Queen Jodes

First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lady of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm

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Of Salt and Sea | Jacaerys Velaryon

Synopsis: Saved from drowning by a siren after the Battle of the Gullet, Prince Jacaerys Velaryon becomes haunted by his saviour, Atalantia. Defying the lore that calls her kind monstrous, he finds not a beast, but a woman of profound sorrow and grace. Their impossible bond, born in a sea-cave and sealed with a kiss upon the waves, compels her to a terrible, wondrous transformation—she trades her tail for legs to walk beside him on Dragonstone’s shore.

Words: 4,833 words

The water had been cold. That was the first truth, and the last. A brutal, swallowing cold that punched the air from his lungs and the fire from his heart. Before that, there had been fire in truth. The screaming, verdant fury of Vermax, the thunder of wings beating against a sky choked with smoke and crossbow bolts. Jace remembered the impact, the shudder that ran through the dragon’s great neck, the terrible, descending lurch. Then the sea, green and greedy, rising to meet them.

He remembered the shock of it, the world gone silent and dark and crushing. He remembered wood—a splintered spar from some shattered cog—and the desperate, clawing strength in his arms as he clung to it. He remembered the arrows. One in the meat of his shoulder, a numbing blow. Another, fiercer, a hot tear just above his hip that leaked his warmth into the endless chill. He remembered, most of all, watching Vermax. His dragon gave one final, thrashing spasm, a great cloud of blood blooming like a flower in the deep green, and then the sea dragged him down. The hope left Jacaerys Velaryon. His fingers, blue and stiff, lost their purchase, and the darkness took him.

He woke to the drip of water and the smell of stone.

It was a slow, painful awakening. His body was a map of agony, each line charted in fire. He lay on his back on something hard and cold. Above him was not sky, but a ceiling of jagged black rock, slick and glistening. He tried to move, to push himself up, and a white-hot spike drove through his side, drawing a ragged gasp from his cracked lips.

Alive. The thought was a stranger to him. How?

Gritting his teeth, he managed to roll his head, to look. He was on a wide, flat shelf within a cavern. The only light was a ghostly blue-green glow that welled up from the water itself, casting wavering, spectral patterns on the walls. The sea lapped softly against the stone a hand’s breadth from where he lay. He looked down at himself. His fine black leathers had been cut away around his wounds. But no maester had tended him. His shoulder and his side were bound with thick, strands of kelp, dark as forest moss, packed and woven against his skin with a strange, firm pressure. It was cold, but the cold was a relief, a numbness that soothed the burn beneath. The scent was of the deep ocean—salt, and rot, and something clean and sharp like a storm on the horizon.

Seaweed. He had heard of damp mosses used in healing, but this… this was the art of another world.

Movement. A flicker at the corner of his eye, there in the water.

He turned his head, slower this time. A face floated just beneath the glassy surface, pale as moonstone. Wide, unblinking eyes, the color of old sea-glass, stared up at him. Hair the shade of tarnished copper and wet rust fanned out like a bloodstain in the clear water.

His heart thudded a painful rhythm against his ribs. His grandfather’s voice, rich with the lore of a hundred voyages, echoed in the vault of his memory. 'The singers from the deeps, lad. Fair of face and cruel of heart. Their voices are honeyed poison, and their kiss is the kiss of the Drowned God, a breath stolen before he claims the rest.'

“Who is there?” Jace called out. His voice was a ruin, a dry scrape on stone. “Show yourself.”

For a long moment, nothing. Only the drip, drip, drip, and the watching eyes.

Then the water stirred. She rose, the sea parting for her without a splash. The blue glow caught the lines of her. She was a woman, or had the shape of one. Skin of a pallor that had never known the sun, smooth and cool as a pearl. Her hair, now plastered to her shoulders and back, was long and thick, the color of a sunset seen through storm-clouds. And there were scales. Small, iridescent things that caught the light and broke it into rainbows. They dusted the hollow of her throat, the curve of her shoulders, and trailed down, down, vanishing into the water where her body ended not in legs, but in the suggestion of something powerful, sinuous, and alien.

Jace’s hand flew to his hip, where his dagger should have been. His belt was gone. He was a wounded animal, trapped on a rock.

“What are you?” he breathed, the words tinged with more dread than wonder.

She tilted her head. It was a birdlike gesture, curious and unnatural. When she spoke, her voice was not the silken, seductive thing of legends. It was low, soft. The words came slow, deliberate, each one a distinct entity. “You were hurt. There was blood. It calls the sharp-fins. The ones with many teeth. You would have been bones.”

She drifted closer. Jace pressed himself back against the unyielding stone, the rough rock scraping his back. “You took me from the water?”

“You fell from the sky,” she said, as one might remark upon the tide. “You watched your… your large one die.” Her eyes, those ancient, depthless pools, held his. They held no malice, but a profound, unsettling sorrow. “The sea held no taste but of grief and sorrow.”

“Vermax,” Jace said, the name a blade twisting in a wound that would never close. “He was my dragon.”

“Dragon.” She formed the word carefully, as if it were a foreign delicacy. “I know this word. The fire-wings. They do not come to the deep places. Yours did.” A webbed hand, its fingers long and graceful, faintly scaled, rose to press against the pale skin between her breasts. “It was sad to see. I feel sorry for you.”

An apology. From a creature of myth and nightmare. It unsettled him more than any threat. “Why?” he demanded, strength returning to his voice as confusion flared. “Why aid me? The tales say your kind lures sailors with songs to a kiss of death.”

A shadow passed over her fair features, a fleeting darkness like a cloud before the moon. “Tales are sung by men who see only the surface,” she murmured, the water around her seeming to still. “My name is Atalantia. I sing, but not to men.” She looked at him, truly looked, and he felt stripped bare, as if she saw the boy beneath the prince’s garb, the child who had just watched his world die. “I saw you fall. A boy with seeping wounds. I have never felt sorrow such as that.”

“A boy?” Jace felt a spark of familiar pride, hot and defensive. “I am Jacaerys of House Velaryon. Prince of Dragonstone. Heir to the Iron Throne.”

She considered this, her head tilting again. There was no awe in her gaze, only a quiet assessment. “You are a boy who lost his large one,” she said, and her tone held no mockery, only a stark, simple truth that was harder to bear than any insult. She moved nearer still, until he could see the fine patterns within her sea-glass eyes. “Sleep now, Jacaerys Velaryon. When you wake, you will go home.”

As she spoke, a profound lassitude washed over him. The eerie blue light pulsed in time with his slowing heart. The gentle lap of the water was no longer a sound, but a feeling, a soft hum that vibrated in his bones and pulled him down into soft, welcoming darkness. His last thought was not of monsters, but of those eyes, holding a pity so vast and lonely it mirrored the empty hole inside him.

When consciousness seeped back, the pain was a distant, throbbing drum. The glow remained. And she was there, closer now, her arms folded on the ledge, her chin resting upon them, watching him with that same unblinking intensity.

He swallowed, his throat dry. “Atalantia?”

A slow blink. A subtle shift in the line of her mouth. Not a smile, but something quieter. An acknowledgment. “Tala,” she whispered, the sound like waves retreating over gravel. “The ones who are mine… they call me Tala.”

Tala, he thought, as the darkness gathered at the edges of his vision once more. A small name. A real name. He had braced himself for a siren’s curse, for a fate sung in dread. He had not been prepared for pity. He had not been prepared for a name. And in the warm, kelp-scented dark, the seed of something perilous and new took root.

The sleep that followed was not like the swoon of wounds, nor the restless slumber of a castle bed. It was the deep, black quiet of the sea itself, timeless and profound. When he finally woke, truly woke, the cavern was empty. The blue glow had faded to the grey, natural light of day filtering through a high, hidden cleft in the rocks. The shelf where he had lain was bare save for a few dried strands of the deep-kelp. Atalantia was gone.

Only the lingering, cool numbness in his wounds and the spectral memory of sea-glass eyes proved it had not been a fever dream.

He found his strength slowly, like a ship taking on ballast. He drank from a trickle of fresh water that ran down the cavern wall. He found his dagger and belt, cleaned of salt and laid neatly on a dry rock. Of his torn leathers, there was no sign. Using the dagger, he fashioned a crude garment from the remnants of his cloak, covering the strange, healed scars that were pale and smooth against his skin. He explored the cavern and found it was not a prison, but a sea-cave, its entrance a tall, narrow archway hidden behind a curtain of hanging rock. One morning, with the tide low, he waded out into the blinding sun and onto a desolate, rocky shore he did not know.

Fisherfolk found him two days later, half-starved and wild-eyed, speaking of dragons and arrows and a woman with hair like sunset. They took him for a madman, until he named himself. Word travelled up the chain of islands, from holdfast to fishing village, until a Velaryon patrol galley, its sails jade-green and seahorse-prowled, found him.

The journey to Dragonstone was a blur of salt spray and silent stares. The men treated him with a reverence edged with fear, as if he were a ghost walking. He stood at the prow, his eyes forever on the sea, searching the waves for a flash of copper, a glimpse of pale skin.

The Stone Drum was a thunder of grief turned to joy. They met him in the courtyard—his mother, Rhaenyra, her face a mask of regal composure shattered by trembling lips and tears that cut tracks through the ash-dark air. She crushed him to her, her strength belying her frame, her sobs muffled against his shoulder. “My boy,” she wept, the words raw. “My sweet, brave boy. The sea gave you back to me.”

They feasted him that night in the Great Hall. The lords and knights drank to his health, to the Prince Who Returned. Tales of his survival grew in the telling—how he had clung to wreckage for a fortnight, how he had fought off selkies, how the Drowned God himself had spared him for a greater purpose. Jacaerys ate the roasted meat and drank the strong wine and said little. He smiled at his mother’s tears and accepted her embraces, but a part of him remained in that blue-lit cavern, listening to a voice that was not a song, but a truth.

The maesters fussed over his wounds, marveling at their healing. “A clean mend, my prince,” said Maester Hunnimore, peering at the scar on his side. “Almost as if the sea itself knit you back together. A fortunate thing, the cold and the salt.” Jace said nothing of the kelp, of the cool, whispering pressure.

As the days turned to weeks, the rhythm of the war reclaimed him. There were councils to attend, ravens to send, the gnawing absence of Vermax a constant, hollow ache in his chest. Yet, every afternoon, when his duties allowed, he would walk the white-sand beaches of Dragonstone. He would stand for hours, his boots sinking in the damp grit, his eyes scanning the tumble of grey waves where the Gullet had been. The sea was a vast, grey-green mystery, hiding its secrets in its depths. She is down there, he thought. Does she swim in the deeps? Does she sing to the whales? Does she think of me at all?

The longing was a physical thing, a pull stronger than the moon on the tide. He told himself it was madness. She was not a woman. She was a creature of salt and myth, a siren from his grandsire’s warnings. And yet, he remembered her sorrow. Her apology. The name she had given him. Tala.

One morning, six weeks after his return, the sea was calm as a sheet of hammered lead under a pale sun. The maesters had finally ceased their fussing. He was a prince, not an invalid. He commanded a small rowboat be made ready.

“The sea, my prince?” Ser Steffon Darklyn asked with a frown. “Is that… wise?”

“I need the air,” Jace replied, his voice leaving no room for debate. “The air away from the castle.”

He rowed himself, the muscles in his back and shoulders protesting at first, then finding a familiar, burning rhythm. He rowed past the jagged fingers of rock that clawed at the surf, out beyond the sight of the grim towers. Here, the world was water and sky, and the silence was broken only by the groan of the oarlocks, the drip of the blades, and the cry of distant gulls. He shipped the oars and let the boat drift, the gentle swell rocking him like a cradle.

He was staring into the dark water, lost in a memory of blue light, when a shape detached itself from the deeper gloom below.

His breath caught. She rose as she had in the cavern, the water parting for her in silent reverence. Atalantia. Her hair was loose, a cloud of dark copper in the sea, and her skin seemed to drink the weak sunlight. Her seaglass eyes found his, and in them, he saw no surprise.

“You came to the sea,” she said, her voice the same low, water-worn murmur. One webbed hand rested on the gunwale of the boat, her touch making the small craft shift slightly.

“I looked for you,” Jace said, the words tumbling out. “Every day from the shore.”

“I know. I saw.” A ghost of something—was it amusement?—touched her lips. “You stand very still. Like a rock that thinks.”

He laughed, a short, surprised bark of sound that startled a gull overhead. “I suppose I do.” He looked at her, truly looked, drinking in the sight of her. The scales along her collarbones shimmered with hints of emerald and amethyst.

She looked past him, towards the brooding mass of Dragonstone on the horizon. “That is your stone nest? It is… large. And hard. All sharp points.”

“It’s my home. Or one of them.” He paused. “Do you have a home?”

“The deep is my home. I travel the waves.” Her gaze returned to him. “But I have not travelled far since I pulled you from the water.”

They spoke then, as the boat drifted. He spoke of the war, of dragons and thrones and duty, words that felt heavy and foolish in the vastness of the sea. She spoke of the great herds of silverfish that moved like living rivers, of the singing of the grey-beard leviathans, of the cold, beautiful silence a thousand leagues down where even light gave up.

“It sounds… free,” he said, a longing in his own voice now.

“It is and it is not,” she replied, her fingers tracing a pattern on the boat’s wet wood. “The water holds you. It guides you. It is all there is.” She looked up, and her eyes held a new, vulnerable yearning. “Sometimes… I dream. Not the small dreams of sleeping, but the wide-awake dreams. I dream of a place where the water does not hold me up. Where I must hold myself up. I dream of sand that is warm, not wet. Of wind that touches all of me, not just the part I show to the sky.” She met his gaze, and her confession was a soft wave against his soul. “I dream of walking.”

The ache in her voice mirrored the ache in his own chest. The distance between their worlds seemed to shrink in that moment, bridged by a shared, impossible want. The careful walls of propriety, the warnings of his grandsire, the cold voice of reason—all of it crumbled like sand.

“Atalantia,” he whispered. The boat was close to the rock she lightly held. He leaned forward, the small vessel tilting. “Tala. I have thought of nothing else but you. Not of my crown, not of my duty. Only of the cave, and your eyes, and the sound of your voice.”

Her sea-glass eyes widened, searching his face. The aloofness, the ancient wisdom, fell away, leaving something young and trembling. “I have watched the shores,” she said, her voice barely a whisper over the lap of the waves. “I have followed the turning of the light, waiting for your shadow on the water. I think of the boy I saved.” She drew a breath, a human gesture. “I think of Jace.”

He did not know who moved first. Perhaps the sea itself pushed them together. His hand came up, cupping the cool, smooth line of her jaw. Her own hand, damp and scaled, rose to cover his. Her skin was cooler than a human’s, smooth as polished stone, and alive with a subtle, humming vitality.

He kissed her.

Her lips were softer than he imagined, and tasted of salt and secrets. There was a moment of stillness, of shock, and then she answered him. The kiss was not timid, nor was it the savage, life-stealing thing of legend. It was desperate, and curious, and filled with the longing of two souls stranded on separate shores. It spoke of blue-lit caves and sun-warmed sands, of a prince’s burden and a siren’s dream. She made a small sound against his mouth, a vibration that was part sigh, part song, and it went through him like a wave.

When they finally parted, breathless, the world had changed. The grey sea was now a tapestry of silver and blue, and the air was sweeter. Her eyes were dark, the seaglass clouded with storm.

“They say,” Jace murmured, his forehead resting against hers, “that a siren’s kiss steals a man’s breath, and then his life.”

Atalantia—his Tala—looked at him, and for the first time, he saw a true, unguarded smile touch her lips. It was a fleeting, wondrous thing.

“Perhaps,” she whispered, her breath cool on his skin. “Or perhaps… it gives him a new one.”

She slipped from the boat then, a flash of copper and pearl, and was gone beneath the waves without a splash. Jacaerys Velaryon sat alone in the drifting boat, his heart pounding a wild, frantic rhythm against his ribs, the taste of salt and longing forever on his lips. The war for the Iron Throne seemed a small, distant thing. A new war had begun within him, a storm of feeling for which he had no chart, and the sea, vast and unknowable, held the only prize he now craved.

The sea did not give up its daughters easily.

Atalantia had felt the change as a strange, pulling hollowness in the place where her strong, silver-scaled tail met the water. It was not pain, but a profound wrongness, like a seabird feeling the air grow thin. For days after the kiss, after the taste of Jace’s warmth and the fire in his human mouth had seared her senses, the dream had become a fever. The deep songs bored her. The endless, weightless blue felt like a prison. She yearned for the hard thing, the dry thing, the real thing.

It was the longing that did it. A longing so fierce it felt like a riptide in her soul, pulling her towards the black-sand shore where his shadow fell each day.

She did not plan it. One moment she was watching him from the surf line, the cold water fizzing around her waist. He stood on a high cliff path, a small, lonely figure outlined against the grey sky, looking out to sea. Looking for her. The pull became an ache, the ache became a command. With a desperate, heaving thrust, she pushed herself forward, not through the water, but out of it.

The sand was an assault. Gritty, shocking, and so very, very dry. It stuck to her skin, which had never known such a thing. Her body, from the hips down, felt leaden, useless, a dead weight dragging behind her. She collapsed onto her side, gasping, the air burning in gills that had sealed themselves shut with a soft, final click inside her neck. She coughed, a raw, human sound.

And she felt it.

A fire, starting in the core of her and racing down through the numbness. It was a feeling of breaking and knitting, of melting and reshaping. She cried out, a thin, ragged sound lost in the crash of the surf, and watched as the last iridescent scales on her lower body shimmered like wet paint in the sun before dissolving into smooth, pale skin. The powerful, fused muscle of her tail split with a sensation that was agony and ecstasy—a great, final stretch—and resolved into two long, strange, separate limbs. Legs. Knees. Feet with toes that curled helplessly against the unfamiliar sand.

She lay there for a long time, trembling, as the sun, a rare and gentle guest on Dragonstone, broke through the clouds and found her. The warmth on her skin was a revelation. It did not diffuse through water; it touched her directly, a blanket of pure sensation. She lifted a hand, watching the light play over her human fingers, the delicate webbing between them gone, leaving only soft skin. She was utterly, terrifyingly naked to the world.

Weak as a newborn seal, she pushed herself up onto her new hands and knees, then, with a staggering, graceless lurch, onto her feet. Her legs shook, threatening to buckle. The world tilted. Walking was not a song; it was a clumsy, painful negotiation with gravity. But she was up. She was standing. On land.

She took one step, then two, each a victory. The sand gave way, making it harder. She stumbled towards a smoother, wet patch by the water’s edge and stood there, letting the thin foam kiss her feet—the only part of her that still felt connected to the sea. She raised her face to the sun, her long copper hair dripping down her bare back, and felt a joy so sharp it was like a spear in her heart. This, she thought. This is the dream.

Jacaerys came to the shore as the sun began its long, bloody descent into the west. The rowboat was pulled up on the sand, but his mind was far out on the waves. He carried a single red rose, plucked from the gardens, its petals the colour of heart’s blood. A foolish, romantic gesture for a creature of the deep. He did not care.

He saw the figure from a distance, sitting near the waterline. For a moment, his heart sank. A fisherwoman, perhaps, or a servant girl stealing a moment of peace. But then the wind caught the hair—a river of dark copper, unmistakable even against the sand.

He stopped dead, the rose forgotten in his hand. “Tala?”

He began to walk, then to run, his boots slipping in the sand. As he drew closer, the details seared themselves into him. The elegant line of her spine, the pale curve of her shoulders, the way she sat with her knees drawn up, utterly still, watching the sunset paint the sea in fire. And she was naked. Gloriously, utterly naked, as unselfconscious as the gulls wheeling overhead.

A rush of heat that was not embarrassment flooded him. He slowed his approach, a knightly decorum warring with a prince’s wonder. He came around in front of her, his shadow falling across her lap.

Her eyes met his. They were the same sea-glass, but wider, filled with a awe so profound it stole his breath. She did not flinch, did not cover herself. She simply looked at him, as if he were the miracle.

Wordlessly, he unslung his heavy wool cloak, the plain black one lined with grey fur. He moved slowly, and draped it around her shoulders, his fingers brushing her skin. It was cool, but not with the chill of the deep. It was the cool of marble warmed by a distant sun.

“You are here,” he breathed, the words barely sound.

“I am here,” she echoed, her voice a little rusty, but hers. She pulled the cloak tight, the coarse fabric alien against her skin. She looked down at her legs, stretched out before her, and wiggled the toes. A laugh bubbled from her, a sound of pure, bewildered delight. “I did not know… I did not know I could have these. If all my kind can shed the sea, or if…” Her eyes found his again, luminous. “If it was you. If it was wanting you that changed the song of my blood.”

“Gods,” Jace whispered, sinking to his knees in the sand before her. He did not dare touch her yet. He only looked, tracing the impossible lines of her—the slender ankles, the delicate knees, the long, graceful thighs now modestly covered by wool. She was a sculpture given life, a myth made flesh and presented to him on a shore of cinder and stone. “I cannot believe it. You are… you are a woman.”

“I am Atalantia,” she said, and then, a shy smile touching her lips.

He reached out then, his hand trembling slightly, and cupped her cheek. She leaned into the touch, her eyes closing for a moment. When they opened, they held a trust that humbled him.

“Come,” he said, his voice thick. He sat beside her on the damp sand, and she leaned into him, her body fitting against his side as if she had always been meant to be there. He wrapped his arm around her, pulling the cloak more securely around them both. She was slender and solid, real and warm.

They did not speak as the sun died. It bled gold and orange and crimson across the sky, setting the very clouds aflame and turning the sea into a sheet of molten copper. It was a sunset that seemed made for them, a final, brilliant chord to end the world they had known.

“It is more beautiful from here,” she murmured, her head on his shoulder. “The colors are… louder.”

“It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” Jace said, and he was not looking at the sky.

As the last sliver of sun vanished, leaving the world in twilight purple and deep blue, he turned to her. He traced the line of her jaw with his thumb, then her lower lip. Her breath hitched. This kiss was different from the first. That had been a collision of two worlds. This was a homecoming. It was slow, and deep, and sweet. It tasted of salt and sunset and a future that had, against all odds, washed up on this grim shore.

When they parted, foreheads resting together, the first stars were pricking through the velvet sky above Dragonstone. The castle on its mountain was a hulking shadow, a place of duty and dragons and war. But here, on this small stretch of sand, with the scent of her hair in his nostrils and her body, warm and whole, in his arms, Jacaerys Velaryon had found a different kingdom. A smaller one. A perfect one.

“I love you, Tala,” he said into the gathering dark, the words a vow more sacred than any he had sworn to a throne.

She took his hand, lacing her strange, new, perfect fingers with his. She did not say the words back; her kind, perhaps, had no such song. But she brought his knuckles to her lips and kissed them, her sea-glass eyes holding his with a promise that needed no translation. The sea had given her legs. It had given him her. The war could wait. Tonight, and for all the nights he could dare to dream, they had this: the sand, the stars, and the endless, whispering sea as their witness.

[jodeswrites]

Of Queens and Usurpers!! AO3

Hey, everybody!

For those of you who were asking for a version on AO3, I've finally put it up!!

You can find it here.

I hope you're enjoying reading as much as I am writing it. I will be getting back to writing it again very soon (personal life... :/)

Jodeswrites xoxo

[jodeswrites]

Ok thank you! (For AO3 link) . Jus wanna say I think you're one of the best writers I've discovered on here lately

No worries.

And thank you. That means a lot to me ❤️

[jodeswrites]

A Heart Grown in Winter | Robb Stark

Main Navi | GOT Masterlist

Pairing: Robb Stark x Alys Reed (oc) - (bare with me, it does eventually feature Robb) Warnings: arranged marriage, sexual content, emotional heartbreak, swearing Synopsis: Young Alys Reed arrived at Winterfell as a ward, finding her heart torn between two brothers. A secret love blossoms with Jon Snow, Lord Eddard's bastard, in the quiet of the godswood. But Alys is betrothed to the heir, Robb Stark, and now she faces a life she never wanted. Alys learns that love can grown in the most unlikely circumstances, with someone she never thought she could love. Word Count: 3,576

The journey had felt like a thousand years. For weeks, Alys Reed had swayed on her saddle before the sun-drenched greens of the riverlands slowly leeched away into a landscape of stoic hills and skeletal trees. The air lost its floral breath and took on a sharp bite that stung her cheeks and made her burrow into her fur-lined cloak.

One moment there were only pine forests and a grey sky, the next was walls of stone and towers hewn from dark granite. It was not beautiful like the carved white stone of her home, Riverwood. The banners that snapped in the wind did not show flowers or songbird, but a snarling direwolf on a field of ice-grey. The very air she breathed was of wet stone, of pine pitch, or earth and woodsmoke.

Her small hands clutched the pommel of the saddle of her father's horse. She was here to foster, to learn the ways of a great house and become a lady worthy of a strategic match. Her mother had already bid her farewell on the docks of Riverwood, reminding her to be brave and good.

When Alys reached the courtyard, she was greeted by an audience. Lord Eddard Stark stood tall and broad, as if made from the same granite as his keep. When he greeted Lord Edmyn Reed, his voice was low and quiet, quieter than what she expected from a lord.

Beside him stood his lady wife, Catelyn Stark, once a Tully from the Riverlands. She was a most beautiful woman, with hair the colour of polished copper and eyes as blue as a summers sky. She smiled and it felt warm.

The children emerged from behind the shelter of their parents' cloaks. The boy who reached Alys first was like a burst of flame in the grey yard. His hair was an unruly auburn, his face dusted with freckles, and a grin so wife it seemed to split his face in two.

"I'm Robb!" he announced cheerfully. He was all eager motion. "I can show you everything! The lichyard had stones older than Father, and the glass gardens - they have summer fruits even in the snow. And we have a new litter of pups in the kennels." His enthusiasm was a welcome, noisy thing that began to chip away at your frozen fear. Alys managed a shy, wobbly smile in return.

But movement behind Robb caught her eye. Another boy, holding back as if held by an invisible tether. Where Robb was bright energy, this boy was a still shadow. Where Robb was copper, this boy was black. And his eyes were the same storm-grey as his father, but he did not resemble his father fully.

"This my half-brother, Jon Snow," Robb said. He reached back and tugged the boy forward by his sleeve. The name hung cold in the air. 'Snow', the name for a bastard born in the North. Alys deduced quite quickly that Lady Catelyn was not his mother. It explained why he was reserved, why he stood further back than Robb and his other siblings. His own clothing was not a patch on the fine embroidered tunic Robb wore, or the dresses his sisters wore.

Jon Snow's eyes flicked over her swiftly, assessing her, then dropping his gaze to the muddy ground beneath his boots. Alys dipped her head and found her focus was no longer on the towering walls or direwolf banners... But on this boy who carried winter in his name.

The rhythm of her new life was etched in routine. Maester Luwin's chambers became a familiar haunt. Alys sat at the long oak table between Robb and Sansa, learning her histories, her sigils, her courtesies. Robb, always impatient with the quill, would nudge her foot under the table with a grin when Luwin droned about Andal migrations. He shared his honeycakes with her at breakfast, defended her teasingly when Arya declared her "squeamish," and included her in every game of knights-and-raiders in the yard. He was, in every visible way, the perfect friend and future lord. Alys was grateful for his friendship.

But her attention was pulled like a compass needle to Jon Snow.

In the practice yard, while Robb laughed and traded boastful shouts with Theon Greyjoy, their wooden sword a blur of enthusiastic motion, Jon would be a dozen paces away. He was instructed differently, albeit by the same Ser Rodrik Cassel who taught Robb and Theon. It was quieter and often of corrections, while Robb received praise in the dozens. Alys often saw the way he pushed himself longer and harder, even after Ser Rodrik had moved on, as if proving himself.

On rides beyond the walls, Robb was always at the head of the column, his auburn hair a star to follow, his voice ringing out as he challenged Theon to races. Somehow, Alys's pony would find its place beside Jon's shaggy garron. He rode in silence mostly, a quiet, watchful presence. But, without word, he was the first to point out the snowy owl perched in the distance, the spiderweb strung between two bushes like a diamond net. And one bitter afternoon, when the wind cut like a knife, it was Jon who saw her hands trembling.

"You'll get used to the cold," he said, is voice low, almost swallowed by the wind. It was the longest string of words he had ever directed solely to Alys.

She looked up, surprised he had spoken, more surprised he had noticed. Flexing her stiff, aching fingers, she asked "Will I?"

His eyes flicked to her hands and then back to the snow-dusted path ahead. "You have to," he stated, simple and absolute.

It wasn't a comfort. It wasn't the same cheerful response Robb would give. It was a stark truth, a survival tactic.

At the age of ten, the godswood became Alys's sanctuary. Robb found it unsettling, remarking that "The tree is always watching." But she was drawn to the deep quiet. The heart tree's face was always weeping, its red sap tears frozen forever, but it wasn't creepy. It was sad, and peaceful.

She found Jon there once autumn afternoon, sitting with his back against the massive white trunk, so still he seemed a part of the tree itself if he wasn't clad in black. Alys didn't announce herself. She simply sat in the carpet of rust-coloured leaves an arm's length away. The silence stretched, filled with the whisper of the leaves and the chitter of a squirrel.

"Do you pray here?" she questioned, the sound barely disturbing the air around them.

"Sometimes," he replied, his voice soft. "It's the only place that feels like mine."

A chord of understanding vibrated deep within her. A guest, a fostered girl. While she wore the fine clothes and ate at the high table, she didn't belong to anyone here. "Can it be ours?" she asked, the boldness leaping from her heart to her lips before she could cage it.

He turned his head then. His grey eyes finally met hers. He searched her face, and for the first time, she saw something real within them. A faint smile reached his mouth, something so rare. "Sure," he said, "It can be ours."

From that day, the godswood was their shared kingdom. Jon's silence unravelled into words - words of his dream to become a knight so great that men would forget his name was ever 'Snow.' Alys confessed that she often cried for home, for her mother's voice and the slow rivers of home.

At thirteen, the world tilted. The easy, genderless companionship of childhood soured and sweetened simultaneously. Alys noticed the new breadth of Jon's shoulders straining against his jerkin, the sharp line of his jaw where his boyish softness had once been. A casual brush of his hand while passing a practice sword sent a jolt up her arm that had nothing to do with the cold. She caught him looking at her, too - his eyes lingering on the curve of her cheek, the way her dark hair caught the light.

The kiss happened in the godswood. A bickering over saddles when the argument died mid-sentence. She stared at his lips while he stared at hers.

The first touch was a question. It was soft and hesitant, polite. But the kiss deepened, a slow claiming born of years of shared secrets and silent understanding. His calloused hands came up to cradle her face with a trembling gentleness that made Alys's knes buckle. When they parted, she gasped.

"I love you, Jon Snow," she whispered.

He squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his forehead against hers. "I love you," he whispered back, his voice rough. "I shouldn't, but Gods help me, I do."

It became a secret world layered atop the real one. Stolen, breathless moments stolen behind the heart tree. Fingers brushed as they passed on the staircase, a touch that burned like fire. Whispers in the dim library of what a future could look like for them if they'd take the plunge. A child's fantasy, but Alys clung to it.

And when she was sixteen, her world crumbled.

The summons came just after breakfast, a cold knot forming in her stomach when she saw her father standing with Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn. Tight smiles and pleasured expressions. Their words were spoken with formal grace of alliances and strengthened bonds. A future for Alys in the North.

To wed Robb Stark.

A tidal wave crashed over her, ice water flooding her bones, freezing the air in her lungs. Alys smiled politely, ever the dutiful daughter and ward.

"Robb is a fine young man," Lord Edmyn said, beaming. "A credit to your house, my lord. What an honour for my daughter to be the Lady of Winterfell some day!"

A sound escaped, a choked gasp that they all interpreted as overwhelmed joy. She was excused while details were agreed upon.

She found him at the top of the old broken tower, the wind whipping his dark curls like a banner. He stared north, towards the unseen Wall. "Jon," she gasped, her tears spilling. "They... they said..."

"I know." His voice was hollow. "Robb told me."

She clutched at the wool of his sleeve, "We could run away tonight. The Free Cities across the narrow sea are waiting for us."

He turned, his eyes not the warm grey but the stormy grey of a tombstone. "It was a dream," he said, his words releasing an anchor that kept her grounded in reality. "Just a dream, Alys."

"We can make it real."

"How?" The world was a crack, cruel and stark. "I have nothing to give you. Nothing to offer. I'm a bastard." Alys swallowed the hard lump in her throat as her lips parted ever so slightly, breathing in as if she could hardly get a breath. "And I can't stay and watch you, with him. So I'm taking the black."

The ground beneath Alys seemed to vanish. The Night's Watch. Eternal exile. No family, no legacy, no future. He was choosing to erase himself from the world rather than watch her play the dutiful role of Robb's wife.

"No..." she whispered.

"Robb will be a good husband to you. You know he will."

He reached out, a rough and familiar thumb ghosting over her cheek to rid the tears that fell. A farewell. He left her alone in the biting wind, a future she had envisioned for herself blowing in the wind like ashes.

For hours, Alys Reed moved through Winterfell like a ghost. The cheerful bustle of the castle preparing for a wedding was a mocking noise. She found herself in the library, a place of solace, but the words on the scroll before her blurred into meaningless black marks. She was simply existing in a state of suspended shock, the echo of Jon's final words repeating like a drum.

She didn't hear him approach. She only sensed a shift in the light as a broad figure filled the space beside her high-backed chair. Robb sat on a wooden bench a respectful distance away.

For a long time, he said nothing. The silence was different from the easy quiet they used to share. This was heavy. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, stripped of its usual confidence, and utterly earnest. "I'm glad it's you," he said.

The simplicity of it cut through Alys's numbness. She turned her head slightly, seeing his profile in the dusty light from the high window. He was staring at his own hands, clasped loosely between his knees.

"It could have been anyone. But a friend..." He let out a soft, humourless breath. "A friend is a good place to start, don't you think?"

The kindness in his words was a needle pricking at the bubble of her grief. She tried to speak, to offer some reciprocal assurance, but her throat had sealed itself shut. She could only nod, her eyes burning.

Then another silence descended. Alys could feel him gathering himself. His next words were spoken with a careful, deliberate neutrality, his gaze fixed on a tapestry of the Long Night on the far wall.

"I know," he said, the two words clear and calm as ice on a still pond, "that you've always loved Jon."

The world stopped. Her breath vanished. An icy chill raced from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet. Her head snapped towards him, eyes wide with fear. "Robb, I..." she stammered.

He held up a hand, a sharp gesture but not angry. "You don't have to say anything. It's all right." He finally turned to look back at her, his Tully-blue eyes clear, understanding and pained. "I've seen the way you looked at him, the way your laughter changed when he entered a room."

The exposure was complete. Alys sat there, utterly naked in her secret.

"It will not be spoken of again," he continued. His voice was firm, the friend receding and the future Lord of Winterfell stepping forth. "We have a duty now. One that cannot be overlooked. You must be loyal to me, as I will be loyal to you. In all things."

He paused. He offered a small, crooked smile, a flicker of the boy she'd ridden beside and laughed with showing through. "Beyond that, you are my friend. I trust you, and I will always protect you."

The wave that hit Alys was a turbulent sea. A staggering, knee-weakening relief washed over her first. He did not cast her aside, or mock her, but offered a way forward. Then came the aching sadness. He asked only for loyalty and honour, a partnership that a marriage could be built upon.

"Thank you, Robb," she whispered. And she meant it with every shattered piece of her heart.

The wedding day passed over her like a strange, silent storm. Moving through the rituals, encased in a shell of numbness, Alys was removed of her Reed cloak and was placed by Robb's heavy, fur-lined cloak of winter. Its significance weighed down of her, no longer a riverlands girl but a creature of the North.

Her vows were whispers lost beneath the high stone walls. Her eyes reamined downcast, fixed on the woven pattern of the rug, afraid to see the sea of faces. But once her gaze flickered up, she was drawn to a familiar figure.

There, standing in the shadows of an archway, was Jon. He was already clad in black, the wool a stark contrast to the celebratory colours of the wedding ceremony. He stood alone, his face a mask of perfect stillness. He did not look at Alys, his eyes fixed above the septon performing the rites. The sight was final. The boy from the godswood was already gone.

Later, the raucous cheers and bawdy songs of the wedding party faded, swallowed by the thick oak door of Robb's chamber - now Alys's chamber. The heavy thud of the bolt sliding was the loudest sound in the world.

A generous fire crackled in the hearth, painting dancing shadows on the tapestries of battles and wolves. The room was warm and utterly alien. She stood in the centre of the room, her wedding gown of silver-grey and blue satin feeling much like a ridiculous costume than a beautiful dress.

She heard Robb move, simply leaning against the solid wood of the door, as if needing its support. Alys forced herself to look at him, seeing his auburn curls and his pale face beneath freckles, and his shoulder slumped. He looked young and nervous.

His voice, when it came, was soft and bare. "Tonight... We don't... Don't have to." he said, the words halting.

Alys stared at her husband. Robb was offering an escape hatch, a reprieve. It was a kindness, the one Jon had told her he had. But she remembered the lessons drilled into them by Maester Luwin. A marriage unconsummated was a contract unsigned, an alliance easily broken. Looking at him now, she saw he didn't deserve the reluctant bride he's been given. He needed his wife's commitment.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. "We must."

He searched her face for a long moment, and then gave a solemn nod. He understood. When he pushed away from the door and walked towards her, he did it slowly.

His fingers were clumsy on the intricate laces of her gown, but they were gentle and patient. He worked slowly, giving Alys time to breath, to absorb her new reality, to understand what was about to take place. The layers of silk and satin pooled at her feet, leaving her in a simple white shift. He pulled at his own tunic, leaving himself bare over his torso. In the firelight, she saw the strong, lean lines of his body, the scattering of copper hair across his chest. It wasn't what she had been expecting, but she also wasn't sure what she had been expecting.

He began to touch her then. It was nothing like the stolen caresses in the godswood with Jon. His hands mapped the slopes and planes of her body, his kisses were not hungry but questioning and tender. He was learning her.

Somewhere, deep beneath the cold numbness of grief, she felt a kindled spark. His skin was warm against hers, the softness of his lips on the shell of her ear, the whisper of her name. She buckled and turned her head, meeting his lips with a fire he'd never expected. Alys had thought she could get through it by thinking of Jon, imagining that it was Jon she lay beside, but in this moment, she was watching Robb and deliberately traced her fingertips down his naval.

A sudden, sharp current of bravery surged through her. It felt less like courage and more like necessity - a final act to bridge the chasm of her own fear. Before her nerves could rebel, her fingers found the fabric of her shift and tugged. The linen whispered against her skin as it slid down her body.

He hadn't expected that. His breath caught, a soft intake of air. His gaze now travelled over her - the gentle slope of her waist, the softness of her hips, the shy curve of her breasts. He was dazed in a grateful wonder.

Within moments, they had made it over to the bed, with Robb discarding himself of his boots and breeches along the way. There was a sharp pain that made her gasp and stiffen, but he simply held her and stroked her temple with his thumb. When he began moving, he did so with a slow, careful rhythm. And the feeling... changed. The pain receded, replaced by a gathering fullness. A coil that began to tighten low in her belly. A small sound escaped her lips and her hands flew to touch his body.

Her mind no longer thought of godswoods and grey eyes. There was only Robb. The feel of his heartbeat against hers, the rhythm they found together, the sensation she had no name for that he brought out in her... How could she have overlooked him?

The coil finally snapped and Alys shook against him. A moment later, Robb's body shuddered against hers with a choked gasp.

For a long time, there was only the sound of the crackling fire and their breaths. Robb then moved, pulling the furs up over her cooled skin.

Tears welled, spilling hot and silent down her temple and into her hair. They were not bitter tears, but born of confusion, overwhelmed-ness, and of an awe of her husband. They had done their duty, but it had opened a door inside that she thought she'd closed forever when Jon broke her heart.

Alys turned her head to look at him, his blue eyes staring back at her, wholly focused on her. Her fingertips rose to graze the stubble of her chin as he placed his hand on her hip, pulling her body closer to his.

"I didn't know I could misjudge my own heart," she whispered against him.

He smiled, true and bright, and he tucked her head beneath his chin, his arms a steady shelter. She closed her eyes, feeling her husbands slow breaths and hearing the northern wind moaning outside.

Alys Stark was exactly where she wanted to be.

[jodeswrites]

Game of Thrones | jodeswrites

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Greetings, noble readers and loyal subjects of the Seven Kingdoms!

If you've found your way here, you likely know what this is. The histories of betrayal and allegiance, of fire and ice, refused to let me go. So, I began to write my own.

To bring some order to the realm, I declare this post the official archive for all my Game of Thrones works.

I hope these tales bring you a even a fraction of the wonder this world have given me.

Jodeswrites xoxo

One-Shots:

A Heart Grown in Winter | completed - Robb x f!oc - 3,576 words

Young Alys Reed arrived at Winterfell as a ward, finding her heart torn between two brothers. A secret love blossoms with Jon Snow, Lord Eddard's bastard, in the quiet of the godswood. But Alys is betrothed to the heir, Robb Stark, and now she faces a life she never wanted. Alys learns that love can grown in the most unlikely circumstances, with someone she never thought she could love.

[jodeswrites]

Of Queens and Usurpers | Chapter Four

Main Navi | HOTD Masterlist | Of Queens and Usurpers Index

Pairing: Aegon Targaryen II x Visenna Targaryen (sister!oc) Synopsis: In a shattered realm where the Greens have won a victory, Princess Visenna's fate is decreed: a political marriage to her brother, Aemond. In desperation, she ignited a forbidden spark with her broken king, Aegon II. As Alicent's control slips and Aemond's cold fury threatens to start a new war, Visenna and Aegon must fight to build a lasting legacy from the ashes. Word Count: 1,272

Chapter Four - Her King, Remade - (NSFW)

The heavy oak door of the council chamber shut with a final, muffled thud. The silence in the long, torch-lit corridor was no better. It spoke every unspoken word.

Aegon's kingly posture disintegrated, his shoulders curled inward. The straight of his back became a defeated slump. He did not see Visenna beside him, his gaze sliding over the stone dragons that lined the hall. The iron-and-ruby crown, which had felt like a conquering helm moments ago, seemed a heavy mockery that bit into his temples.

He moved with the momentum of a retreat, pushing past the guard at her door to the familiar sanctuary of Visenna's solar. His target was clear: the carafe of Dornish strongwine that gleamed on the side.

"Don't."

The word snapped his momentum. He whirled, his face a mask of wounded fury. "Do not," he hissed, the words trembling, "presume to command me. I am tired of being commanded. By her. By him. I will not have it from you."

He was a cornered animal, all pride and lashing pain. Visenna's heart ached but not with pity. With a fierce, protective understanding. She closed the door softly, sealing them in, and approached him with a steady, calm certainty.

"I am not commanding the king," she said, her voice low. She stopped an arm's length from him, holding his eyes with her own. "I am reminding him who he is."

A bitter laugh escaped him. "Who am I? Tell me, since you seem to know. I am the king whose own mother issues his decrees? I am the king whose brother tries to squash him? Where is the victory in any of this, Visenna?"

"The victory," she said, stepping closer, "is here." She lifted her arms but she did not touch him. Instead, she took the crown from his head and placed it down. "It is in the shattered expression of Aemond when he learned he had lost me. It is in the very words you spoke and the silence that followed when none dared to challenge." Her voice dropped, becoming intimate. "You did that. You saw what you wanted and you claimed it. Did Aegon the Conqueror claim the Seven Kingdoms by waiting for permission? No. He did it with fire and blood. Just as you have now."

He stared at her, his breath coming in short, ragged pulls. The anger was still there but it was softening at the edges. "He had Balerion and his sisters," Aegon whispered. "I have lost my dragon and I am broken." He gestured vaguely at his own scarred body.

"You have me," she breathed, her palms coming up to cradle his face. Her thumbs swept over the rough, rippled skin of his scars with a tenderness that made his eyes flutter shut. "I am here by my choice and by yours. These..." She leaned forward, pressing her lips to a knotted ridge of flesh near his collarbone, a kiss as soft as a prayer. "These are not proof of your weakness. They are proof of your survival. You are here, you are alive, you are king."

Her words were a balm. They did not erase the pain but they eased it, forging his humiliation into a validating need. A low, guttural sound broke from him and he captured her mouth with a kiss.

This kiss was a conqueror's claim. Nothing like their first. This was a king asserting his dominion and a queen offering her absolute surrender. It was all teeth and tongue and shared breath, hungry and devouring. His hands gripped her hips and he walked her backwards until the back of her knees met the edge of her carved bed.

He broke the kiss, his forehead resting against hers. "I am the king," he rasped, as if convincing himself.

"You are my king," she affirmed, her fingers moving to work at the laces of his doublet.

Her assurance undid him. With trembling hands, he helped her push the black silk from his shoulders. She turned her back, presenting the laces of her green gown. His fingers were clumsy, but she waited until the fabric loosened and pooled at her feet, leaving her in a thin linen shift. She turned back to face him, her gaze stealing the air from his lungs.

She guided him to sit on the edge of the bed and knelt before him, removing his boots. When she rose, she let the shift fall. The gentle swell of her breasts, the curve of her waist... She was glorious and she was his. She pulled at the pin in her hair, tossing it aside, her golden hair falling in soft waves down her back.

He stared at her as she helped him out of his breeches. He couldn't contain himself and pulled her down onto the bed in a tangle of limbs. It was a raw, consuming urgency. His mouth found hers again, then trailed fire down her throat until he found the bud of her breast. She gasped, her head falling back, her fingers spearing into his silver hair.

"Aegon," she sighed.

He entered her in a slow thrust. A shared gasp filled the space between them - a sharp stab of pain for her, a shuddering release of unbearable tension for him.

She moved beneath him, a subtle arch of her hips, and a broken sound was torn from him. He began to move, his rhythm faltering at first, then picking up. He pulled back and slammed in, his anger and humiliation spurring him on. Her legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him deeper, anchoring him to her. She whispered against his ear between ragged kisses.

"My king..."

"My love..."

"My Aegon..."

"Conquer me..."

Each word pushed away his doubt, fuelled his fire. With each deep thrust, he was not the puppet king they saw. He was Aegon, and he was claiming his land, his treasure, his queen. Her nails scored down his back, marking him, reminding him he was really here, really the one in power. Each brutal plunge reminded him that he was the true conqueror.

His climax took him like a storm, violent and cleansing. A raw, wordless cry tore from a place deeper than the pain. He collapsed upon her, his body shuddering, his face buried in the crook of her neck. She held him through it.

For long minutes, there was only the sound of their mingled breath and the distant cry of a gull outside. The sweat cooled on their skin. The last of the sun's rays painted them in stripes of gold and shadow.

Slowly, Aegon rolled to his side, taking her with him, keeping her close. He traced the line of her cheekbone, his touch now gentle.

"They will say I was weak, led by lust or wine, or both."

Visenna turned her head, her lips brushing his scarred chest. "Let them talk. They called the Conqueror a usurper and his sisters whores. History only remembers his victory." She propped herself up on an elbow, looking down at him. She was fierce and beautiful. "History will not recall who ordered what. It will remember its king was Aegon, who overcame all obstacles and secured victory for the realm. And he shall have a son born from my womb."

He looked up at her, this girl who didn't see a ruined brother, but a glorious king. The hollow ache was gone, replaced with a steady, burning ember. He had taken what he wanted, he had told them all that there was no changing his mind, and he was going to keep it with fire and blood.

[jodeswrites]

Can u post on ao3

Hey! I'm on the waiting list for an account. Soon as I'm able to, I'll post up the link for you.

[jodeswrites]

Of Queens and Usurpers | Chapter Three

Main Navi | HOTD Masterlist | Of Queens and Usurpers Index

Pairing: Aegon Targaryen II x Visenna Targaryen (sister!oc) Synopsis: In a shattered realm where the Greens have won a victory, Princess Visenna's fate is decreed: a political marriage to her brother, Aemond. In desperation, she ignited a forbidden spark with her broken king, Aegon II. As Alicent's control slips and Aemond's cold fury threatens to start a new war, Visenna and Aegon must fight to build a lasting legacy from the ashes. Word Count: 1,465

Chapter Three - The Reckoning

The air in the small council chamber was thick with an unusual anticipatory tension. Visenna stood behind the king's chair, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. Aegon sat, his posture an unfamiliar authority, his back straight and hands flat on the table. His iron-and-ruby crown on his head.

Alicent sat at the foot of the table, her posture rigid, her eyes fixed on her folded hands as if in prayer. The councillors - Jasper Wylde, Tyland Lannister, Orwyle, Larys Strong- wore expressions of mild curiosity.

The door opened, and Aemond entered.

He moved with a different energy than Visenna had seen in days. There was a sharpness to him, a focused intent. He dressed in a tunic of midnight black, his hair swept back. He did not look at Visenna, though. His gaze went to his mother, who refused to meet it, then to the empty chair beside the king's. His chair. A faint, almost imperceptible tilt of his chin suggested satisfaction. He believed he was here to receive his dues, ratified by law and council.

He stood behind his chair, waiting for the king to speak, the very image of a prince.

"Your Grace," Ser Tyland began. "The petitions from the Stormlands..."

"Can wait," Aegon said, his voice carrying a forced strength. He did not look at his brother. He stared at a point in the centre of the table, gathering the words he and Visenna had rehearsed. "We are here for a matter of the royal line. Of securing the future."

Aemond's posture, if possible, became straighter. His hand rested lightly on the back of his chair. A faint, cool smile touched his lips. He finally glanced at Visenna, a possessive arc of his eyes that made her shudder.

"The succession is the realm's wound," Aegon continued, his fingers lacing together tightly. "To heal it, the crown requires an undisputed, direct line. A clear path." He took a breath. "Therefore, I will take a queen."

A ripple of approval went around the table. Lord Wylde nodded, Grand Maester Orwyle smiled. This was expected. The king was finally doing his duty, choosing a bride to give them all an heir, if he could. If not, at least he tried, and it would solidify Aemond's grasp on the throne as heir with his own queen beside him.

Aegon's eyes flickered shut for a heartbeat, then he opened them. "The blood must be pure. The loyalty, absolute." He gave an awkward, stiff motion of his hand. "I will marry my sister, Princess Visenna."

The approval from around the table died instantly, frozen in time.

For a second, Aemond did not move. He had heard the words, but their sequence was wrong. I will marry my sister. I, not he. It was all wrong. He tilted his head slightly, as if trying to hear the words for a second time. His gaze left his brother and swung to his sister. He was processing the words, replaying the scene.

"A... clever solution, Your Grace," Grand Maester Orwyle stammered into the void, trying to force the pieces to fit a new picture. "The Valyrian precedent... the purity of blood is, of course, paramount..."

"I must have misheard, brother," Aemond said, cutting through the babbling, his tone one of polite bafflement. "The fatigue of the morning, perhaps. It sounded as though you said you were taking the bride of your heir, in order to sire your own."

The quiet fury was not in volume, but in precision. He framed it not as a loss of love, but as a king's pathetic attempt at overreaching.

Aegon flushed. "It is a royal decree for the benefit of the realm. A law..."

"Ah," Aemond breathed, the syllable heavy with a fake understanding. "Law. Of course. I had forgotten. The law is what you say it is to suit desire. How convenient it is to have a crown that functions as both prize and pardon." He shifted his weight. "Tell me, does it also wipe the wine from your chin, or must our sister attend that too?"

The insult was breathtaking. It reduced Aegon's kingship to a toddler's bauble and Visenna to a nursemaid, all in once vicious sentence.

Visenna stepped forward, her voice a soft balm of submission. "Brother, please. Aegon acts for the good of all. I am but a sister, obeying her king. The king's will is my duty." She was pouring the words out, trying to douse the icy fire Aemond was lighting.

Aemond's eyes settled on her. The calculation was gone, replaced by something colder: disappointment.

"Obey?" he repeated, as if the word were in a foreign tongue. "You, who have never obeyed aught but your own cunning?" He took a single, silent step closer to the table. "Do not insult me by dressing it in a septa's robes."

He had seen through her completely. He had stripped her bare and named her ambition in front of the entire council. Her face burned, but she held her ground. "The king has decided," she insisted.

Aemond looked from her to Aegon. He let out a soft, humourless sound, not quite a laugh. "So he had. Then by all means, I will not stand between a king and his... newfound sense of duty."

He turned to leave. The door closed behind him with a definitive thud.

The silence in the chamber was thick, a suffocating fog. Aegon was the first to move, gripping the edge of the table so as not to show his trembling hands. The flush of anger on his neck was deepening to an ugly purple against his scars. He looked less like a king who had issued a decree and more like a boy who had thrown a rock at a window and now stood amidst the shards.

Ser Tyland stared at the grain of the oak table, Lord Jasper with his handkerchief pressed to his lips, and Orwyle's chain seemed to weight heavy as he slumped into his chair. Only Lord Larys Strong appeared engaged, his mild gaze drifting from Visenna's pale face to Aegon's creased brows.

It was Alicent who broke the spell.

She did not speak at first. She simply pushed her chair back, the legs scraping against the stone floor with a sound that made everyone flinch. She rose, not looking at Aegon, nor Visenna.

"The announcement will be made from the throne room tomorrow at noon," she stated. She was the Queen Dowager, and this was damage control. "Grand Maester, you will draft the proclamation. Cite the purity of the Valyrian bloodline, and the... duty... of the princess. It is a wise decision."

Alicent's attention swept the rest of the table. "Lord Tyland, you will ensure the Gold Cloaks are doubly vigilant in the city. There will be talk. There may be... unrest. Lord Jasper, you will draft a summary of historical unions within the royal family for distribution to the more tiresome members of the Faith. Cite Jaehaerys and Alysanne heavily."

"He dares... to speak to me... like some common..." Aegon sputtered quietly, lowly.

Visenna cut him off by placing her hand on his shoulder, her thumb making soothing circles on the tense muscle beneath the silk. Aegon leaned into her touch, anchoring him to reality.

"What am I to do with Aemond?" he questioned with anger, spitting at his brother's name.

Before anyone could speak, Alicent did. "You have taken something from him. Now, you must give something back."

"A wife." Visenna muttered.

All eyes turned to the golden-haired princess. "The matches proposed for the king were for the good of the realm. Mayhaps one will satisfy your brother."

Aegon was still for a moment, the red haze of his anger clearing at their words. His eyes were suddenly sharp and keen. Then a slow smile spread across his face. "Yes. My mother and sister are wise. Grand Maester, fetch those scrolls with the names of ladies you believed a good match for the crown."

"Your Grace?" Orwyle blinked.

"For Prince Aemond. For his loyal service, he shall have his pick of the brides found suitable for a king."

The cruelty was exquisite. He was offering Aemond his leftovers. The woman he had rejected. Now presented as a gift. Aemond would be forced to choose a bride from a roster of his brother's discards.

Alicent closed her eyes. It was a move worthy of Otto Hightower, made by her children to slight another.

"A shrewd gesture of royal benevolence, Your Grace," Lord Larys Strong commented, his voice approvingly.

"See it done."

As the meeting adjourned, Aegon stood. Visenna fell into step beside him, her hand resting lightly on his arm. He looked down at her, his expression triumphant. Visenna smiled up at him, mirroring his satisfaction.

[jodeswrites]

Of Queens and Usurpers | Chapter Two

Main Navi | HOTD Masterlist | Of Queens and Usurpers Index

Pairing: Aegon Targaryen II x Visenna Targaryen (sister!oc) Synopsis: In a shattered realm where the Greens have won a victory, Princess Visenna's fate is decreed: a political marriage to her brother, Aemond. In desperation, she ignited a forbidden spark with her broken king, Aegon II. As Alicent's control slips and Aemond's cold fury threatens to start a new war, Visenna and Aegon must fight to build a lasting legacy from the ashes. Word Count: 2,116

Chapter Two - Stoking the Flames

The grey light crept through the high, narrow windows of Visenna's solar, a thief in a silken mantle, stealing the night's concealing shadows and leaving behind the cold truth of what they had done. She sat on the edge of her rumpled bed, the fine linen of her shift cool against her skin. The ghost of his kiss was a brand upon her lips. In the dark, with his hands in her hair and the taste of sour wine on his tongue, it had been salvation. Now, in the pale wash of the morning, it felt more like a conspiracy.

Across the room, Aegon stood at the window, a silhouette carved against the milky sky. The broken , wine-sodden creature of the night before was gone, shed like a second skin. In his place stood something straighter - the king he should have always been. He had dressed himself, his movements in the half-light clumsy and silent, a man preparing for battle.

Visenna watched the line of his shoulders, the tension in his neck. He was not looking at the waking city below; he was staring into some middle distance. She loved him in that moment. Not with the girlish flutter of her youth, but with a fierce ache that was older than her years. She loved the stubborn, flickering flame within him that she alone seemed able to fan.

"They will have seen," she said, her voice a soft melody in the quiet chamber. It was not a lament, not a fear. It was the opening move in the game they now played, the first piece placed upon the board. "The guards at your door will have noted your absence. My maids will know you stayed. Their whispers will be the first volley."

Aegon did not turn. "Let them whisper," he said. "Whispers are the weapons of the powerless. I will shout to drown them out."

She rose, the shift whispering against her thighs as she padded barefoot across the Myrish rug. She approached him. "And what will the king shout?" she asked, stopping just behind him, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body. She let her voice carry a teasing lilt. "Will it be a tantrum? A brother's jealous fit?"

He turned then, slowly. In the harsh morning light, he looked older than his years. The scars on the left side of his neck and jaw were livid, purple robes of ruined flesh against his skin. But his eyes... his eyes were different. The haze was burned away, replaced by a sharp focus that pinned her where she stood.

He reached out and caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger. His touch was cool. The possessiveness in the gesture send a hot, sharp thrill through her. "It will be law," he said, his voice law. "But I lack the words to wrap my want in reasons they cannot dispute."

A smile touched her lips. This was the dance. He had the will and royal authority, she had the mind and political cunning. Together, they were a whole ruler. She leaned into his touch but her eyes held his. "The succession. You sit the throne with no heir but Aemond, who lacks an heir himself. The lords fear another Dance, especially should our brother ever become king. You have refused every bride they have brought before you..." She paused, letting the logic build like a wall in his mind. "But now... after solemn reflection, you have chosen a match that strengthens the realm in the same way they were preparing to the moment you are gone. A marriage of pure Valyrian blood, uniting the king's line beyond all doubt. The highest duty of a king is to secure his dynasty. You are securing the future."

He watched her, that strange, weary admiration dawning in his hollow eyes. He let his hand drop from her chin to curl around the back of her neck, his fingers tangling in the loose waves of her golden hair. "Impressive," he murmured, his thumb stroking behind her ear.

"They will try to tear it apart and he will lead them."

A shadow passed over his face at the mention of Aemond. The jealousy she had sparked was a living thing, a dragon curled at their feet. "He will do as his king commands."

"When has he ever listened to you?" Visenna countered gently, not to wound him. "He believes I belong to him, as Vhagar once did. To take me is to take a pound of his flesh. He will see it as the deepest slight a brother can give."

"And if he does?" The question was quiet, but the steel beneath it was new-forged.

"We make our move today. Now. Before any of them can make their own. And we tell Mother first." She reached up and placed her hand over his where it rested against her neck.

"She will not approve."

"She doesn't have to." Visenna's mind was racing with outcomes branching like a tree. "She wants the line secure. This secures it through you, the king. It's a cleaner line. Should you have remarried and had sons... Her control would end. She may hate it, but in time, she will see the advantages."

Aegon was silent for a long moment, his gaze searching her face as if memorising its lines. "You would make a formidable Hand of the King," he said finally, a crooked smile touching his lips.

Gazing at him, she said, "I would rather be your queen."

He nodded, the decision settling upon him like a mantle of office. "Then we go to her now. Before the council convenes." He released her and moved to the door, each step a commitment. At the door, he looked back. "Wear green."

When the door shut behind him, the silence was different, charged with their shared purpose.

Visenna dressed with slow, deliberate care. Her maid, Josey, entered with wide eyes but asked no questions. Together, they laced her into a gown of deep green velvet, the colour of the Hightower beacon in the fog. The sleeves were slashed with cloth-of-gold and the high neck was embroidered with a subtle pattern of interlocking chains in black thread. Her hair was braided and coiled severely at her nape, a style too old for her years, but perfect for a queen.

The hour after, she stood outside the doors to Alicent's chambers in the Tower of the Hand, a residency she had not given up. The walk through the Red Keep had been sidelong glances and hastily averted eyes. The news, or the rumour of it, was already a live thing slithering through the stones.

Aegon, beside her, wore a doublet of black slashed with green silk, the three-headed dragon of their house embroidered in gold over his chest. He held himself with a rigid, pained formality, but his chin was high and his gaze was dismissing. He was playing the king, and for the first time, Visenna saw that others began to believe.

Ser Gerrad Grover of the Kingsguard stood watch at Alicent's door. His eyes behind his white helm flickered between them, noting their solemnity and the way Aegon's hand rested at the small of Visenna's back. "Your Grace. Princess," he intoned.

"Announce us," Aegon commanded, his voice permitting no hesitation.

Ser Gerrad knocked once and pushed the heavy oak door inward. "Your Grace, King Aegon and Princess Visenna."

The Queen's solar was a room of quiet. Alicent Hightower stood at her prayer table, a simple slab of oak before a beautiful seven-pointed star. She was already dressed for the day in a high-necked gown of sombre grey, her vibrant auburn hair pulled back and pinned up. The room smelled of beeswax and dried lavender.

She did not turn at their entrance, finishing her whispered petition to the Mother. The silence stretched. Visenna felt Aegon's fingers press more firmly against her spine, a silent signal to hold fast.

Finally, Alicen turned. Her face was a calm, polished mask, but her famous hazel eyes were as watchful as a cat's. They took in Aegon's uncharacteristic posture and Visenna's attire. A mother's perception and politician's instinct warred in her.

"My children," she said. "This is early."

"Mother," Aegon began. He did not step forward, but seemed to grow taller where he stood. "We come on a matter of state. A decision has been made concerning the succession."

Alicent neatly clasped her hands before her. "I see. And does this decision require my counsel, or merely my audience?"

"Your understanding," Visenna said softly. It was a risk to speak before the king, but it was part of their unspoken pact - she would guide the conversation into necessary ground. "The realm's unrest stems from a single, festering question. The king intends to answer it. Permanently."

Alicent's gaze sharpened on her daughter. "And what answer has His Grace conceived in his... solitude?"

Aegon's jaw tightened at the veiled barb, but his voice remained steady. "That the crown requires an undisputed line. That the only way to secure this peace is to unite the blood of the dragon under one banner, through the king himself."

The hope that had flickered in Alicent's eyes for a Lannister bride or a Baratheon alliance died. Smothered by an icy dawning. Her eyes locked onto Visenna, standing there in her Hightower green, and the pieces connected.

"No," she breathed, a word so soft and broken.

"I will marry Visenna," Aegon stated. The declaration was not loud, but it fell into the quiet room with the weight of an anvil.

"You cannot." It was a mother's plea, stripped of all queenly artifice. She took a step toward Aegon, her hand outstretched as if to physically pull him back. "Aegon, think. It is Visenna."

"I know who she is, Mother," Aegon said, a flicker of impatience in his eyes. "Our blood is that of the dragon. This union will be the realm's strength."

"Strength?" Alicent's voice whispered in fury, or was it fear? "You stoke a fire and call it strength? You take what is not yours."

Visenna could feel the heat rising within her, but she spoke with a cool balm to her voice. "I am a dragon to be claimed? I think not. You ask me to do my duty to the kingdoms by producing an heir of unrefutable Targaryen blood. This I will do... with Aegon."

The silence in the room deepened, the meaning of her words shifting. Alicent's eyes widened, seeing the truth she had missed before. It was not merely a strategic alliance. It was a choice of the heart.

"I see now," Alicent whispered, the fight draining from her voice, replaced with a weary understanding. "And what of Aemond?"

Visenna held her ground. "He is the king's heir until I produce a son. And we will find a wife worthy of him."

"A bride his brother once refused before he stole the only girl he ever wanted?" Alicent snorted. She looked to Aegon's stubborn expression to Visenna's defiant face. "He does not want a wife. He wants you."

She let out a long slow breath, the last of her resistance escaping with it. Alicent agreed that the line was cleaner, stronger, but at what cost?

"I will not stand in your way," she said, her voice hollow. "I will do what I must to quench whatever fires I can. But know this: you have turned your brother into your enemy this day. And that is a fire no one can quench save you, Visenna." Her gaze firmly fixated on Visenna as she spoke, and then turned her back on them. "May the Mother grant you mercy where Aemond will not."

Aegon stood rigid for a moment longer and then took Visenna's hand and led her away. The heavy door shut behind them, sealing Alicent in with her silence.

In the corridor, the air felt changed. The victory was theirs, but it tasted sour.

As they walked towards the council chamber, they passed an arched window. Visenna's gaze was drawn downward, as if by taut wire. Aemond stood in the yard below, having just dismissed a groom from his white destrier. He stood perfectly still, looking up at the sky as if reading the clouds. Then, as if he felt the weight of her stare, his head turned slightly.

His single eye found them in the window of the tower. He held the stare, all emotion scoured away, for a long time. Then he turned on his heel and walked towards the Holdfast.

"He knows," Visenna breathed, the cold from the window seeping into her bones.

[jodeswrites]

House of the Dragon | jodeswrites

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Hello, wonderful readers and fellow Targaryen stans!

If you're here, you've likely felt the same pull I have - the need to stay in the rich and fascinating world of House of the Dragon. I've found myself utterly captivated in the histories written in fire and blood. So much so, that I've been writing my own.

To keep everything organised and easy to find, I'm making this post the central hub for all my House of the Dragon works.

So, pour a glass of Arbor gold (or whatever you prefer), settle in, and I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing.

Jodeswrites xoxo

Series:

Of Queens and Usurpers | in progress - Aegon x sister!oc - 7,360 words

In a shattered realm where the Greens have won a victory, Princess Visenna's fate is decreed: a political marriage to her brother, Aemond. In desperation, she ignited a forbidden spark with her broken king, Aegon II. As Alicent's control slips and Aemond's cold fury threatens to start a new war, Visenna and Aegon must fight to build a lasting legacy from the ashes.

[jodeswrites]

Of Queens and Usurpers | Aegon Targaryen II

Main Navi | HOTD Masterlist

Pairings: Aegon Targaryen II x Visenna Targaryen (sister!OC)

Warnings: SPOILERS! Alternate Timeline, Depictions of Violence, Character Deaths, Incest, Suicide, Child Death, Grief and Mourning, Toxic Relationships, Substance Abuse, Abusive Behaviour, Age Gap, Smut

Synopsis: The Dance of the Dragons is over. The Greens stand victorious, but their triumph is written in ash and blood. King Aegon the Second , physically shattered and haunted by loss, rules a broken realm from a throne that brings him no solace. The future of the dynasty rests of a knife's edge. His sister, Princess Visenna, is presented with a solution: to become a bride to their possessive brother, Prince Aemond, to secure the line of succession. Horrified by a fate that feels like a gilded cage, Visenna makes a desperate bid for her own destiny. She turns to the one person with the power to change her path: the broken king himself. What begins as an act of defiance sparks and unexpected and perilous alliance. In the shadowed halls of the Red Keep, where every smile hides a dagger and every loyalty is frayed, a new and dangerous games begins. To save themselves and secure a legacy from ruin, Visenna and Aegon must navigate the venomous politics of a fractured court, the seething rage of a betrayed brother, and the ghostly weight of a crown paid for in blood.

You can also now find this on AO3.

Chapter One - The Princess's Plea, 2,507 words

Chapter Two - Stoking the Flames, 2,116 words

Chapter Three - The Reckoning, 1,465 words

Chapter Four - Her King, Remade, 1,272 words - NSFW

Chapter Five - coming soon

[jodeswrites]

Of Queens and Usurpers | Chapter One

Main Navi | HOTD Masterlist | Of Queens and Usurpers Index

Pairing: Aegon Targaryen II x Visenna Targaryen (sister!oc) Synopsis: In a shattered realm where the Greens have won a victory, Princess Visenna's fate is decreed: a political marriage to her brother, Aemond. In desperation, she ignited a forbidden spark with her broken king, Aegon II. As Alicent's control slips and Aemond's cold fury threatens to start a new war, Visenna and Aegon must fight to build a lasting legacy from the ashes. Word Count: 2,507

Chapter One - The Princess's Plea

The silence in her mother's apartments was thick with ghosts of the Red Keep. It was a silence Visenna Targaryen hated. It pressed against her ears and roared louder than any dragon in the Dragonpit. She stood before a high, narrow window, her back to the room, her fingers tracing the stone of the sill. Ten and six years old and she felt the weight of the world on her shoulders like a chainmail shroud.

Outside, King's Landing stank of slow renewal. The Dance of the Dragons was over. The words were said so often they had lost meaning, a hollow chant. The Dance is over. The King has won. Yet Visenna's family, the triumphant Greens, were a collection of broken things in a gilded cage.

Her mother, Queen Alicent, moved through the Red Keep like a stern, green-clad ghost, holding the bones of the realm together with sheer will and brittle prayers. Her brother, King Aegon the Second, sat the Iron Throne with a body as scarred as his spirit, seeking solace at the bottom of cups of Dornish wine. And Aemond... Aemond moved with a new, deliberate stiffness, his shattered body now mended but forever altered. The sapphire in his socket seemed to burn colder now.

"Visenna."

Her mother's voice cut through the silence. Visenna turned. Alicent stood by the great, oak table, her hands resting on a scroll. She looked older than her years these days. "Come. We must speak."

"Is it about the petition from the Reach?" Visenna asked, crossing the room. She tried to sound engaged, every inch the dutiful princess. "Ser Tyland said their grain stores-"

"It is about your future," Alicent interrupted, her gaze unwavering. "And the future of our house."

A cold trickle, like meltwater from the Blackwater, traced Visenna's spine. "My future?"

Alicent unrolled the scroll, thought Visenna knew she did not need to read its contents. They were etched in her mind. "The war cost us everything. Your father, your grandfather, your nephew, your brother and sister..." Helaena's fate was a wound too fresh. Alicent closed her eyes, steadying herself. "The line of succession is... perilous. Aegon sits the throne, but his heir is Jaehaera."

A sweet, shattered girl who jumped at shadows and spoke to spiders. The last child surviving of a union that had brought only grief.

"The realm will not accept another queen regnant," Alicent stated, the political reality as hard as iron. "Not after Rhaenyra. Not after the blood that was spilled over that very question. The precedent is set, however foul the means. The throne must pass through a male line."

Visenna's breath began to feel tight in her chest. "Aegon could remarry."

A flicker of profound exhaustion crossed Alicent's face. "He will not even entertain the notion. Between the wine and his injuries, it is... uncertain if he even could."

The vulgar truth, laid bare.

"That leaves Aemond," Alicent said, and the name hung in the air, inevitable as a sword's fall. "Aemond is the last viable Targaryen male. He secured our victory in the God's Eye. When Aegon's time is done, the throne will pass to him. But to secure the succession, to bind our claim with unassailable strength, he must marry and his heirs must be of pure Valyrian blood."

Alicent's eyes finally softened, a tragic softness. "It must be you, Visenna."

The world tilted. The stone floor beneath her seems wobbly. "Mother... no. He is my brother."

"You are Targaryens," Alicent replied. "Your father and I, we planned for Helaena and Aegon. This is no different. It is necessity. It is duty."

But it was different. Visenna had seen how Helaena shrivelled in Aegon's presence. They were not suited.

And Aemond... Aemond was not Aegon. Aegon's attentions had been an occasional neglect. Aemond's attentions were a constant pressure. Since she had bloomed into womanhood, his single eye had followed her with a intensity that made her skin prickle. His "kindness" felt like a branding. You are mine. He never said it, but she heard it in every word, saw it in every glance. His adoration was a cage, his possessiveness a shackle. To be bound to him, for life, to share his bed, to bear his children... It terrified Visenna.

"I cannot," she whispered, her voice trembling. "Please, Mother. There must be another way. A cousin from across the sea..."

"There is no other way that keeps our family on the throne!" Alicent's composure cracked, her voice rising to a desperate hiss. "Do you think I want this for you? Do you think I am blind? I see how he looks at you." Visenna stepped back. Alicent smoothed her hands down her dress. "But he will protect you when I am gone. He will secure the blood of our house and he will do it with you by his side. It is all that matters now."

The finality in her mother's eyes extinguished Visenna's hope. Alicent had made her calculation, weighing her daughter's fear against the cold arithmetic of power.

Visenna fled. She did not run to her chambers. She ran through the serpentine passages of the Keep, her slippers whispering on stone, until she found herself outside the doors to the King’s solar. The two knights of the Kingsguard stiffened at her approach. She was dishevelled, her eyes wild.

"I must see my brother," she demanded, her voice hoarse.

"His Grace is not to be disturbed, Princess," one intoned.

"He will see me." She put every ounce of royal will she possessed into the words. Perhaps it was the ghost of her father in her face or the desperation in her eyes, but after a moment’s hesitation, the knight nodded and opened the door.

The stench hit her first: sour wine, unwashed bodies and the cloying scent of medicinal ointments. The solar was shrouded in gloom, heavy drapes drawn against the afternoon sun. Aegon the Second, the Conqueror Reborn, sat slumped in a high-backed chair by a dead fireplace. A goblet dangled from his fingers. He was gaunt, the handsome youth burned away by fire and grief, leaving a craggy, pain-ridden man of three and twenty. His unkept silver-gold hair falling over eyes that were glassy and distant.

"Who dares…?" he slurred, then squinted. "Little sister? Have you come to scold me for skipping council again? Tell Mother I’m contemplating the realm’s… the realm’s…"

"I am to be married," Visenna said, the words bursting from her.

Aegon blinked slowly. "Good. Fine. You should be. Pretty thing like you. Get you out of this… this... whatever this is." He took a long drink.

"They are giving me to Aemond."

The goblet stopped halfway to his lips. For a long moment, the only sound was a drip of wine hitting the Myrish rug. Aegon’s bloodshot eyes focused, sharpening from a drunkard’s haze into something darker, more alert. A muscle twitched in his jaw. Then, deliberately, he drained the cup and reached for the flagon. "So? He’s a prince. You’re a princess. Targaryens wed. It’s what we do." He poured, his movements careful, too careful.

Visenna stepped closer, the desperation breaking like a wave inside her. "He believes I belong to him. He always has. You know this. Mother says it is for the succession, because Jaehaera is a girl and you will not remarry."

Aegon let out a bitter, wet chuckle. "Smart man, my brother. Knows what he wants." He swirled the wine, not looking at her. "It solves a problem. Let him have it. Let him have the throne and you with it. I’m tired of problems."

This was going all wrong. He was supposed to be angry, to be protective, to be… a king. He was her last hope. The truth, the dangerous, secret truth she had guarded since she first understood the flutter in her chest when he smiled, broke free.

"I have always loved you."

The words fell into the stale air, stark and undeniable.

Aegon’s head snapped up. His gaze locked onto hers, the drunkenness burned away in an instant by a shock so profound it was almost comical.

Visenna pressed on, the dam broken. "When I was a girl, it was you I followed. You I dreamed of. Not him. Never him. And I know… I know you were wed to Helaena. I know I was too young. But I am not young now." She took a final, trembling step, her voice dropping to a whisper. "If you have ever cared for me, even a little, you will not let them do this. You are the king. Stop it."

For a heartbeat, she saw it. A fire, long buried, flickered in the depths of his sunken eyes. It was jealousy, yes, raw and possessive. It was memory of a time before the war, before the scars, when he was a careless prince and she was a bright-eyed child who adored him. It was something akin to hunger. Then, as if a shutter dropped, it vanished. His face smoothed into a mask of royal indifference. He looked away, back to his wine.

"Leave me, Visenna."

The dismissal was a physical blow. She stood frozen, humiliation and despair washing over her hotter than dragonfire. She had laid her soul bare before a man who had none left to give. Without another word, she turned and fled the room, the sound of his renewed drinking following her into the hall.

Time became a blur of silent tears and cold dread. Her maids prepared her for bed, their faces pitying and wary. They knew. The whole keep would know by now. She dismissed them, wanting only the merciful silence of her chambers. She stood in her shift by the window, watching the torches flicker in the yard below, feeling like a prisoner awaiting execution.

A soft knock at the door.

"Go away," she called, her voice thick.

The door opened anyway. Aegon stood there, framed in the torchlight of the corridor. He was sober, or as close to it as he ever came. The drunken slouch was gone, replaced by a tense rigidity. He had changed his tunic, and his hair was damp, as if he had dunked his head in a basin. He stepped inside and closed the door quietly behind him.

Visenna pulled a robe around herself, her heart a frantic drum. "What do you want?"

He didn’t speak at first. He paced a short track on her carpet, his boots soundless. He looked at her things - the books, the lute, the portrait of their family painted in happier times - as if he’d never seen them. "You told Mother you refused," he stated.

"She did not listen."

"You came to me."

"You did not listen either."

He stopped pacing and faced her. The mask was gone. In its place was a raw, unnerving intensity. "I listened." He took a step closer. "You said you loved me."

Visenna held her ground, lifting her chin. "A foolish girl’s confession to a king who only loves his wine."

A ghost of his old, crooked smile touched his lips. "The king is tired of wine." He ran a hand through his damp hair, the gesture agitated. "You were right. About Aemond. About the succession. About… all of it." He let out a short, hard breath. "I went to Mother. I told her to stop the wedding."

Hope, fragile and dizzying, burst in Visenna’s chest. "And?"

"She asked me how. How could it be stopped, without inviting chaos? Without insulting Aemond. I gave her reasons of state, of… of stability. She looked at me as if I were still a child hiding behind her skirts." His eye twitched. "There is only one way to stop it, Visenna. One reason Aemond could not contest. One solution that answers every question of blood and succession."

He closed the final distance between them. He smelled of soap and the faint, lingering scent of iron and smoke that never left him. His hands came up, not to grab her, but to hover at her shoulders, as if she were a dragon he feared to startle.

"Marry me."

The world stopped. The words hung in the air, not as a question, but as a stark, terrifying proposition.

"You… you refused to even consider remarrying," she breathed.

"I was considering the wrong bride." His eyes searched her face, desperately seeking something - agreement, absolution, perhaps just an echo of his own madness. "It solves everything. The realm gets a queen of pure blood. The succession is secured through me, the sitting king, not a brother. And Aemond…" His jaw tightened. "Aemond cannot have what is the king’s."

What is the king’s. The words should have chilled her. Instead, they ignited a defiant fire. It was escape. It was victory. It was the fulfillment of a forbidden dream, twisted and born of desperation, but real.

"You would do this? Defy Mother? Defy Aemond?"

"I am the king," he said, and for the first time since his coronation, it sounded like a fact, not a burden. "I let them steer me through the war. I let them pick my wife, my council, my battles. I let them have my children, my dragon…" His voice cracked. He swallowed, his gaze burning into hers. "I will not let them have you."

He was broken, cruel, unpredictable, a shell of a man clinging to a throne of swords. But in this moment, he was hers. And she had loved the man he might have been for so long, it was easy to pour that love onto the wreckage that remained.

"You said you loved me," he whispered, his voice rough. "Was it just a trick to sway me?"

She looked up at him, at the scars, the pain, the desperate need in his eyes that mirrored her own. She thought of Aemond’s cold sapphire stare, his crushing possession. She thought of a lifetime as a broodmare for a man who saw her as a prize. Then she thought of this - a shared throne, a chance to heal a broken king and save herself.

"No," she said, her voice finally steady. "It was not a trick."

Relief, profound and shocking, washed over his face. He leaned closer, his breath warm against her lips. "Then say you will be my queen."

It was madness. It would ignite a different kind of war within their own walls. Alicent would rage. Aemond… she dared not think of Aemond’s wrath. But it was her choice. Her rebellion.

"Yes," she breathed.

The word was still hanging in the air when his lips met hers.

It was not a gentle kiss. It was a seal. A claim. It tasted of wine and desperation and a bitter, bloody victory. It was the first move in a new, more intimate dance of dragons. And as Visenna kissed him back, pouring every ounce of her fear, her hope, and her long-held love into it, she knew with certainty:

The war was not over. It had only just begun.