's chambers or when you attempted to wander somewhere you were not permitted to go.
You were not asleep. You never truly slept anymore, not since the first night they had dragged you from your bed at this same wretched hour. Now you simply lay in the darkness, your violet eyes fixed on the embroidered canopy above you, counting the silver threads that formed the three headed dragon of House Targaryen. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. You had counted them a thousand times. You knew every stitch, every knot, every place where the thread had worn thin from age and neglect. The dragon's ruby eyes seemed to watch you in the darkness, patient and eternal, waiting for you to break.
The door opened without your leave. It always did.
"His Grace requires your presence, my lady."
Ser Alan's voice was flat, carefully neutral, stripped of anything that might be interpreted as either sympathy or satisfaction. He stood in the doorway like a statue come to life, his white enameled armor gleaming faintly in the light of the single candle that burned on your bedside table. His hand rested on the pommel of his sword, not in threat, but in habit. A Kingsguard was never truly at ease, even in the bedchamber of a traitor's daughter.
He did not look at you directly. None of them did. The servants, the guards, the ladies in waiting who had been assigned to attend you, they all treated you as if you were made of smoke and shadow, something that existed on the edges of their vision but could not be acknowledged without risking contamination. You were a Blackfyre. The blood of Daemon Blackfyre ran in your veins, the blood of rebels and usurpers and men who had dared to challenge the rightful rule of House Targaryen. Looking at you too long might be mistaken for sympathy, and sympathy for a Blackfyre was treason.
You had learned that lesson within your first week in the Red Keep, when a young kitchen maid had smiled at you in the corridor and offered you a warm roll fresh from the ovens. The girl had been dismissed the next day, sent back to her village with a black mark on her name and a warning never to seek employment in King's Landing again. You had not seen her go. You had only heard the whispers, carried to you by Lady Jeyne with a smile that did not reach her cold gray eyes.
"It seems some servants forget their place. A shame. She seemed a sweet girl."
The message had been clear: kindness to the Blackfyre was a crime, and crimes were punished.
You rose from the bed. The stone floor was cold beneath your bare feet, the spring chill seeping through the mortar despite the thin rushes scattered across the flagstones. The chamber was always cold. The servants who tended the fires in the royal apartments seemed to forget that this room existed, or perhaps they remembered all too well and chose to let the flames die out of quiet, spiteful neglect. The single candle on your bedside table guttered and smoked, casting long shadows that danced across the bare stone walls like specters at a feast.
You had been given this chamber on your wedding night. You had been naively grateful then. "Your own space," Valarr had said, his mismatched eyes warm with false consideration. "Every woman deserves a refuge. Somewhere she can be alone with her thoughts, away from the demands of court and husband. I would never deny you that."
A refuge. That was what he had called it. But there was no refuge in this cold, barren room with its bare walls and its threadbare tapestries and its single window that looked out over the black waters of the Blackwater Rush. There was only silence. Only the slow, grinding erosion of everything you had been before the war, before the surrender, before they had stripped you of your name and your family and your future and dressed you in Targaryen red.
You had not bothered with a robe. The first night, you had wrapped yourself in a heavy cloak, clutching it around your shoulders like armor as Ser Alan led you through the darkened corridors. When you had arrived in Valarr's chambers, he had looked at you with that gentle, puzzled expression he wore so well and said, "Why do you hide yourself, sweet wife? You are the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms. The blood of Old Valyria flows in your veins. You should be proud of what you are."
He had taken the cloak from your shoulders himself, his fingers brushing against your skin with deliberate, lingering softness. He had folded it carefully and set it aside, and you had never seen it again. The next night, you had worn a different robe. The same thing had happened. By the third night, you had understood the lesson he was teaching you.
You will come to me as you are. You will hide nothing. You belong to me, and I will see all of you.
So now you wore only your shift. Thin linen, pale cream in color, cut low enough to show the elegant soft swell of your breasts. It had been laid out for you by one of your ladies in waiting, Lady Alia, you thought, though it might have been Lady Mariene; they all blurred together in your mind, a procession of cold faces and colder eyes.
The shift was too fine for a prisoner, too revealing for a proper lady. It was a garment designed to display you, to emphasize every curve and hollow of your body, to remind you that you were an object to be looked at and touched and possessed.
And you hated it. You hated your beauty because it was the reason you were here, in this cold room, in this cold castle, married to a man who looked at you like you were a prize he had won in battle. If you had been plain, if you had been ordinary, perhaps they would have sent you to the Silent Sisters, like your sisters had been, or allowed you to join your brothers at the Wall. But you were beautiful, and your beauty was Valyrian, and Valarr Targaryen wanted to possess it.
You followed Ser Alan through the corridors of Maegor's Holdfast. The hour of the wolf, they called this time. The torches burned low in their iron sconces, their flames reduced to guttering embers that cast more shadow than light. The stone walls were slick with condensation, moisture beading on the ancient masonry like sweat on a dying man's brow.
The Red Keep was never truly silent. Even at this hour, there were sounds, the distant tread of guards on the battlements, the scurrying of rats in the walls, the mournful cry of gulls wheeling over the Blackwater. But the silence between those sounds was vast and empty, a yawning chasm that seemed to swallow everything it touched. You walked through it like a ghost, your bare feet making no sound on the cold stone, your breath forming small clouds in the chill air. The thin linen of your shift did nothing to ward off the cold, and you could feel your nipples hardening beneath the fabric, could feel the gooseflesh rising on your arms and thighs. By the time you reached the Prince's chambers, you would be shivering, your body betraying your vulnerability to him before you ever spoke a word.
You knew the way by heart now. Down the winding stair from your tower chamber, past the door to the servants' quarters where you sometimes heard muffled laughter that fell silent the moment you drew near.
At the end of the passage, a heavy oak door bound with iron bands marked the entrance to the Prince's private chambers. Two more Kingsguard stood on either side, Ser Roland Crakehall and Ser Gwayne Gaunt, their white cloaks hanging still in the motionless air, their faces hidden behind the gleaming visors of their helms. They did not acknowledge you as you passed.
Ser Alan pushed open the door and stepped aside, his duty discharged. His eyes met yours for the briefest moment, a flicker of something that might have been pity, quickly suppressed, and then he was gone, melting back into the shadows of the corridor like a wraith.
You crossed the threshold alone, as you always did. The warmth hit you first.
It was like stepping from a frozen wasteland into the heart of a dragon's lair. A great fire roared in the stone hearth, flames leaping high and golden, filling the room with a heat that seemed to seep into your bones and thaw the chill that had settled there during the long, cold walk. The air was thick with the scent of sandalwood and smoke and something sweet and faintly musky, like the perfume of night blooming flowers mingled with the clean, sharp scent of male skin. It was the scent of him, you realized. The scent of Valarr Targaryen, embedded in every tapestry and cushion and fur, saturating the very air you breathed.
The Prince's chambers were vast, easily four times the size of your own barren room. The furniture was dark and heavy, carved from exotic woods that had been imported from the Summer Isles and the forests of Qohor at unimaginable expense.
And there, in a high backed chair before the fire, sat your husband.
Valarr Targaryen did not look up when you entered. He was reading a leather bound book that lay open in his lap, its pages yellowed with age and covered in the spidery script of some long dead maester. The firelight played across his features, highlighting the sharp planes of his face, the strong line of his jaw, the slight furrow of concentration between his brows. He was dressed in a robe of black silk embroidered with red dragons, loosely tied at the waist, revealing a glimpse of his chest, lean and muscled, with a dusting of dark hair that matched the short cropped locks on his head.
He did not look like a dragon. That was the first thought that had crossed your mind when you had seen him at your wedding, standing before the High Septon in the Great Sept of Baelor as the realm watched and whispered. And it was the thought that returned to you now, as fresh and bitter as ever, each time you laid eyes on him.
He was handsome. You could not deny that, no matter how much you wanted to. His jaw was strong and sharp, his nose straight and aquiline, his brow noble. His mouth was perpetually curved in a half smile that never quite reached his eyes, giving him the look of a man who knew a secret that no one else did and found immense satisfaction in that knowledge. His body was lean and well made, not bulky like a tourney knight, but wiry and graceful, with the long muscles of a swordsman and the easy, coiled tension of a predator at rest.
But his coloring was all wrong.
His hair was dark, a deep, rich brown that bordered on black, and cut short, close to his skull in the martial style his father Baelor Breakspear had favored. It was thick and soft looking, and you had felt it beneath your fingers enough times to know that it was indeed as soft as it appeared. There was only a single streak of silver gold to mark his Targaryen blood, a narrow ribbon of pale brightness that ran from his temple to the nape of his neck like a brand. It was as if the gods had begun to paint him in the colors of Old Valyria and then grown bored, abandoning the work halfway through.
And his eyes. Those mismatched, unsettling eyes. One was a clear, piercing blue, the blue of the Stormlands sky, the blue of his mother Jena Dondarrion's bloodline. The other was a deep, warm brown, almost black in certain lights, flecked with amber and gold, the brown of his Dornish grandmother. They sat together in his handsome face like two strangers forced to share a room, never quite meeting, never quite agreeing. They gave him the look of something assembled from spare parts, something the gods had cobbled together from whatever materials they had at hand and then sent out into the world unfinished.
He looked like a Stormlander. He looked like his mother's son. He looked like a mongrel.
And there you stood, Y/N Blackfyre, the spitting image of Daena the Defiant reborn.
You were everything a Targaryen should be. You were the living embodiment of the bloodline that had conquered Westeros, the bloodline that had ruled for nearly two hundred years, the bloodline that Valarr Targaryen could claim by name but not by appearance. And you wore the name of his family's greatest enemy, Blackfyre, the house of the usurper, the house of rebellion and treason and broken oaths.
The irony was not lost on you. It was certainly not lost on him.
You could feel his attention on you even before he looked up. It was a physical thing, a weight, a pressure, like the heat of the sun on bare skin. He was always aware of you, always attuned to your presence in a way that made you feel like prey being stalked by a patient, methodical hunter. And when he finally raised his eyes from his book, the impact of his gaze was like a blow.
His mismatched eyes traveled over your body with the slow, deliberate thoroughness of a man savoring a fine wine. They lingered on the swell of your breasts, visible through the thin linen, on the curve of your hips, on the length of your legs. They traced the line of your throat, the soft hollow where your pulse fluttered visibly beneath your skin. They drank you in, consumed you, devoured you. And when they finally met your eyes, there was something in them that made your breath catch, a hunger so raw, so intense, so utterly possessive that it stole the air from your lungs.
He wanted you. That was nothing new; you had known that since your wedding night. But there was something else in his gaze tonight, something darker and more complicated. It was as if he resented you for making him want you. As if your beauty was a personal affront, a reminder of everything he was not, everything he could never be. He looked at you like a man starving, and hating himself for his hunger.
"My wife," Valarr said, his voice low and smooth. He did not look away from your face, though you could see the effort it cost him. His eyes kept flickering down, tracing the lines of your body, before he forced them back up. "How kind of you to join me. I was beginning to fear you had forgotten the way."
As if I could forget. As if I could ever forget anything about this nightmare you have constructed for me.
You said nothing. You had learned that too, in the long weeks since your wedding. Silence was safer than words. Words could be twisted, weaponized, turned back upon you with that gentle, reasonable smile he wore so well. Words could be used to trap you, to expose you, to give him more ammunition for the slow, grinding war of attrition he waged against your spirit every single day.
Silence, at least, was your own. He could not take your silence. He could not twist it or weaponize it or use it to humiliate you. He could only wait, and watch, and try to find new ways to make you speak.
He closed the book and set it aside, but he did not rise. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, his legs spreading slightly, his posture one of casual, arrogant ease. The robe fell further open, revealing more of his chest, the flat plane of his stomach, the trail of dark hair that disappeared beneath the silk. He was aroused, you realized with a jolt. The evidence of his desire was unmistakable, pressing against the fabric of his robe, and he made no effort to hide it. Why would he? This was his chamber, his kingdom, his world. You were the intruder here, the supplicant, the conquered.
"Come here," he said.
Just that. Two words. Soft as a lover's whisper, heavy as a command. It was not a request. It was never a request, no matter how gently he spoke it. Every word that fell from his lips was an order wrapped in silk, a demand disguised as consideration.
You walked toward him. Your bare feet made no sound on the thick Myrish carpet, and you moved with the unconscious grace that had been drilled into you since childhood, the posture of a noblewoman, the bearing of a lady, the carefully cultivated elegance that marked you as someone of consequence even when you had no consequence at all. The thin linen of your shift whispered against your skin as you walked, a constant reminder of your vulnerability, your exposure, your complete and utter dependence on his mercy. You could feel his eyes on you with every step, could feel the weight of his gaze like a physical caress, sliding over your breasts, your hips, the shadowed juncture of your thighs.
You stopped before his chair, close enough to feel the heat of the fire on your skin, close enough to smell him, that intoxicating blend of sandalwood and smoke and warm male skin that you had come to associate with long nights and tangled sheets and the slow, inexorable erosion of your will. He looked up at you, his head tilted slightly to one side, his mismatched eyes gleaming in the firelight.
His hand rose. You braced yourself for his touch, on your face, your throat, your breast. But instead, he caught a strand of your silver gold hair between his fingers, rubbing it gently as if testing the quality of fine silk. His touch was light, almost reverent, and his eyes softened with something that might have been mistaken for genuine admiration by someone who did not know him.
But you knew him now. You had spent a moon learning him, studying him, cataloging his every expression and gesture and word. And you knew that the softness in his eyes was not admiration. It was hunger. It was envy. It was a desperate, consuming need that he hated himself for feeling.
"Beautiful," he murmured. His voice was rough, almost pained. "Gods, do you have any idea what you do to me? What you've done to me since the moment I first saw you?"
He drew the strand of hair to his face and pressed it to his lips. His eyes closed for a moment, and you watched his throat work as he inhaled the scent of you, the faint perfume of the lavender soap you were permitted to use, the clean, sweet smell of your skin. When he opened his eyes again, they were dark with something that looked almost like anguish.
"You know," he said, still stroking your hair, still holding it against his lips as if he could not bear to let it go, "I used to dream of hair like this. When I was a boy, I would pray to the Seven every night, every single night, to make mine silver. To make me look like my grandfather. Like my uncles. Like a true Targaryen."
His voice was soft, musing, but there was an edge to it now. A bitterness that he could not quite hide.
"I would kneel before the altar in the royal sept," he continued, "and I would promise the gods anything, anything at all, if they would just change the color of my hair. I promised to be brave, like my father. I promised to be wise, like my grandfather the King. I promised to be pious and just and merciful and all the things a prince is supposed to be. And every morning, I would wake up and run to the mirror, hoping that this timeā¦ this time, they had listened."
He released your hair, letting it fall back against your shoulder. His hand moved to your face, his fingers tracing the line of your cheekbone with a touch so light it was almost not there at all. His thumb brushed the corner of your mouth, and you felt your lips part involuntarily, a small, betraying response that you could not control.
"They never did," he said. "The gods have a cruel sense of humor, don't they? They gave the Valyrian beauty to the Blackfyre, the daughter of traitors and rebels, the spawn of a usurper's bloodline. And they gave the dornish coloring to the Prince of Dragonstone, the heir to the Iron Throne."
His thumb traced your lower lip, pressing slightly, feeling the soft, full curve of it. His eyes were fixed on your mouth now, and you could see the conflict in them, the desire warring with resentment, the hunger battling with something that looked almost like hatred. Not hatred of you, you realized with a start. Hatred of himself. Hatred of his own weakness, his own need, his own desperate, consuming want for something he believed should be beneath him.
"You should have been mine by right of blood," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "You should have been born a Targaryen. You should have been my sister, my cousin, my equal. Instead, you are my enemy's daughter, and I have to pretend that I married you for politics. For duty. For the realm."
His hand slid from your face to your throat, his fingers wrapping around the slender column with a gentle but unmistakable pressure. He could feel your pulse beneath his palm, quick, fluttering, like a trapped bird. His thumb stroked the hollow of your throat, feeling the warmth of your skin, the life that beat just beneath the surface.
"But that's not why I married you," he said, and his voice cracked slightly, revealing a rawness that you had never heard before. "I married you because I couldn't stop thinking about you. Because from the moment I saw you, standing there with your family, defeated, kneeling, surrounded by guards, your head held high even in defeat, I knew I had to have you. I had to possess you. I had to make you mine."
He hated you because you made him feel weak, made him feel wanting, made him feel like a mongrel scrabbling at the gates of a palace he would never be worthy to enter.
And beneath all of that, beneath the hunger and the envy and the resentment and the hate, there was something that looked almost like tenderness. Almost like love. But it was a twisted, possessive, consuming love, the love of a dragon for its hoard, the love of a collector for his most precious acquisition.
His hand tightened on your throat, not enough to hurt, but enough to make you aware of his strength, his power, his absolute control over you. His mismatched eyes blazed with an intensity that was almost frightening, and you could see the muscles in his jaw working as he struggled to contain whatever was raging inside him.
"You are mine," he said, and it was not a statement. It was a vow. A curse.
His hand released your throat and moved to the back of your neck, tangling in your silver gold hair. He pulled you down, and you went willingly, or perhaps not willingly, but without resistance, which amounted to the same thing. His mouth found yours, and he kissed you with a desperate, consuming hunger that stole your breath and set your blood on fire.
It was not a gentle kiss. It was not the careful, controlled kiss of a husband performing his marital duty. It was raw and hungry and full of all the twisted, complicated emotions that churned inside him, the desire, the envy, the resentment, the need. His tongue swept into your mouth, claiming you, tasting you, devouring you. His hand in your hair held you in place, not allowing you to pull away, not allowing you to escape the intensity of his kiss.
And gods help you, you kissed him back. You did not mean to. You did not want to. But your body betrayed you, as it always did. Your lips parted beneath his, and your tongue met his, and your hands came up to grip his shoulders, whether to push him away or pull him closer, you could not have said. The taste of him filled your mouth, wine and smoke and something dark and addictive that you could not name. The heat of him surrounded you, enveloped you, consumed you.
When he finally broke the kiss, you were both breathing hard. His forehead rested against yours, and you could feel the rapid beat of his heart against your chest. His hand was still tangled in your hair, and his other hand had found your waist, his fingers pressing into the soft curve of your hip with a possessive grip.
"You are cold," he observed, his thumb tracing the line of your cheekbone. "The walk from your chambers is too long. I have told the servants to keep your fire burning through the night, but they seem to forget. Careless of them. I shall have to speak to the steward."
You will do no such thing, you thought. You want me cold. You want me to arrive here shivering and desperate for the warmth of your fire, the warmth of your bed, the warmth of you. This is by your design, as everything is by your design.
But you said nothing. You simply stood there, letting him touch you, letting him pretend to care about your comfort. What else was there for a traitor's daughter to do?
"The hour is late," he said, withdrawing his hand. He rose from his chair with the easy grace of a man who had never known a moment's true hardship, who had never had to fight for anything in his life. He was not tall, shorter than his father had been at his age, you had heard, and shorter than most of the knights who served in the Kingsguard, but he still loomed over you, close enough that you could count the flecks of lilac in his blue eye, the flecks of amber in his brown one. "I trust your chambers are comfortable?"
Cold. Empty. A prison with silk curtains and a bed that feels like stone. "Yes, my prince."
"Good." He smiled, and for a moment, he almost looked kind. "I would hate to think you were suffering. You have suffered enough, I think. Your family's choicesā¦ well. We need not speak of that. The past is the past, and you are my wife now. The future is what matters."
He reached down and took your hand. His fingers were long and elegant, a musician's fingers, a scholar's fingers. They wrapped around yours with a gentle but unmistakable firmness, a claim of ownership that needed no words to express.
"Come to bed," he said, his voice rough and low.
He rose from the chair, pulling you with him, and began to walk toward the great canopied bed. You followed, because you had no choice. Because your body was already responding to him, already softening and warming and preparing itself for his touch. Because some traitorous part of you wanted this, wanted his hands on your skin, his mouth on your throat, his body moving against yours.
He did not release your hand as you walked. His fingers were warm and strong around yours, and you found yourself gripping back, holding on to him as if he were the only solid thing in a world that had turned to water and smoke.
The act itself was never violent. That was the worst part. That was the part that made you want to scream, to weep, to claw at your own skin until you could feel something other than this terrible, suffocating gentleness.
If he had been cruel, you could have hated him. If he had hurt you, truly hurt you, if he had taken you with the brutal entitlement of a conqueror claiming his spoils, you could have built walls of rage and disgust to shield yourself from his touch. You could have retreated into the cold, clean fortress of your hatred and watched him from behind its battlements, untouched and untouchable.
But Valarr Targaryen was not cruel. He was gentle. And his gentleness was more devastating than any cruelty could ever be.
He laid you down on the bed with the care of a man handling something precious and fragile. The furs were soft beneath your back, the silk sheets cool against your heated skin. He loomed over you for a moment, his mismatched eyes traveling over your body with that hungry, reverent gaze, drinking in the sight of you spread out before him like a feast. The firelight played across your skin, gilding your silver gold hair, casting shadows in the hollows of your throat and the valley between your breasts.
"You are so beautiful," he breathed. His voice was thick with emotion, almost pained.
He lowered himself beside you, propped on one elbow, and his free hand began to explore your body. His touch was light, almost reverent, as if he were mapping the contours of a holy relic. His fingers traced the line of your collarbone, the curve of your shoulder, the soft swell of your breast. They circled your nipple through the thin linen of your shift, feeling it tighten and peak beneath his touch, and he made a low sound in his throat, a sound of satisfaction, of possession, of hunger barely restrained.
"I want to see you," he said. "All of you."
He did not tear your shift away. He did not rip the fabric from your body. Instead, he gathered the hem in his hands and slowly, slowly drew it upward, revealing you inch by torturous inch. The mound of your sex. The skin of your stomach. The curve of your waist. The undersides of your breasts. And then, finally, your breasts themselves, full and round and perfect, the nipples a color that darkened as he watched, tightening in the cool air of the chamber.
He made that sound again, that low, almost pained sound, and lowered his head. His mouth found your breast, and you gasped as his tongue circled your nipple, hot and wet and devastatingly skilled. His hand found your other breast, his fingers rolling and teasing the sensitive peak until you were arching beneath him, your body betraying you with every shudder and moan. His tongue swirled around the bud, sucking gently at first, then harder, teeth grazing just enough to make you arch into him. A gasp tore from your throat, your fingers threading into his hair, tugging at the silver streak as pleasure warred with the haze in your mind. Was this what you wanted? His free hand slid up your thigh, pushing the hem of your dress higher, fingers brushing your wetness.
He took his time. Gods, he always took his time. He explored every inch of you with his hands and his mouth, learning you, memorizing you, claiming you. He kissed the hollow of your throat and the inside of your elbow and the sensitive spot just below your ear that made you gasp and clutch at his shoulders. He traced the curve of your hip with his tongue and pressed open mouthed kisses to the soft skin of your inner thigh. He touched you everywhere, tasted you everywhere, until you were trembling and desperate and utterly, completely his.
And through it all, he watched you. His eyes never left your face, cataloguing every reaction, every gasp, every involuntary arch of your body. He wanted to see your pleasure. He needed to see it. Because your pleasure was proof, proof that you were his, proof that your body recognized his claim even if your mind resisted, proof that the Valyrian beauty he coveted responded to the mongrel prince who should have been beneath you.
"Feel how wet you are for me," he growled, slipping a finger to stroke your slick folds. You bucked against his touch, a moan betraying your body's eagerness even as you bit your lip, eyes fluttering shut. He circled your clit with pressure, dipping lower to push one finger inside you, then two, curling them to hit that spot that made stars burst behind your eyelids. His mouth returned to yours, swallowing your cries as he pumped his fingers, stretching you, preparing you, your whispered 'wait' lost in the rhythm of his thrusts, but your hips rose to meet him, chasing the building tension.
"Look at me," he commanded, his voice rough. "I want to see your eyes when you come apart for me."
You tried to look away. You tried to close your eyes, to retreat into the darkness behind your lids where he could not follow. But his hand caught your chin and turned your face back to his, and you had no choice but to meet his gaze as his fingers found the slick, aching center of you and began to move with devastating precision.
"Look at me," he repeated, and there was something in his voice, a desperate, almost pleading quality that made you obey. "I need to see you. I need to know that you feel this too. That I'm not the only one burning."
Your climax crashed over you like a wave, and you cried out, a sound you could not contain, a sound that was torn from you against your will. Your back arched, your fingers digging into his shoulders, your eyes locked with his as the pleasure consumed you. And through it all, he watched. His mismatched eyes blazed with triumph and hunger and something that looked almost like worship.
"That's it," he murmured, his voice thick with satisfaction. "That's my girl. My beautiful, perfect girl."
He moved over you then, settling between your thighs, and you felt the hot, hard length of him pressing against your entrance. He paused for a moment, his forehead resting against yours, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
"Say my name," he said. "I want to hear you say my name."
You did not want to give him that. It felt like too much, like a surrender too complete to be borne. But his hips shifted, the head of him pressing against you but not entering, and you knew, you knew, that he would wait all night if he had to. He would wait until you broke, until you gave him what he wanted, until you acknowledged that he was the one giving you this pleasure, that he was the one you needed.
"Valarr," you whispered. The name tasted like defeat. Like surrender. Like the death of everything you had been before.
His smile was a thing of terrible beauty, triumphant and hungry and impossibly tender all at once. "Again."
"Valarr."
He thrust into you in one smooth, devastating motion, and you cried out his name a third time, not because he asked, but because you could not stop yourself. He filled you completely, stretched you perfectly, and for one endless moment, you simply stared at each other, joined in the most intimate way possible, your breath mingling, your hearts pounding in tandem.
"Mine," he breathed, and began to move.
He made love to you slowly, reverently, as if you were something holy and he were a pilgrim who had traveled a thousand miles to worship at your altar. His thrusts were deep and deliberate, each one designed to draw out your pleasure, to make you feel every inch of him, to imprint himself on your body and your soul. He watched your face the entire time, his eyes dark with intensity, cataloguing every flutter of your lashes, every parting of your lips, every gasp and moan that escaped you.
"So perfect, so mine," he whispered, voice thick with emotion, slow thrusts that built like a gathering storm, pulling out almost fully before sliding back in, grinding against your clit with each hilt. His hands worshipped your body, one tangling in your silver hair to tilt your head back for his kisses, the other pinning your hip to the bed, controlling the pace. You wrapped your legs around him, heels digging into his ass, urging him deeper despite the lingering fog of consent's shadow.
The intensity mounted, his reverent touches turning possessive, gripping your thigh hard enough to bruise, sucking marks into your neck that would linger like claims. Sweat slicked your skin, bodies sliding together in a symphony of gasps and moans.
He shifted, angling to hit deeper, faster now, the bed creaking under the force. Your walls clenched around his cock, the coil in your belly tightening unbearably. "Come for me," he urged, thumb finding your clit again, rubbing in tight circles as he pounded into you.
The climax crashed over you like a wave, your pussy spasming around him, milking his length as you cried out, silver hair sticking to your damp forehead, purple eyes glazing with release. He followed moments later, thrusting erratically before burying himself deep, cock pulsing as he flooded you with hot cum, ropes spilling into your core, burying his face in your breasts as his body shuddered against yours. You felt the hot pulse of his release inside you, felt his arms tighten around you as if he were afraid you might disappear, felt his lips press reverent kisses to your throat and shoulder and the corner of your jaw.
For a long moment, neither of you moved. You lay tangled together, your breathing slowly returning to normal, your bodies still joined, your skin slick with sweat. His weight was warm and solid on top of you, and despite everything, despite the hatred and the resentment and the bitter knowledge of what he had taken from you, you felt safe.
It was a lie. You knew it was a lie. But in that moment, in the warm, firelit darkness of his chambers, with his body pressed against yours and his breath soft on your neck, you could almost believe it.
He stirred finally, rolling off you but not letting go. His arm remained wrapped around your waist, pulling you against his side, and his hand came up to stroke your hair with a gentle, almost absentminded tenderness.
He pressed a kiss to your temple and settled back against the pillows, his arm still wrapped around your waist.
"You may return to your chambers now," he said, his voice already growing distant, dismissive. "Ser Alan will escort you."
The words were the same as they always were. The dismissal was the same as it always was. And yet tonight, something was different. Tonight, the thought of leaving, of rising from this warm bed and walking back through those cold corridors to your cold, empty chamber, filled you with a despair so profound that it threatened to swallow you whole.
You did not move.
The silence stretched. One heartbeat. Two. Three. You could feel his attention shift, could sense him turning his head on the pillow to look at you. You kept your eyes fixed on the canopy above, counting the dragons. Five. Six. Seven.
"You are still here," he observed. There was no surprise in his voice, only a kind of clinical curiosity. "I gave you leave to go."
You swallowed. Your throat was dry. "I know."
"Then why do you linger?" He propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at you with those mismatched eyes. In the dim light, they seemed to gleam with an inner fire of their own, the blue one cold as ice, the brown one warm as embers. "Have I not been a considerate husband? Have I not given you your own chambers, your own space, your privacy? I would never force you to remain where you are not wanted."
Where you are not wanted.
The words hung in the air between you, heavy with double meaning. You were not wanted in his heart, you knew that, had always known it. He did not love you; he possessed you. He coveted you. He resented you and worshipped you in equal measure. But he did not love you, not in any way that you recognized as love. And you were not wanted in his chambers either, except when he summoned you, except when he wanted to use your body and watch you respond to his touch.
But here you were. Tangled in his silk sheets, breathing his air, warmed by his fire. And the thought of leaving, of rising from this bed and walking back through those cold, dark corridors to your empty room, made you want to weep.
"You summon me," you said. Your voice was barely above a whisper. "You summon me every night."
His brow furrowed with perfect, practiced confusion. It was a mask you had seen him wear a hundred times, the face of a man who could not understand why anyone would question his actions, who genuinely believed himself to be acting only with the purest of intentions.
"I summon you because you are my wife," he said, as if explaining something simple to a child. "It is my duty to attend to you. To ensure the continuation of our line. The realm needs heirs, sweet wife. Our union must bear fruit."
He reached out and brushed a strand of silver gold hair from your face, his touch feather light, almost tender. His fingers lingered on your cheek, tracing the line of your jaw, the curve of your ear.
"But I would never keep you here against your will," he continued. "That would beā¦ unseemly. You are not a prisoner. You are my wife. If you wish to return to your chambers, you have only to say so. I will summon Ser Alan myself."
You are not a prisoner.
The words were a lie, and you both knew it. You were a prisoner in all but name. Your every movement was watched, your every word reported, your every attempt to reach out to the world beyond the Red Keep carefully and quietly thwarted. You were not permitted to write to your brothers at the Wall, not permitted to see your sisters, not permitted to send word to your mother in Tyrosh, not permitted to leave your chambers without an escort of guards who claimed to be protecting you but who served only to remind you of your captivity.
You had tried, once, to walk in the gardens alone. It had been a small thing, a tiny act of rebellion. You had simply slipped away from your ladies in waiting and wandered down a path you had not been shown before. Within minutes, two guards had appeared at your side, their faces carefully neutral, their voices politely insistent. "For your safety, my lady. The Red Keep can be dangerous for those who do not know its ways."
You had not tried again.
And your ladies in waiting, they were not companions. They were watchers. Spies in silk and velvet, assigned to report your every word and deed to the Prince. They whispered behind their hands when they thought you could not hear, their voices dripping with contempt. "Traitor's daughter." "Blackfyre whore." "She thinks herself a dragon, but she's nothing but a pretender in borrowed scales."
They pulled your laces too tight when they dressed you, leaving bruises on your ribs. They brought you cold food and colder stares, and when you asked for something, a book, a warm bath, a moment of peace, they smiled sweetly and promised to see to it, and nothing ever came of it.
The world had been carefully, methodically stripped away from you. Your family, your name, your freedom, your dignity. Everything that had made you who you were had been taken, piece by piece, until only he remained. The only person who touched you without care. The only person who looked at you without disgust. The only person who spoke to you as if you were a person, not a symbol of a defeated rebellion.
You were tired. Gods, you were so tired. Tired of the cold walks. Tired of the cold bed. Tired of the cold stares. Tired of being alone with your thoughts and your grief and your rage until you felt like you might shatter into a thousand pieces.
And he was warm.
He was here, solid and real, his body radiating heat beside you in the vast bed. He was the only person in the Red Keep who touched you without making you feel like something unclean. His hands on your skin, his voice in your ear, his presence filling the empty spaces inside you, it was a poison, you knew, sweet and slow and deadly. But it was the only warmth you had.
You hated him for it. Hated him with a fierce, burning intensity that sometimes took your breath away. Hated him for what he had taken from you, for what he continued to take, for the way he made you need him even as you loathed him.
And you needed him. That was the worst part. That was the part that made you want to scream. You needed his warmth, his touch, his voice. You needed the only human connection that was offered to you, even knowing that it was offered with chains attached.
"Valarr."
His name felt strange on your tongue. You usually called him "my prince" or nothing at all, maintaining that last, fragile barrier of formality between you. But in this moment, in the dying firelight, with your body still humming from his touch and your walls crumbling around you, you could not bring yourself to maintain that final pretense.
"Yes?"
His voice was soft. Encouraging. The voice of a man who already knew what you were going to say and was savoring the anticipation, drawing out the moment like a cat playing with a mouse.
You closed your eyes. You could not look at him while you said it. You could not watch his face as you surrendered this last, precious piece of yourself.
"Let me stay."
The silence that followed was the loudest thing you had ever heard.
You could feel him smiling in the darkness. You did not need to see his face to know that the satisfaction was radiating from him like heat from the dying embers, that his mismatched eyes were gleaming with quiet triumph. You had given him exactly what he wanted, exactly what he had been working toward since the night of your wedding.
"I'm sorry," he said, and there was nothing but gentle confusion in his tone. "I don't understand. Stay where?"
You bastard. You utter, complete bastard.
You knew what he wanted. You had always known. He wanted you to say it clearly, to spell it out, to beg for the privilege of sleeping in his bed like a dog begging for scraps at the master's table. He wanted you to acknowledge that you needed him, that you wanted him, that all his careful manipulation had worked exactly as intended. He wanted you to hand him this victory on a silver platter, to kneel before him and offer up your last shred of pride as a gift.
And you were going to give it to him.
Because you were too tired to fight anymore. Because the thought of that cold walk back to your empty chambers, of lying alone in that cold bed with nothing but your thoughts for company, made you want to weep. Because whatever this was, this twisted, poisonous thing between you, it was better than the alternative.
"The corridors are cold."
"The corridors are always cold." His tone was mild, pleasant. "I have offered to have braziers placed along your route. You declined."
Because accepting would mean admitting I notice the cold. Because accepting would mean I owe you gratitude for every scrap of warmth you deign to give me.
"I did not wish to trouble the servants."
"Ah." He said it as if you had revealed something profound.
"You are too considerate, wife. Most ladies would demand a dozen braziers and complain of the smoke. But not you. You bear your discomforts in silence." His hand found yours beneath the furs, his fingers interlacing with your own. His palm was warm. "I admire that about you. Truly."
You wanted to pull your hand away. You did not.
"Please," you said instead.
The word tasted like ash in your mouth, like defeat, like the death of something precious and irreplaceable. It was the word of a supplicant, a beggar, a woman who had been stripped of everything and was grateful for whatever scraps were thrown her way.
"I am asking. I want to share your chambers. I wantā¦"
You faltered. What did you want? You wanted your family back. You wanted your freedom. You wanted to wake up and discover that the last moon had been nothing but a nightmare, that you were still in Tyrosh with your mother and your siblings, that the war had never happened and Daemon Blackfyre still lived and the world still made sense.
But those things were gone. They were ashes and dust, scattered on the wind of history. All that remained was this room, this bed, this man.
"I want to stay," you finished, your voice barely audible.
His smile was a thing of terrible beauty.
It transformed his sharp, mismatched features into something almost angelic, the face of a savior, a protector, a man who had rescued a fallen woman from the consequences of her family's treason and lifted her up to stand beside him. His blue eye sparkled with warmth. His brown eye gleamed with satisfaction. He looked like a painting of some ancient hero, a knight of legend who had slain the dragon and claimed the maiden as his reward.
"Oh, my sweet wife," he murmured.
He leaned down and pressed his lips to yours. The kiss was soft, tender, achingly gentle. It was the kind of kiss a devoted husband might give his beloved wife after a long separation, a gesture of pure and selfless affection. And it made you want to scream.
"Of course you may stay. I would never deny you anything you truly wanted. I told you, did I not? I am the only one in this world who will care for you. The only one who sees your worth."
He pulled the furs up over your body, tucking them around your shoulders with careful, almost paternal attention. His hands smoothed the fabric, ensuring that you were completely covered, completely warm, completely enveloped in his care. Then he lay back against the pillows and drew you against his side, one arm wrapping around your waist and pulling you close.
His body was warm. Solid. Real. And for one terrible, shameful moment, you felt safe.
It was a lie. You knew it was a lie. This safety was an illusion, a gilded cage dressed up as a sanctuary. He was not your protector. He was your captor, your jailer, the architect of your slow and methodical destruction. The warmth of his body was the warmth of the dragon's breath, and you were the lamb curled in its jaws.
But it was warm. And you were so tired. And for just this moment, just this one moment, you could pretend.
"Sleep now," he murmured against your hair. His breath was warm on your scalp, his voice a low, soothing rumble. "You are where you belong. With me. Where no one can hurt you. Where no one can whisper their poison in your ear. Just us, sweet wife. Just us."
His arm tightened around your waist, pulling you even closer. You could feel the steady beat of his heart against your back, the rise and fall of his chest, the solid reality of his presence. He was everywhere, surrounding you, enveloping you, claiming you.
And then his lips found your ear, and his voice dropped to a whisper so soft you almost didn't hear it.
"I will make you love me," he breathed. "I will make you need me so completely that you won't remember how to breathe without me. And when that day comes, when you finally see that I am the only one who will ever truly want you, I will be there. Waiting. As I have always been waiting."
He pressed a kiss to the curve of your ear, his tongue tracing the delicate shell of it, and you shivered, not from cold, but from the dark promise in his words.
"Sleep," he said again, his voice returning to that gentle, soothing tone. "Dream of me. Dream of us. Dream of the life we will build together."
You closed your eyes.
The tears came then. Silent and hot, sliding down your cheeks to soak into the silk pillowcase. You did not make a sound. You had learned not to cry where anyone could hear, learned to swallow your grief and your rage and your despair until they became a hard, cold knot in your chest. But you could not stop the tears. They flowed from you like water from a broken dam, an endless river of sorrow that you had been holding back for too long.
His arm tightened around your waist. You felt his lips curve into a smile against the crown of your head.
He knew.
He always knew.
And tomorrow, when the sun rose and the world went on as it always did, you would wake in his bed. You would open your eyes to the sight of his chambers, surrounded by his scent and his warmth and his quiet, suffocating care. You would look at yourself in the polished bronze mirror that hung on his wall and see a stranger, a woman who had begged her captor to keep her close, who had traded her last scrap of independence for a few hours of warmth.
The servants would know. They always knew everything that happened in the Red Keep. By midday, the whispers would have spread through every corridor and every kitchen and every stable. The Blackfyre whore has moved into the Prince's chambers. She begged him to let her stay. She crawled into his bed like a dog seeking warmth.
Your ladies in waiting would smile their cold, knowing smiles. Lady Jeyne would make some cutting remark disguised as concern. "How wonderful that you and the Prince have grown so close. I'm sure your mother would be so pleased to know that you have foundā¦ comfortā¦ in your new home."
And Valarr would watch it all with those mismatched eyes, that gentle, reasonable smile playing at his lips. He would see the whispers and the stares and the quiet cruelties, and he would do nothing to stop them. Why would he? They served his purpose. They reminded you that he was the only one who treated you with anything resembling kindness, the only one who touched you without making you feel like something unclean.
He was the disease and the cure. The poison and the antidote. The dragon and the knight who slew it.
And you were his.
But that was tomorrow. Tonight, in the dying firelight, wrapped in his furs and his possession, you lay still, your body pressed back against his in the spoon of his embrace.
His cock, still half hard from your earlier joining, nestled against the curve of your ass, warm and heavy. You tried to focus on the rhythm of your breathing, to let the exhaustion pull you under, but the tears kept coming, silent tracks carving paths down your face.
Then you felt it, a subtle twitch, a thickening against your skin. His length stirred, growing firm once more, pressing insistently into the cleft of your cheeks. Your breath hitched, a fresh wave of emotion crashing through you.
Not again. Not when your heart felt so raw, so fractured. But your body, traitorous as ever, responded with a faint clench low in your belly, the lingering slickness between your thighs a reminder of how he'd already claimed you.
Valarr shifted behind you, his hand sliding from your waist to cup your breast, thumb brushing over the still sensitive nipple. He hardened fully now, his cock rigid and hot, the veined shaft sliding along your ass as he rocked his hips forward in a slow, deliberate grind.
"Shh," he murmured into your hair, his voice a low rumble that vibrated through your back. "Let me hold you closer. Let me make it better."
You didn't protest, words caught in your throat, choked by the sobs you refused to voice. His free hand trailed down your side, over the flare of your hip, fingers dipping between your legs to part your folds. He found you wet, despite everything, his touch gentle as he stroked your clit in lazy circles, coaxing more arousal from your unwilling core.
A whimper escaped you, muffled into the pillow, as his cock nudged at your entrance from behind, the broad head parting your lips.
He pushed in slowly, inch by inch, filling you again with that stretching burn that blurred the line between ache and need. Your walls fluttered around him, gripping his thickness as he sank deep, his hips flush against your ass. The position pinned you in place, his body a solid weight over yours, one arm banded across your chest to hold you tight while the other worked your clit with unerring precision. He didn't thrust yet, just held himself buried inside, letting you feel every pulse of him, every throb against your inner walls.
Tears streamed faster now, soaking the silk beneath your cheek, your purple eyes squeezed shut against the overwhelming flood.
Why did it feel good? Why did his possession twist the knife of your despair into something almost like solace? He began to move then, shallow rolls of his hips that dragged his cock along your depths, grinding against that spot that made stars burst behind your lids.
His breath was hot on your neck, lips pressing soft kisses there even as his pace quickened, thrusts turning firmer, the slap of skin on skin echoing softly in the chamber.
"That's it," he whispered, his mismatched eyes no doubt fixed on the back of your head, imagining your surrender. "Take me. You're mine to comfort, mine to fuck, mine to keep." His fingers pinched your nipple lightly, rolling it as he drove deeper, his cock pistoning in and out with controlled power.
You cried silently, body rocking with each impact, ass pressing back against him involuntarily as pleasure coiled tight despite the grief tearing at your chest.
He fucked you like that, possessive, unyielding, his hand leaving your clit to grip your hip, pulling you onto him harder.
The angle let him hit deeper, his balls slapping against your thighs with every plunge. Your sobs broke free in quiet gasps, tears blurring your vision, but your pussy clenched around him, soaking his length with fresh wetness. He groaned, low and reverent, burying his face in your silver hair, inhaling your scent as if it were his lifeline.
The build was relentless, his thrusts erratic now, chasing release while forcing yours. "Cry if you must," he said softly, voice laced with that dark tenderness. "But come for me again. Show me you need this as much as I need you." His hand snaked back to your clit, rubbing fast and firm, and the dam broke. Your orgasm ripped through you, walls spasming wildly around his cock, milking him as you shuddered, tears flowing unchecked.
Valarr followed with a muffled curse, slamming deep one last time, his release flooding you hot and thick, ropes of cum painting your insides. He held you through it, cock twitching as he emptied himself, his arms wrapping tighter, as if to absorb your sorrow into his own body.
In the quiet aftermath, he stayed inside you, softening slowly, his lips trailing kisses along your shoulder. The fire had died to embers, casting faint shadows over the furs tangled around you both. Your tears slowed, exhaustion finally claiming you, and as sleep pulled you under, the dreams came, of dragons, but also of mismatched eyes watching over you, a cage that felt, in the haze, almost like home.
And Valarr held you through the night, his possession complete, your cries a secret shared only in the dark.
Content Warnings āĖąæ Aerion himself serves as a hefty warning. Toxic marriage, possessiveness, smut, fingering, cunnilingus, dry humping, breeding kink, finger-sucking, mentions of piv, primal play (I'm sorry), manipulation, obsession, ideas of 'blood purity' (i.e., Valyrian heritage), no explicit physical descriptions of the reader but I am an advocate for House Velaryon being black with Valyrian features (though, of course, you can imagine the reader as you wish), general dark/twisted themes. You're both freaks in this.
Notes ā§ĖĀ°. I'm not surely exactly what it is about Aerion Targaryen/Finn Bennett that has compelled me to step so outside my comfort zone when it comes to writing, but here we are. This is the first addition/chapter to what I'm thinking will be a universe of other Velaryon!reader x Aerion fics. Please be responsible when reading, and I hope you enjoy!
The smell of the sea lingers in you like ribbons of seaweed knotted around your sternum. Even now, two moons since your weddingāsince your silver-blue maiden shroud was stripped from you and Aerion draped a cloak of crimson silk with black trimmings around your shouldersāthe salt-air still strong in each strand of hair. Grains of sand seem to coagulate in your nail-beds, and when the days are particularly lonely in Summerhall, you swear that you can feel the cold-waters of Driftmarkās shores lapping at the napes of your ankles.
The sea is within you, in your blood, in your very bones. And yet you still miss it. Itās as intangible as childhood.Ā
Summerhall is suffocating. The air felt thicker here. It reeked of honeysuckle and sun-scorched earth, blown over from the rolling Dornish marches. The gardens were sprawling and luscious, once attentively kept by your husbandās lady-mother, Dyanna Dayne. He never spoke of her to you, but you knew about the traditional funeral practices of the Daynes of Starfallāthat his motherās corpse was most likely wrapped up in a chrysalis of lavender and left on the summit of the Red Mountains to be feasted upon by vultures. The servants tend to her thickets of moon-blooms now. You suppose that responsibility may one day fall to you when Daeronās married off to some heiress of a great house and is made lord of all she holds dear.Ā
You swallow that thought down and it bobs viciously in your throat. You have no interest in being the lady of Summerhall, nor languishing in those sweltering gardens surrounded by the lilac buds nursed by a dead woman.
Home was even in the periwinkle thread you were using to stitch waves into muslin. Embroideryās one of the only past-times you had left. When you miss the shallow waters of Driftmark lapping gently at the nape of your ankles, you put a needle to cotton. When the feeling of sun-warmed sand between your toes seemed like a different lifetime ago, you sit in the bay window of the chambers you share with Aerion, practicing your cross-stitch as you listen to the winds whistling through laburnum trees.Ā
Today, youāre sewing the pale stone outline of High Tide.Ā
āAnother hard day spent, wife?ā Aerion muses when he returns to your chambers after supper, draping todayās cloak over the back of the chair at your vanity.Ā
You look up from the embroidery hoop in your lap, briefly glancing over that small smirk and the half-lilt of his brows. āIf you say so, husband. And you?ā
āThe hunt went well. Daeron fell off of his horse, butā¦ā He shrugs, āthat was to be expected after downing a gallon of wine.ā
His mouth twitches, and heās looking at you as if heās expecting a similar, amused kind of reaction from you. The best you can manage is a wan, pursed smile that mightāve looked more like a grimace.Ā
āIām glad your day was fruitful, my lord,ā you offer diplomatically as his smirk melts into a rattled scowl.
āHmph.ā Heās displeased by your lack of reaction, but not surprised. He then gestures lazily to his crimson doublet. āCome. Help me undress, wife.ā
This was something heād make you do every evening since your wedding night. Whether he considered it a form of intimacy or control, it became a relentless part of your routine regardless.Ā
You sigh, putting your embroidery down beside you on the cushioned window-seat and standing, straightening out the creases in your silks before crossing the room to him. As soon as you were an armās stretch away from him, Aerion knocks his chin up, jutting his jaw the slightest bit. A muscle twitches there in his mandible as you step up to him, almost toe-to-two. Your skirts whispered faintly against his legs. His fingers flex at his side, reaching out just enough for his fingertips to touch at the soft satin of your gown.Ā Ā
āYou ought to wear more red,ā he says quickly when you begin to work on the buttons of his doublet. āTheyāre your colours too now, after all. It is proper for a wife to represent her lord husbandās house.ā
You bite into your tongue. You have no interest in donning scarlets and blacks to satisfy your husbandās ego. Aerionās heart bleeds fire and blood so ravenously, he expects everyone to be so fanatic. Especially you, it seems, often regarding the sea-green and teal of your dresses with contempt. But, for a woman hundreds of miles from her home, your clothes were some of the last autonomy you had. Swathing yourself in blood-red would feel like the last bit of rebellion you had left in you rotting away.
Still, you bowed your head demurely and continued to undress him. āVery well, husband. I shall fetch for a seamstress, so they might get my measurements and fashion me something worthy of your noble house.ā
If Aerion hears the sarcasm seeping into your calculated response, he doesnāt care enough to acknowledge it. Instead, he lets the corner of his mouth curl viciously and counters, āWell, not before long, this seamstress shall need to take a different set of measurementsā¦to accommodate for the swell of your belly, of course.ā
Your fingers went still against the ringmail-vest underneath his doublet. Another fascination of Aerionās was the idea of you being round with his baby.Ā
The first time he bedded you, it was as tradition follows. Your consummation had been a private thing, per Aerionās insistence. Heād bargained with his father that the maester might wait outside of the room until the two of you were finished, to only enter after the deed was done to ensure that youād bled. After a day of feeling like you were dressed as some prized pig for the slaughterhouse, youād taken this as a sign of chivalry. Youād almost thought that this marriage would be something you could stomach.Ā
That night, Aerion undressed you. Working slowly at the laces of your corset with your back turned to him, murmuring to himself about the humiliation of his family that nightāDaeron drowning in his cups, his cousin Valarrās peacocking as he twirled his Tyroshi wife under his arm, and his younger siblings constant nattering. You let him complain. You thought the longer this part of the night was prolonged, the less daunting the act itself would be. But the four-poster of your marital bed lingered in your periphery like some kind of beleaguering ghost as Aerion moved your hair over to one shoulder and started tracing chaste kisses along the trembling line of your shoulder.
āYouāre scared, wife,ā heād muttered in observation, fingertips coming to feel the goosebumps along your skin.
Wife. Youāre his wife.
āNo,ā you had scrambled to say, voice catching shallowly around your frantic lie. āNot scared, onlyā¦ā You shuddered at the feeling of his mouth against the top of your spine, ānervous, that is all.ā
āYouāve heard the whispers then. Brightflame. The monstrous second son of the kingās youngest son. So cruel, so capricious.ā He slipped one of your arms out of its sleeve, then the other, and his chest rumbled with an amused laugh when your hands reached instinctively to clutch the material at your chest to your breasts. āDo you believe the whispers? Do you think me as frightening as they say?ā
You couldnāt say what had possessed you to say it. Perhaps it was the unnerving sensation in your stomach that everything was slowly getting away from youāyour dignity, your self-control, any sense of knowing your place in the world.Ā
āI know that my father did not want me to marry you,ā youād blurted, hands still grasping your gown to your chest. āI know that he wouldāve rather married me off to your drunkard brother, but the court whispers that you longed for a Valyrian bride. That you long for Valyria itself. Though, the King wants to leave the days of marrying Targaryens to Targaryens behind. So, your grandfather and Prince Maekar compromised. They offered you meā¦ā The thickening silence behind you had been startling. You could still remember the pounding of your heartbeat against your ribs as he said nothing at all. Youād swallowed and continued in spite of yourself, āThough, we lost most of our coin after the Danceā¦and, since Queen Daenaera married the Dragonbane, our dynasties have seemed to forget our old alliance. Until today.ā
Aerion hummed contemplatively, the knuckle of his forefinger moving down the rosary of your spine over silk. āUntil today.āĀ
āSo no, I do not find you frightening because I think you are some cruel, erratic princeling,ā you carried on. āI do wonder what you thought you could get out of a marriage with an almost penniless house from a lonely island across Blackwater Bay.ā
āI assume the maester of High Tide taught you about Valaena Velaryon?ā
You stilled again. āValaenaā¦?āĀ
āLet go of your dress,ā said Aerion quietly.
āExcuse me?ā
āYour dress.ā
Taken aback, you felt the hold on the brocade slacken. Aerion hummed in satisfaction, reaching around you to firmly close his hands around your wrists and move your hands from your breasts. The satin of the bridal gown slipped down your body as seamlessly as water, pooling at your ankles and leaving you in the silk chemise your lady mother had commissioned for the wedding. It was lacy around the neckline and hem, intricate but dainty. It left the lengths of your arms and most of your legs bare and exposed to the cold air of your marital chambers.
The hairs on the nape of your neck stood tall, and you went on instinct to cradle your palms to yourself to emulate some semblance of warmth, forgetting that Aerionās fingers were still clasped around you. The small thrash made him press both of his thumbs into the hollows of your wrists.
āPretty,ā heād said. It made your throat swell. He then went on, āValaena Velaryon was the fairest bride of her time, they say.ā Your husbandās hands started to move up from your wrists, over your elbows, and up to the skimpy straps of your chemise, teasing his index finger under it to feel at the skin there. āA true beauty of Old Valyria. She married my namesake, did you know that? Lord Aerion Targaryen, lord of Dragonstone during the Century of Blood. He was the last rider of Aegarax. They had a fruitful marriage, Lord Aerion and his lady wife from your lonely island across Blackwater Bay. Do you know why?āĀ
All words and breath were lost to you. You were acutely aware that Aerion stood behind you, fully-dressed and entirely in control, whilst you were with your back to him, vulnerable and dressed in only a scrap of silk.
āI canāt remember,ā was all you could muster.
āHm.ā He didnāt sound particularly disappointed, nor pleased, by your answer. There was no malicious edge or self-satisfied grunt at your haziness. He appeared to be entirely collected. Then, just when he began talking again, he started to pull the flimsy straps of your chemise down your arms, āAerion and Valaena had three babes. A girl, firstā¦āĀ
Aerion did not let you cover yourself this time. As soon as the straps were gone, he merely batted your arms away and hooked his fingers into the scooping neckline at the back of the slip, taking his sweet time in pulling it down your torso.Ā
āAfter their daughter, a sonā¦āĀ
When the silk caught at your hips, Aerion let out a quiet, appreciative sound, stroking his thumb over the dip in the small of your back, before tugging it over the swell of your ass. Your breath hitched at the exposure, at the cold draught whispering from the open window.Ā
āAfter their heir, a final daughter.āĀ
The silk hit the floor, joining the shallow sea of your satin bridal dress with a murmur. You were entirely naked.
āAegon,ā you choked then, not even bothering to attempt covering yourself again. āThe Conqueror and his sisters. Visenya and Rhaenys. Lady Valaena was their mother.ā
āClever girl,ā he praised, half-mocking. āLady Valaena, of your almost penniless house from your lonely island, birthed the three-headed dragon. Her womb made the Targaryen dynasty what it is today.ā
Not a fraction what it was a century ago? You yearned to bite at him, but somehow had resisted the urge.
āAnd you think I am Lady Valaena born-again, to bring you forth three babes on the birthing-bed, so they might be conquerors?ā you asked him.Ā
āNot conquerors, wife,ā Aerion mused, kissing the curve of your shoulder again, ādragons.āĀ
Before that night, youād heard horror stories about consummation. Of splitting pain and cruel, selfish men, pawing at breasts like raw meat or spoils of a hunt, emptying themselves into their ripe wives like grunting boars.Ā
Aerion was not like that. He did not mount you like some stable mare, fuck you brutal and short. It was a methodical art, the way he took you that night. He told you, between heated kisses, the filthiness of his mouth dragging against yours, that heād had dreams of a three-headed dragon. Of flames, and the sky torn open, bleeding a comet of blazing red, as the night sung with the songs of dragons once more.
He laid you out on his bed, all bare and goose-flesh and shivering, and let the kisses move from your swollen mouth to the valley between your breasts. Your sternum arched from how you shamefully arched out of the crimson sheets and into his hunger. His mouth followed down to your abdomen, lingering over the swell of your lower-belly. Heād looked ravenous, you remembered. As if he could already picture your womb full of him.Ā
āYouāll give me dragons, wife,ā heād told you, moving himself lower, and lower, until he was brushing his spit-slick lips against the sensitive juncture of your thighs.Ā
His hands came down to your hips firmly when you started to jerk them, feeling tender and unfamiliar as your cunt started to ache.Ā
āThree of them.ā
Then, he kissed your cunt how heād kissed your mouth. Insatiably, dirtily, perfect. He licked at you, that tongue of his curling against a particularly tender spot of you that youād only clumsily felt at yourself when you could not sleep. There was nothing clumsy about the way he handled you.Ā
A sound came out of you that mightāve been a sob when he sunk his index finger inside of the warm heat of you. He curled it with some kind of second-nature to a sweetness within you that made you needily buck your hips and finally move your hands from where theyād been balling up fistfuls of duvet into them.
āThe maesters donāt want lesser men to know this,ā heād murmured against you, opening you up, coaxing a second finger into you, all the while tasting you and sucking at that pearl of yours, ābut a womanās pleasure is just as important as a manās. I think Lord Aerion treated his lady wife right, do you? Old Valyria did not treat fucking like some sin.āĀ
You could barely listen to what he was saying, his fingers stimulating a part of you that felt so deep, so intense, and so good, that it felt like it belonged to him rather than you.
āLord Aerion took care of his Velaryon bride. He fucked three dragons into her and they united all Seven Kingdoms.āĀ
He met your eyes then, his own so dark with lust and narrowed into almost slits that he almost looked like one of the beasts himself. His mouth left your heat for a brief moment, slick with your arousal and his own saliva.
āI shall do the same to you,ā heād promised.
Your moon-blood had arrived twice since your wedding, and youād thought that might deter him. But his aspirations remain steadfast, and so does he. Your husband means to make some vessel of prophecy and magic out of you.
Every other night, heād have his mouth on your cunt again. His fingers filling you. Heād make you unravel at least twice before unlacing his own breeches and taking you however he saw fitābent over the edge of your bed, sprawled across the sheets with a pillow propped under your hips, you riding him. Each time was pleasurable as the last, and youād be a liar if you said that you didnāt enjoy laying with him in such a manner. If your husband was anything, it was a good lover.Ā
But he was also cold and waspish. Cruel to his younger siblings, and derisive to his elder brother. He treated servants and guards alike as if they were animals. He rarely asked about you, rarely acknowledged you as little more than the future mother of his babes. He did not care that you hated the heat of Summerhall, that you missed the sea, and the salt-air, nor that you longed to feel the sand under your feet. He did not care that Driftmark haunts you when you sleep, girlhood laughter, and chasing your brother over the beach, tiny feet splashing through the waters. Your dreams werenāt deemed as important as his. If Aerion were to wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and thrashing after some nightmarish terror of cities burning or dragons slain, heād wake you up too. Youād try and ask him what was wrong, be the attentive wife, stroke your fingers through his short strands of silvery hair. He didnāt want comfort.Ā
Heād ruck up the cotton of your nightdress, sink into you, and mouth at the column of your neck as he spoke about fire and blood, slaughtering Blackfyres, the ways of Old Valyria, and how beautiful youād look pregnant.Ā
āI pray to the Mother every day that I will one day be worthy of bearing your child, my lord,ā you say then, smiling vacantly up at him as he stands there, shirtless and frowning.
Heās so handsome, you think. Handsome in that otherworldly kind of way that only really existed now in his bloodline or across the Narrow Sea in whorehouses. You wish that he cared more. That heād notice your homesickness, the way you gaze so longingly out of your window as you look eastwards, and offer to visit Driftmark with you. Or at least sit next to you and ask about your home, about yourself, about what you liked to do. You hate embroidery. Your fingers are calloused from needle-pricks and unbuttoning the stiff fastens of his doublet every day. You miss horse-riding. You miss running. You miss talking about things other than Valyrian histories.
You have this grotesque, needy want in you for him to just want you back, not for some royal womb, or incubator for a three-headed augury. You want to be his wife in the same way your mother was your fatherās, and Lady Dyanna was his fatherās. Mayhaps then youād care more for the gardens and being lady of Summerhall.
āSuch pretty, obedient words,ā croons Aerion, his knuckle caressing over your cheekbone. āI almost believe them.ā
This makes your eye twitch, but you say nothing. Youāre not sure Aerion expects you to, because heās sweeping past you and over to his wardrobe to find some night-clothes to change into. You glance down at your own dress, then out at the pinkish sunset, and glide over to your own. Pointedly, you slip into a blue shift. You hear a disgruntled sound getting stuck in his throat as he watches the loose material of it all fall over you, but remain silent to start unbraiding your hair.Ā
Aerion would prefer that you have a maidservant to do these kinds of things for you, such as ready you for bed, and do your hair. Heād rather you do nothing at all but sit somewhere, looking ornamental and pretty all day, as he hunts and spars and spits cruelties to the small folk, then returns to you, so you might open your legs like a good little wife and do your duty. You prefer keeping whatever little of your self-government you have left since becoming a princess.
He waits for you on his side of the bed. He has the levelled look of a bored princeling in his expression, but those eyes of his can no longer deceive you. Heās cross with you. Impatient, for whatever reason. It mightāve unsettled you a moon ago, but now it only makes you languish more to prepare yourself for bed. The sunās swallowed by the peaks of the marches by the time you climbed in next to him, smelling like the sprigs of lavender you rub against your pulse-points every night.
āHow will you have me tonight, my lord?ā you ask drolly, folding your hands sensibly over your lap.
Aerion squints at you, affronted. āYou make it sound as if it is a chore.ā
āItās a duty,ā you correct.
āOh, so dutiful, when youāre moaning like a wanton whore in my ear for it,ā Aerion snarls. He doesnāt like it when youāre short with him, nor when you get righteous about sex. āIf you do not wish to be bedded tonight, wife, you need only tell me.ā
You scoff. āThatās all I need-do, is it? Simply tell you?āĀ
āI am not some common brute. Some beggar-raper. I am your lord husband,ā sneers Aerion, as if you could ever forget. āIf you donāt want me to fuck you, say it. You have a tongue, donāt you? A mouth?āĀ
āNoticed, have you?ā
āClever girl, arenāt you? So full of wit and bite.ā The malice in his eyes darkens when you stare stubbornly back at him, unflinching. āGo on then, what is it? What has upset you so? Are your days spent doing your embroidery and eating lemon-cakes so trifling, wife? Does my right as a husband to expect heirs from you upset you?āĀ
You feel incensed, wroth stirring in you with a heated sensation not too dissimilar from want. āI do not begrudge you for wanting heirs, Aerion. I understand what it means to be a woman in this world. I know my place. But am I such a frivolous fool for wanting, just once, for you to return from whatever sport youāre spoiling and talk to me?āĀ
āI am talking to you! I talk to you plenty!ā he returns defensively.
āYou donāt! You never do. You make snide remarks and ask me to undress you. Youāre gone most mornings when I awake. We rarely break our fast together. When you do lower yourself to talk to me, itās about seeing me round with child,ā you seeth, a stinging in your eyes now. āI say child, but you do not want that. You do not want a son to teach how to be chivalrous, or a daughter to protect. You want me to labour three beasts, so you might return your house to its former glory. I knew even as a little girl that I would end up brood-mare to some lord of some castle, Aerion, but I never thought heād only deign to converse with me if itās to talk about your thirst for some hatchling to rip me open!āĀ
Aerion stares at you then, and the moment that ensues is long and filled with tension. The look he gives you is almost indiscernible in its multitudes. Wroth, bemusement, a hint of arousal. He likes you like this, and you know it. He loves the bite, even if he mocks it. He likens it to fire, but you know that itās the sea. Vicious, still at times, but its belly is as ravenous as a dragonās.Ā
āFeel better now?ā he then asks, cruel and grinning lopsidedly.Ā
The steadiness of his voice is like nails against bone. You feel sick with anger and it makes the candlelight reflecting in his eyes resemble flames.
āYouāre incorrigible,ā you tell him, hurt.
āNext time you do not wish to lay with me, wife, just say it. You neednāt waste your precious breath with touching speeches such as that,ā Aerion drawls, shifting to lie on his side all haughty and complacent.Ā
It made you feel so humiliating and wretched, but Gods, you wanted him to fight with you. To yell at you, just how he yells with his father and Daeron. Itās a ghastly longing, to wish that your husband would shout at you, but it was yours all the same. You remember arguments between your parents when you were growing up. Your father is temperamental as the waves that crash against the slates of Driftmarkās rockery, and your mother, a Stark, was as brittle as winter. Their spats would oft send High Tide splitting into factions. But when they would make up, they were perfectly happy. Your mother would press her lips to the stubble on your fatherās jawbone and heād kiss her brow, and love felt uniquely real.Ā
Now, silence torments you. Loneliness scabs over your skin like old wounds. You feel perverse for enjoying sex with Aerion when this rotten throb in the pit of your stomach yearns for more. Even if it was ugly.Ā
āIs that really all you have to say?ā you utter, disconcerted as you stare at his turned back. āIt is not just about not wanting to lay with you, Aerion, itāsāāĀ
āSleep, wife,ā he interjects coolly, āIām sure you have another tiresome day in the morrow of needlework and staring out of your window.ā
Do you know why I stare out of that window? You want to shout at him. Do you know what has been taken from me?Ā
But he doesnāt care. If you were to tell him about how homesick you felt, how alone and uncomfortable in your own skin, heād surely make some crude remark about how a babe would surely make you busy enough to forget all about how forlorn you were. You did not want to be belittled anymore tonight, so you turn over, back facing him, and bury your cheek against the satin pillow. Under your skin feels so hot and nettled from your upset, but the satiny material cools it just enough for you to steady your breathing.
The windowās on your side of the bed. Your window, Aerion called it.Ā
Hundreds of leagues of grassland, moors, and plains splay out beyond the palace. Here, you werenāt far from the Red Mountains, crimson at sunset, soaked with the spilled-blood of old enemies. If you were to flee west, youād reach Blueburn river and Grassy Vale, where House Meadows preside in a flowery keep on the banks. You did not know much about House Meadows, other than that they were sworn bannermen to House Tyrell, whoād surely send you right back to Summerhall, fawning sycophants that they were. South of here was Blackhaven, with its black basalt walls and a bottomless, dry moat. It mightāve been a good place to abscond if it werenāt for it being the seat of House Dondarrion, kin to your good-uncle Baelor. Further north was just miles upon miles of fertile land, rife with farmers and livestock.Ā
East, then. Stormās End, at Durranās Point. The Baratheons had no love for your husbandās bloodline. Their lord paramount, Lyonel, would take you under his wing. He was fond of your mother, having even named her Queen of Love and Beauty at a tourney in their shared youth. Heād feed you, offer you a bed, and extend you an olive branch of refuge all without sending a single raven to the Targaryens. He might find you a ship and send you on your merry way back to Driftmark before word even reaches Summerhall that youāre gone.Ā
You wait.Ā
Stars gather and twinkle in the sky. Each inhale, practiced to sound levelled and sleep-like, is taken like communion.Ā
You glimpse over your shoulder to the curve of his skull. Heās sleeping, you can tell. From the small sliver of his face you can see, thereās softness and an absence of his usual strain. His sleep is dreamless tonight.Ā
Good, you think. At least he wonāt take up, muttering frantically about fire-scorched earth and prophecies. At least you have a head-start.Ā
Leaving the castle was easy enough. Summerhallās a royal retreat and only lightly-fortified. The guards stationed at their posts were dolts, at best. They saw you, the mad princeās wife, treading over cold-stone in your almost-translucent nightdress and just about had it in themselves to straighten their spines and avert their eyes respectfully.Ā
The gardens were luscious and thick with purpled flowers. Lady Dyanna lived in each flourishing bud of lilac. As you waded through knee-length sweetgrass and herbs, you felt a nastiness gnaw at your insides. A strange kind of jealousy, for the dead mother of your husband. Lady Dyanna was loved. Maekar loved his wife. You try to picture her as you move to the edge of her gardens. All that springs to mind is a saintly vision, of terracotta skin and angelic, violet eyes. In your mind, Lady Dyannaās radiant and fascinating. Maekar would never let her rot in a window-pane, yearning for Starfall as she makes threads of plum-purple into the Palestone Sword. Why could they not have made their son in their image?Ā
Your two-faced husband, of perversions and filth when heās got his mouth on you, who becomes disillusioned once he is spent.Ā
Thereās a thicket of dense wood surrounding Summerhall. Your slippers traipse over splintery twigs as you move through a barren maze of red cedars, sentinels, and wormtrees. The night sky nips at your bare arms and you curse yourself for not bringing a cloak. You try to defend yourself, thinking about Aerion back in that blasted bed, and the odd uneven floorboard in your shared chambers. He could be a light sleeper at times. You couldnāt have risked it creaking underfoot and stirring him.Ā
The wood around you feels like a wet-breathed, living creature, slipping through the silk of your shift, lapping its roughened tongue over your bare calves. Blackberry brambles snag at the hem and leaves rustle in knotted branches.Ā
You think of Lyonel Baratheonās silver streaks in his wiry, black hair and the way he laughs from his belly. Of salt spray, of the damp smell of a ship. It spittles against your skin and catches in your head. You think of that peace and nothing but.Ā
Certainly not the bed youād left warm. Anything but the man inside of it.Ā
And yetā¦
āI hope they have your eyes,ā Aerion told you one night last week, one of your legs hiked up to his waist as he cradled your face. āOur boy. Our girls. Our dragons.āĀ
A pale-blue tendril ribbons around your sternum, back through the woods, around the stems of Lady Dyannaās moon-blooms, through the slumbering corridors of Summerhall, and to the very place you slipped away from him. Tonightās the first night he didnāt fall asleep with an arm around your wrist, chin tucked into the crook of your neck as he mumbled sleepily into your hair.Ā
āImpudent little wretch,ā you snarl to yourself grumpily, breaths rasping into tendrils of white before you as branches whip by in convoluted shapes.
Above, peaking through foliage, the skyās a chipped, silver stag.
Lyonel, you try to think about instead. A warm hearth, a bowl of broth, a tankard of ale, and someone who thinks of you as a living girl rather than a walking womb.Ā
Just when the air starts tasting less like the incense Aerion likes to keep burning, that thick, earthy, leatherish smell, you hear a sound thatās not yours. Footsteps, the measured kind. Unhurried and somewhere behind you.Ā
No. No, no. āShit.ā
You donāt glance over your shoulder to decipher whom, or what, it is that is advancing. Your heartās a hummingbird against your ribs, and you have the frantic, mindless sort of terror of a chased rabbit or hunted fox. You run.
The fur-lined slippers on your feet slide in damp loam, splattering up the back of your calves. Sweat starts to bead from your pores, making the silk of your nightdress cling to your thighs and collarbone. Thereās nothing but the husk of your own frightened breaths and slippery footsteps. You fool yourself into thinking itās goneāthat whatever was chasing you grew sick of the hunt and trudged away.Ā
Until, āWife.āĀ
Thereās no wroth in it. The voice isnāt even raised. It scares you more than if it was a yell, torn through the sentries.
It makes your stumble, one of your slippers catching in the mud. You abandon it in your pursuit. One of your feet bare, the unearthed twigs and rocks scratch at the sole of it. You barely feel the sting. You run harder.Ā
Itās him, you know it. You canāt even hear a company of other footsteps. Itās just him, following after you with unhurried, fluid steps that sound deceptively calm.
āYouāre making this worse for yourself,ā he calls out to you.Ā
His words make a whimpered sob lodge itself in your throat. You try and pick up some speed, but the muscles in your legs are burning. Everything feels hot and suffocating. Since your honeymoon, youāve been cooped up in Summerhall like a caged bird. This is the most youāve moved in two moons. Those girlhood days of racing your brother and the stewardās son are gone. You feel sluggish, and exhausted, andāA root catches your foot. Your remaining slipper is wrenched off, and a cry tears through you.
The world morphs into a blur of snarling trees and dirt. Before your knees and jaw can slam against the filthy earth, a hand closes around your upper arm. Itās bruising and rough. Itās him.Ā
Your spine slams into rough bark so hard that your breath abandons you, skull thudding in tandem. Tiny white stars cloud your vision until his face emerges from the fog.
Your husband, your man, chest rising only faintly as if the hunt hadnāt been an inconvenience to him at all. His silver hairās mused from sleep. No guards flanked him, no cloak rippled in the wind from his shoulders. Heās still in the fine-cotton of his sleep-shirt, eyes mirror-bright from the moonlight. Heās beautiful and terrifying. As pale as pearls and all yours.Ā
Neither of you speak.Ā
Shamefully, your breaths are the only ones that come out panting. You struggle to level them, chest heaving so hard that on the inhale it swells out to brush against his. Your teeth are chattering violently. All of your senses feel spiked and sharpened. You think you might be able to hear the footfall of a small creature from a mile away.
Aerion lowers his dilated gaze. Your bare feet are cut and muddied, wet leaves clinging to them, and the hem of your shift is torn. Youāve got your hands behind your back, fisting against the sticky bark, as if youāre protecting the last bit of yourself you can from him. It feels futile when his eyes return to yours and he has that mad, hungry look of a man who knows exactly what youāre thinking.
āYou run poorly,ā he says quietly.
It hits you like a blow. āYou,ā your voice is hoarse, wounded, āyou followed me.ā
His head tilts. āYou didnāt think I would?ā
The hatred in your flares hot and cancerous, spreading into every vein. āI hate you.āĀ
An emotion twitches in his expression but youāre too frightened to understand it. He raises one of his hands and the motion makes you flinch so violently that your shoulder slips against the bark, scratching at your skin enough to splinter. It only makes him hesitate for a moment, fingers flexing in the space between you, before it flattens the palm against the trunk beside your head.
Heās everywhere now. You feel in him your lungs. This somehow feels more intimate than sex. Heās in your marrow.Ā
āI dreamt of you. Of a nursery, bright with sunlight. I woke,ā he says, darker, āand your side of the bed was cold.ā Aerionās jaw hardens, his lips so very close to yours. All hot air and want and fury. āDo you know what that felt like, wife?āĀ
You stare at him, still breathing heavily. You have no words to give him. Your own blood is trying to speak to you as something vile coils around your organs but you canāt make heads or tails of it. Itās an ouroboros that stifles you as his other hand snakes out to press your hip deeper into the tree.
āNo,ā he answers for you, āyou donāt.āĀ
The cedars tremble as you do, and youāre weak enough to think about Driftmark again. Itās absurd but itās yours, and you can almost hear the vicious breaking of black-water waves against slate. You remember being small and childlike but itās nothing like this feeling of fragility. You want your mother and her lap, her hands combing through your tresses.Ā
Your eyes start to well and you hate yourself for it. Strangely, itās more than you hate him.
āI wanted to leave,ā you confess.
āI know.ā
āI meant to reach Stormās End. Ser Lyonel.āĀ
Aerion blinks. āAnd that he might find you a maiden ship that would send you back to your lonely island? Away from here. From me.āĀ
Your heartās in your ears, your throat, it beats and pulses everywhere. āHow do youā¦āĀ
You didnāt think he knew about your homesickness. You didnāt think he cared.Ā
āYou talk in your sleep,ā he tells you.
Itās enough to make you dumb. Marriage is a peculiar thing. You were so sure he didnāt know anything about you and yet he knows this. That your slumbering mumbles are of home and the sea.Ā
Gods, you wish things were different. In another life, you might spend your days swimming and wading through shallow coves as he spars and hunts. Youād return to him happier in the evenings. Heād kiss the salt off your skin and youād mouth at the swollen bruises on his knuckles. Youād each taste of sea and fire; heād love you completely, and youād love him the same.Ā
āYou would have frozen before dawn,ā Aerion remarks at your shivering. āYou wouldnāt even make the next village over.ā
āIād rather freeze than burn in your stifling palace,ā you spit.
āBrave girl,ā he taunts. His thumb strokes over your hipbone then and it makes you jolt. The way he smirks at you is maddening. If you didnāt know any better, youād think heād want to splay you open and crawl inside. āDragons donāt burn, wife. Havenāt I told you this?ā
You want to scream in his face. āIām not a dragon. Iām a Velaryon by blood. Salt and sea.āĀ
āAddam of Hull rode Seasmoke,ā he challenges.Ā
āThe Sowing of the Seeds as an abomination,ā you sneer viciously. āThe mythology of House Targaryen being pure-blooded and closer to Gods than men died the day Rhaenyra let bastards claim dragons. Vermithor and Seasmoke died at the Second Battle of Tumbleton. Silverwing died alone in the Red Lake after that useless oaf, Ulf, got himself killed. No one even knows what happened to Nettles and Sheepstealer.ā
You thought that he might be angry at you for talking back to him, but that smirk of his softens into an amused curl of the lips.
āYouāve been reading our histories,ā he muses fondly, thumb caressing lower from your hip, down to the hollow above your thigh, where the flesh is tender and sensitive.Ā
āThereās little else to do in your prison of a castle,ā you say defensively.Ā
āOh, Iām sure,ā Aerion croons lazily.Ā
His entire hand shifts then to cover the entire expanse of your lower belly. Underneath, you feel a mad, ugly stirring. You almost choke.
āYouāre vile.ā
He bares his teeth. āAm I?ā
āAnd cruel.ā
āYou fled my bed in your nightdress and slippers,ā he reminds you. He presses the slightest bit into your stomach, relishing in the wicked way your face betrays you. āWithout so much as a cloak to warm you.ā
You glare at him nastily. āI left in haste.ā
āNo. You did not take a cloak because you feared the floorboard near the bed would creak,ā he states. Your lips part in shock and his own widens into a grin. āThat loose board by the windowāthird plank from the foot of our bed. You stepped over it.ā
āThat doesnāt mean you know me,ā you seeth.
āNo?ā he says. Arrogance bleeds from him. The hand thatās next to your moves too, knuckles grazing along the curve of your torso until they brush the frayed rip of your shift. He toys with the torn threads and looks at you as if youāre a meal. āYou stare east every sunset. You rub lavender at your wrists before bed because it reminds you of spring. You sew pretty waves into your embroidery when youāre lonely. You mutter for your mother in dreams. You like it when I fuck you from the behindā¦so I cannot see how much youāre enjoying it. It makes you feel in control.ā
Breath hitches in your throat.Ā
Sensations invade you. The palm of his hand, greedy and warm, on the small of your back as he gets you when he wants you. The contrasting coolness of your own arms folded under your head as you gnaw on your bottom lip. Sometimes, heāll kneel for you. A kiss to each hemisphere of your backside, the backs of your thighs, on your heat. Others, he isnāt as patient. Heāll have kissed your mouth first in these instances, after having you unbutton his doublet and peel away your own clothes. Heāll know that these devouring kisses wouldāve left you wet enough for him.Ā
Itāll be as if he wanted to intertwine your body with his, those nights. Like he wanted to swallow you and spit you out onto his bedsheets. His fingers will reach and grab at any part of you he can find.Ā
You hate yourself. You hate him.Ā
āYou do not ask me,ā you manage to say gravelly. āYou do not ask me anything.āĀ
He rolls his shoulder. āI notice.āĀ
āYou have a grotesque way of showing it, husband.āĀ
You snarl it as an insult but hearing the title makes him smile.Ā
āDo I?ā he mocks. āYou wanted a fight tonight. You wanted me to shout at you, to get angry. To prove that I want you. Is that not grotesque to you, wife?āĀ
Tears gather and the sight of him wobbles in front of you as if seen through water. āYou donāt know what I want.āĀ
āI know what you think that you want. You think you want that lonely island across Blackwater Bay.ā Aerion shakes his head then, hand finally daring to slip under the rugged hem of your nightdress. A strangled sound escapes you when his fingers press into the flesh of your thigh. āBut thatās not what you really want, is it? Not deep down. Not in here,ā he emphasises, the fingers splayed out on your womb moving to linger over your heart. It thuds treacherously against him. āYou want the same as I.ā
You somehow have it in you to scoff at him. āDragons, born-again?āĀ
āMaybe not yet. But you want this marriage. You want me,ā he says, and it isnāt even arrogance now that he imbues. Itās just the self-assured confidence of someone whoās uttering a fact. As if he knows all of your wants and deficiencies.Ā
āYou think very highly of yourself, my lord.āĀ
His teeth are pearl-like in the moonās glow as he smirks. āMaybe.ā
āYour ego is larger than the Red Keep,ā you insult.Ā
āGo on.ā
āAnd you are mad,ā you rasp, feeling the heat of his fingers just over your cunt, not quite touching. āYou treat the small folk as if theyāre not even human, looking down at them in disdain. You think youāre leagues above the whole world, as if youāre still on dragonback. Youāre addled with delusions and nightmares, I do not think you even know what is real.āĀ
āYou,ā Aerion says darkly, finally letting his fingers touch you, his index and middle slipping between your folds, where you want him, where youāre wet. āYouāre real.āĀ
You keen as his thumb finds that sweet-spot of yours. āFuck,ā you grit, one of your arms untucking from behind you to grasp at his wrist. Startled, you realise your slip-up and look up at his hungry eyes. Chagrined, you correct the mistake, āFuck you.ā
āYou want me to?ā he asks, grinning. Gods, you hate him. His fingers sink into you, both at once. The stretch is enough for you to whimper, nails biting into his skin. All the while, he keeps his eyes on yours. āYou want Driftmark, wife? Iāll find the finest captain and his best ship, Iāll take you. You want the sea? Youāll have it. You need only ask. The dragon ought never let his rider want for a single thing. I want you happy and mine. Let me?āĀ
His fingers curl then, reaching a part of you that makes you curl into him, forehead kissing his chest that finally feels like itās at least a fraction as unsettled as yours. He drags them in and out of you at a deliciously slow pace, but your knees are weak with it. Both of your hands grasp at his arms now. He feels strong and unmoving. His mouth pecks at your hairline reverently.
āYouāre evil,ā you sob. āThis is all I am to you. This is all you ever want.āĀ
Aerion merely hums. Rather than giving you reassurance, he presses an open-mouth kiss to your cheek, dewy and spit-slick. Itās all filthy.
āI want more.āĀ
Desperation wracks you. More what? You donāt even know. But youāre rocking yourself against him, grinding down onto his hands, and you want the hand thatās still on your heart to move the slightest bit down to grasp at your breast.Ā
He delivers another kiss, this time to your mouth as he nudges his forehead against yours to pry you away from the cover of his chest. He groans against your mouth, swallowing your own sob of pleasure depravedly. Itās a messy kiss, sloppy and shameless. Youāre only distinctly aware that youāre still in the dead of the wood.
āCan you take another?ā he checks.Ā
Your head shakes violently. āNo.āĀ
He smiles against your mouth. āI thought you wanted more?āĀ
But he listens regardless, crooking the digits already inside of you just right, making you arch and moan brokenly.Ā
āI hate you. I hate you, I hate you, IāāĀ
āShow me how much, wife.āĀ
You come on his fingers, a single tear rolling down your cheek. His tongue catches it, then it catches yours, and it tastes of salt as they tangle in an even dirtier kiss than the last. It tastes like home. He works you through it, kneading comfortingly at your hip as your hips jerked against his at the overstimulation. So gently, he slips them out, holding your gaze as he parts his lips and tastes you. The sound he makes is obscene.Ā
Bonelessly, you slump against him. His hand, the one that wasnāt just inside of you, shifts to cradle the back of your head against his heaving chest. He smells of smoke and you.Ā
āI want to go,ā you pant, cunt dully aching between your weak thighs. āI donāt want to sit in that room, waiting for you every night.āĀ
āThen, donāt.āĀ
āWhat would you have me do? Tend to your lady motherās flowers? Sit in your solar, gossiping with the other well-bred ladies, who all titter over how handsome you are?ā Jealousy drips from your tongue and sanctifies him. You feel his smirk against your temple, and the only kindness is knowing those wretched lips of his taste like you. āWhat is it, husband, you think I do whilst I wait for your dragons to tear me open?ā
Aerion waits. Thinks, perhaps. He squeezes at the flesh of your hips, rolling them closer to his. He hums again, more contemplative than the last. Then, he draws his wet mouth to the shell of your ear, and speaks,
āRun.āĀ
Your eyes blow open, gaping at him. āPardon?ā
āI want you, wife,ā he says, suddenly letting go of you and stepping back, leaving you on fawn-like legs and shivering, āto run.ā
āIs this a trick?ā you demand indignantly, one of your eyes twitching.
āItās no trick. I want you to run,ā Aerion repeats. āI want you to prove to me how little you want to be the lady of Summerhall. How all of that court gossip bores you. I want to see how much my pretty wife misses the sea.āĀ
Youāve just finished on your hand. You can still feel the slick of it between your thighs and a throbbing for more in the bottom of your belly. And yet heās telling you to run.
āRun,ā you echo.Ā
His expression oozes a bright, fevered certainty. āYes.āĀ
Thereās no mockery there or even a challenge. Itās hunger and interest and he wants you to bite. He loves your bite, you remind yourself.Ā
āYou mean to make sport of me. As if Iām some wild boar or feral stag,ā you accuse.
His mouth twitches. āPerhaps.āĀ
āYouāre sick, Aerion.āĀ
āAnd yet youāre still here?ā he teases.
This is madness, but you indulge it. āWhat happens if I run?ā
āI follow.āĀ
Terror waltzes along your spine. āAnd if I escape?āĀ
āThen you prove me wrong,ā Aerion replies simply, daring you.
It feels like a trick, despite his reassurance that it isnāt. Though, youāre sea-born enough to want to reach the horizon heās dangling in front of you, however much of a mirage it might be.
āYouād let me go?ā you say in disbelief, prayer-like.Ā
Your husbandās gaze dissects you like youāre an animal as he remarks, āIāll let you try.āĀ
āThis is a game.āĀ
āIsnāt everything?āĀ
He makes an unbridled rage swell inside of you. āFuck you.āĀ
āIs that what you want instead of running?ā Aerion laughs.Ā
āYou speak of me as if Iām an animal!ā you yell at him, appalled.
Aerion doesnāt seem unnerved. āAre you going to do it or not?āĀ
Your heartās in your mouth again, leaving your ribs hollow enough for dread to make itself wretchedly at home. It tucks itself away in a layer of rot as your feet move without leave. One step, then another, until a third makes a twig splinter in half under you. The pain lances through you, brief and startling, but you turn and run regardless.Ā
Aerion does not come after you right away, or maybe you just couldnāt hear it, for the blood that rushes in your ears and the woods that seem to swallow everything in its eerie stomach.Ā
Air bludgeons you as raw as a gut-blow. The terror you feel is primitive and thrilling. It makes your body unearth a scion of girlhood from within you that dusted over after your wedding in Baelorās Sept. Outpacing your brother over wet sand, horse-riding along Driftmarkās cliffs, the first morning your father took you out to sea aboard his favourite ship. The gulls caterwauling above you and the entire world opening itself at your feet as if you mattered.Ā
Bizarrely, an hysterical laugh nearly breaks you in half, like a wishbone.Ā
Heās driving you to madness, is all you can rationalise. Rumours spill through the Seven Kingdoms about the madness of Targaryensābut what of their wives? Does the coin flip for them, too? How oft do the Gods hold their breaths for the brides of dragons?
The outstretching branches of trees catch at your arms and surely cut them to ribbons. You dread to think about the sorry state of the soles of your feet. As a child, splattered in sea-water and dirt, your mother would scold you for trekking dirt through High Tideās hallowed walls. Sheād clutch at the pearls around her neck to see you like this, soiled and brutish as you run through the woods away from your husband.
Your husband.
āDo you feel alive, wife?ā he calls out to you then from within the dark, as if he knew that the thread that binds you had just given. āDo you feel in control?āĀ
Hearing his voice again excites you. A sick part of you hopes you both get lost in this forest. That the rest of your cursed marriage is spent like this. You would never have to hear the gall of a courtier again, or a buttinsky maestar fussing over your moon-bloods. It would just be the two of you. Youād like that, you think.Ā
āTired yet?ā he taunts. Itās as if he speaks through the trees. Omnipresent and haunting.Ā
Heās to you what Valyria is to him.
āCome, wife. Answer me.ā You curse him as you run. How is he not out of breath? āI want to hear you. How does it feel? Do you still feel like an animal?āĀ
āYouāre a monster!ā you shout hoarsely.Ā
The trees laugh with him, you swear. It intermingles with the pursuit of footfall, spiking your panic. Heās close. You feel him in your bones. Heās in your very soul.
Your head turns to find him too late as something hits you from behind, hard enough to make the world pitch and eat you whole. You think itās his name that you wail as you go down into damp leaves and loam. Itās only earth for a moment, your chest flush to it. You feel like a corpse in the dirt, alone and cold against the unending body of it. All thatās gone when a weight settles over you.Ā
Aerion rolls you onto your back in one effortless motion before you can scramble or grab purchase at tufts of soil. Your hair cascades across the forest floor, torn shift twisting around your thighs. You must look unseemly.Ā
Still, Aerion straddles you, knees bracketing your wildly-bucking hips. At last, his breaths struggled too. The moon ensnares him in this feral halo that can only be Targaryen. A smirk takes shape, the way a dragon mustāve once looked feasting on its prey.Ā
There was a dragon over a century ago they called the Cannibal. Aerion must be him in living, human form. The membranes of his wings now exist as Aerionās arms that snap out to catch both of your wrists and pin them above your head against the moss and foliage. Sinews and tendons strain at the column of his throat, and heās every bit of those beasts that he longs for.Ā
āGet off,ā you spit, hips jerking up.Ā
He grinds his own down to meet you halfway. Heās hard. Had he been this whole time?Ā Ā
āCareful. Youāll make me think you enjoy this,ā he says condescendingly.
Your glare is as filthy as your nightdress. āYou tackled me!āĀ
āI caught you. I won.āĀ
āThatās cheating!ā you protest.
Aerion blinks. āWe didnāt agree on any rules.āĀ
āAs if youād even bide by them if weāshit.āĀ
He moves your wrists into one hand and slips the other between your thighs again. Of course, youāre still wet. Itās smeared and messy, and he teases the tips of his fingers through it, catching them at your pulsing entrance, before quickly moving them up to your clit. Heās relentless in his desire to make a madwoman out of you.
āLook at you,ā he says fondly, āmy beautiful wife.ā The hard length of him presses through his breeches and against your hip. āYou look better like this than you did on our wedding night. You were a pretty bride but prettier prey, I think.āĀ
āWhat is wrong with you?ā You can only marvel at his perversions. You wanted him to want you but this overwhelms your senses. Is this how he wants you? A heart thudding in fear, silk tattered, cunt slick, all as his fingers tease you.Ā
āEverything that is wrong with me is wrong with you,ā he tells you as he leans in to breathe in the scent of your neck. Lavender. āBlood of two, joined as oneā¦āĀ
Your spine arches away from the earth to press your breasts against his chest. Itās enough to make his fingertips stop teasing you, settling over your clit with a delicious pressure.
āHen lantoti Änogar,ā you murmur against his mouth, repeating the same words to him in Valyrian, āva sČ³ndroti vÄedroma.āĀ
His pupils dilate, the violets of his eyes lost in seas of insatiable black. āYouāve been learning the old tongue?āĀ
āI read about Valyrian wedding traditions,ā you tell him offhandedly, as if you didnāt do it to impress him.Ā
He looks at you as if youāre everything heās ever wanted and suddenly shifts his hips so that his cock presses against your slick, aching heat. The rough fabric of his breeches rubs against your bare, tender folds. It makes you writhe wantonly.Ā
āAnd what other research have you been doing, wife?ā Aerion asks. Heās released your wrists entirely now and his other hand comes to palm at the soft swell of your breast. His index and thumb find your nipple deftly, rolling it between the digits. āTell me you havenāt been touching yourself during your lonely afternoons, imagining it was me.āĀ
Your mouth curls into a sneer. āWhen you leave me for hours on end, you mean? To slip away into boredom? So what if I did then, husband? So what if I let my hand wanderāāĀ
āAnd touch what is mine?ā he interjects darkly, eyes narrowing at you. He grinds against you again. His breeches must be soaked from you. āMy filthy wife, slipping her pretty little fingers inside her dripping cunt. Do you think of me? Is it my cock you want when you get greedy and rub at yourself, or is it my tongue?āĀ
Heat ravages your body with a fever and you cannot reply to him. Your hips wiggle, seeking more stimulation. He does not give it to you.Ā
āBoth, most like,ā he wagers, lust roughening his voice as well as the pinch of his fingers around your nipple. āI bet you fuck yourself thinking about me. Youāre not bored, are you, wife? Youāre empty.ā
āIām not some whore from Silk Street that lives and breathes cock, Aerion. I want my husband,ā you tell him raggedly.Ā
His lips twist into a pout of feigned sympathy. āPoor girl. Iāve been neglecting you, havenāt I? What a cruel husband you have. To spend his days hunting when he has the prettiest of prey right there in his bed, waiting for him.āĀ
His degrading words make you dizzy. Is this what you even wanted? You wanted him to want you, yes, but this? The ache in you is for him, but it feels so wrong and perverted that you have to believe that thereās more you want. There has to be. You are not so debased as to think this is all you want from this marriage. Youāre of the sea. There must be more.
āI want you to talk to me,ā you say, bucking your hips up again, moving your heat against the tent of his cock. āI want you to ask me about my home, about my day. I want us to break our fasts together, after youāve woke me up with your mouth on me. I want the whole castle to be sick of us when we fight and fuck. When they hear raised voices, theyāll know youāll soon want me. It isnāt just your cock I want, Aerion, I want you.āĀ
Itās so painfully earnest that you feel even more humiliated than you did when he fingered you against that tree.Ā
But he doesnāt smirk at you in sick amusement or delight in your vulnerability. Aerion stares at you, just as desperate.Ā
āYou terrify me,ā he says, and itās the last thing you expected, though you understand it perfectly.Ā
That terror is part of the want. Itās a limb in this living thing that exists between you. An amorphous mass of it thatās cancerous and obsessive. He looks fascinated by you and you hope he never loses that. You never want to be something that bores him.Ā
The idea of returning to Summerhallās tedium makes you taste bile.Ā
Abruptly, Aerionās moving from off of you and settling onto the forest floor at your side. He pulls you with him, arranging you as if you were a ragdoll until youāre draped heavily across his chest, head pillowed on the lean muscle beneath his sleep-tunic. His arms embrace you and youāre all his.Ā
āYouāre right,ā he admits (this must kill him). āI will do better. Iām sure Lord Aerion broke his fast with his Lady Valaena. If youāre to give me my three dragons, I ought to give you whatever you ask, hm?āĀ
Youāre not sure what to say to that. You knew better than to think that madness would ever leave him, or his dream of a three-headed dragon. A sick part of you didnāt even want it to. As long as he thought of you as otherworldly as him, you were content. Both of your wants made something salvageable out of this marriage and youād cling to them.
He tilts your chin up then and his gaze is as deep as the ocean, though far less volatile. Thereās a tenderness to him that youāve never seen in him before.Ā
āTell me about the sea, wife.ā
a/n: sorry about that abrupt ending, thought it was a fitting end! hope u enjoyed nonetheless. feel free to send in some requests for aerion & his velaryon wife. i'm sort of obsessed with them.
Summary: Coriolanus goes to District 2 for officer training, as a gap year before returning to the Capitol to study under Dr Gaul. There he finds you.
Your devotion to your little cousin, reminds him of the only love he has ever known.
warnings: Dead Dove do not eat, stalking, emotional abuse, obsession, Coryo being de lu lu, power imbalance.
Word count: 7, 386
Part 1
Part 2
part 3 coming soon
When Coriolanus found out that his sint in district 12 was nothing more than a lesson from Dr Gaul. A sick, twisted, joke. He first felt like a fool, until his unrefined rage took its place.
Dr Gaul was amused by his shock which only added to his fury. He had endured the worst few months of his life.Ā Fresh blood stained his hands, and it was all a game to her.Ā
āWhat?ā, she asks in a mocking tone, āDid you think after all my efforts, I was going to leave you to the districts?ā.Ā
Another fish is dropped into the pond of her new pets, that lap over each other to get it. Coriolanus was not going to be her newest addition to her collection.Ā
He pickles up his bag, and slings it over his shoulder as he heads back to the door.Ā
āAnd where do you think youāre going?ā Dr Gaul calls after him.Ā
āTo district 2 for officer trainingā, he tells her.
He was going to make his own way. He would leave the Plinth prize for Tigres and Grandmaāam. The money would take care of them in his absence.Ā
He sighs when the door doesnāt open, turning back to Dr Gaul who remained glaring at him from her pond. He wondered if he would be subject to some mind alternating experiment.Ā
āDid you not hear me when I said you will be studying under me at the university?ā.
What other tests did she plan to put him through? Would he be able to survive the next round? He felt weak after District 12. He still wore the lessons from it as ghastly open wounds.Ā
āI still have a lot to learn from the districtsā Coriolanus states.Ā
He was free in the districts. A faceless peacekeeper had fewer obligations than a Snow. He was retreating to the districts to hide. At least for a little while, he had no focus on nothing other than mere survival. Yes sir, no sir, straight away sir. After everything he wanted to wade in the water. He was not yet ready to face the man he had shown himself to be.Ā
Dr Gaul looks shocked at the news. She thought he would just fall into line. Worship at her feet for her mercy, not turn it away.Ā
She scoffs at the boy, turning away from him and back to her pond.Ā
āA year, Mr Snowā, she announces., āAnd then your summer camp is over. I have big plans for you. Bigger than officer training. Go now, youāve irritated meā.Ā
When Coriolanus tries the door again, it opens.
He makes the stop home. He didnāt get to say goodbye last time and he would hate to put them through it again.Ā
The news of the money reaches them before he does. It makes for a difficult conversation. One where Tigress canāt stop crying, and Grandmaāam cant wrap her head around why Coriolanus was going back.Ā
With a kiss, he leaves them, heading back to the train station. Itās a full days journey to district 2.Ā
Itās early morning by the time he arrives.Ā
He knew district 12 was the poorest District but the change is astonishing. District 12 was bleak and dirty.Ā
District 2 was its own little city. People wore fashionable clothes, tried to make an effort in their appearance. District 12 wore rags that were covered in coal.Ā
The buildings were more soundly made and had colorful, fresh paint. Despite the early morning, people crowded the lanes with trade. Coriolnaus made his way to the compound impressed with the effort of the district.Ā
Another noticeable difference was the amount of Peacekeepers. There seemed to be two to every district citizen. The officers in training wore a darker blue, almost black uniform.Ā
One stopped him, knowing a new peacekeeper when they saw one. He walked Coriolanus to the Compound, giving him a brief layout of the district. Mungo was his name. A few years older than Coriolanus, but not much bigger.Ā
They were in the centre now, where people did trade stalls, and shops lined the street. Behind that was the factories where most people worked.Ā
The Compound was far east, and a fair walk from the train station. Given the large space, and distance of the district, Officers were taught to drive and if senior enough, given a personal vehicle to get around. Mungo was unable to pass the next level of officer training, despite being here for years.Ā
Officer training offered routine to Coriolanusā day. Wake at 5:30am, eat breakfast, dress and exercise. Shower, dress and lectures. Lunch, military training, lecture, small half hour break, workshop on some sort of basic training, afternoon tea, study period, more military training before dinner, and lights out. He was able to grow his hair back in district 2, lice were less of a threat here, which gave him back some of his identity.Ā
It was exhausting and exactly what Coriolanus needed. When his head hit the pillow at night, he went straight to sleep, overcome with fatigue. He rose through the ranks quickly which impressed his Commander, and infuriated others.Ā
Unlike Commander Hoff, Commander Vongurt held himself with dignity. He was a war hero, which is why he was awarded the position in a more wealthy district.Ā Ā
He had a wife who followed him from the capitol after the war. She hated living in the district but Vongurt wouldnāt leave. Here, he was king.Ā
Commander Vongurt took a shine to Coriolanus. It started with idle conversation, before the Commander would invite Coriolanus to play chess in his office, before eventually dinner in his home.Ā
A boy without parents, clutches to any similar shape. He liked the Vongurts. They acted like his parents, and he allowed them to do so.Ā
Mrs Vongurt was no baker, but would always go out of her way to ensure Coriolanus had some baked goods in his storage from the sweets shop. She would kiss him hello and goodbye, which at first he hated but soon grew accustomed too.Ā
Commander Vongurt was less obvious with his affections. A small pat on the shoulder, a little more focus in training. He would give Coriolanus fatherly advice, and nonchalantly call him son.Ā
Coriolanus learned from Mungo that they used to have a real son. A drunken night in a stolen peacekeeper car took him years ago, and the Vongurts seemingly never got over it.Ā
Coriolanus was glad. The universe had taken his parents, so why shouldnāt he take the place of someone elseās son.Ā
It hurt to know, he couldnāt keep them. Tigress and Grandmaāam, his real family, were waiting for him back home. He would have to return to them. The Plinth money wouldnāt last forever. Besides, he had bigger plans than commanding a district.Ā
Ā It was strange how well it all clicked. Coriolanus was offered parental figures, and they were offered a lost son in exchange.Ā
Of course, they would never take the place of his own mother and father. Nor would he take the place of their son. They were merely clutching each other in the dark.Ā
Still, Coriolanus let himself indulge. He would go over whenever asked, and often found solace in the commander's office after a long day.Ā
This did not stop him from working hard. It was after all what first caught the commanders eyes, Coriolanusā need to be the best.Ā
The other men were challenging. Coriolanus fought hard to keep his spot at the top in all things. He was the only capitol member which ruffled a few fellow officers, who thought they had worked harder to be in his spot.Ā
Coriolanus noticed you in district 2. You were the Commanders housemaid, you were hard not to notice.Ā
You were awfully polite as you served tea in the parlor of an evening.Ā
You were the only servant Mrs Vongurt spoke kindly to.Ā
Coriolanus in no way, looked out for you, it was perhaps because you were the only district he knew that his eye always caught you.Ā
If you werenāt in the Vongurts manor working, you were with a little girl. No more than 6.Ā
He liked you for a district. You were always kind. Something about you softened Coriolanus. He figured it was an offset of the Vongurts' own affection for you. He paid no more mind to it. Officer training was all he wanted to focus on.Ā
Coriolanus stood in the middle of town square, lost and irritated.Ā
He had to be at the justice hall in the next ten minutes. By his map, he was already there, but saw no grand building that could be it.Ā
He stares at the map in a huff, trying to figure out where he went wrong, but he couldnāt. It should be here.Ā
A shadow approaches him which only works to irritate him more. He was not going to accept help from a district.Ā
āOfficer Snow?ā, he recognized your voice, halting his plans to tell the stranger to get lost. You were no stranger.Ā
āYou look lost. Are you alright?ā, you kindly ask him.Ā
Over your arm, you carried a basket of groceries. Too fresh and expensive to be for yourself.Ā
āI amā, he admits to you only. He shows you the map, and you peer at it.Ā
āI am meant to be at the Justice hall in the next ten minutesĀ for an assignmentā, he explains.Ā
āTheyāve given you an old mapā, you say, looking up to him, āThe Justice hall hasnāt been here for yearsā.Ā
Coriolanus huffs out in annoyance. His eyes squeezed shut. One failed assignment was not the end of the world. He doubted Commander Vongurt would even count it. It was more the others had gotten one up on him.Ā
āItās-ā you begin but one look at him had you feeling as if his misdirection was your fault.Ā
āIāll take youā, you offer.Ā
With a kind smile, you lead the way.Ā
āThank youā, he sincerely says, following you.Ā
āItās no problemā, you say, but your eyes floated around the market. Coriolanus tried to stay back, to save your reputation.Ā
A clear path with fewer people allowed Coriolanus to shuffle closer to talking distance.Ā
āI am surprised you recognized meā, he comments.Ā
āYou are the only officer who has ever been around the Manor for teaā.Ā
āThe Vongurts have been very kind to meā, he dismisses.Ā
āMe tooā, you agree.Ā
Coriolanus wanted to keep talking. His irritation just moments ago vanished amongst your presence.Ā
āDonāt I normally see you with a little girl? Whatās your daughter's name?ā, he quizzes.Ā
āYes, sir. Sheās my cousinā, you correct, āLorretta. Iāve had her for a couple of years since her parents diedā.Ā
āHow did they die?ā.Ā
You looked surprised he asked, but answered anyway.Ā
āHer father drowned, and her mother caught some sort of disease that slowly killed herā.
āYou seem a bit young to shoulder that responsibilityā. He felt sorry for you. A young girl by herself. He never saw any man with you.Ā
You shrug it off. āJust me and her left now. Who else but me?ā.
You turn down a row of buildings and suddenly the rocky ground becomes concrete under your feet. The Justice building must be close.Ā
āI am sorry. I take it your parents have passedā, he wondered why he cared, but he did. He wanted to know your family dynamic.Ā
āYes, Sirā, you say quietly, āThey were rebels. I was very lucky Commander Vongurt gave me a chanceā.
Is that why you were so meek now? You were shown at a young age what happens when you step out of line.
It also explains why the Vongurts treated you better than the other servants. He knew you had been with them a long time, but you must have been a child.Ā
āI am sorryā, he says, seeing he has now upset you, āI didnāt mean to pryā.Ā
You shrug again and brush it off. He was an officer, any question he asked would be met with an answer.Ā
āMy cousin raised me tooā, he admits. His honesty took him off guard. It was none of your business.Ā
But you were a favorite of Vongurt, so why couldnāt you be a favourite for him too?
āI would have died without her. Sheās my favourite person in the whole world. I worry about her all the time back in the Capitol without meā.Ā
The words made him feel lighter as he admitted his guilt.Ā
āWell take it from me, as big cousins, we only care that you are safe and happy. Everything else doesnāt matter. I hope Lorretta leaves me behind one day, for better things. You shouldnāt worry, thats our jobā.Ā
The words eased him to hear. You were so sweet. So comforting. Lorretta was in good hands.Ā
āWellā you say, āThere she isā.
Coriolanus looks in front of him to see the wide gate that protected the large stone building. A panem flag flew on a flagpole, and the justice symbol was carved over the front entrance.Ā
Coriolanus sighed, half glad he was no longer lost and half sad that he had lost your attention with no promise of it ever returning.Ā
āThank youā, he praises.Ā
His relief turned into a pestering feeling that you were to return to town by yourself. He pushes it down, surprised that such a feeling was rearing its head. It was only talk of cousins, he assured himself, his mind was on Tigress, and the protective feelings that she arose within him.Ā
āOf course, Sir. Good luck with your assignmentā.
You offer one more kind smile before your part ways. You turn back to town and Coriolanus makes his way inside.Ā
He tries his best to push you out of his mind, but as his head hit the pillow that night, sleep took the long route to find him while he thought of you.Ā
Coriolanus made more of an effort to visit the manor whenever he could.Ā
You showed him no more familiarity than before, but he felt more connected to you then anyone else before. He came to district 2 to rest his mind, but now you played on it, disrupting his peaceful routine.Ā
To his dismay, an invite to a ghastly party held for Vongurts wifeās friends, did not reward him with sight of you. He sat with Commander Vongurt in misery while Mrs Vongurt hosted her classless friends.Ā
After hours of enduring Commander Vongurt managed to sneak Coriolanus away with him to the study. Coriolanus tried to not come across as obvious.Ā
He waited until Commander Vongurt was solely focused on his next move in chess, before he asked where you were.Ā
You were not one of the live-in staff. You hadnāt been for years. Not since you took custody of your cousin. You lived in a house over in one of the communities. Vongurt did not know which one.Ā
Coriolanus let him win the game, in gratitude for the information that he didnāt know he desperately wanted.Ā
He made his exit after that. No point in staying if there wasnāt even a chance he would see you.Ā
Coriolanus hid his jacket, despite the cold, in the parlor so he would have an excuse to collect it tomorrow. When he knew you would be there.Ā Ā
That night in the bunk was the same as those before it; sleep invaded him. He went over how he would approach the situation tomorrow.Ā
He left the compound during his study period. When he arrived at the Manor he was delighted to hear Mrs Vongurt had gone to the doctor for a cure for her hangover.Ā
Coriolanus made his way inside without an invitation from the staff who opened the door. There was a mess when he left last night but now everything was back in order. He could almost see his face from the way the floor shined.Ā
No one bothered him while he collected his jacket. You again were nowhere to be found.Ā
He wandered the halls, peeking in rooms trying to find you. When he eventually did, you were in the kitchen, cutting out pictures from capitol magazines and gluing them onto cardboard.Ā
He knocks on the door which startles you.Ā
āOfficer Snowā, you greet as he enters.Ā
He eyes your craft on the table. You had cut out the clothes from the book, making your own outfits from them.Ā
āItās my breakā, you defend, āMrs Vongurt throws the magazines out after sheās done with them so she doesnāt mind me using themā.Ā
You flinch slightly as he draws closer to you, picking up the last one you were working on. He wonders what he did to cause such a reaction.Ā
āYouāre not in troubleā, he says. Certainly not by him.Ā
Your current project was a black evening gown which had two long strips on either side and large white bows on the hips. You paired it with black heals and the head of a model with long, curled hair.Ā
He places it back down in favour of another less dressy. A red sundress, paired with flats, and advertisement of diamond necklace and ruby earrings.Ā
He shows it to you.Ā
You were bashful, embarrassed that he had caught you playing pretend.Ā
āWhat I would wear to a picnicā, you explain.Ā
āComplete with diamondsā, he teases.Ā
Your shoulders rise in embarrassment as you quickly collect your craft, packing it away into a woven bag.
āWould you like a cup of tea, Officer?ā, you deflect.Ā
He hands you back your card, knowing you wanted it. You reach for it, but he pulls it back at the last second.Ā
āI think you would look very beautiful in this outfit. I am sorry if you thought I was making fun of youā, he says before finally handing the card back.Ā
You throw it in with the rest, and turn to busy yourself with the pot.Ā
āIāll make you a potā, you ignore him completely, āI can deliver it to the sitting room if you want to wait thereā.Ā
He instead takes a seat on the stool under the large wooden table that you used to do craft on.Ā
āIs it because I am a man or a peacekeeper that makes you so uncomfortable in my presence?ā, he questions.Ā
He loved that you hated getting into trouble. You were such a good girl.Ā
āForgive me. I meant no offence, sir. I just thought you might be more accustomed to a nicer atmosphere. I was not giving you directionā.Ā
āYou have no idea the slums I have been in the last few monthsā- Years- āA servants kitchen holds no horror for meā.Ā
āOf courseĀ not, sirā, you breathe.Ā
The pot was hot enough now, so you pour it over the tea leaves, allowing time for it to soak and infuse.Ā
āYou donāt have to call me sir, or officer Snowā, he mentions.Ā
You pour the tea into fine china, and mix it to his liking as you answer.Ā
āāDisrespect of an officer is twenty lashesā, you announce.
Coriolanus picks up the cup, blowing on the hot tea.Ā
You pick up your basket before he could answer, already taking steps away from him.Ā
āMy breaks over, Officer Snow. If you need anything, ring the bell and someone will comeā, you tell him.Ā
Someone. Not you. He thinks to himself.Ā
āThank youā, he accepts.Ā
Coriolanus doesnāt finish his tea after you are gone.Ā
His study period was almost over. There was no more time to be wasted with you.Ā
He learnt you did mending work on the side like Tigress did, which offered him a new approach.Ā
He didnāt know why he sought your presence, or why you wouldnāt leave his mind after everything he had been through after district 12.Ā
It was perhaps because you were kind and reminded him of his loving cousin who he missed dearly. Either way he didnāt fight himself to ignore it. It was a little joy in a sea of misery.Ā
Finding ways into your life offered him something to look forward to after long days of officer training.Ā
He strayed from his patrolling path one day to follow you and your cousin home. Going back the next day while you were at work and your cousin was at school to have a look inside.Ā
You kept a neat home. It was only small, but all you needed.Ā
As soon as he entered the kitchen table was only a few feet away, the kitchen was directly left and had nothing to separate it from the rest of the space. Past the table were two doors. One was a playroom for Lorretta, the other the bedroom with only one queen bed for the two of you.Ā
Despite your evident love for fashion, you had very few clothes, Lorretta having more. You had a few pieces of jewelry, and a small amount of makeup.Ā
The room was quite bare and with nothing else to see he goes back to the living room. An old brown sofa sat facing the wall with a small coffee table in front of it.Ā The bathroom was directly across the room.Ā
He walked around, observing the living space.Ā Dishes were drying on the rack, the fridge and cupboards had food, all clothes were in the washing basket in the bathroom and your toothbrush sat next to a smaller one in the cup.
It felt homey. He was glad you were not living in slums. Although, it was hardly anything to boast about.Ā
He locks up after himself, retreating back to his duties.Ā
He decides he must get Lorretta to like him. You would soon follow, he was sure.Ā
He tears a few buttons off his uniform for an excuse to approach your house.Ā
Lorretta sat on the bottom step drawing pictures in the dirt with a stick.Ā
She was a cute child with blonde hair, and dark green eyes. Her face was round and chubby, and her teeth were little and gapped.Ā
āHelloā, he greets when he draws her attention.Ā
She stares at him blankly. It must have been confusing for the little girl to see a peacekeeper at her door.Ā
āI am Coriolanus Snowā, he continues, reaching into his pocket for the pouch of sweets.
āYouāre Loretta, aren't you? I have something for youā.
Her eyes perk up at the sight of the bag. The stick she is holding is dropped to the ground in exchange for the bag.
āFor me?āshe asks, surprised.Ā
You yank the door open, not seconds later and race down the steps, between them.Ā
āLorretta, get back inside the houseā, you demand.Ā
āHereā, Coriolanus whispers, giving the bag over.Ā
The little girl snatches it up and runs back inside before you can grab it.Ā
āTheyāre just sweetsā, he tells you before you panic too much.Ā
āCan I help you with something, officer?ā.Ā
He can tell by your tone of voice, you were not pleased to see him.Ā
āYes, you canā, he lifts his shirt to show you the missing buttons, āthe uniform lady will kill me if I take back another ruined uniform. I was wondering if you could help me? I can payā.Ā
His approach softened you enough to rid the scowl off your face and come close enough to take the shirt from him.Ā
āYes, i canā, you say checking the damage, āIāll have it fixed by tomorrow. You can pick it up from the Manor, next time you are there, sir. Weāll count the sweets as paymentā.
You were trying to distance yourself from him, but it wasnāt going to be that easy.Ā
āNo, not the Manorā, he refutes, āI canāt make any mistakes in front of Vongurt with the next round of officer assessments coming up. Iāll come back after training tomorrowā.
You looked uneasy but it wasnāt a suggestion.Ā
āOkayā, you agree, āBut please donāt let anybody know I did this for you. I donāt want any more peacekeepers at my door. They are not all as nice as youā.Ā
Coriolanus' heart leaped. You liked him. You were just scared of the uniform.Ā
āOf courseā, he promises. He wouldnāt let anyone else knock at your door anyway.
āIāll see you tomorrow then, officer Snowā, you remarked, making your way back up the steps.Ā
āSee you thenā, he smiles.
The day dragged as he waited to return to you.Ā
When it was finally time, he walked so fast that he began to sweat. It delayed him when he finally reached your house because he hated not looking presentable to you.Ā
Loretta was not outside, and he was sure that was by design of you. You were protective over her, like Tigress is over him.Ā
You must have been watching from the window as when he reached the first step, you shot out through the door.Ā
āOfficer Snowā, you greeted.Ā
You push him back off the step by coming down them yourself. The shirt is handed to him all too soon.Ā
āGood as newā, you tell him.Ā
āHow much do I owe you?ā, he uttered, reaching into his pocket for some coins.Ā
āI had to pry Lorretta hands off the bag before she gave herself a tummy ache. Payment is satisfiedā.
āI insistā, he says. He gives you whatever is in his hand but you donāt accept it.Ā
āGoodnight, officer Snowā, you stated.Ā
āHey waitā, he calls out after you. All day he has longed for this moment. It couldnāt be over just like that.Ā
You turn back but donāt say anything.Ā
āIs something the matter?ā.
āOf course not, sirā, you asked confused.Ā
āIāve been greeted friendlier by enemiesā, he complains.Ā
āI meant no offence, Sir. I have dinner on the stoveā.Ā
He nods, perplexed. What was he going to say? Donāt have dinner. Let it burn.Ā
āGoodnight thenā, he permits, walking hastily back to the compound.Ā
The shirt is balled in his fist.Ā
He avoids you for the next few days. Throwing himself back into his peacekeeper duties. He took more patrols at night to keep his mind occupied. When he wasnāt focused, his mind drifted to you.
He doesnāt know why your rejection hurt him so much. It was too soon after Lucy-Gray, to be thinking of you any sort of way.Ā
But he yearned for you to be kind to him. He wanted to snatch your kindness from you, solely for himself. It would only lead to heartbreak. You would betray him somehow. All humans were selfish, self-preserving animals. He wished he could believe it when it came to you.Ā
You gave up your life to raise your cousin, like Tigress did for him. He never thought he could find someone to match Tigressā goodness. But if it was true, if you were one of the last good people in the world, should he not protect that before it is stamped out?
He decides he needs to test you. If you fail, he can go back to a peaceful life, but if you succeed and his intuition was right, he would take you as a reward.Ā
He thought for hours of an appropriate test, but came up with nothing. It was by chance he agreed to accompany Mungo to the jewelry shop to collect the profit and send it back to the capitol bank.Ā
He never expected to see you there. It was just after school had been let out of the day, and you were left finishing up some work after picking Loretta up from school.Ā
You were showing the shopkeeper your slip from Mrs Vongurt that gave your permission to pick up her cleaned jewelry. The old man was tight with security. He scrutinized the slip, ensuring it was valid.Ā
He paid off duty Peacekeepers to stand guard, ready to take down any one who failed to walk through his alarm system.Ā
Apart from you and Loretta, there was only one more couple in the shop. Yet six peacekeepers guarded it.Ā
Mungo went to the back with the shop assistant and Coriolanus found his way over to a bored looking Lorretta.Ā
āHelloā, he greets the small child, āhow was school day?ā.
He kept his voice low so he didnāt draw attention from you. You were sure to demand the small child away from him, and Loretta wasĀ his in.Ā
āGoodā, she answers quickly, āDo you have any lollies?ā
Coriolanus shakes his head, looking at a high display of different coloured sapphire birds.Ā
āNot today, sorryā, he answers.Ā
Coriolanus picks up a small, green, sapphire bird, and looks around to make sure no one saw him take it.Ā
With ill intent, he bends down to Lorretta, patting her shoulder to distract her from the weight of the bird going into her jumper pocket.Ā
The shopkeeper had accepted your slip and given you the jewelry. The sight of Coriolanus talking with your cousin, had you racing over.Ā
āI have some shirts to be mended, Iāll bring around some sour drops if your cousin tells me you have been well behavedā, Coriolanus spoke to the little girl.Ā
āI am always goodā, she retorts with hopeful eyes, āIf i am really good can I have a giant lollipop?ā
āLorrie!ā, you scold with a laugh. You take the child into your arms lovingly pressing her against you, āI am sorry, officer Snow. She is only jokingā.
Coriolanus remains knelt on the ground. He suddenly felt shy under your attention, and couldnāt meet your eye so he remained looking at the little girl.Ā
āIf you are really good, and eat all of your dinner, and do all of your chores, Iāll bring you a giant lollipopā, he promises to loretta.Ā
She does a little jump off the ground, staring up at you begging you to allow this trade to happen.Ā
ā I might drag my feet if it means this one goes to bed on timeā, you tickle your cousines neck which elicits a gleeful squeal.
Coriolanus rises from the floor, now having the courage to look at you.Ā
āThereās no rushā, he tells you.
You smile at him, which causes a stronger response then he would have liked. A small smile and he felt his heart leap. He would give anything to see a proper smile from you.Ā
āWe should get going. Goodbye, officerā, you bid.Ā
āGoodbyeā, he breathes, watching you go.Ā
The alarms blar as soon as you walk through the doors. It panics you greatly, freezing you in spot with a horrified expression.Ā
Coriolanus watches as Peacekeepers descend upon you, shoving you hardly against the wall.Ā
He hated to see it but if you could pass this test, he would assure nothing like this would happen again.Ā
But for now a peacekeeper ran his hands along your body and another one went through your bag.Ā
A shout is given when the bird is retrieved from your cousins pocket. Her wrist quickly caught in a tight hold.Ā
It was unfortunate that Henry rose to action. He was known for being overbearing and cruel.Ā
āWaitā, you demand as the bird is thrown to the safety of a peacekeeper and your cousin is dragged outside.Ā
Coriolanus quickly rushes outside after you in sheer joy that you were standing up for Lorrie.Ā
Henry had entered the street with the little girl in his grasp. He stood looking angrily at you as you took your crying cousin into your arms and refused to let him walk on with her.
āShe didnāt take it!āā you demand, āIt was an accidentā.
āStealing is 10 lashes. Interfering with Peacekeeper work is three days in the goalā, he threatened.Ā
Still you did not release her, keeping your body protectively over her.Ā
āShe didnāt stealā, you reiterate, āOfficer, please, it was an accident. It wonāt happen againā.
Henry grows frustrated, yanking the girl from under you with a painful tug.Ā
āWait, stop, it was meā, you scream, āi put it in her pocketā.Ā
You were the same as him. You protect those you love, baring the cost of doing so.Ā
He was never going to let you go to the whipping post, but revelled in the knowledge that you would go for your cousin.Ā
Lorretta is dropped at your false confession and you are grabbed instead.Ā
āThieving, little, bitch. ā, he called you, raising a hand and bringing it down with enough force to knock you off balance.Ā
His tight hold on your wrist kept you upright as he continued to hurl abuse, āUsing a little girl to do your dirty workā.
Coriolanus rushes to you, watching as Henry lifts his boot and plants it into your side.
āHey!ā Coriolanus yells at him, āstop!ā.Ā
Coriolanus grabs you just below where Henry had caught you in a vicious grip.
Lorretta wailed off to the side, watching helplessly as adults fight. People in the street stop to watch a woman get beat but none come to help her. Further proof that only you were worthy.Ā
āMind your business, Snowā, Henry demands, trying to tug your wrist away.Ā
Ā āLet her goā, Coriolanus objected.Ā
This greatly upset Henry, who took a step closer to Coriolanus and tightened his grip on your wrist.Ā
āWho are you to tell me to do anything? Iāve been here three years longer than you. I outrank you. What, because youāre the Commanders lapdog you think there'll be no consequences for stepping out of lineā, he spat.Ā
āI think who are you going to report me to?ā Coriolanus provoked.Ā
āThereās other authority figures than just Commander Vongurt. Maybe i take your subordinance to the committee of justiceā, Henry threatened.Ā
Coriolanus was not worried. He did not intend to remain an officer, so his record mattered little to him, on the off chance Henry got his justice.Ā
āAnd youāll tell them what? That a little girl who canāt even reach the top of the counter stole something in a room full of Peacekeepers? Or a woman who was watched from the second she walked through the door managed to take something without anyone noticing? Whoās to say you didnāt do it? You didnāt score too well on your last officer assessment. Maybe you decide a robbery is just what you needed to claw back some points at the expense of the peace of the district. Maybe the committee of justice would like to hear thatā.Ā
Henry calculates his next move. He knew that he would never beat coriolanus in court. He knew too many fancy words, and could string them together in the most charming and convincing way.Ā
āTake your bitch thenā, Henry growled, throwing your wrist out of his hold.Ā
With the scene now done, the crowd disperses and the rest of the peacekeepers follow Henry back inside.
You tear yourself from Coriolanusā grasp as he bends to comfort you. You are out of his reach before he realizes. Back over to your cousin, holding her in your protective embrace.Ā
From the way you held her to one side, coriolanus could tell Henry did harm to your other side when he kicked you. He perhaps shouldnāt have allowed the test to go on for so long.Ā
Lorretaās cries are loud, yet you make no attempt to shush her. Your eye was red from Henryās punch, but no tears shed. You were staying strong for your cousin, but it didnāt matter, Coriolanus could see the shake of your hands.Ā
He approaches you slowly. Your look told him that you were expecting him to go with the other peacekeepers.Ā
āY/nā, he addressed, āIāll take herā.Ā
He opens his arms to take the weight from you but you shake your head ānoā at him.Ā
āI have toā, you begin talking in a quick, shaky voice, āMrs Vongurts jewelryā.
Your eyes flick to the door in a terrified gaze. To go back in after that would be brutal.Ā
āIāll get itā, he offers, āIāll take it to the estate. You go homeā.
This you nod too. You donāt thank him, just turn and walk about as fast as you can with the weight of your cousin and the pain of your body.Ā
Coriolanus does as he promises,after he makes the journey back with Mungo and the money. He would be glad when he passed high enough to get a vehicle. It was all too slow for him when he was so eager to get back to you. He explains to the Vongurts the situation. Henry was sure to face the consequences tomorrow and Coriolanus would make sure he pays every day after that.
It was the first time he rejected their offer to stay. He needed to see you. Now he knew you were the one, he was eager to fulfill his duties as your man.Ā Ā
By the time he reached your door, it was dark and cold.Ā
He knocks three times before you answer.Ā
āOfficer Snow? What are you doing here?ā you asked, shocked to see him.Ā
āI came to check on you. Can I come in?ā, his foot wedging itself through the door gave you your answer, so you stepped back and let him in.Ā
āI never said thank youā, you state.
He surpasses you in your own home, leaving you by the door.Ā
āI donāt want a thank youā, he returns.Ā
He moves back over from the kitchen table to stand in front of you. Your eye has blackened around the soft flesh of your face, he reaches out to gently trace it with his thumb.Ā
āThat looks like it hurtsā, he comments.Ā
His actions freeze you, you donāt move or speak so he continues.Ā
āWhereās your cousin?ā, he asks, walking to the fridge and pulling out the frozen peas.Ā
āSheās asleepā, you say a bit unsteady.Ā
āGoodā. He sits at the table and gestures for you to sit in the chair next to him.Ā
You do, not knowing what else could be done. You take the frozen peas from him when he presses them against your eye.Ā
Coriolanus makes himself comfortable after his task is taken from him. He spreads his legs wide and smooths his hands on his thigh, slumping back into his seat.Ā
āIs she okay?ā, he asks.Ā
āA little shaken up, but he didnāt hurt her. Thank godā, you answer.
āIt wonāt happen againā, he promises, āIāll make sure you and your cousin are safe from now onā
You look at him unsure, but donāt call him on it.Ā
āYou canāt control everythingā, you remark.Ā
āYes, I can,ā he retorts. One day he would control everything.Ā
āIs there anything I can do?ā, he offers.Ā
You nod your head no with a sly smile.Ā
āNo, weāre fineā. You throw the bag of frozen peas to the table, using your hand to rest your face.
You go quiet again which drives Coriolanus insane. He wished he knew what you were thinking, what you wanted.Ā
Ā He knew what he wanted. He wanted to feel your lips against his.Ā
So he reaches out to the bottom of your chair, his fingers grip the wood and he slides you along the floor over to him.Ā
You look at him like a deer seeing a hunter. Big, wide eyes, and skittish demeanor.Ā
You turn your head away from him as if that would deter him.Ā
His fingers on your jaw, turn your head back so his lips could meet yours greedily.Ā
You donāt move, make no sound. Coriolanus gets his fill without resistance.Ā
Even when he pulls back, his fingers remain locked around your jaw, keeping you facing towards him, but your eyes are cast to the table.Ā
āY/nā, he calls to you, trying to regain your attention. You donāt give it to him, zoning out.Ā
āY/nā, he calls again in a strong tone. This time your eyes flick to him, but your body remains a statute.Ā
āNothing like this will ever happen againā, he promises, āYou deserve so much more than thisā.Ā
His eyes leave yours as he darts around the room, looking at the bare house. You deserve so much more than a district life. Should you not be rewarded for your kindness, for your loyalty to family?
Tigress deserved to be.Ā
He feels your hands, clutching his hand on your jaw, so he exchanges his hold to wrap around your small hand, intertwining them and bringing the down to your lap
His attention went back to you who still looked frozen in shock.Ā
āWhatever you need from now on, Iāll take care of it. Of both of youā, he vows, looking quickly to the room your cousin slept in.Ā
āPlease leaveā you whisper, once more your eyes fall from their target.Ā
āYouāre kicking me out?ā, he questions, astonished.Ā
āNo, sir, I am just tiredā, you lie.Ā
Your eyes glaze with tears which you refuse to show him.Ā
Coriolanus reaches out, taking your chin between his thumb and forefinger gently, before releasing it all together and rising from his seat.Ā
āAlright, you sleepā, he relents.Ā
His hand touches your shoulder as he walks past. You could breathe once more when you heard him open the door, and lock it behind him.Ā
He knew the first thing you would do is go to the Commander.Ā
He made a point to get to the man before you did.Ā
Coriolanus skipped his lecture to head to his office, so coriolanus would be the first person he saw when he arrived for work.Ā
The faux son of the commander needed no appointment. Still Commander Vongurt seemed surprised to see Coriolanus waiting in his office so early.Ā
āCoriolanus, sonā, the commander questioned, āhas something happened?ā.
Coriolanus rose from the guest chair as the Commander neared his desk, throwing himself into his great chair and waiting for a response.Ā
āI have some newsā, Coriolanus announced taking his seat.Ā
āYouāre leavingā, the commander guessed in a disappointed tone.Ā
āNo. No, not yetā. The worried look on the commanderās face disappeared but the curiosity remained.Ā Ā
āBut when I doā, Coriolanus continued, āIāll be taking Y/n with meā.Ā Ā
Commander Vongurt was stunned at the news. He said nothing in return, as the emotions passed through his head.Ā
Coriolanus knew the Commander had a soft spot for you. It was the only reason you could work the hours around caring for your cousin.Ā
āWouldnāt you rather it was me, than some district?āCoriolanus justified.Ā
Vongurt still didnt respond. Coriolanus could see the emotions as they passed through his mind, bewilderment, anger, acceptance, sadness.
āI can take care of herā, he promises.
āBut youāll both be in the Capitol?ā, Vongurt finally said. He didnāt doubt Coriolanus' care taking skills, but the wound of his dead son still stung. To lose those he tried to fill him with, would reopen the wound with no replacement.Ā
āItās only a day's travel. Mrs Vonhurt could stay with us when she comes to visit. It would make her feel less trapped hereā.Ā
āAnd what of her cousin? She would never leave herā, Vongurt countered after a brief thought that maybe Lorretta could be a stand in.Ā
āShe wonāt have to. The Capitol is big enough for both of themā, Coriolanus pointed out.Ā
āThe Capitolā, the Commander scoffs, ātheyāll tear her apart. No, Coriolanus, I am sorryā.Ā
Coriolanus leans forward on his knees, talking to the commander as if he was telling him a secret.Ā
āI plan to be a man of great powerā, he tells the older man, āA man who can do as he pleasesā.Ā
āThis is all coming as a bit of a surprise. Youāve made no mention of her beforeā, the commander says.Ā
āI love herā, Coriolanus admits slowly, āI tried to convince myself otherwise, but I feel if I let her slip through my fingers, I'll regret it the rest of my lifeā.
āLove is it?ā, Vongurt muses, relaxing back into his chair. Coriolanus' confession seemed to ease the older man.Ā
āYes, I would rather it you than a districtā, Vongurt admits.Ā
Coriolanus rises from his seat, holding out his hand as if they just closed a business deal.Ā
The Commander rises, taking hold of Coriolanus' hand in a firm shake.Ā
āIāll take good care of herā, Coriolanus promises.Ā
āJust donāt take her too soon. This is all very suddenā.Ā
āI promised you a year, didnāt I?ā Coriolanus grins.Ā
mdni, 18+, posessive!popecody, dom!popecody, borderline obsession, based off season one and two pope cody (still catching up)
listen to this ā¬.į
pope codyās really possessive over you. but he doesn't show it.
itās quiet, a heavy feeling that settles in the air. itās the way he sits at smurf's pool parties, back against a chair, just watching you. not little glances, stolen and shy. no, not that. he stares long and hard until you feel the uncomfortable heat of his gaze burning a hole at the back of your neck.
especially now, with you in that cute little two piece he loves, the one that makes your boobs sit just right and pretty, shows off the curve of your hips and ass. his jaw stays tight, the beer bottle sweating in his grip while some guy by the barbecue lets his eyes drag over your legs a beat too long. but he doesn't say a word. he doesn't have to. he just stores the image away, coming home later with a split lip and bruised knuckles from slamming his fist into the guy, a silent, violent way of marking his claim.
and when any of his brothers talk to you, especially baz okay, mostly just baz, something ugly snaps in him. if baz even just says hi to you once, pope gets quiet in a way thatās terrifying. heāll grip his bottle until the glass shatters in his palm, not even flinching as the shards pierce his skin, blood welling up and dripping between his fingers. itās like heās too focused on the idea of someone else taking up space in your head, that his own body becomes an afterthought.
he'll never acutally tell you he doesn't like when you smile at other guys. he isn't built for conversations like that, never has.
but later, when you're asleep in his bed, breathing slow and warm against his shoulder, he reaches for your phone on the nightstand. he memorized your passcode weeks ago, just watched your thumb move over the keypad enough times until he knew the pattern better than he knew his own. he scrolls through the texts to your mom, your friends. then he checks the logs. the endless strings of messages and missed calls between you and him while he was at work. just how it should be.
after he puts the phone back exactly where he found it, down to the millimeter, he doesn't close his eyes. instead, he lies there in the pitch black and watches you for an hour straight, chest tight with a quiet, irrational fear that if he looks away, you might just slip out of bed and disappear into another man's arms. and, when he's definitely sure you won't, he pulls you flush against his chest, wrapping his toned arms around you so tight itās almost hard to breathe, tangling his legs with yours, and finally lets himself drift off, anchoring you to him.
girls nights out make him sick. like borderline physically ill. the nausea sits heavy in his stomach when you mention them. he won't say a word, just nods his head, murmurs "have fun" in a voice so flat it sounds hollow. but heās already planning the route in his head. he parks three blocks away from whatever bar you're at, sitting in the dark with the engine off, just waiting. he watches you through the foggy glass of the bar window.
itās not about trust or the lack of. he knows his sweet girl could never ever lie to him. he knows you could never do him wrong.
itās the men.
he knows exactly what runs through their heads when they see you walk in the room. watching you like a pack of wolves to a lamb. and he can't stand not being there to put his body between you and their eyes.
and, god, it drives him fucking feral knowing you had a love life before him. he hates the thought of other mouths kissing you, other hands that had touched you before his ever did. it lives under his skin like a deep, festering splinter he can't dig out.
and he tries to fuck it out of you every single time.
itās like he thinks if he just goes deep enough, hard enough, slow enough, he can physically overwrite every memory of anyone who ever tried to claim you before him. that's when the quiet, simmering possession cracks wide open and turns into something desperate and hungry.
he leaves kiss bitten bruises in places you can't hide. the hollow of your throat, the dip of your collarbone. the soft inside of your thigh where your skin is sensitive, where the blood pools into a pretty, dark purple. little flowers blooming where everyone can see them, visible above the neckline of your blouse, impossible to miss. marks that scream "stay away" without him ever having to open his mouth.
and he can go the whole night just pounding into you, fueled by that inhumane stamina of his. his large hands grip your hips hard enough to leave fingerprints, dragging you back onto his cock with every painfully sweet stroke, until you're sobbing, a drooling, whimpering, beautiful mess. only then, only when you're completely undone, would he slow down, burying himself to the hilt and just holding himself there.
his lips brush over your ear, low and wrecked, "tell me." you always know exactly what he needs to hear before he even says it. "tell me you're mine. tell me this pussy's mine, sweet girl. please, please, please." he chants it into the damp skin of your neck, over and over, until the words lose their shape and just sound like a desperate prayer. and you moan it back, delirious and broken, "yours, yours, 'm all yours, popey."
"good girl."
his large hands come up to wrap loosely around your throat. not squeezing. just holding. his thumb pressed against your pulse point where he can feel your heartbeat hammering frantically against his skināproof that you're alive, and here, and entirely his. he can feel the vibration of every moan and whimper right there under his fingertips and it makes his cock twitch inside you. he grinds his hips forward just once, slow and filthy, watching your mouth fall open and your eyes roll back.
and when he finishes, he finishes inside you. every single time. he thinks about it more than he should, obsesses over it when he's alone. getting you pregnant. watching your belly swell with something that is purely, undeniably his. a living, breathing proof that he's the one who gets to have you. that you belong to him and him alone.
a dark, twisted part of him hates that you're on birth control. to the point that he even has your cycle memorized down to the day. and when youāre ovulating, he fucks you with a savage, desperate intensity, filling you up over and over again till you're practically dripping, silently praying the pills fail. just waiting for that one slip-up that will tie you to him forever.
but he'd never say any of this out loud to you, of course. never let you know about the obssessively possessive thoughts that fester his mind, because he's terrified you'll leave him if he ever does, if you ever find out.
little does he know the more terrifying truth is, you already know.
and it doesnāt scare you in even the slightest, if anything, it only makes you love him more. because maybe you're just as unhinged as he is, because maybe you two are broken things feeding off a mutual madness, and you're more than perfectly willing to let him ruin you for anyone else, to let him consume you completely. whole.
just as long as he lets you ruin him for anyone else too.
toxic bf!aerion who gets so close to your face you can see the flecks of grey in his cold, blue eyes. his voice is a low, venomous hiss, not quite a yell but something worseāa controlled, seething rage that vibrates in the air between you.when your eyes well up and you try to turn away,his hand shoots out, fingers digging into the soft flesh of your cheeks, forcing you to look at him.a tear escapes and tracks through his grip.he doesnāt wipe it away. be squeezes harder, his thumb pressing into the corner of your trembling mouth. ādonāt be pathetic, angel,ā he sneers, the pet name a twisted little knife. ātears wonāt fix your disobedience.ā
toxic bf!aerion who films you during sex without you knowing.he sets his phone up on the dresser, the red recording light a tiny, accusing eye. later, when youāre curled up in one of his oversized t-shirts feeling vulnerable, heāll pull you onto his lap in front of his laptop. āwatch,ā heāll command, his chin hooked over your shoulder. heāll play the video, the sound of your own desperate, whining moans filling the room. ālisten to you,ā heāll mock, his voice a hot, amused whisper in your ear as his free hand slips under the shirt, fingers sliding into you with cruel familiarity. āso loud for me. so shameless.do you even hear how pathetic you sound, my little dove?ā heāll fuck you with his fingers over the noise of your own humiliation, and the wet, obscene sound of it, paired with your cries on the screen, is what makes him groan against your neck. your shame is what excites him the most.
toxic bf!aerion who gets painfully, visibly hard when heās reduced you to a flustered, teary mess. heāll pick a fight over nothingāthe way you looked at the waiter, the tone of your voiceāand escalate it until youāre a trembling heap of apologies and confused sobs. heāll stand over you, his gaze raking over your blotchy face, your heaving chest, and a slow, dragon-like smile will spread on his lips. heāll press you against the wall, letting you feel the rigid line of his erection through his tailored trousers against your stomach. ālook what you do to me,ā heāll murmur, capturing a tear with his tongue. āyou ruin everything, and it just makes me want to ruin you more.ā
toxic bf!aerion who sees a ghost of a smile on your face from a text and the world turns to ice.youāre on his bed, a soft laugh escaping you at a meme your best friend sent, and suddenly his shadow falls over you. āwho is he?ā his voice is deceptively calm.you stammer, holding up the phone. āitās just kiera, seeāā he snatches it from your hand. he doesnāt even look at the screen.he just hurls it across the room where it smacks into the wall with a sickening crack. āliar,ā he breathes, his eyes wild. āyou smile like that at everyone, hm? you belong with me, donāt let that slip from your pretty little head,okay?ā the replacement phone you get a day later has no passwords he doesnāt know.
toxic bf!aerion who fucks you with the sole purpose of stealing the very air from your lungs. heāll push into you so deep, so suddenly, that a sharp, broken gasp is all you can manage. heāll watch the pleasure-pain bloom on your face, and when the overwhelmed tears startāquiet, hiccupping thingsāhe doesnāt soften.he uses them as fuel.heāll hook your legs over his arms, driving into you harder, faster, the bed slamming against the wall in a brutal rhythm. ācry all you want, doll,ā he grunts, sweat dripping from his brow onto your chest. āit wonāt make me stop.it just makes me want to hear my name more.ā and heāll edge you, bringing you right to the brink before slowing to a torturous grind, over and over, until youāre sobbing his name, āaerion, please, aerionāā a whiny, pent-up mantra that finally earns you his release.
toxic bf!aerion who claims you in public with a performative, degrading ownership. in a booth at a club, surrounded by his laughing, drunk friends, his hand will slide under your skirt.his rings are cold against your skin. you freeze, but his other arm is a steel bar across your waist, pulling you back flush against him. ārelax,ā he murmurs into your hair, loud enough for the table to hear.then heās pulling you onto his lap, arranging you so youāre straddling him, his hands running possessively down your ass, moving you in a slow, grinding rhythm against the hard line of his cock, right there in front of everyone.your face burns with humiliation.he smiles, tipping his chin up, the king of the ruin heās making of you. āsee?ā he says to his friends, his voice proud. āshe knows who she belongs to.ā
toxic bf!aerion who, after that public display, pulls you into a darker corner.youāre a shaking, embarrassed mess, still aching and wet from the friction. he sits on a plush bench, spreads his legs, and points to the floor between his new LV boots. āhere.ā when you hesitate, his eyes flash a warning.you kneel. he guides you to grind slowly against the hard toe of his boot, the expensive leather a cold, rough contrast to your heat. you hide your flaming face in his thigh. he strokes your hair with surprising gentleness, his fingers tangling in the strands. āthereās my good girl,ā he coos, feeling the tremors in your body. āmaking a mess on me. cute.ā but his hand on your head is almost tender.
toxic bf!aerion who, in a rage over you being ten minutes late from coffee with your āpathetic little friend,ā pins you to the foyer wall. his hands are vise-grips on your forearms, sure to leave perfect, bracelet-shaped bruises. he leans in, his voice a deadly calm storm. āyou will text me.you will share your location.every minute.every move.do you understand?ā your lip begins to tremble, a traitorous sign of weakness.he sees it. the fury in his eyes flickers, shifts. he exhales sharply, then dips his head, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to the crown of your head. his voice drops to a whisper, strained with something that almost sounds like real fear. āi just need to know youāre safe, angel. this world.. itās full of people who would take advantage of someone like you.i have to protect you. even from yourself.ā
and thatās the hook, buried deep in the bruise.the sudden shift from violence to vulnerable devotion. It rewrites the entire script.the surveillance isnāt control, itās care. the isolation isnāt possession, itās protection. the pain is just proof of his desperate, fractured love.
you know you should run. but when he kisses your bruises and calls you his only real thing, when he cries after hurting you and begs you to stay.. you canāt bring yourself to leave. because leaving would mean believing the monster is all he is. and youāve seen the scared, lonely boy hiding behind his eyes. youāre convinced youāre the only one who can save him.even if it means letting him destroy you, piece by precious piece.
