overview. ormund's wife!reader runs into gwayne in the sept a week or so before gwayne leaves for king's landing and the war. a simple conversation amid cousin-in-laws is more than enough to put possessive husband!ormund in a horrible mood, leading to a very immature argument and an unorthodox way of reconciling.
contains. language, references to religion, eventual light smut (18+).
wc. around 5.4k.
a|n. FOURTH repost, tumblr is determined to flag it. i had to edit out a couple sections of the smut, so sorry if it’s inconsistent or on the dry side (utmost heartbreak, ugh) .
the frail handheld fan the septas offered outside of the sept earlier doesn’t do much to placate the sweltering heat; it hadn’t taken long to realize that there’s no use in vigorously fanning. all the paper-thin thing does is push and pull the hot air.
seated to your left, your husband, the lord ormund hightower, is also terribly vexed by the heat. he clasps and unclasps his hands, scratches at the collar of his grey doublet, and eventually tugs the rings off of his fingers on account of the clamminess of his hands.
to ormund’s own left, daeron sits in the center of he and ser jon roxton, or “bold jon” as many style him. as the septon approaches the sermon’s conclusion, daeron perks up as to not miss a single syllable. if you know anything about daeron, and you do, it’s clear he’s itching to return to the high-tower and slip out to the makeshift ‘dragonpit’ to look-in on tessarion; that is if daeron is able to sneak off without ormund noticing.
you tug a handkerchief out of the pocket of your gown to pat at your neck and ears, as well as across your forehead. as you go to place it back in your pocket, ormund softly taps an outstretched hand on your thigh to silently request the slightly dampened cloth.
he doesn’t lift it to his nose immediately, not as you know he would’ve if you weren’t seated in the center-front pew of the sept. instead, ormund runs a hand across the linen, lingering on the lopsided stitch of your initials. initials sewn by your closest lady-in-wait, nicolette, years ago after coming into the service of your house of birth. you were both young then, seven-and-ten, and nicolette’s needlework wasn’t nearly as steady as it is now.
if it weren't so suffocatingly hot, all the attending nobles would show considerable shame at the speed in which you all rise when the septon finally dismisses the service. the attendees start to spread out; some to request a word with the septon, others to the candle-room to pray.
“we should socialize for awhile, my love,” ormund states, standing awfully close and pressing a gentle hand to your lower back.
you’re too outdone by the heat to even entertain the idea of tens on tens of trivial conversations, “that is the proper thing to do, yes,” you admit.
ormund cocks his head with a taunting grin, “are you suggesting that you don’t care to mingle, and on a holy day at that.”
“i am suggesting that any matter of actual consequence can be sent via raven to the high-tower, rather than discussed at length here in this heat.”
“speak to the lady ashford, at least,” ormund implores, tongue-in-cheek, “she’ll only continue to pester you about the solstice tourney, until you do. she’s already sent plenty of ravens, as you’re well aware.”
all of which i tore, or asked nicolette to disregard and discard of, or threw into the hearth myself. so, yes, i am well aware.
“‘it’s not the time for any of the reach’s annual tourneys. we’re in the midst of a war. or is lady ashford somehow not privy to our current situation,” i retort, quiet enough to reach only ormund’s ears.
“go, y/n,” ormund insists, though it is at this point impossible to conceal that chuckle of pure delight, a clear sign of how much he loves when your resolve cracks ever so slightly, revealing the petulance underneath. when it’s directed at other people, that is.
“i might as well, i suppose” you grumble, rolling your eyes, “it’s too hot for socializing, we shall all roast like pigs on a spit.”
to that, even ser jon cracks a slight smile, “that much is true, my lady,” he agrees.
as a sort of ‘thanks’, ormund presses a gentle peck to your lips; it’s proper and perfectly chaste, suitable enough for the ever watchful eyes about the sept. those of the gods, lords and ladies alike.
once ormund slips off, and daeron and jon with him, nicolette appears at your side to point out the lady ashford near the sept’s ornate double doors. there the lady is speaking in the center of a group of other noblewomen.
you gather your skirts to start the trek across the spacious sanctuary, with nicolette gathering what’s left on your other side.
“the solstice tourney,” you murmur, more to yourself than to nicolette, “that of all things is what plagues the lady ashford. not the needless war that shall surely require all of our men to take to their swords and shields soon enough, including lady ashford’s own lord husband. i am starting to think she’s incredibly simple.”
you aren’t able to get far at all though; “my lady y/n, what duty calls so that you must rush so swiftly by your cousin-in-law.”
it is the charming drawl of ormund’s cousin, ser gwayne hightower, sitting in an otherwise empty pew, with an arm propped on the back of the bench.
“ser gwayne,” you pause so abruptly nicolette nearly crashes into you, “my apologies, i hadn’t noticed you there.”
“oh, all is well. come, sit,” he gestures to the vacant pew, “unless you were attending to a much more important matter, of course.”
“no no, it wasn’t of any import at all,” you insist, very thankful for the interruption.
“what of lady ashford, my lady,” nicolette asks, after a pleasant curtsy to ser gwayne.
“i’m positive i’ll much prefer ser gwayne’s company,” you say, signaling nicolette to take a seat nearby.
“what’s this about the lady ashford,” he raises an eyebrow.
“the lady insists on preparing for the annual solstice.”
“to what end, the realm is at war,” gwayne points out, trailing off skeptically.
“at least someone sees reason,” you revel in the company of another sound mind, “i mean, my lord husband knows it is a pointless endeavor, though he implores i entertain it nonetheless. my ‘duty’ as the lady hightower, he says. surely there are better things to allocate our coin to, perhaps the thousands of reach men ormund must summon to war, those that the crown hasn’t already summoned,” the sarcasm in your tone isn’t lost on gwayne.
he leans languidly against the pew, with a humored snicker, “well, i can say we’d be the better for it if you took up my lord father’s place as hand of the king, rather than that ser criston cole,” he teases.
“i am surely no hand of the king, ser gwayne,” you smile mildly at the thought, “though i do say a prayer for ser otto on the daily, the rightful lord hand.”
gwayne tilts his head, eyes narrowed in a way that translates fondness. the corners of his lips curl into a smile, which isn’t at all unusual; he smiles often when you’re around. much to ormund’s irritation, which only worsens whenever you insist that it is only a fondness for the friendship you share, nothing more. and nothing at all to interpret as romantic.
in truth, it is a marvel that gwayne isn’t married; a man of house hightower, the son of the hand to three kings, a sensible and upright knight, though not so much so that he’s dull. tack on that softer shade of hightower auburn that frames a face that’s more than easy on the eyes; the average noblewoman prays nightly for a future husband like gwayne.
even so, it was ormund’s irritatingly attractive everything, an ‘everything’ that aligned with your taste so much so that it pissed you off upon first meeting him, that drew you in. alongside a most peculiar personality that, even after years of marriage, you still can’t put into the proper words. a personality that, alongside your own, makes for a very stubborn and unruly dynamic at times. even so, as lord and lady hightower, you are undeniably steadfast spouses, with a household molded around a genuine love.
“as do i, and i truly thank you for it,” gwayne says softly, it’s clear the topic is a tender one.
“i am glad to do so, and to pray for you as well. ormund says you are off to king’s landing soon, sometime within this upcoming week.”
“i am, my lady. though i am sorry to spoil your plans for the solstice, there’s no need for it now that i can’t be there to crush my dearest cousin in a joust,” he jests in an attempt to re-lighten the mood.
“now is not the time to jest,” you laugh, “the gods shall strengthen your shield, and i shall pray for your safekeeping until you return to oldtown.”
gwayne gingerly takes one of your hands, planting a sweet kiss to the soft skin in gratitude; it’s as proper and chaste as the one ormund pressed to your lips earlier, though it lacks the same sort of affection.
nonetheless, you are aware that the man standing awfully close behind you (once again) wouldn’t agree at all on the matter.
“cousin,” gwayne releases you to greet ormund, glancing up and over your shoulder. the two get along well enough, apart from the occasional [constant] insult, even when you aren’t involved. when you are involved, we’re left with moments such as the current one.
“cousin,” ormund repeats.
rudely.
neither breaks eyes contact, considering it a forfeit of some sort.
“husband,” you attempt to interrupt their immature little showdown, “nicolette and i were on our way over to lady ashford, when we ran into ser gwayne; a most pleasant surprise, isn’t it.”
“an unpleasant distraction indeed, i do agree, my love,” ormund sneers.
“that’s not what i sa—” you start, only for ormund to interrupt.
“gwayne, we’ll be seeing each other at today’s council at the tower, i presume.”
“it is my last appearance at council. i ship out to king’s landing soon enough. someone must step out of the comfort of their castle and take to the sword, there is a war to be won,” gwayne affirms.
“i suppose so. oh how we’ll miss your presence in oldtown.”
before gwayne is able to answer, ormund holds out a hand
to offer it to you; a cue that it’s time to go. “i think my lady and i are due for a final prayer. worthy is the husband
that kneels with his wife in prayer, wouldn’t you both say.”
you stand up, though you refuse to take ormund’s hand.
“it was great to see you, gwayne. i’ll try to at least see you off before you leave oldtown,” you say, smiling despite how badly want to strike ormund to the ground.
“i’ll looks forward to it, my lady,” gwayne stands, pulling you into a hug, throwing a sharp glare in ormund’s direction over your shoulder.
“he has always known how to sniff you out like a hound, hasn’t he,” ormund declares as soon as one of the guards closes the carriage doors behind ser jon, the last to enter the carriage. you, your very agitated husband, and nicolette are already inside. ser jon sent daeron and a few other guards to ride in the carriage behind this one, an attempt to spare daeron’s delicate ears from what’s to come.
“is it now a sin to speak to one’s cousin-in-law, one that must leave the safety of oldtown to join the war effort, at that.”
you sit on one side of the carriage next to nicolette, while ormund and ser jon sit on the opposite side. the center of the bench is usually daeron’s spot.
“does that cause you unrest, y/n. gwayne isn’t the first nor the only one the crown summons to war in these trying times.”
“i am aware ormund. there is still no wrong in wishing him well, for fuc—”
“ah ah,” ormund waves a finger, preventing the unsavory word from slipping, “not while we remain on holy ground.”
you wouldn’t argue with that. so, the carriage falls into silence for the ten minutes it takes to maneuver through the crowds of churchgoers and others in the hectic street near the sept.
once the carriage steers off of the smooth créme stone surrounding the sept, and onto the plain cobblestone of oldtown’s normal streets, you waste no time in continuing at full volume, “for fuck’s sake, does the holy word not say that the gods smile upon close and amiable kin. you are being brash ormund.”
“do you not think it brash for my cousin to undress my wife with those greedy eyes in the center of the sept, for others to witness of as well,” ormund argues, “he’s a crafty bitch in knight’s armor, a brazen fucking cunt, and i-”
“actually,” you interrupt, “we spoke of gwayne’s lord father, your uncle, who i pray over daily. who, in case you’ve forgotten, was unjustly unseated as hand of the king again. a perfectly simple conversation.”
“that much has not escaped me, y/n.”
“oh, it hasn’t, has it. well, let’s pray that the rest of your wits, what little there is, return to you soon,” you say, sickeningly sarcastic.
“oh, so i am a simpleton now, since i prefer my wife to not fraternize wi—”
“yes, yes you are. a simpleton, in every sense of the word,” you speak over him for once.
ormund nods bitterly, throwing up his hands, “a simpleton, i am. me she says.”
“him, i say,” i murmur, not one to ever allow that infuriating man to have the last word.
“was i speaking to you,” ormund asks, tilting his head.
“was i to you,” you counter, “there is somehow still some petty answer on the tip of your tongue.”
“cut out my tongue then, since it displeases you so.”
“it does, and i will. i think i shall put it out on display as well. i’m sure i’ll enjoy you much much more without it.”
ormund laughs mockingly, “aww, will you. you’re rather fond of me and my tongue when it’s—”
you hate nothing in the world more than the effect that that condescending tone’s got over you, and the fact that you love it so much, even at a time like this.
“oh shut the hell up already, you rotten little rat. sniff my handkerchief like the little idiot you are and be quiet—”
“did you call me a fucking idiot,” he scoffs in irritation at your childish choice of an insult, “know that if i bore you no affection i’d have your tongue for that.”
“would you; or are you too busy sniffing around at my heels of to do much of anything. perhaps you’ve helped you and your sinful nose to my smallclothes too, the unclean—”
“i do and will continue to do so. in fact, i did so last night and twice the night prior. what of the ‘habits’ of your own that the gods would name unclean, whorish even.”
“and do i indulge in these whorish things alone, you lustful cretin,” you demand, “hand me my handkerchief, since you feel so strongly of me.”
ormund snatches it out of the pocket of his doublet, “fine. take it, i have no need of it,” and flings it across the carriage onto the space between you and nicolette.
“glad we agree, then,” you mutter.
“very glad,” ormund scoffs.
“great,”
“very great.”
there is an instance of silence, though it doesn’t last long.
“jealousy is an awful sin, you know,” you add.
“mhm, and i feel for those that suffer from it,” ormund
answers with sarcastically fake concern.
“then i pray the gods are steadfast in delivering you from it, my love.”
next to you, nicolette raises her eyes to spot ser jon already
staring at her with pursed lips. to which nicolette offers a sheepishly knowing smile. out of anyone, these two are well aware of the childishness their lord and lady conceal so well most of the time. to jon and lettie’s relief, the carriage is completely silent for the remainder of the ride.
the moment the carriage comes to a stop in the courtyard, ormund forces the doors open from the inside, forget waiting for an attendant to open the doors for you all, as is the normal thing to do. ormund also ignores the marital custom of offering one’s wife a steady forearm to help her out of a carriage. ser jon, in the fashion of a true gentleman, offers an arm in ormund’s place and guides you out of the carriage. an arm ser jon then extends to nicolette as well.
“why thank you, ser jon. there is at least one man in our midst that well-mannered,” you state.
in response, ormund starts off for the entrance without you, with ser jon on his heels.
“prick,” you murmur to yourself.
to your left, daeron steps out of the other carriage to find his ill-mannered sire halfway to the castle entrance. to which the young prince peers over at you, “are you and lord ormund quarreling again, my lady.”
as soon as daeron’s in reach, you rest a gentle hand on one of the prince’s shoulders, “pay that no mind, daeron. we all know it won’t take long for our lord to realize the error of his ways and return to his senses.”
daeron goes to offer an arm for you to take as you walk, a gesture ormund taught to and instilled in the prince. however, ormund interrupts the gesture from farther in front, “come daeron,” he demands.
“prick,” you murmur again, as daeron smiles apologetically and scampers along to catch up to ormund and ser jon.
that was earlier in the day, no later than ten-am. the remainder of the day consisted of a sewing session in the gardens (which was cut short due to the heat), a most peaceful lunch without ormund around to bitch-and-moan, and quite the remarkable showcase of your talents in archery out in the shade of the training yard.
from three to five you engage in a very pleasant nap, followed by an attempt to visit the library upon getting up; an attempt that is ruined by the sight of ormund already in the library.
it isn’t until a little later that evening, after the aforementioned council is adjourned, that you are “graced” with ormund’s presence again.
it’s about seven-pm at that point, and it isn’t nearly as warm as earlier. you’re in your chamber, nearing the end of a bath. marienne, another of your ladies-in-wait, stands to the side of the tub with a towel, while nicolette prepares a clean robe. the third lady-in-wait, eda, lights a stick or two of clove incense to set on your vanity.
the four of you are forty-five minutes into an enthusiastic conversation on nicolette’s newfound attraction to ser jon. an attraction nicolette denies, which is a statement you deny the validity of, and an attraction marienne and eda are sure ser jon shares.
“there is no shame in it, nicolette,” eda grins, to which nicolette groans again in adamant protest.
“exactly, ser jon is a very formidable knight,” marienne snorts.
as you step out of the tub into the towel, laughing along, there’s a persistent knock on the door.
“perhaps it is ser jon, lettie,” you tease, as nicolette leans against it to hear the guard on the other side.
“lord hightower approaches and requests a private moment with the lady,” the guard informs through a thin slot in the door. nicolette glances over at you, all too aware of the hostility between the two of you today.
“lady y/n prefers to enjoy a little.. uh.. solitude tonight,” nicolette responds.
there is a faint shuffling of feet on the other side, then the guard speaks again, “lord hightower is adamant, perhaps the lady will kindly reconsider.”
“y/n, cease your pettiness,” ormund orders, pushing past the guard to the slot. ormund won’t attempt to enter unless you grant permission, though.
you let out a very very long sigh, “very well,” and pull the towel tighter, take a seat on the edge of the tub in preparation for whatever bullshit ormund brings with him.
“the lady will allow it,” nicolette says, and in seemingly less than a second ormund is standing in front of you.
“lady wife,” ormund speaks.
“lord husband,” you reply, equally as curt.
your ladies slip off to the side, silent as a trio of mice when a wicked old cat comes near.
“leave us ladies,” ormund turns to the three of them with a charming smile. although their dismissal is out of their control, all three throw an apologetic glance your way. well, excluding eda, who’s able to guess exactly how lord ormund plans to ‘put an end’ to the petty spouses’ quarrel.
“can i not even bathe in peace, now,” you speak, the second the two of you are alone.
ormund strolls over to your vanity, taking a seat on the stool’s lavender cushion. ormund’s lips remain shut, as he occupies himself with the various trinkets on the vanity. while examining an ivory hairpin he says, “you can’t remain vexed forever, y/n.”
“i’ll remain vexed forever and some,” you proclaim.
“you are my wife, there is not a lord alive that doesn’t harbor some possessiveness over his lady wife.”
“and that’s all well, i only thought you had the decency to set that and your boysish feud with your cousin aside, at a time like this especially. do you and gwayne not fight for the same purpose, in the name of the same gods.”
“mhm,” ormund huffs mockingly, finding you cute even when you are scolding or spewing insults at him.
“move, will you,” you approach the vanity with a sigh. clearly the conversation isn’t going to go anywhere.
“i won’t, actually,” ormund taunts.
“ormund it is too late for these games. i must tend to my hair, and lotion myself, and-”
“alright alright, spare us all the speech, you spoiled thing,” he pulls you into his lap.
you are too spent to reply or refuse; ormund plants his chin on your shoulder, cheeks pressed together.
“i only pray you show as much care when i leave off for the war,” ormund rasps after while.
“why would i not, ormund. you are my husband. gwayne is without a wife, it is only a simple kindness to pray for your cousin’s safety as well.”
“i suppose you are right,” ormund groans, adjusting you again.
well.
you never expected him to admit it.
“you are right,” he repeats, “my cousin is without a wife. a pious little wife to pray nightly for his safe return to oldtown, or to send letters to weekly, or one desperate enough to pleasure herself to the thought of him with the same filthy hands she’d clasped in prayer only moments prior.”
you scoff, “are you suggesting that i’d do such a decrepit thing,” you ask, smiling nonetheless
ormund’s lip sticks out just a little, finding amusement in the face that you asked a question with oh so obvious an answer, “do you think i don’t know my own wife.”
he stands up without warning, and directs you to the bed. you comply, though when you opt to simply sit at the end of it, ormund smiles slowly. menacingly almost, gesturing to the headboard.
you comply. again.
and your lack of protest pleases ormund.
in the few seconds it takes to get rid of your robe, and settle, now entirely bare, into a comfortable spot in the center-top of the bed, ormund’s shed shoes, sword and scabbard, and all other garments. at this point, both of you are bare and staring unabashedly at the other. you at the contours of his hips leading to the patch of almost-auburn hair resting atop his length. ormund slides onto the bed, towering over you on steady knees, planted on the insides of your thighs to prevent you from trying to close them.
ormund raises a hand to himself, stroking it ever so slowly.
you try to sit up, almost as if the current view isn’t nearly enough. to that, ormund places a heavy hand to the center of your chest, pushing you to lie down again.
“ormund,” you whine, not at all a fan of not getting your way. to which you receive a stern, “do as i say,” in return. ormund’s hand travels south, making sure to stroke over your skin which is still a little damp, stopping only when it reaches your center. the wetness there isn’t on account of the bath, though. ormund disregards all concepts of prep, sliding two fingers in, all the while, he hasn’t stopped stroking himself.
as he speaks, he switches hands for nothing more than the disgusting urge to transfer your wetness to his length. it’s difficult to tell since your eyes clamp shut with every languid rub in the right place, but you could swear you saw ormund sink the fingers that came out of you into his mouth before switching hands.
“while i am away, think of me and only me; pray for me and only me,” he instructs.
selfish brute.
“that’s not—” you start to protest.
ormund rotates the pad of his pointer against a sensitive spot to shut you up.
“when you lie awake at night, think only of me.”
“i-” you try again to answer, racking your brain for some bratty response. however, your husband knows exactly where to touch when he’s sick of your smart mouth and expects nothing more than a yes or a no. actually, no no’s at all.
“what did i say, y/n.”
“i won’t—”
ormund delivers a series of two slaps to your cheek, hard enough to sting, “try again,” he tsks.
you hold out, somehow. the last of your irritation from earlier today isn’t evaporated entirely, and you can’t let him win so easily.
“hm,” ormund grunts in dissatisfaction, pulling the fingers out of you.
ormund leans forward, elbows on either side of your head, head dropping to rest on your chest, “you aren’t listening well today, are you,” he asks condescendingly. he inhales, taking in the scent of cinnamon and mint, your signature choice of soap.
he lifts your right leg up, back back back until your knee rests beside your head.
you let out a pathetic whine of frustration. frustration for the fact that you allow this man to do with you as he pleases, time and time again, even after he irritates you beyond comprehension.
to muffle the whining, ormund’s lips lock onto yours, establishing a rhythm in little to no time.
simultaneously, he guides his hips to meet yours, aligning with your entrance.
ormund pushes only the tip in; you’re so slick though, that more of it makes it in than ormund intends.
“remind me,” ormund settles his forehead on your shoulders, curls tickling the skin, “what are you going to do while i’m away.”
you can barely handle the pace ormund’s set, prioritizing reach over speed, damn near digging into you.
“pray,” you sigh, bluntly and begrudgingly so, trying your hardest to keep your head on straight.
ormund thinks it’s adorable that you think that’s working, and anywhere nearly enough to warrant you lifting your hips, asking after more contact.
“y/n,” he warns, hips lifting, threatening to pull out entirely.
“ok, ok. pray nightly, only for you.”
“that’s right,” ormund rewards you with an inch or two more, “only for me.”
“what else,” he encourages.
“and—and i’ll think only of you, only you. everyday,” you sigh out, arms snaking around his shoulders, hands pushing into the muscles of his back.
“good, good girl. go on,” he grunts, with a peck to your lips.
he allows another inch, then another out of kindness of his heart.
“i can’t—”
“you will,” he interrupts, “continue.”
you take a second to breathe, or to remind yourself how to, rather.
“forget gwa—to hell with gwayne. i’ll throw his letters in the hearth, all of them. and wait patiently for you, only you, as the—as the faithful and obedient wife does.”
ormund smiles against the clammy skin of your shoulder, very satisfied.
“there it is,” he pushes in all the way, all at once.
you tighten your arms around ormund’s shoulders, hands anchoring to the curls in the back of his head. he doesn’t protest when you yank; the guttural groans that vibrate against your shoulder are that of the purest pleasure.
ormund’s so thick, the pressure of each thrust reverberates in your core, through your thighs, and back up again.
“perhaps putting a babe in you is the perfect incentive to hold you to your word, hm.”
“yes, yes, please,” you plead, invigorated all over again.
you and ormund talked about starting on your first child a month or so ago, before the confirmation of war.
“is that what you want.”
“yes,” you moan, “please, i’m so sorry for what i di—i won’t do it again, please.”
ormund pecks your lips again; he never denies you much of anything, and he definitely won’t deny you now, not when you’ve finally said the words he wants to hear.
he rises to lean straight up again on his knees, lifting your other leg up and back. you’re as open as possible. it’s all so overwhelming you clench your teeth around a part of the sheets.
you reach your peak moments earlier than ormund, arching off of silk sheets that are tacky with sweat.
you can tell ormund’s close when he starts to abandon all sense of rhythm. when he releases, there’s so much of it, there’s nowhere near enough space to stuff it all in, there never is. he pulls out as the last it releases, landing on your thighs and stomach.
ormund lifts a hand to your mouth, then slots your lips together again to taste himself on your tongue.
when you push ormund off in need of air, he rolls over to the side, stretching out entirely, chest rising and falling in unison with yours.
you stuff the sheets underneath your hips for a little height to help the seed take, “i’ll need another bath at this rate,” you rasp, throat spent.
ormund swings a leg off of the bed with a groan, “well, the holy word says a husband that washes with his wife is a worthy one, indeed.”
“it says no such thing,” you snort, watching ormund walk around to your side, pressing another kiss to your lips.
𝓮. जया ⎯⎯ EEQRV’26, feel free to leave questions, comments, or feedback here or in the eeqrv mailbox. thanks for reading ! ★
Showing similar signs of infertility as her mother, her father, King Viserys allowed her to live her life unmarried, fearing her death as well. To escape the court's prying eyes, she moved to Old Town with her younger half brother Daeron. There she met Gwayne, the perfect man. With a worried stricken mind, she was scared that he wouldn't accept her due to her struggles.
Once war breaks out, she felt stuck, in between the loyalty she has to her blood sister and the love of her life.
no name nor descriptions of looks so can be read as an x reader or x oc. whatever you choose
I do not read the books. I am basing most of the fic off of own personal beliefs of his character, and what I have seen so far in the show. (i do a bit of research here and there though.)
Chapter Word Count: 3,241
❩❤︎☾ ⩥❇︎⩤ ☽❤︎❨
The earliest memory she had of her mother was on a hot summer day: Laid out on the settee, legs spread wide, the large, pregnant belly made it hard for Aemma to sit comfortably. Kneeling on the end, in between her mother’s legs, she fanned the heat away from the woman.
“One day you will be in my position.” Her mother told, basking in the breeze. “You’ll marry some high lord and produce some more princes and princesses.”
Maids and maesters surrounded them, yet none of them helped. She was the only one doing anything at the young age of five. All day, her mother lounged around, tired from merely being awake: body overexerting itself from preparing the babe.
“It doesn’t seem fun." She commented.
Even though she was young, she was still observant. Her mother, Queen Aemma had been pregnant as long as she could remember. Whenever Aemma wasn’t, she was bed-riddened, recovering from yet another miscarriage.
“It’s not.” Aemma confirmed. “But I got you and Rhaenyra from it. There's nothing better in my life than you two girls.”
“Nothing?” She wondered with a tilt of her head.
They were royalty, everything they could ever want at their fingertips. Targaryens, the rulers of seven kingdoms. Dragonriders, the only people who could tame the beautiful beasts. Yet, the thing Aemma loved most was her and her sister.
“Nothing could ever compare to having the two of you.” Her mother told her gently.
Aemma reached out, caressing her cheek. She was loved by her mother. So deeply that it made her wish that one day, she could have a child to love, to raise as she had been. When her mother spoke to her about children, there was nothing but pure joy.
It was most girl’s dream to grow older, marry a good man, and have children of their own. Most of the time, it was due to the expectations of the world, but not her. To her, becoming a mother, raising beautiful children in a loving home was the greatest achievement in life, just as her mother had.
As she was far too young for it at the moment, her mother got her a doll to play pretend with. All day and night, she would carry around her doll, claiming it was her baby. It looked nothing like a Targaryen, with its red hair and brown eyes, but it was hers.
Her mother would play along as well, calling the doll her grandson, cradling it and kissing it as though it were real. At supper, she would try to feed the babe her food, claiming that it needed it to grow strong. In a way, she believed it too helped Aemma in her moments of grief.
Most saw it as cute, a child playing pretend. But to her, it was serious, a practice run to help her prepare for the real thing. Believing if she did this, she could be the perfect mother. Raising children with care and love, just as she was.
By all logical reasoning, she should be afraid of birth; having seen her mother go through such horrific pregnancies, witnessing the grief that followed. Especially when it eventually became the thing that killed her.
She remembered standing in between her father and Rhaenyra, her sister who was only a few years older than her. Syrax stood atop the hill, waiting for the command. Her fathers hand laid on her shoulder with a strong grip. It was clearly more for him to stabilize himself rather than comforting his youngest daughter.
Their uncle, the rogue prince, Daemon, leaned into Rhaenyra, whispering to her in high valyrian, a language she could not yet fully understand. With a shaken breath, Rhaenyra finally spoke up, ready to say her goodbyes to their mother and younger brother.
With the word of dracarys, the dragonfire consumed the bodies wrapped in cloth, turning them to ash. Reaching out, she grabbed onto Rhaenyra. Rhaenyra brought a hand to her head, petting it softly.
Tears strewn down her face as she couldn’t help but remember her mothers words, a want for her to have the happiness of children. At that moment, she made a promise to herself, she would have a daughter, and the name would be Aemma.
Nothing would ever be the same. Now she was a motherless girl, ten years of age, who wanted nothing more than to be a mother herself.
Part of her believed that time would stop, the world would go on as it was in that moment. Her father would name Rhaenyra heir and he would have no reason to remarry. Sadly, that was not how the world worked. The realm hated women, believing that they had no reason to rule.
They pushed her father to remarry in hopes of producing a male heir. Viserys was king, a man who could pick anyone. Yet, out of all people, he chose Alicent Hightower, Rhaenyra’s longest friend. While Alicent wasn’t her friend, the older pair were always kind to her, inviting her on a few hang out.
But now, things had become strange for the two Targaryen girls. Tensions grew, especially for Rhaenyra as they both felt as though the world expected them to replace their mother with the girl that betrayed them.
“She is not going to be my new mother.” She seethed as she looked at the doll in her hand. She reminisced on her mother playing pretend with her, something that Alicent would never do. “I will see her as nothing more than your old friend.”
“Nor will I.” Rhaenyra stood in front of the mirror, brushing out her own hair. “I do not think she expects us to see her as such.”
“Why her? Of all people-” She put the doll down, turning to her sister.
“I ask myself the same.” Rhaenyra responded with a sigh, turning to her. “There is no point in fighting it anymore. She is with child, there is nothing we can do.”
At first, Alicent didn’t treat the two of them as though she were above them, that now she was a rank above the two Targaryen girls. Seeing them more as equals, Alicent kept a weary distance, knowing that things were strained, not wanting hostility.
That ended once Rhaenyra married Laenor Velaryon. She didn’t understand what caused it, something that had to have happened behind her back. Entering into the hall with her bright green dress, she addressed the two princesses as “stepdaughters”.
It was derogatory, a way to show that she was above them. Neither of the girls took it kindly, as things had changed from cordial to hostile. Rhaenyra and Alicent often threw backhanded insults at each other, a way to openly mock one another without causing an uproar in the court.
She, on the other hand, would merely avoid Alicent at all cost, not wanting anything to do with her or her children. Only waiting for the day she could marry some high lord and move far away from Kings Landing and start a family of her own.
✿
The day she had her first bleeding she thought she would be excited, now that her dreams were one step closer to becoming true. But, It was hard for her to be happy when she withered in excruciating pain.
Most of her bleeding days were spent bedridden in pain, it even would get to the point where she would retch from the excruciating amount of pain. The only thing that would bring her comfort was the doll that her mother had given her, holding onto it tightly as she pretended the pain weren't real.
Unable to leave her bed, she cradled her stomach as tears streamed down her face. The maester would bring her concoction after concoction, attempting to find a suitable medicine for the pain. None of it ever worked, not even milk of the poppy.
Month after month, the pain never got better, never gave her rest. While the maesters tried to find a cure, a way to ease the pain, most of her father’s efforts were focused on Rhaenyra, so she did not have to worry about being forced into marriage or childbearing anytime soon.
Years went by until the maester’s had finally given up. “I have hit my limit, and so have the maesters at the citadel.”
“I am to suffer every month like this for the rest of my life?” She wondered in disbelief.
“Sadly, there is nothing we can do.” Orwyle told her sympathetically. “We tried with your mother as well, but nothing worked.”
“My mother experienced the same?” She questioned, not knowing why after years, they had never mentioned something of the sorts.
“Yes.” He told her along with a nod of his head. “I believe it is linked to the reason why she struggled to carry. It is called infertility at the citadel."
“So you are suggesting that I cannot have children?” The dots began to connect in her head, what the meaning of it all meant.
“Your mother had you and Rhaenyra.” He commented, trying to ease the stress.
“After many miscarriages.” She reminded him. “My mother was a strong woman, I am not. Whose to say that the first time wouldn’t kill me.”
“I cannot predict such a thing.” Orwyle said truthfully. “To avoid that outcome, I suggest not trying to conceive once you are married.”
The gods played a cruel game: One where she had to choose between her hopes and dreams of becoming a mother, the thing she had been waiting for the five and ten years she had been alive, and staying alive.
She could risk it, try to bring life into the world at the sake of her own, but then that child may grow motherless. Or worse, she would have to live with the knowledge that she had lost a child of her own.
She needed to be alone, to breathe the fresh air, away from all people. In the air where no one could bother her, where she couldn’t be reminded of the soul crushing, devastating news. Riding to the dragonpit, she hoped to seek the solace in her dragon.
Fafnyr, a pure white dragon with bright blue eyes. A creature of flame that looked as though it were made of ice and snow. The dragonkeepers described him as dull of mind, too friendly for his own good.
There wasn’t a mean scale on his body, seeing everything as a friend. Fafnyr had to be separated from the other dragons, as he didn’t understand danger; didn’t understand that he couldn’t run up to Caraxys, and scamper around his feet while his teeth were barred and clicked his tongue in irritation.
Fafnyr was lucky that he was mostly unharmed, that all Caraxys did was throw him against the stoney walls of the dragon pit. He was sore for a bit, but didn’t have any serious, longlasting damage.
Thankfully, he had just recovered, allowing her to take off to the skies once more. It did help, giving her a moment to pretend it wasn't real, that she was merely a girl flying through the skies with no worries.
She wished she could stay up there, live without having to deal with the harsh realities. Eventually she had to come down, the crushing weight of reality pushing her down both mentally and physically.
The moment she dismounted her dragon, guards notified her of the king calling her to his chambers. She knew what it was about, Viserys wouldn’t want to meet with her in his room if it weren’t such a difficult topic that he wished to hide.
What she didn’t expect was for them to be accompanied by the queen as well. The last thing she wanted was people to know about her situation, especially her father’s wife. It already set her on edge, knowing the woman would put ideas into her fathers head.
“The maester told me.” Her father said sadly. “I will not let you face the same fate as your mother.”
Silence filled the room as they waited for her to respond. “What do you expect from me?”
She was hurt, irreparably changed, ambitions crushed. Now, her father stood in front of her, expecting her to have something to say. A plan set in place to get around it all. There was nothing. Not a single thing could change her fate.
“I think it would be best for you to marry an older man,” Alicent spoke up, voicing her unwanted opinion. “Someone who already has many sons, no reason to have more.”
“That is ironic for you to say.” She scoffed, cutting the queen off.
Looking up and down the queen’s pregnant form, she glared. Her world had been flipped on its head, and all Alicent wished to talk about was marriage. Not only that, but to marry her off to a decrepit old geezer. She wouldn’t have it.
“I do not think that.” Her father quickly cut off any fight that might ensue, taking his daughter’s side for once. Walking up to her, he rubbed the sides of her arms. “Rhaenyra is heir, and she has already had a child of her own to be second in line. There is no reason for you to marry.”
They never asked if that was what she wanted. Even though she couldn’t risk having children, maybe there was hope for her, that she may yet find her knight in shining armor. But it was hard in this society.
Men were prideful, especially ones of high birth. Believing they were special, they must have a child to continue their lineage. It would be nearly impossible to find a good man, one she loved, that would accept her as she was. One that wouldn’t use another woman to get what he wished.
“I think that is best.” She devastatingly agreed.
Now she had to give up marriage as well as having a child.
She filled her days moping around the castle, watching her half siblings and nephew play. It hurt her knowing she could never look at a young child and say it was hers. Rhaenyra was the only one she confided in, in turn Rhaenyra let her spend more time with Jacaerys than would be reasonable.
It wasn’t the same though. There was no connection. He would always be her little nephew, Rhaenyra’s child and heir.
And then, Daeron was born. He had the name of a Targaryen, the blood of King Viserys, yet he couldn’t have looked any different. With reddish-brown hair and the brown eyes of his mother, he looked like the perfect depiction of a Hightower.
Yet still, she felt close to the boy. He was perfect, so happy, life filled with giggles and the brightest sun rays. She loved him dearly, as though she had carried him for nine months and gave birth to him.
Whenever Alicent was away from him, handling her queenly duties, she would seek the boy out: Playing with him, lulling him to sleep, even taking him to the gardens to get some fresh air. She could often be found carrying him around the castle. If a person didn’t know, they’d assume he were hers.
Being around him made her forget her grief, unlike her other young relatives. It was as though she was a young girl again, playing pretend with her doll. But now she was a grown woman, with a real baby that wasn’t hers.
As Daeron and Jacaerys shared the same wetnurse, they were often together for play time. Rhaenyra and her would join the young boys, using it as an excuse to spend time together during the busy days.
Everyone noticed how attached she had become to her younger brother, especially Rhaenyra. It got to the point where it began to worry the older sister, feeling the need to remind her of reality.
“He is not your son, you know?” Rhaenyra felt the need to say to her, as she acted otherwise. “He doesn’t even look anything like you.”
“Neither does your son.” She angrily shot back before turning back to Daeron to make faces at him. Daeron giggled at her in turn
Rhaenyra was irritated at the comment, yet held her tongue as arguing would get them nowhere. “What I mean to say is: You have to remember that he’s Alicent’s.”
“I know.” She sadly said, sitting back from the baby to look over at her sister. “But she doesn’t care for him like I do. You saw what that has done to her other sons. Would it be such an awfulthing for this babe to have a real mother figure in his life?”
Rhaenyra couldn’t disagree with that. Even at such a young age, Aegon and Aemond were already turning out horribly, no thanks to their mothers absence. Maybe this child may have a greater shot at life with her present.
That is exactly what Alicent wanted for the boy as well, a better outcome in life, to be raised away from the pressures of the court. When he was three years of age, Alicent thought it would be best for him to be sent away to Old Town. A place where he could be raised respectfully in the light of the Seven.
The moment she caught wind of the news, she bolted into her fathers chambers, happy to see Alicent there too, for once. She wasn't able to get a single word out before the tears started streaming down her face. Kneeling in front of the two of them, she begged.
“Send me too.” She pleaded. “He’s my little brother.”
“Old Town would not suit you.” Alicent tried to argue.
“Father please.” She turned her attention to him, knowing that she had no hope of getting through Alicent. “I am eight and ten, I have heard the talk of the courts. They whisper horrid things about me, wondering why I am unmarried. I need to get away from it all.”
“You could still marry, my offer is still there.” Alicent pointed out. “But, you only wish to stay close to Daeron.”
“I cannot deny that it is a reason aswell.” She was too hysteric to lie, turning her attention to her father’s wife. “Alicent. My queen. Please, I beg of you.”
Alicent turned her attention to Viserys, showing she wouldn’t have a say in the matter. He currently seemed more upset at the first thing she mentioned. “Who speaks ill of you? I will have their tongue ripped out.”
“Everyone!” She exaggerated, needing a yes. “I cannot handle it anymore. I wish to leave with Daeron, so he may also have a family member there to keep him connected to his Targaryen roots.”
“That would be good.” Viserys thought about it for a moment. “He may not look like it, but he is still a dragon. I wouldn’t want him to forget that in Old Town. If this is what you really wish for, then I’ll allow it.”
“Husband!” Alicent shouted angrily, clearly not happy with this outcome.
But she was quick to cut off the queen, not allowing her to change his mind. “Thank you father!”
Rising to her feet, she wiped her tears away, hugging him tightly. He too joined her in an embrace, saddened to see her go, but relieved that she wouldn’t be alone. Her and Daeron would be together, having each other for whenever they needed. Never parting.
Next ⇝
❩❤︎☾ ⩥❇︎⩤ ☽❤︎❨
Hello all!! I hope you enjoyed this first chapter! I know that it doesn't have gwayne in it and I'm sorry, but I really needed to set this side of the story up for the second half where we get more into the war and stuff!! If you wish to talk to me more about the fic, or know where I am in updating the next chapter, please don't be afraid to join my Discord Server! I would love to see you there!!
I also have an Ormund fic that I will be finishing in the next few days, so if you find the time, i suggest checking it out!!
Comments would be very appreciated!
Taglist: (comment or dm me to be added or removed)
Summary: Ormund prays in the Starry Sept as is expected of a Hightower lord. What he doesn't expect is to fall for a lady who is about to become a septa. He endeavors to change her mind and make her his by any means necessary. Warnings: SMUT 18+ p in v, unprotected sex, obsessive behavior, yearning, possessiveness, power imbalance, corruption kink, dubcon if you squint, manipulation, Ormund's pov.
The odor of smoke and wax clung to the air of the Starry Sept, a familiar perfume that Ormund Hightower had known since boyhood. It was not an unpleasant scent, precisely. Merely overwhelming, a constant assault on senses that had always been sharper than he might have wished. Frankincense, myrrh, the slow drip of tallow candles, the faint mustiness of ancient stone. It all mingled together into a haze that made his nose twitch and his head ache if he lingered too long.
He did not linger today. His visits to the sept were swift, dutiful, a perfunctory acknowledgment of the piety expected of a Hightower lord. The blood of Oldtown ran deep in his veins, and Oldtown was a city of the Faith. The Starry Sept had been the seat of the High Septon himself before the Targaryens came with their dragons and their queer customs, and even now, with the Faith’s center moved to King’s Landing, the sept in Oldtown remained a place of profound sanctity. Ormund came, he knelt, he prayed, he left. It was the proper order of things.
This particular afternoon found him in one of the smaller side chapels, a quieter space dedicated to the Crone. The high windows let in slanted shafts of golden light, dust motes dancing lazily in the beams. Rows of prayer candles flickered on iron stands, their flames shivering each time the great doors somewhere in the sept opened and closed. Ormund knelt on a cushioned prie-dieu, head bowed, hands clasped before him. His lips moved in silent recitation of the familiar words, though his mind wandered. It often did. Matters of trade, of governance, of the constant thrum of politics, these things occupied him more than the mysteries of the divine. Still, he kept up the appearance. For his house. For his people.
A sudden thud shattered the quiet. Then a gasp, high and startled.
Ormund’s head lifted. His prayer forgotten, he turned his gaze toward the sound, toward the small alcove near the side of the chapel where a stand of votive candles burned before a statue of the Crone herself. A woman stood there, no, a girl, or something between the two, clutching her elbow with one hand while a small leather-bound prayer book lay splayed open on the stone floor at her feet. A candle on the stand beside her had been knocked askew, its flame guttering dangerously close to the edge before steadying. She must have caught her elbow against it, the shock causing her to drop the book.
She was a septa in training, Ormund saw, or near enough to one. She wore a plain gray dress of coarse wool, high-necked and long-sleeved, the sort of garment meant to obscure the body, to render its wearer sexless and humble before the gods. Her head was bare, however, no wimple, no veil, just a simple braid of hair wound around her crown. A novice, then. Not yet sworn.
The dress was plain. The dress was meant to be plain. But the way it sat on her was anything but.
Ormund’s gaze lingered, and he knew he should look away. He knew it with the same certainty that he knew the words of every prayer his septons had drilled into him as a child. He was a Hightower. He was a lord. He was kneeling in a sept, for the love of the Seven, and his thoughts should have been on higher things. But the gray wool fit her firmly, snugly, cupping the swell of her breasts in a way that suggested the dress had not been sewn for her measurements. Perhaps she had grown since receiving it, filled out in ways the Faith had not anticipated. Perhaps it was a hand-me-down from a slimmer novice. Whatever the cause, the fabric pulled just slightly across her chest, outlining the soft shape of her with a clarity that made Ormund’s mouth go dry. And lower, at her hips, the dress sat tightly, hugging the gentle curve of her waist and the flare of her hips with an almost indecent precision.
She bent to retrieve her prayer book.
The fabric strained across her backside.
Ormund forgot to breathe.
There was nothing immodest about the dress. It covered her from throat to shoes, revealed not a sliver of skin beyond her hands and her face. Yet, somehow, that made it worse. More scandalous. A lady at court might wear a gown cut low, might flaunt her bosom and her shoulders, might laugh and flirt and play the games of seduction with all the practiced art of her station. Ormund had seen such displays a hundred times and thought little of them, save perhaps a vague distaste for the frivolity of it all. But this, this accidental sensuality, this unintentional provocation, a pious woman in a sept, clothed in the drab wool of the Faith, her body made all the more apparent by the very garment meant to hide it, sent a bolt of heat through him that had no place in a holy sanctuary.
He should not be having these thoughts. Not here. Not now. Not ever.
She straightened, book clutched to her chest, and her eyes met his.
Her expression was doe-like, startled and timid. Ormund realized with a jolt that she had caught him staring. Of course she had. He had not been subtle. He had been gaping like a boy who had never seen a woman before, in a sept no less, before the Crone’s own altar.
“Forgive me, my lord,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper, trembling. She dipped into a clumsy curtsy, still clutching the book. “I am so very clumsy. I did not mean to disturb your prayers.”
Her words shook him from his stupor. Ormund rose from his kneeling position, his legs carrying him toward her almost against his will. He felt as though he were watching himself from a great distance, a marionette pulled by strings he could not see. His footsteps echoed on the stone floor, too loud in the hush of the chapel.
“There is nothing to forgive,” he heard himself say. His own voice sounded strange to his ears, rougher than usual. “A candle can be righted. A book can be picked up. No harm has been done.”
She blinked up at him as he drew closer. The movement exposed the long line of her throat, and Ormund’s eyes traced it before he could stop himself.
“You are kind to say so,” she murmured, her eyes dropping to the floor. Shy, he thought. It was endearing. “I should not have been so careless.”
“I have not seen you here before,” Ormund said, ignoring her self-deprecation. He clasped his hands behind his back, a posture that felt both formal and strangely nervous. “I am a frequent visitor to the Starry Sept, and yet your face is unfamiliar. Are you newly come to the Faith?”
She hesitated, her fingers tightening on the spine of her prayer book. “I have been studying with the septas for some months now, my lord. I keep mostly to the septry gardens and the scriptorium. I...I do not often attend the public prayers. I am still learning the proper observances.”
“Then you are a novice still,” Ormund said.
“Yes, my lord. I have not yet taken my vows.”
Something in his chest eased at that. He did not examine the feeling too closely. “And what is your name, girl? And your house? You have the look of noble blood, if I am not mistaken.”
She looked startled that he would ask, that he would care. “I am...my name is...” She swallowed before giving her name, and the motion drew his eyes to her throat again. “I am of House Bulwer of Blackcrown, my lord. Sworn to your own house. Our lands lie on the northern coast of Whispering Sound.”
Ormund nodded slowly. He knew the name. They were loyal bannermen, decent and respectable. The lady he recalled as a quiet, unassuming woman who paid his taxes on time and rarely came to court. A widow, if memory served. Or was she? Ormund could not recall a Lord Bulwer. He would have to look into it.
“You are far from home,” he observed.
“Not so far,” she said, and for the first time, a ghost of a smile touched her lips. It transformed her face, softening the anxious lines around her eyes, making her look younger. Sweeter. “I have known the city all my life.”
“Then why have I not seen you?” The question came out more intently than he intended, and he saw her flinch back, the smile vanishing. He tempered his tone. “Forgive me. I only meant...a lady of a noble house, even a minor one, would usually be presented at court. At the Hightower. I host gatherings. Feasts. Surely your father would have brought you.”
Now she looked embarrassed. She ducked her head, and a few strands of hair escaped her braid to curl against her temple. “My mother is not...she is not a wealthy woman, my lord. My father died when I was young, and there was no one to arrange.. that is, I have no dowry of note to speak of. Only a small parcel of land that will pass to my cousins, for I am my father’s only child, and a daughter cannot inherit.” She spoke quickly, as if eager to get the words out and be done with them. “I did not wish to be a burden to her. I thought...I thought it better to remove myself from the world and dedicate my life to the Seven. The Faith will take me as I am. It does not require gold.”
Ormund stared at her.
An only child. No dowry. A burden. So she had chosen the septa’s robes, the gray wool, the cold cell and the silent prayers, because she believed she had no other path. Because no lord had come seeking her hand, and she had not wished to be a weight around her mother’s neck. A lump formed in Ormund’s throat, and he did not know if it was pity or something else.
What a sweet girl.
The thought rose unbidden, and he let it come. She was sweet. He could see it in every line of her, in the way she held her prayer book like a shield, in the way she could not meet his eyes for more than a moment. Polite, kind, gentle. Studious, she had mentioned the scriptorium, and he could imagine her there, bent over illuminated manuscripts, her brow furrowed in concentration. Pious, truly pious, unlike the flock of young ladies who fluttered around the Hightower’s halls, who giggled and whispered gossip and played at virtue while their eyes roamed over every eligible lord in the room. He knew their type well. He had been avoiding them for years, much to his advisors’ consternation. A lord of thirty ought to be wed, they told him. A lord of thirty ought to have an heir.
He had never felt the lack of a wife before. He felt it now. It crashed over him like a wave, sudden and staggering, leaving him hollowed out. He had waited too long. He had been too choosy, too indifferent, too absorbed in the duties of his station. And now here, kneeling before the Crone’s altar, was a woman who should have been his. A perfect bride, wasted on the gods. She was ready to give up a man’s touch forever, to live and die a virgin, without ever experiencing a taste of what life could offer. What he could offer.
But why should she?
Ormund’s jaw tightened. Who was he to question the will of the Seven? He was a Hightower, sworn to the Faith, a defender of the holy septs. And yet, in that moment, he felt a surge of betrayal. Jealousy. The gods had no right. No right to take her from him.
A woman like this, gentle, modest, good, she was meant to be a wife, a mother, the lady of a noble house. His house. What right had the Seven to claim her, when they had countless septas already, countless women who had chosen the cloth freely and without regret? She would not be choosing freely. He could see it in the way her shoulders curved inward, in the way her smile had faded when she spoke of her reasons. This was not her first choice. This was surrender.
He thought of her dreams, the dreams she must have had as a girl. Finery. A noble lifestyle. A strong husband to protect and provide for her. Children to fill her arms. Had she dreamed of those things? Of course she had. Every girl did. And she had let them go, one by one, because she believed they were beyond her reach. She had resigned herself to a life of gray wool and cold stone, and she called it piety.
It was not piety. It was waste.
Ormund looked at her, this shy, timid creature with her ill-fitting dress, and he felt something calcify in his chest. She was not a septa yet. She had not taken her vows. She was still a woman, still a maiden, still reachable. There was still time.
“My lord?” Her voice was uncertain. He realized he had been silent for too long, staring at her with an intensity that must have been unsettling. She shifted her weight, clutching her prayer book tighter. “Are you well?”
“Quite well,” Ormund answered. His voice was calm, measured, betraying none of the tumult inside him. He forced his expression to gentle. He could see her relax, just slightly, at the change. “I was only thinking that the Faith’s gain is the world’s loss, my lady. You speak of being a burden, but I see no burden. I see a woman of grace and humility, qualities that are all too rare.”
Her eyes widened. “My lord is too kind,” she whispered. “I am nothing so remarkable.”
“I disagree.” He let the words hang in the air between them, heavy with meaning. Then, before she could protest, he inclined his head in a slight bow. “I have taken enough of your time, Lady Bulwer. I hope we shall meet again. I come to the sept often.”
She curtsied again, still flustered. “I...yes, my lord. I am often here. In the afternoons. When the light is best for reading.”
“Then I shall look for you,” Ormund promised.
He left the chapel with his heart beating harder than it should, the scent of smoke and wax clinging to his clothes. He did not look back. But he felt her eyes on him as he walked away.
He came back the next day.
The Starry Sept was quiet in the afternoon, the vast stone halls echoing with the soft shuffle of sandaled feet and the distant murmur of chanted prayers. Ormund found her in the same side chapel, kneeling before the same altar, the Crone’s wise stone eyes gazing down at her with dispassionate benevolence. She was not reading this time; her hands were clasped, her head bowed, her lips moving in silent supplication. The gray dress was the same one she had worn the day before. It still fit her the same way. Ormund took a moment, standing in the shadow of the doorway, to simply look at her.
Ormund wanted to wrap her in silk and velvet. He wanted to see her adorned in Hightower green and gold. He wanted to put pearls around her throat and rings on her fingers and watch her eyes go wide with wonder. He wanted to give her everything she had resigned herself to living without.
He stepped forward, his boots echoing on the stone.
She looked up at the sound, and again, that flicker of surprise crossed her face. “Lord Hightower,” she said, and made to rise, to curtsy, but he waved her back down.
“Please, do not stand on ceremony. We are in the sept, after all. All are equal before the gods.” He moved to the prie-dieu beside hers and lowered himself to his knees, folding his hands in a mirror of her posture. “I hope I am not intruding on your prayers.”
“No, my lord. I had just finished.” She glanced at him sidelong, eyes questioning. “You said you came here often. I did not think...that is, I did not expect to see you again so soon.”
“Did you not?” Ormund allowed a hint of a smile to touch his lips. “I told you I would look for you. I am a man of my word.”
She ducked her head to hide her smile. The gesture was so artless, so genuinely shy, that Ormund felt a pang of tenderness in his chest. He had known women who could blush on command, who used their modesty as a weapon, a lure. This girl was not one of them. Her embarrassment was real, and it was achingly endearing.
“Tell me more of yourself,” he said, keeping his voice low and gentle. “You said you spend time in the scriptorium. Do you enjoy your studies?”
She hesitated, as if unsure whether he truly wanted to know or was merely being polite. Then, slowly, she began to speak. Her voice grew more animated as she talked about the manuscripts she had been copying, the histories of the Faith. She had a scholar’s mind, Ormund realized. She spoke of illuminated texts with genuine enthusiasm, of the painstaking work of grinding pigments and applying gold leaf. She was, as he had guessed, studious and intelligent, far more intelligent than she gave herself credit for.
He asked her questions. He listened to her answers. He watched the tension slowly drain from her shoulders as she forgot, for a moment, to be afraid of him.
It became a ritual. Every afternoon, Ormund found an excuse to visit the Starry Sept. His duties could wait, he told himself. A lord’s work was never done, but an hour of prayer was never wasted. He told no one where he was going, slipping away from the Hightower with only a single guard, who waited outside the sept’s grand entrance. He did not want to draw attention. Not yet.
Each day, he found her in the same chapel. Each day, he knelt beside her and spoke with her, learned about her. He learned that she loved the smell of rain, that she had a sweet tooth and missed the honeycakes the cook at her father’s keep used to make, that she was secretly terrified of the septa who oversaw the novices, a stern old woman with a cane she was not afraid to use.
She relaxed around him, day by day. She stopped flinching when he approached. She started smiling when she saw him: small, shy smiles at first, then broader ones, her eyes crinkling at the corners. She laughed at his dry jokes, her hand flying to her mouth to stifle the sound, as if laughter were forbidden in the sept. Ormund wanted to tell her that the gods would not begrudge her joy, but he did not, because the sound of her laugh was a gift and he did not want her to stop.
He was falling. He knew it. He did not try to stop it.
She was everything he had never known he wanted. Gentle where other ladies were sharp, sincere where they were calculating, truly devout where they were merely performative. She did not flirt. She did not scheme. She did not look at him and see a title, a castle, a political advantage. She looked at him and saw a man, and that man, she seemed to think, was being kind to her out of some noble impulse of charity.
She had no idea.
The more he learned of her, the more convinced he became. She ought to be his. Not the gods’. His. She would fulfill her duty to the Seven by being a good wife, by raising her children in the Light, by tending to the smallfolk on Hightower lands. She did not need to rot away in a septry cell, forgotten by the world. She did not need to die a virgin, untouched and unloved.
The thought of her untouched made something dark twist in his belly. It was not right. A woman like her, sweet, warm, made for tenderness and affection, she deserved to know what it was to be held, to be cherished, to be loved. She deserved a husband who would worship her, who would give her everything she had denied herself. She deserved him.
The idea crystallized in his mind, and once it had taken root, it would not be dislodged. He would wed her. He would make her Lady Hightower. Her lack of dowry meant nothing to him; his coffers were full, his lands prosperous. Her mother would be ecstatic, a daughter who had resigned herself to the Faith, suddenly elevated to the highest rank in Oldtown. It was a fairy tale, a miracle. It was meant to be.
But he could not simply declare his intentions. Not yet. She was too skittish, too convinced of her own unworthiness. If he confessed his feelings too soon, she would flee. She would think she was dreaming. She would think he was mocking her. He had to be patient. He had to be careful. He had to make her see that she was not a burden, that she was desirable, that she was worthy of love.
So he waited. He visited. He befriended her, day by day, until she trusted him implicitly, until she looked forward to his visits, until the sound of his footsteps in the chapel made her turn with a smile already blooming on her lips.
Then, when he judged the moment right, he made his move.
It was late afternoon, and the light through the chapel windows was the color of honey. She was sitting on a stone bench near the candles, her prayer book open in her lap, though she was not reading it. She was looking at him instead, a soft, dreamy expression on her face that made his chest ache. They had been talking of small things: the weather, a new shipment of incense that had arrived, the septa with the cane who had been unusually severe that morning. The conversation had lapsed into a comfortable silence, the kind that only existed between people who knew each other well.
Ormund turned to face her fully, his heart beating a steady, determined rhythm in his chest. “I have been thinking,” he said, “about your choice to join the Faith.”
Her expression flickered, the dreaminess replaced by something guarded. “My lord?”
“I do not mean to pry,” he said, holding up a hand. “Forgive me if I overstep. But I have come to know you these past weeks, and I find myself... concerned. You are young. You have a whole life ahead of you. And yet you speak of taking vows that will bind you forever, that will cloister you away from the world.” He paused, letting his words sink in. “Surely you feel as though you are missing out. Surely you are at least curious about what you are leaving behind.”
She looked down at her lap, her fingers tightening on the leather cover of her prayer book. “I have made my peace with it,” she muttered. “It is not as if I had many other options.”
“But if you did,” Ormund pressed, leaning closer. “If a path opened before you, a different path, one that led to marriage, to a household of your own, would you take it?”
She was silent for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was barely audible. “It is a moot point, my lord. I have no dowry. No prospects. I am not...I am not the sort of woman men fight for.”
“You are wrong,” Ormund said, and the intensity in his voice made her look up sharply. “You are so wrong. But that is not what I asked. I asked if you would take the opportunity, if it were offered.”
She bit her lip, and the gesture sent a bolt of heat through him. “I do not know,” she admitted. “I have never...I do not know if I am suited for marriage. The septas say that it is a sacred duty, but they also speak of the...the temptations of the flesh. The lusts that drive men and women together. I have never felt...” She trailed off. “I have never felt overwhelming desire. The way the septas describe it. So perhaps I am better suited to the cloth after all. I will manage without it.”
The words hung in the air between them, and Ormund felt his patience snap.
She had never felt desire. Of course she hadn’t. She had been sheltered, hidden away first in her father’s modest keep and then in the septry, surrounded by old women in gray wool who told her that the body was a vessel of sin and shame. No one had ever touched her. No one had ever kissed her. No one had ever shown her what passion could be. So she thought that meant she was incapable of it. She thought that meant she was destined for a life of cold sheets and silent prayers.
The possessiveness that had been simmering in his blood for weeks boiled over. He could not let this stand. He could not let her slip away into the Faith’s embrace without ever knowing what she was giving up. He had to show her. He had to make her understand.
“I can help you,” he said.
She blinked, confused. “Help me? How?”
Ormund rose from his knees, he moved to stand before her. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and questioning, her prayer book forgotten in her lap. He reached down and gently took it from her, setting it aside on the bench. Then he took her hands, drawing her to her feet.
“My lord,” she began, a nervous tremor in her voice, “what are you...”
“Hush,” he murmured. He stepped closer, backing her toward the stone wall of the chapel, until her shoulders brushed the cool stone. She was trapped, though she did not seem to realize it yet. Her eyes were fixed on his face, bewildered but not yet afraid. “You said you have never felt desire. I believe you. But I also believe that you are wrong about yourself. You are not incapable of passion. You have simply never had anyone awaken it in you.”
“I don’t understand,” she whispered.
“Let me show you,” Ormund said. And then, before she could protest, before she could pull away, he lifted his hands and cupped her face.
Her skin was soft. So soft. His thumbs traced the line of her cheekbones, the curve of her jaw. She trembled under his touch, her breath catching in her throat. Her eyes, those beautiful eyes, were filled with confusion and the first stirrings of alarm.
“My lord,” she said again, but her voice was weaker now, less certain.
“Trust me,” Ormund breathed. He leaned in, pressing his nose to the curve of her throat, just below her ear. He inhaled deeply. The scent of her flooded his senses: clean skin, a hint of soap, something sweet that he could not name. No perfume. She would not wear perfume in the sept. It was just her, just the natural scent of her skin, and it was intoxicating.
His hands slid from her face to her shoulders, tracing the line of her collarbone through the rough wool of her dress. He felt her shiver. Her hands came up, pressing against his chest.
“You are beautiful,” he murmured against her skin. “Do you know that? You are so beautiful, and you have denied yourself for so long. But you do not have to deny yourself any longer. Let me show you what you have been missing.”
Her breath hitched. “Ormund, I...we should not...”
“Why not?” He lifted his head to look at her. “We are in the sept. We are before the gods themselves. If this were wrong, would they not strike us down? But they will not. Because there is no sin in love. There is no sin in what I feel for you.”
She stared at him, her lips parted, her protests dying on her tongue. He could see the war in her eyes, the years of teaching, of modesty, of fear, clashing with something new, something she had never felt before. He would win. He would make her feel it and then she would be his.
He kissed her.
Her lips were soft and warm and utterly still beneath his at first, frozen with shock. But Ormund was patient. He moved his mouth gently, coaxingly, one hand sliding to the back of her head to cradle it. He angled her face and deepened the kiss by slow degrees, letting her acclimate to the sensation. His thumb stroked the nape of her neck in soothing circles.
Slowly, hesitantly, she responded.
It was barely there, a slight movement of her lips against his, a tiny sound from the back of her throat. But it was enough. Triumph surged through him. She was not immune.
He pulled back just enough to look at her. Her eyes were glassy, her breath coming in short, shallow gasps. “There,” he whispered. “That is desire. Do you feel it?”
“I...” She swallowed hard. “I do not know.”
“Then let me teach you more.”
His hands dropped to her body. He traced her form, his palms skating over the curves that the gray wool did such a poor job of hiding. Her waist, her hips, the swell of her breasts. She gasped when his thumbs brushed the undersides, her back arching involuntarily. The wool was coarse beneath his fingers, but the warmth of her body bled through it, he could feel the way she trembled.
“You are so responsive,” he murmured, his voice thick with want. “So perfect. You see? Your body knows what it wants, even if your mind does not.”
“We cannot,” she breathed, but she did not push him away. Her hands were still on his chest, but they were clutching at the fabric of his doublet now, clinging rather than resisting. “Someone will see...”
“No one will see,” Ormund assured her. He glanced toward the chapel entrance, deserted, as it always was at this hour. “It is only us. Only us and the gods. And the gods want this. They want you to be mine.”
His hand found the hem of her dress and began to lift it, slowly, inch by inch. The wool bunched under his fingers, and cool air kissed the bare skin of her calves. She made a small, strangled noise, her eyes going wide.
“What are you doing?”
“Showing you,” he said. “Showing you what you would be giving up. Showing you what I can give you.” His other arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her flush against him. She could feel the hardness of his body, the evidence of his own desire pressing against her hip. Her breath caught.
“I will make you feel things you have never imagined,” he promised, his lips brushing her ear. “And when I am done, you will understand. You will want me as I want you. And I will wed you. I will make you Lady Hightower. You will never wear gray wool again. I will dress you in silk and velvet and cover you in jewels, and every night I will take you to my bed and show you pleasure until you forget your own name.”
Tears glimmered in her eyes: overwhelm, confusion, the first stirrings of a pleasure she did not yet understand. “Ormund...”
“Shh. Let me.”
His hand found the apex of her thighs, and she jerked, a sharp gasp escaping her lips. He held her steady, his arm a band of iron around her waist. He was gentle, so gentle, as he began to touch her. His fingers traced the shape of her through the thin linen of her smallclothes, feeling the heat that was already building there. She was innocent, untouched, but her body was responding to him. He could feel the dampness beginning to seep through the fabric.
“You see?” he breathed. “Your body knows. Your body wants this.”
He teased her through the linen, rubbing slow circles that made her whimper. Her head fell back against the stone wall, her eyes fluttering closed. Her hands, still clutching his doublet, tightened. She was trying not to make a sound, biting her lip so hard he feared she would draw blood.
“Don’t,” he chided gently. “Let me hear you. There is no shame here.”
He pushed the linen aside and touched her bare skin. She cried out, a broken sound that echoed faintly in the stone chamber. He swallowed it with a kiss, his tongue sweeping into her mouth as his fingers explored her most intimate places. She was wet now, slick and hot and so very ready, even if she did not understand it. He massaged her gently, learning the shape of her, finding the places that made her gasp and twitch.
When he found the small, sensitive pearl at the crest of her sex, she nearly buckled. He circled it with his thumb, pressing just hard enough, and she made a sound that was half-sob, half-moan. It was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard.
“That’s it,” he crooned. “That’s it, sweet girl. Feel it. Let it happen.”
He worked her with patient fingers, building her higher and higher. She was shaking now, her whole body trembling, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Her hips began to move of their own accord, rocking against his hand, seeking what she did not yet understand. Ormund understood. He knew exactly what she needed.
He pushed one finger inside her, and she cried out, her inner muscles clenching around him. She was so tight, so impossibly tight. A true maiden, untouched and pure. The thought made him groan, his own arousal straining painfully against his breeches. He added a second finger, stretching her gently, and she whimpered, her nails digging into his chest.
“It’s all right,” he murmured. “It’s all right. I have you.”
He moved his fingers in a slow, steady rhythm, his thumb still circling her pearl. The dual sensation was too much for her. He could see it in her face, the way her brow furrowed, the way her lips parted on a silent cry. She was close. So close.
“Let go,” he commanded softly. “Let go for me.”
Her body convulsed, her inner walls clamping down on his fingers in rhythmic pulses. A high, keening wail tore from her throat, he caught it with his mouth, kissing her deeply as she rode out the waves of her climax. She sobbed against his lips, tears streaming down her cheeks: tears of pleasure, of shock, of a release so profound she had no words for it. He held her through it, one arm still wrapped around her waist, keeping her upright as her legs gave out.
When the tremors finally subsided, she slumped against him, her face buried in his shoulder. She was crying quietly, her body limp and boneless in his arms. Ormund stroked her hair, pressing kisses to her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth.
“There,” he whispered. “There, now. Was that not worth feeling? Was that not better than a lifetime of cold prayers?”
She did not answer. She could not. She was too overwhelmed, too undone. But the way she clung to him, the way her fingers twisted in the fabric of his doublet told him everything he needed to know.
He was not done with her yet.
Gently, he eased her back against the wall and reached down to unlace his breeches. Her eyes, still glazed with the aftermath of her pleasure, went wide when she saw what he was doing. A flicker of fear crossed her face, and he soothed it away with a murmured reassurance.
“Shh. Do not be afraid. This is the natural conclusion of what we have begun. I will be gentle. I will make it good for you, I promise.”
“But...but I am not wed,” she whispered, the last vestiges of her pious training clinging to her like a ghost. “This is...this is a sin...”
“There is no sin in love,” Ormund repeated firmly. He hoisted her up, his hands gripping her thighs, wrapping her legs around his waist. The position pressed her back against the wall and opened her to him completely. The head of his cock, slick with his own arousal, nudged against her entrance. She was so wet, so ready. “I will marry you. I swear it. I will go to your mother tonight and ask for your hand. You will be Lady Hightower. This is not a sin. This is a consummation.”
He rubbed himself against her, coating himself in her slickness, and she whimpered, her head falling back. Her hips twitched, an involuntary motion that pressed him closer. She wanted this. Her body wanted this, even if her mind still resisted.
“Tell me you want it,” he urged. “Tell me you want me.”
“I...I do not know...” Her voice was wrecked, raw.
“You do know.” He pressed forward just slightly, just enough for the tip of him to breach her entrance. She gasped, her inner muscles fluttering around him. “Say it. Say you want me to be your husband.”
“I...” Her eyes met his, teary and drowning in sensation. “I want...I want...”
“Say it.” He pushed in another inch. She cried out, her nails raking down his chest. He was stretching her, filling her in a way she had never been filled before. She was so tight, so hot, so perfect.
“Husband,” she sobbed. “I want you to be my husband.”
The word sent a bolt of pure, primal satisfaction through him. He surged forward, sheathing himself fully inside her. She screamed. He swallowed her cry, kissed her through the pain of her maidenhead breaking, held himself still to let her adjust.
“Good girl,” he praised, his voice rough with strain. “Good girl. You took all of me. You are so perfect.”
She was weeping, but she was also clinging to him, her legs locked around his waist, her body slowly relaxing around the intrusion. He waited until her breathing steadied, until the tension in her shoulders began to ease. Then, slowly, he began to move.
He fucked her with slow, deep strokes, each thrust measured. He wanted her to feel every inch of him, wanted her to understand what she had been denying herself all these years. Her whimpers gradually turned to moans, her cries of pain melting into sounds of pleasure. Her hips began to meet his, awkwardly at first, then with growing confidence. She was learning. She was feeling.
“That’s it,” he grunted. “That’s it, take it. Take all of it. This is what you were made for. This is what I will give you, every night, for the rest of our lives.”
She was panting now, her breath hot against his neck. Her inner walls fluttered around him, tightening in a way that signaled another approaching peak. He quickened his pace, driving into her harder, faster, chasing his own release.
“Tell me how it feels,” he demanded. “Tell me.”
“Good,” she gasped. “It feels...oh, gods, it feels so good...”
The words were his undoing. Hearing her admit it, hearing her lose herself in the pleasure he was giving her. He drove into her one last time, burying himself to the hilt, and spilled his seed deep inside her with a groan. The sensation of it, the warmth flooding her core, pushed her over the edge again, milking him of every last drop.
They stayed tangled together against the stone wall, both of them breathing hard. Ormund pressed his forehead to hers, his eyes closed, his heart pounding. She was still trembling, little aftershocks rippling through her body. He could feel the evidence of what they had done, the mingled fluids trickling down her thighs.
She was ruined. She was his.
“I will go to your mother tonight,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her damp forehead. “We will be wed by the end of the month. You will never wear gray wool again. I swear it on the Light of the Seven.”
She did not speak. She only nodded, her face still buried in his shoulder. But her arms tightened around his neck, that was answer enough for him.
Ormund held her until she stopped shaking. Then he helped her straighten her dress, tidying her as best he could. She would need to return to the septry, would need to clean herself up before anyone noticed the state she was in. He would send a maester to her with a potion later, something to prevent any consequences until after the wedding. He was not careless.
He watched her walk away on unsteady legs, her prayer book clutched to her chest like a shield. She did not look back at him. But he could see she moved differently, the faint hitch in her step.
That night, he dispatched a raven to House Bulwer, requesting an audience to discuss a matter of great importance. He did not use the word “betrothal” in the letter, but he did not need to. No one would refuse the Lord of the Hightower.
Ormund stood at the window of his solar, looking out over Oldtown. The city was bathed in moonlight, the towers and spires silvered by the glow. Somewhere below, in the septry, his bride-to-be was lying on her narrow cot, perhaps still feeling the ache of him inside her. Perhaps dreaming of silk and velvet. Perhaps dreaming of him.
He smiled, satisfied. The gods had tried to take her from him. But he was a Hightower, and Hightowers did not lose. She was his now, his lady, his wife, the future mother of his children. It was, he reflected, the most pious thing he had ever done.
a/n: Since it was requested to write something for Ormund. The fic was inspired by Rhaenyra looking strangely hot in her septa disguise in season 2. Reblogs, comments and likes are appreciated! <3
a/n: Voluntary donations are accepted on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: https://ko-fi.com/catbayunthestoryteller <3
CW: MDNI/18+. NSFW. Secret relationship w/Ormund Hightower. Taboo dynamics. Ormund was/is reader's guardian of sorts. Age gap implied. [Ormund is canon age, reader is 18+ & older than Daeron]. Unprotected p in v. Creampie. Ormund is a walking fraud. Reader has Ormund under her finger. No explicit descriptions of reader, her targaryen bloodline/characteristics, or her relation to Daeron.
A/N: I literally wrote this in 20 mins before I had to leave the house. I'm rusty as hell, this is probably a nothing burger, but I'm trying something new with Ormund because he's been on my mind for a hot second. Anywho, reblogs, comments, and likes are greatly appreciated. <3
⟢ NAVIGATION | MASTERLIST
Ormund Hightower has tried everything in the book to rid you of your Targaryen ancestry.
He makes you recite the literature of the Faith of The Seven, dresses you in the signature Hightower shade of green, and bathes you in anything that would cover the stench of dragon hide on your skin.
The one thing he couldn’t fully get rid of was the language you grew up speaking.
He’d call High Valyrian the language of savages, quick to rise his hand in a preemptive strike when he hears you speaking the language with Daeron in secret. Ormund was a man of knowledge and he despised not understanding the language or not knowing what you were saying behind his back. He hated not being able to decipher your words from the rolls of certain letters on your tongue to the complex grammar he tries to pick up but continues to miss. He believes you used the language to mock him; he couldn't ever fully get rid of that defiant fire you kept burning alive.
Sure, he scolded you harsher than he did with Daeron, something you’ve long hated since being put under his guardianship until adulthood but you quickly grew accustomed to it. He tells you he does it with the intent of making you a proper lady of the realm, to remove any semblance of the tainted ancient blood that coursed through your veins and make you more appealing to potential suitors.
Ormund was a man of morals, he doesn’t bend his will all that easily. Unfortunately for him, you were one of the few that knew how to get under his skin.
It was in the stillness of the night that Ormund finds himself bewitched by your presence. With the moon high in the sky, you sat bare on top of his thighs, riding his cock like you were meant to, like you had something to prove. Your nails clawed down his perfect chest with every harsh bounce of your hips, careful not to scratch him too much or leave marks behind on his perfect skin. He was too occupied with gripping your hips to care much about where your hands were, squeezing and kneading at the fat of your ass, encouraging you to buck down onto him even harder.
It was at this moment of vulnerability that you'd make your move. You leaned down on top of Ormund so your chests rubbed together, and your back arched to take him even deeper than before. Your kiss bitten lips skimmed over his ear, and you began speaking the very language Ormund demonizes. He wouldn’t know what you were saying, he didn’t care to learn the language on his own, but the tips of his ears grew hotter with every undecipherable noun and adjective that came out of you; the whispered words he heard were more reminiscent of a purr than anything else.
You finish your blabbering with a bite of his earlobe, sending Ormund into a full body shudder as his orgasm sneaks up on him sooner than he anticipated. He fills the warmth of your cunt like he had done a handful of times prior, groaning into the curve of your neck and wrapping his arms around your waist to keep you secure above him. Once the high has worn off and he catches his breath, you pull away to look at him carefully, a satisfied grin on your sweet face that was too similar to that of a dragon after a successful hunt.
Ormund knows he’ll have to keep whatever was going on between you a secret, he just prays that his true intentions aren’t revealed until his plans of making Daeron king come to fruition. For now, he’ll play along a little longer, for he knows you’re already damned, and at this rate you’ll bring him down with you.
summary: gwayne finally returns from the war after months away to claim you at last, only to find that you and ormund have grown far closer than he anticipated, and that his cousin has no intention of letting you go so easily. (13k)
contents: targ!reader (no physical descriptions), love triangle, enemies to lovers, angst, hurt/comfort, forbidden love, infidelity, canon divergence, cw for emotional manipulation, mentions of ptsd, descriptions of blood and gore, s3ep6 spoilers, smut 18+ (MDNI): gwayne gets a much needed handjob, fem receiving oral
( PART ONE ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
vi. RUIN & RETURN
It had been six days since Gwayne’s letter arrived at camp; five since the Hightower host marched for Tumbleton; and one since you arrived within the ancient walls to wait.
Ormund had not allowed you to read it. He tossed the parchment into the hearth before you could so much as ask and promptly reached for his sword, unsheathing the steel with a strange air of control, right before a shout tore from his throat. He brought the blade down onto the war table hard enough to splinter the old wood. “Useless craven— Coward— Cunt!” he bellowed with every blow, until the ivory pieces sitting atop the map scattered to the floor like knocked-out teeth.
You stood on the far side of the tent, wrapped in your nightgown and still sticky with sex between the thighs, and watched the man lose all of his usual composure in the space of a single breath. Daeron stood just in front of you, not quite broad or tall enough to protect you from his uncle’s rage, but trying to shield you from it nonetheless.
With one final wavering exhale, Ormund sheathed his sword again and left it lying flat on the ruined table before him. His tense shoulders loosened as he raised a hand to swipe a rogue auburn curl from his brow. He turned to face you again with a much more careful, if only slightly unhinged, smile on his mouth.
“There has been no sight of Aemond,” he announced at last. “Nor Vhagar— We’ll have to proceed to Tumbleton on our own. Gwayne will meet us there in time.”
It was not joy alone that heavied your chest at the sound of his name. It was much closer to dread, which burned as it rose into your throat like bile — alongside something that should’ve felt like love but had since grown into something far more complicated in your last few moons as prisoner. You turned from him at once and shoved the tent flap aside just in time to exorcise your sickness onto the dewy grass below.
The dread did not leave with it, and neither did the guilt.
Now you sit at the long table of another manse’s dining hall, far humbler than that of the Red Keep but still a palace compared to the war tents, and watch the last of the orange sunrise die over the hills through the arched windows. Somewhere down that road, your husband rides towards you — alone and hunted and entirely unaware of what awaits him in these walls.
“You’ve hardly touched your supper,” Ormund says beneath the soft scrape of his knife as he cuts himself a slice of honeyed boar. Despite not having properly dined since the war began, he eats with a methodical sort of restraint. He takes small bites, chews each of them thoroughly, and doesn’t talk again until he swallows. “I’m not going to have to feed you myself again, am I?”
You miss the amusement dancing on the edge of his melodic voice with your attention fixed on the window, where the dark edge of the hill meets the violet sky. “I’m not hungry,” you answer distantly.
“Yes. You said as much yesterday as well,” Ormund sighs with all the exasperation of a man grown tired of losing his battles with you. “I’d have thought you might be glad to have a proper kitchen. With proper cooks. With proper food.”
His apathy cuts you like a blade, which has grown sharper and more frequent since the letter arrived at camp. It seemed to sever whatever spell had briefly held the two of you together before now; or otherwise shut something in Ormund that has not opened since he learned of his cousin’s imminent arrival.
“Well, forgive me, my lord,” you say with a voice as thin as Valyrian steel. “If my husband’s sudden return from the dead has rather spoiled my appetite.”
Ormund’s eyes snap up from his plate at once. They’re pale and unreadable and utterly void of the warmth you’d grown so accustomed to. When the blue of his eyes are warm, they’re like swimming in the languid blue of a summer sea. They carry none of that silken familiarity tonight.
“He is not dead yet," Ormund reminds you with his brows raised to his hairline. “So far as either of us knows, anyway.”
Yet. The word alone makes you flinch, though you cannot yet tell if he means it as cruelly as it feels. You find more and more these days that you can no longer tell the difference with him now.
“What am I to say to him?” you wonder suddenly aloud, as if the question had been building in your throat since you learned of Gwayne’s arrival. Your anxious hands twist in the charcoal-silver skirts borrowed from Lady Footly’s closet; a gift, Ormund called it, despite it not belonging to either of you. “When Gwayne arrives— what do I tell him? How am I meant to look at him?”
“You are his wife,” Ormund responds plainly, with one careless roll of his broad shoulders. “I suppose you’ll look at him as you always have.”
Your face screws with a choked-back anger. “That’s not an answer—”
“No. But it’s the only one I have.” He sets his fork and knife on the plate with a heavy clink and leans back in his chair. He tilts his chin upward to stare at you over the top of the glittering candles between you, ringed fingers fidgeting over the pale white cloth.
“I have an army to feed, men to protect, and walls to build before Rhaenyra’s dragonfire can swallow the castle whole,” he continues in a monotone. “Unfortunately, I no longer possess the luxury, or the patience, of coddling your guilt.”
His words burn red-hot through your chest, searing you like a brand. You flinch away from them as if he’d struck you physically, though it might’ve hurt less if he had. Your eyes sting as your throat tightens around all the words you want to fling back at him — perhaps that he had not seemed so burdened by you a week past, when his mouth was on you and his fingers were in you; that he had not been so burdened by your guilt all the weeks before that, when he swore your safety mattered to him above his cousin’s own claim to you.
But you swallow down the accusations now and throw your napkin onto your untouched plate instead. Your chair scrapes hard against the cobbles as you rise from the table in a rush of black and silver silk.
“Where are you going now?” Ormund huffs.
“For a walk,” you answer without looking back at him.
“You haven’t even touched your food,” he calls to your retreating figure, motioning to your uneaten plate with a ringed hand. His even voice begins to fray at the edges, “Sit down and eat—”
“Feed it to the hounds—”
“Sit!” His voice cracks through the room like thunder when your hand curls around the cold brass door handle. The sheer volume of his voice, the raw bite underneath it, roots you in place. Your head turns slowly to find the man glaring at you from his spot at the table, though the scowl on his chiseled features disappears just as quickly as it came on.
His eyes flutter shut as his broad chest inflates behind his emerald coat, with a slow breath in through his nose. You watch the man walk himself down from some invisible ledge — tense shoulders dropping, clenched fists easing, rough breaths coming easier again.
“I’m sorry…” Ormund says when he opens his eyes again. The light in the pale blue of his gaze has returned to him, you find, and so has the softness in his smile when he rises from his chair to meet you. “I am sorry, my love— I forget myself— This war has driven me half-mad, if you could not already tell.”
He exhales a faint laugh that you do not join him in. He crosses the distance between you in a few short strides, wide hands settling along the outsides of your elbows — warm, even through the thin sleeves of your gown. You peer up at him through your lashes, uncertain whether the tenderness he extends to you now is real or simply the version he’s allowing himself to show you.
“If ever I am… cross with you. Or short with you in any way— It is never because of you, understand?” Ormund confesses lowly, eyes darting back and forth between your weary ones. “It takes me a moment to remember myself, is all… You understand that, don’t you?”
You swallow hard and nod wordlessly in response, though what you most desperately want to tell him in that moment is that Gwayne had never been so cross with you. That not once in your moons of marriage had he so much as raised his voice at you or frightened you the way Ormund has in such short time. You want to say it if only to see it hurt him the way his words have hurt you. Instead, you say nothing.
“He does not have to know,” Ormund murmurs to you, thumbs brushing your arm in an absent, reassuring gesture. “Nothing occurred between us that was not asked of me. I gave you only what you wanted— Surely a man cannot be faulted for answering his summons.”
Your brows lower over your narrowed eyes. “Are you saying that… that what we did is my fault alone?”
“Of course not!” Ormund laughs, broad hands rising to cup your burning cheeks between them. His palms are warm and calloused; they feel like velvet as they brush your skin. “I’m saying neither of us is at fault— You said it yourself, did you not? The war broke your vows. Not us.”
Some traitorous part of you, so desperate for absolution, nearly softens into his touch at that. You did not ask to be taken from the Red Keep; you did not ask for Ormund's protection; you did not ask for a husband to ride off at dawn and leave you to wonder all these months whether he was living or dead.
You are desperate and half-convinced in your own madness, but you think that perhaps Gwayne will understand that. That surely a woman who believed herself abandoned and already widowed cannot be faulted for the comfort she found in the meantime. It is a thing far too fragile to build a conscience on, but you cling to the comfort of it anyway.
“My cousin rides to Tumbleton alone— without his own army and with Daemon’s surely hunting him,” Ormund coos gently to you, sweeping his thumb across your skin. “It is entirely possible that he will not survive the journey here at all. And then there would be nothing for you to confess… And you would’ve spent all these days worrying for naught.”
The words settle over you like ice in your veins. Your eyes dart back and forth between his own as you search for something human within him — some acknowledgment of what he’s just comforted you with — and find nothing in return.
“You speak of his death like it would be a mercy to me,” you whisper, voice thick with unshed tears.
“I speak of it only as a possibility," Ormund corrects softly. “I only mean to spare you the fear of it, my love. Is that not a kindness?”
You do not answer him. You could not even if you wanted to; not with the invisible hand curling its way around your throat, as you listen to the man who’s protected you from certain death frame your husband's demise as a kindness done on your behalf.
But when Ormund ducks softly down to press a sickly sweet kiss to your mouth, tasting of the sweet wine and honeyed figs from supper, you cannot seem to pull away from him. Gods forgive you, but you lean into it instead; you ball the collar of his coat into fists and chase the comfort in his mouth the way you’ve chased the safety of his hands since you were brought to his side.
You think of the man who fed you bread from his own fingers when you would not eat; who cut down a hedgeknight before he could harm you; who wrapped you in his blankets and warmed your fingers in his hands on particularly freezing nights.
That man is still in there, somewhere, hidden beneath the throes of war.
You fear what might become of him before it’s done.
vii. MUD & MERCY
You stand before the tallest window of the Tumbleton manse, overlooking the winding ivied streets below. They lead straight to the western gate, where the scouts had seemingly spotted a rider without banners in the distance — a messenger from another camp, they said, or maybe Gwayne. The dying sunlight paints the sky in milky orange hues while you pick at the ragged skin of your thumbnail in an absentminded worry. The delicate nailbed splits and blooms red.
You do not notice until a silken handkerchief is motioned suddenly in the corner of your eye.
Your head whips to find Daeron standing at your elbow, green eyes glimmering and pink mouth fixed into a firm line of boyish solemnity. He stands taller than you now, which hadn’t been the case when you first arrived at camp — now you have to look up to properly meet the young boy’s gaze.
“Oh,” you say within a surprised breath. “Thank you.”
You take the cloth from him with a trembling hand. The pale linen blooms pink when you press it to the raging skin of your bleeding thumb. Daeron grimaces sympathetically in return, though you aren’t looking at him to see it.
“Are you nervous?” he wonders aloud, hands crossed firmly behind his back.
“A bit…” you confess in a sigh, dabbing at the wound and knowing that there is no string of words you could possibly put together to express just how nervous you are.
“Aye,” he nods. “I suppose I am, too… I’ve not seen him since I was a child.”
Your head turns slowly to flash the boy a knowing look. “You are still a child, my prince,” you remind him with a smile.
“A younger child, then,” Daeron mutters sheepishly back, freckled cheeks flaring as he turns back toward the window. His long, auburn tendrils sway softly at his shoulders when he shakes his head. “Long enough that I can no longer recall the last conversation I had with him… Though I’m sure it was about you, no doubt, with his betrothal to you and all…”
“Well, he spoke of you often,” you tell him, and watch the boy’s pale eyes flicker with a newfound life when he turns to you again. “He made it clear he was quite proud of you… And if it’s any consolation, I did not intend to steal him from Oldtown.”
“I’m glad for it,” Daeron blurts, then shakes his head at himself when the words don’t come out right. “Not that he left, of course, but that it was you he was given. There are far worse fates, to be true…”
He trails off and watches your face twist with confusion. His anxious gaze drops to the blood-spotted handkerchief as the tips of his ears glow pink. The words seem to escape him without a single thought in his floundering attempts to explain himself.
“I only mean that— that he is good. My Uncle Gwayne. The best of us, really, and Ormund is…” Daeron forgets why he brings up the older man the second his name spills from his lips, though he cannot seem to stop talking. “Ormund is good, too, I’m sure. Somewhere deep down. But he— He does not lose well, my lady. And I’ve learned that… that it's a dangerous thing, to— to be the prize he’s decided he’s won.”
The words come out of him in a rush; sentences half-formed and stumbling. He glances at you only once in a quick and searching look, before looking away again like he can’t stomach a second more of the contact. Your stomach twists in a sick feeling at each word from his mouth. Your throat runs dry as you choke on whatever response you might have given him — some careful deflection, maybe, or a warm laugh to soothe the boy — but a horn sounds from the tower before you can find any response at all.
Three short, sharp blasts send the keep into motion immediately.
“He’s here!” someone yells, far off in the distance. “Open the gates— it’s Ser Gwayne!”
Your feet seem to move on their own accord. Despite the dread sitting heavy in your belly, your legs carry you instantly towards Gwayne. You hold your dress skirts in your fists as you rush down the winding stone stairs, through the crowded hall, and out the heavy oak doors of the entrance. The humid, evening summer air takes the breath from your lungs as it strikes you across the face; it becomes near-impossible to take another one in, with your heart climbing so suddenly in your throat.
The thundering of hooves against cobblestone finds you before you’ve made it down the steep stone steps of the ancient castle. You’re blinded, briefly, by the setting sun until you hold a hand over your squinted eyes. Armored knights and groomed horses come into view — straddled loosely behind Bold Jon’s mare is Gwayne, though his face and hair are so caked with dirt and blood you scarcely recognize him.
Gwayne tries and fails to dismount on his own. His legs betray him after days of nonstop walking, and the exhaustion makes them buckle almost instantly. “Gwayne!” he hears you shout, right before he feels your hands reach for him before he can fall.
Your arms curl beneath his own to keep him upright. He leans the bulk of his weight against you without ever really meaning to, clinging to your warmth and the scent of floral bathing oils he isn’t quite used to. And, though he smells like dirt and death, you hold him back just the same.
“You’re alive,” you pant, breaths fanning in his muddied hair. “Gods, you’re alive—”
“Well…” He huffs a not-quite laugh that you can feel in his shoulder, pulling just far enough away to meet your wet eyes with a pair of duller, paler ones. “I told you I meant my vows, didn’t I?”
His words come out in rasps, voice dry from days of thirst and weeks of shouting. His chest sears with a foreign feeling at the way you’re looking at him now — like he’s half stranger, half god. “Apologies for my appearance, dear wife,” he pants and swallows down the sudden urge to cry. “But I have had a… rough go of things as of late…”
Your features crumble under the weight of your own tears. You shake your head at the man, and at his sorry attempt at a joke. “Gods, I’ve missed you...”
Gwayne exhales slowly through his nose as his cracked lips curve into a crooked smile, visibly exhausted but his even still. “Not nearly as much as—”
“Ser Gwayne.” The voice cuts through the bustling courtyard at once.
You feel every muscle in your body seize on instinct as your head whips back towards the stone steps, where Ormund stands at the top of them. His eyes scan the scene below — of you and Gwayne and your bodies only just now easing apart as the red-haired man attempts to stand on his own.
The silver chain of Ormund’s pomander clinks faintly in the newfound quiet as he brings the perfumed incense up to his nose, inhaling deeply to rid the scent of sweat and blood and death from his nostrils.
“I see you’ve made it,” is all he says.
Gwayne exhales an exhausted huff, a mixture of a laugh and a scoff. He sways softly on his muddied boots and clutches onto your shoulder with his free hand. “It’s good to see you too, cousin…” he responds in a monotone.
Ormund turns to Daeron, who’s hovering just beside him with his pale hands clenched into fists — it takes every bit of strength in the young boy’s body not to run down to his uncle alongside you, worried about how Ormund might react.
“See that a room is made ready for your uncle. And a hot meal is sent with haste— whatever the kitchens can manage quickly,” Ormund says to the boy, then pauses as his eyes drift back to Gwayne’s. “And perhaps a bath.”
Gwayne’s cracked lips curl into a slow smile. He breathes a laugh through his nose as he watches his cousin spin on his heel to walk away. “You always did have delicate sensibilities…” he attempts to call to the man, though he fails to muster the strength in his voice to be heard.
It is you who insists on escorting Gwayne to the bath. You wave off hovering knights and Tumbleton servants with a firmness that surprises even you — no longer a prisoner of war, but a high lord’s wife.
Gwayne, it seems, is much too spent from the journey to do anything more than lean into your shoulder the whole way up the winding castle. He braces himself on your firm weight as you peel the ruined layers of clothing from his body and coax him gently into the steaming tub.
Your own borrowed gown joins his tattered things in a forgotten heap on the cobbled floor as you sink into the water alongside him. The warmth laps gently at your waist as you shift yourself over his lap, resting the bulk of your weight on his thighs.
The bathwater turns the color of weak tea by the time you’ve worked the worst of the grime from Gwayne’s pale skin. Dark streams of dirt and old blood swirl away beneath the cloth in your hand, brushing a tad too gently over his shoulders and chest and back, as if anything too hard might break him entirely.
Gwayne sits slumped against the tub, eyes half-closed and head lolled back. The war had certainly taken its due upon his pretty features — the new hollows beneath his cheekbones, the fresh scar above his brow, the deep grey exhaustion under his once bright eyes. There’s a leanness to him now that suggests missed meals and weeks of marching; and a sort of heaviness in his gaze that suggests longer weeks of grief.
But still he softens for you, minute by minute, as you drag the cloth over the angle of his dirtied jaw. He exhales slowly through his nose and leans instinctively into your touch.
“You needn’t do this to yourself, you know?” the man murmurs, but makes no further move to stop you. “There are servants more than capable of tending to my bath.”
“I want to do it,” you tell him simply, dabbing at a speck of blood on his cheek. “I’ve missed you too much— I’d rather not share you with a servant just yet.”
He gives you a tired, crooked smile in response. “I missed you, too,” he says with a sigh, fingers clutching you harder by the waist beneath the water’s surface, like he’s still trying to make sure you’re still real. “Gods, you cannot imagine how badly…”
You rinse the cloth in the cooling water and press it gently to his hairline, dabbing at the remnants of dirt clinging stubbornly to him there. His adam’s apple bobs as he swallows through a tightening throat — being touched this gently threatens to undo him entirely, after weeks away and days of nonstop bloodshed.
His tense shoulders finally sink beneath the water as he admits, “I thought only of you… The entire way here… I fear it’s the only way I managed it— knowing that I could not die without seeing you first.”
Your throat tightens as guilt strangles you all over again; the bitter reminder of what you’d done, and all the nights you forgot to miss him back. Your fingers move anxiously to set the cloth on the rim of the tub and dip into the ceramic dish lying there. You scoop a handful of lavender soap onto your fingertips, and work it between your palms until it starts to foam.
“I thought of you, too,” you tell him with an averted gaze, which is true enough even though it feels like a lie when it escapes your mouth. “Every day.”
“And what of Ormund?” Gwayne wonders aloud, cracking one pale eye open to study your face as you rake the suds through his long auburn hair. The dull, muddy strands slowly return to their proper flaming color with each gentle pass of your fingers, as the last of the war’s blood and grim streams down his pale shoulders in dark rivulets. “I trust my cousin treated you well in my absence. He can be insufferable, I know, but he is not unkind… Not truly.”
You falter at the mention of him. Your hands still briefly in his damp tendrils as a sick feeling curls in the pit of your stomach. You swallow hard through the cold hands of guilt strangling your throat and force your fingers to keep moving, praying he does not notice how they tremble faintly against his scalp.
“He was… accommodating,” you answer carefully, eyes trained on his hair rather than on his attentive gaze, lest he read the whole truth of it plainly upon your face. “He kept me fed. Housed. Safe… For the most part— Tilt your head back; let me rinse your hair.”
You lift yourself slightly off the man’s lap to reach for the pitcher resting on the table beside the tub. Glittering rivulets of bath water cascade down your arms, glimmering in thin ribbons over the curves of your breasts in the dancing candlelight. Gwayne tips his head back to oblige you when you settle astride his scruffy thighs once more. His long, pale fingers smooth absently over your hips beneath the water, tracing idle circles along your soft skin.
“You’ve gone rather short with your answers, dear wife…” he observes lowly, peering at you from the bridge of his nose. “That’s not like you…”
“I’m just tired, is all…” you deflect, cupping one hand over his brow to shield his eyes while your other pours the clean water steadily over his hairline. The suds run clear down his temples and trickle back into the bath below. “It’s been a long day… A long several months, if I’m honest…”
“Yes… For us all, I’m sure,” Gwayne sighs and lifts his head once more when you shift to place the pitcher back onto its table. He arches an auburn brow and musters a quiet smile; the simple ease of being with you returns to him by the minute now, as his fingers settle over your ribcage again. “Though I do hope my letters kept you some company… Small comfort as they must have been.”
You go suddenly very still above him, muscle locking despite yourself. The guilt that had been simmering in your chest surges up your throat all at once now, in a red-hot flame that makes you feel halfway sick. For a long moment, you fail to make sense of the words — his letters — after so many months of waiting to hear from your husband, and after so many months of hearing Ormund tell you each day that there had been not a single word from him.
“…Your letters?” you repeat on bated breath.
“Yes,” Gwayne nods, brows pinching at your confusion. “I wrote every time I could manage it— At every stronghold we arrived… Did you not receive them?”
Your mouth opens and closes as you struggle to find the words to respond — words that would placate your own confusion without disclosing what you had been doing in the days awaiting his letters. “Perhaps… Perhaps they got lost. Along the road…”
Gwayne scoffs a humorless laugh at the thought. “Well, I pity the poor hand who got my letters instead of you…” he croons lowly.
“Why?” you press with a wavering grin. “What did they say?”
“Nothing of substance,” he shrugs his bare shoulders. “Just… foolish things.”
“Like…?” you trail off, soothing your palms down the pale canvas of his chest.
A faint uncertain smile tugs at his mouth as he watches your hands dip below the waterline. “I wrote of… what fields I passed. What foolish things Ser Criston said that day. What I’d seen— What I missed of home, what I missed of you…”
He trails off when your fingers find his cock, lying limp along his left thigh. He feels like velvet in your fist as you massage him slowly hard. “Keep going…” you coo to him.
His hips twitch beneath you when you tighten your grip on his stiffening length. “I— I wrote of your hands,” he manages, and swallows hard when your thumb swipes across the sensitive tip of his cock. His eyes grow heavy with desire as he watches you work at him through the haze of cloudy water. “How I missed the— the feel of them on me… Gods…”
“Go on…” you murmur, smearing your lips along his jaw.
“I wrote that… that I missed your smell,” he confesses, fraying with each slow pass of your hand. “Your hair after a bath… The wine on your breath after supper… The sweat between your thighs after a long day— Seven fucking hells.”
His jaw clenches tight when your free hand dips down to cradle his balls, squeezing the sensitive sack between your fingers until his cock jerks in your fist. His heavy head lolls into your kiss; he feels you smiling against his cheek.
“You’re already close, aren’t you?”
He swallows hard. “You have no idea how long it’s been…” he confesses in a blissful sigh.
“I’m sure there were plenty of whores on the road,” you singsong in his ears.
He shakes his head instantly in protest. “None as beautiful as you…”
His denial does little to comfort you. Instead, you feel a white-hot rage searing in your chest. Some distant, ugly part of you wishes he had taken a thousand whores while he was away, if only to take the weight of your own betrayal off your shoulders. At least then you could share it, this guilt, instead of living alone in your sin. You hate yourself most of all for even wishing it, and you feel very suddenly disgusted in your own skin — eager to be free of him and this moment altogether.
“Then cum,” you command against his pulse, jerking his cock faster in your fist. Gwayne’s fingers clutch at the plush skin of your hips hard enough to etch bruises there, and you revel in the hurt as his grumbled moan fills the bathing chambers. “Come on. Cum for me—”
He makes a broken sort of sound in the base of his throat as he seizes just beneath you, tense and trembling as his high hits him full force. The cooling water threatens to slosh off the rim as he twitches through his orgasm, which spurts into the cloudy water in short ropes of pearly-white, until he relaxes finally with a sigh.
“Give me a moment…” he pleads through ragged breaths. “I’ll make you feel good, I just— I need a moment…”
“I’m alright,” you assure him with a shake of your head, and with a sad smile that he doesn’t catch with his eyes still closed. “You rest tonight… I’ll see you in the morning.”
viii. CAGE & CONFESSION
You do not go to find Ormund until long after Gwayne’s breathing has steadied.
He takes up the whole of the bed in his inhuman exhaustion; one leg straight and the other bent beneath the quilts, one pale arm slung over his bare stomach and the other left reaching out for your empty side of the bed as you slip from beneath the silk. You storm for Ormund’s solar in the dimly lit halls in nothing but your thin ivory nightgown; the fabric catching at your ankles with every furious stride in the man’s direction.
You find the room lit by a sea of glittering candles when you throw open the door without ceremony. It strikes the wall a harsh bang, far too loud for the late night; the wind of the blow makes the flames gutter wildly in their sconces.
Ormund’s head snaps up from his dispatches at the sudden intrusion. His quill pauses on the parchment — because the work of war is never truly done, not even at the dead of night. His eyes are cold for a flicker with a soldier’s instinct, then warm again all at once when he finds no threat — only you. The corner of his mouth curls into a slow, knowing smile accordingly.
“Come to warm my bed already, have you?” the man lilts in his usual melodic voice, setting his quill aside as he slouches back into his cushioned seat. “I confess, I hardly expected to see you tonight, what with your husband so newly returned. Bold of you, really—”
“Don’t,” you snap.
The word slices through the solar like a blade, and wipes away the smug curve of his smile in an instant. Your nightgown billows around your ankles with every furious step inside; the shadows of the fabric catch in the candlelight and turn you into something half-spectral as you loom over the desk across from him.
“He wrote to me. For months, he wrote to me,” you agonize. “And when he asked whether I’d received them, I sat there like a fool, knowing I hadn’t gotten a single one.”
Ormund draws a long, even breath through his nose. His ringed fingers settle flat over the desk as he keeps a measured composure about him, even though yours unravels by the minute.
“Ah…” he hums under his breath.
A shocked laugh escapes your mouth. “That’s all you have to say to me?”
“What would you have me say?” he asks, pale eyes locked with yours as he braces himself on the arms of his chair to rise. The wood scrapes harshly along the cobbles when he stands to full height. “That I kept them from you? That I— read them for myself and burned each one in the hearth when I’d finished? Very well… I did.”
The plain admission threatens to knock the breath from your lungs. You had braced yourself for denial, to be true, to spend these late hours coaxing the truth from his lips. You were not prepared for confession; not so soon, and not so easily.
“Why?” you demand, half-breathless with tears. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“Because I did not wish to hurt you,” Ormund says, as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world. “You wept for that man every night for the better part of a moon’s turn. I thought it might ease you, if you’d believed he didn’t care enough to write to you at all. I thought I was sparing you the grief of it.”
“That was not yours to decide!” you shout, voice shaking beneath the weight of your girlish fury. “Those were my letters, Ormund! My husband's words! You had no right—”
“No right?!” he thunders through an emotionless laugh, ocean eyes flickering with madness in an instant. “You are my prisoner! Or have you so quickly forgotten, given how generously I’ve treated you?”
You flinch back as he rounds the desk, though you cannot seem to leave the spot ahead of him as he inches towards you like a predator to prey.
“You’re lucky you’re standing here at all. Any other Targaryen beast would be in chains, but you…” he continues, prowling another step closer. “I let you share my tent, my table, my bed. And I did it gladly because I came to love you despite the— taint in your blood.”
You peer up at him through teary eyes when he towers finally in front of you — brows raised, eyes hardened, jaw clenched tight.
“But… you are still my prisoner,” he reminds you evenly. “You have been since the day you arrived at my camp. So I have every right to decide which letters enter your hands and which ones do not.”
Each word strikes you like a physical blow — worse, somehow, than the searing one the hedgeknight had dealt you, which has caused an unnatural cracking of your jaw ever since. Maybe because these cruel, cruel words come from the same mouth that has kissed you, pleasured you.
“Prisoner?” you repeat tearily, features screwed in disbelief. “You say you love me and yet you call me beast in the very same breath. Wh… What am I meant to make of that?”
Ormund’s face falters finally at the sight of your tears, clinging to your lower lashes and glimmering gold in the candlelight. A soft crack splits down the unforgiving marble of him as he shakes his head down at you.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he says and turns away.
“Like what?” you spit at the back of him.
“Like I've wounded you,” he snaps, long coat fanning slightly at his waist when he turns to face you again, now several paces away. “Where was your Gwayne when you hadn’t eaten in five days, and I fed you bread from mine own hand? Tell me that.”
Your mouth parts, but nothing comes out.
“Where was your dutiful husband when that hedgeknight had you pinned in the dirt with your skirts torn to your thighs?” Ormund continues, palms splayed at his sides for effect. “Because I did not see him riding to your rescue as I had. I did not see him holding you through the nights you woke screaming. That was me— Only me— And yet you still stand here and weep over a handful of mindless letters, as if that erases the whole of what I've done for you.”
Your chin jerks back as you flinch hard at his words, at the weight of them, which you can feel heavying your chest until every new breath feels impossible. Ormunds goes silent for a moment; the shadow of his clenched jaw comes and goes as he grits his teeth. His fists open and close at his sides until they finally relax, when the anger within drains into mourning.
“I’m sorry,” he mutters suddenly, boots padding along the cobbles as he closes the distance between you once more. “Forgive me. You’re right, I— I should not have kept them from you. I only meant to spare you, you understand that, right?”
His wide, gently calloused hands reach for your cheeks with a tenderness that feels maddeningly sincere compared to the vitriol he’d thrown at you moments ago. He lifts your chin and ducks his head into your eyeline when you do not meet his gaze. His blue eyes go round and wet with a boyish grief as hurt sears through his chest.
“I only want to keep you safe,” he whispers. “Whatever else I’ve done wrong— that much has always been true… You know this, don’t you?”
He peers down at you and waits on bated breath for a response. You say nothing just yet. Your trembling hands reach from the gold buttons of his coat. At first, he thinks you mean to push him away — you want nothing more, in fact, than to push him away and wrench yourself from his hands and return to your place in bed next to Gwayne.
You do not.
You just close your eyes, exhausted past the point of arguing any further. The threads of guilt and love and fury and anguish tangle together somewhere deep in your chest, until one is utterly indistinguishable from the others. The only thing you know now for certain is that the whole of your life can be categorized into two groups: those who have stayed and those who have gone.
Your own family had sailed across the Narrow Sea and left you behind without so much as a backwards glance; and Gwayne, gentle as he is, still rode off to serve a cause that mattered more to him than you.
Ormund is, perhaps, the only person in your life who has never once abandoned you. Whatever else he has done to you before now — however cruel or calculating or maddening he has since become — he has never once walked away from you. Not when you intended to starve yourself, not when you were pinned in the mud by your skirts, not when you woke up screaming on particularly brutal nights.
You hate how much it all matters to you, however fickle it may seem. You hate it, and you hate that cannot make yourself stop needing it all the same.
“I don’t know what to do…” you confess in a broken voice, clutching him hard by the collar of his coat. His softened face is bleary behind the tears burning in your eyes. “I feel so guilty, Ormund— I do not know for how long I can bear it. It sets heavy on my chest, all the time, and I cannot set it down—”
“Then let me carry it,” he tells you. His grip goes more solid when you attempt to turn away, thumbs pressing harder into your cheeks. “I can bear it well enough for the two of us, I swear it—”
The breath of his words fans across your chin when he ducks down to kiss you, hard and sudden and searing. He tastes of wine and mint leaves when the velvety pad of his tongue licks into your mouth without warning.
You sigh hard through your nose at the feeling of him and cling to the front of his coat as he walks you backward a few paces towards the desk. The edge of the wood catches hard against the backs of your thighs. Ormund’s hands dip from your face to your hips, balling the fabric of your gown until it rises up your legs.
“Did you take him into your bed tonight?” he pants rough against your mouth, with the tip of his broad nose nudging yours. “Your husband? Did you fuck him? Tell me.”
“No,” you shake your head on an exhaled breath. Your fingers curl into his dark curls as his wet mouth drags along your neck, down to your exposed collarbone. “I only pleasured him with my hand. Nothing more.”
Ormund nods swiftly, as though pleased by the admission. He peers up at you through his lashes as he kisses down your clothed chest. “Always a giver, aren’t you?” he hums lowly, mouth quirking softly at the edges. “Allow me to return the favor, then…”
He sinks to his knees, with your ivory skirt now pushed up to your thighs. You keep one hand splayed along the back of his knuckles and the other tangled in his curls as he kisses your cunt like he would your mouth. He moans when his tongue slots between your sticky folds, a muffled growl you can feel in the very pit of your stomach.
Ormund is not quite as measured with his mouth as Gwayne had been the evening before he left you. He’s fast and sloppy and loud — you can hear his tongue as it flicks against you, his lips as they suckle your clit, his moans as your honey pools on his tongue.
You swallow down a moan before it can swell through the quiet room. It turns into a whimper in your throat instead. “Ormund—” you gasp quietly, tugging him hard by the hair as his tongue laps at your swollen clit.
His bleary eyes open to peer up the length of your body — your heavy head tilted to your chest, your gaze lidded and glassy with pleasure, your chest rising and falling with uneven breaths. “Let me have it,” he slurs against your pussy, and smiles to himself at the pretty sound you make for him in response. “That’s it— Let me have it…”
Your mouth presses into a tight line to choke back a moan when his mouth returns to your cunt, suckling the sensitive button between his lips and flicking his tongue against it simultaneously. You shudder against his mouth when you cum for him, whimpering when he buries his moans and muffled murmurs of praise against your drooling pussy.
You do as you’re told — you give it all to him, you let him bear it — while Gwayne sleeps off the remnants of war across the hall.
ix. GARDENS & GHOSTS
The gardens of Tumbleton are modest things compared to the grandeur of the Red Keep, though you struggle to remember it so vividly now. Here there are only a few neat rows of late-summer roses gone wild for want of a gardener, an overgrown path winding between shaggy hedges, and a slowly weeping fountain gone quiet and still. You spend Gwayne’s second evening at the foreign castle walking beneath a canopy of drooping wisteria, with your hands looped loosely through the crook of his arm and your dress skirts whispering against the stone with every languid step.
“I’d nearly forgotten what this was like…” Gwayne hums, studying the wilting roses with distracted interest. “Walking somewhere without waiting for an arrow to find me first…”
“Don’t worry, Ser Gwayne…” you squint with a teasing lilt. “I’ll keep you safe.”
And though Gwayne hasn’t so much as seen you hold a real sword in your hand, he flashes you a tight-lipped smile anyway. “Of that, dear wife, I have no doubt…”
You fall into an easy quiet thereafter; the ordinary rhythm of marriage, though it still feels a bit foreign to you now. He asks only about small things: if the summer storms had frightened you too badly, if the men at the Hightower camp treated you well, and if you’d truly meant what you said about that farm. You answer each in turn, grateful for the ease of it — or, at least, for the brief illusion that nothing had changed between you at all.
“And the encampment?” Gwayne asks then, flashing you a knowing look from the corner of his eye. “You’d said precious little of it thus far. Surely, it wasn’t so unbearable— Though I’m sure my cousin likely wasn’t making it easy for you.”
“There isn’t much to say,” you shrug with a feigned air of detachment, though the words come out a little quicker than you mean them to. You catch the faint furrow of confusion between his brows, and pretend to be more preoccupied by the wilting wisteria overhead instead. “It was… eventful. I suppose. In its own way.”
“Eventful?” Gwayne repeats with an arched brow. An unsure laugh sputters from his chest a second later. “I can’t tell whether that’s meant as a comfort or a warning…”
“It’s nothing worth troubling over,” you tell him. “Truly.”
Gwayne’s eyes flit down to where your wrists are curled lazily around his bicep. The dull nails of your right thumb and forefinger pick aimlessly at the already marred skin of your left. He stops instantly in place — he had sensed something amiss since you caught him in the yard, to be true, but he sees it more plainly in your being than he had the night before.
“Did something happen?” he blurts.
Your head whips to him, eyes widening in an innocuous look. “I… I don’t know what you mean?”
He swallows once and rephrases. “Something happened…” he repeats, this time as a firmer statement. “At the camp. Something you’re not telling me.”
You exhale a slow and shaking breath, though it does little to loosen the tightness in your chest now. You find that, once cornered and with his pleading eyes searching your face, you cannot quite bring yourself to lie to him again.
“There was a… a man," you start unsteadily, eyes fixed on the overgrown hedge behind his shoulder rather than his face. “A hedgeknight. I was out gathering berries, and he— He asked me about a letter. The one you left me. And when I wouldn't— He tried to—”
“He tried to what?" Gwayne presses when you trail off, ducking his auburn head into your eyeline when you avert your gaze. His voice is low and careful, but you can hear the tension straining beneath it already.
“He grabbed for it… And I struck him, without thinking, and he struck me back…” Your fingers lift absently to your cheek, brushing the ghost of a bruise with your finger, long since healed but not yet forgotten. Your gaze goes glassy and unfocused with the recollection of the memory — the smell of the berries, the taste of the blood, the feeling of the wet earth beneath you. The rest of the words come out in choppy and nonsensical. “And I fell— and my skirts— I think he meant too— I don’t know truly, but I— I could not stop him—”
“Gods…” Gwayne huffs, as if the breath had been punched out of him entirely. His pale, handsome features screw together in horror as his pale eyes glitter with anger at himself. “I should’ve been there… I never should’ve left you.”
“Ormund killed him,” you add quickly and watch a complicated look flicker behind Gwayne’s eyes at the name. “Before he could…”
Gwayne nods when you trail off, signaling that you need not go on any further. “I am glad for that, at least,” he says, though there is a strain in his voice that suggests something other than gladness. His palms reach for your hands then, preventing you from picking at the skin there. “I am glad my cousin was there for you. Truly. I was a fool leaving you behind. I should’ve stayed, I should’ve—”
You shake your head in protest of his apologies. “No—”
“I should’ve been there—”
“Don’t,” you tell him, though the word spills broken from your mouth when you jerk your hands free from his. The sudden loss of his touch leaves your fingers strangely cold. “Don’t apologize. I do not deserve it.”
“Deserve it?” Gwayne echoes with lowered brows. “What do you mean, deserve it?”
“Your kindness,” you sniffle. “I don’t deserve it.”
Gwayne blinks owlishly at you, and feels a strange searing in his chest when you flinch back from him as he tries to step closer. “Why are you saying this?”
“I have— I have sinned.” Your breath catches hard on a sob. Your wet eyes try and fail to meet his gaze. “I have betrayed you.”
Gwayne tenses at once. His face goes still and solemn; the warmth he’d had for you moments ago drains slowly from his features now. “What do you mean?” he wonders lowly.
“With— With Ormund— We— I,” you attempt to speak through hitched breaths, though you cannot seem to get any of the words out. “I cannot express to you— how unspeakably lonely I have been—”
“Lonely?” he repeats, spits back at you like venom. “Do you think I was not lonely?”
“You at least had a war to fight!” you argue tearily. “I was taken prisoner, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“And do you think I would not have rather been home?” Gwayne shouts. “With you, instead of watching my men die in a field over a war I never wanted any part of?”
“You’re the one who left!” you exclaim when he turns away from you, already retreating down the gravel path before he can lose his composure completely. “If you stayed, we could’ve been together! And none of this would’ve happened! You act like someone was dragging you by your boots to go fight a useless war!”
Gwayne stops at that, a few paces ahead. His shoulders are rigid beneath his borrowed doublet when he turns to you again, though not enough to face you fully. Only his profile is visible to you now, with his auburn hair falling over his brow and his emotionless grin hinting at the corner of his mouth.
“I did not… want this marriage…” he confesses in calculated murmurs. “Not at first, anyway. That much I’ll admit, but… From the moment I wed you, it never once crossed my mind to seek comfort elsewhere.”
“Gwayne, I—”
“I meant my vows,” he tells you and turns, finally, to face you fully. You found no trace of fury in his face now, only a pained sort of look that turns his pale eyes a glassier shade of blue. “I have always meant them.”
“I didn't know if you were alive!” you agonize through a sob. “Don’t you understand that? Months, Gwayne — months without a single word! Not knowing whether you were breathing or rotting in some unmarked grave! And I couldn't even write to you to ask, because Ormund told me it wasn't safe. He said the letters might be intercepted, might lead Rhaenyra's army straight to you, and I could not risk that—”
“Ormund told you that?” Gwayne interjects, voice gone dull and cold. “That your letters weren’t— safe to send?”
“Yes,” you nod. “He said that—”
“And mine?” Gwayne presses with a slow step closer. “I presume he kept mine from you as well. That’s why you never got them, isn’t it? Because of him?”
You go quiet, unsure of how to answer — like there’s some joke here somewhere you have not yet been let in on. But, to Gwayne, your silence is answer enough. He exhales a long, shuddering breath through his nose.
“Ormund and I used to play a game,” he tells you suddenly, with a humorless smile ghosting across his mouth. “Run the tower, we called it— a footrace to the top beacon. And I let him win. Every time. Because he could not bear to lose even the smallest thing.”
Your eyes widen slightly, as you remember Daeron’s warning in the castle window — his anxious, hardly intelligible ramble. “It’s a dangerous thing to be the prize he’s decided he’s won,” the boy had told you. You hadn’t understood what he meant by that until now.
Gwayne’s features screw with a withheld fury, one that Ormund would’ve already unleashed on you tenfold by now if the roles were reversed.
“He was a thin-skinned twat even then. I thought it harmless, at the time. I never imagined…” he trails off, clicking his tongue against his teeth when he turns to you again. He shakes his head as his mouth twitches into a sympathetic sort of smile. “If you think Ormund loves you, dear wife, I assure you, he does not. He simply decided that you were another game worth winning.”
He does not wait for your response. He turns on his heel, and when he walks away this time, he does not stop.
His feet carry him down the overgrown path, through the winding unfamiliar castle, and straight towards Ormund’s solar — without him ever fully registering any of it; not until he swings open the heavy oak door, at least, and is met instantly with the humidity of an incensed bath. He nearly chokes on the musky oils sitting heavily in the air.
“Leave us,” Gwayne orders Daeron in lieu of a real greeting. The boy’s eyes widen in shock at the sudden intrusion from where he stands obediently off to the side, robe in hand. His gaze flits to Ormund’s on instinct, who gives him a curt nod of approval without looking up, before scurrying out of the room.
The older man sits submerged to the chest in a steaming copper tub. A wooden tray sits balanced across the rim, with his inkpot and parchment laid before him. His quill scratches against the paper in swift strokes until Gwayne unsheathes his long sword with a sharp hiss. The older man tenses when the steel kisses the soft skin of his throat.
“You will explain yourself,” Gwayne says, peering down at the man from the bridge of his nose. “Or, by the gods, I will open your throat right here in this tub.”
Ormund does not so much as flinch when he sets his quill back into its inkpot. He tilts his chin just slightly to look up at the man and feels the faint pressure of the blade against his adam’s apple. Amusement flickers in his blue eyes.
“She told you, then,” he hums — not quite a question but not entirely a statement either. “I did wonder how long that might take.”
“She told me everything,” Gwayne bites out through clenched teeth. “The letters— mine to hers; hers to me. Months of lies, cousin, you called protection.”
“Yes. I protected her," Ormund nods without reservation. “More than you ever did, seeing as you were hundreds of leagues away and all. I fed her when she attempted to starve herself grieving you. I killed a man who meant to rape her in a berry patch while you were off playing at war like a child—”
Gwayne tenses at the accusation buried in his words. The edge of the blade presses harder to Ormund’s throat, but still, he does not waver.
“I gave her a place to sleep when the storms came, and warmth when the nights grew cold, and company when she felt no one else in the entire realm cared whether she lived or died,” the man lilts evenly. His voice does not rise and his stare does not yield, not even with the cold steel resting steadily against his pulse. “So, please, spare me the outrage, cousin. I only gave her what she asked for— freely, and often, and more enthusiastically than you can imagine.”
Gwayne’s whole body goes rigid. A mixture of fury and humiliation prickles red-hot at his pale skin. His knuckles turn white around the hilt of his sword, but the blade does not move an inch.
“Well, go on, then,” Ormund tilts his head, eyes glimmering with amusement. “Finish it, if you mean to. Open my throat here, in my own bath, and we’ll see who she weeps for. You or me.”
Silence fills the empty solar. Gwayne grits his teeth and wills his hand to move; to either strike the man down or turn away entirely. He cannot seem to do either.
Ormund lifts a lazy hand to swipe the blade away without a word. He rises slowly from the bath a second later. Rivulets of water glisten as they rush down his lean body and trickle audibly when they hit the surface again. He stands before his cousin, unabashedly bare, and reaches for the linen cloth draped over the edge of the tub.
“For what it’s worth, cousin,” he says, swiping the nettle across his toned, golden skin. “I never intended to make an enemy of you. And I rather think, whatever she may tell you now to spare your pride, that she’d choose to stay exactly where she is, if given the choice.”
Gwayne opens his mouth to argue.
“Daeron!” Ormund calls out before he can.
The door creaks slowly open a second later. The younger boy reappears with an obvious hesitance, refusing to meet either of their eyes as he rushes to his uncle’s side. He settles the emerald fabric over the older man’s broad shoulders, and Ormund slides his arms through the long sleeves. He ties the sash with slow hands and with an expression that looks almost sympathetic.
“Best wash up soon, cousin,” he grins. “It’s nearly time for supper.”
x. STEEL & SUPPER
Supper that evening is a small and wretched thing; four places set at a round table dragged in from some lesser hall to make the arrangement feel less tribunal. It’s close enough that you can feel the heat of both men suffocating either side of you, along with the cold, watchful silence of Daeron across the way; young enough to shift awkwardly in his seat at the tense silence, but old enough still to understand exactly what such silence truly means.
No one speaks a word of the hard truth of it out loud. Neither of you needs to — the whole of your sin sits at the table like an uninvited guest, souring the wine in every cup and thickening the air until you can scarcely draw a single breath around it.
“So…” Ormund says first to break the silence. He talks beneath the soft scraping of his knife against the porcelain as he cuts into his meat. “Ser Criston fights on, and yet you alone have returned to us… Why is that, I wonder?”
Gwayne turns slowly to glare at the man with dull, blue eyes, already too annoyed for idle blather. “Because fighting on is madness,” he answers distantly.
Ormund scoffs with a wad of food in his cheek. He smiles as he swallows it down, angling his head in the young prince’s direction. “Do you think me mad, boy?”
Daeron’s eyes shoot up from his plate. His spine straightens instinctively at his uncle’s sudden attention. “No, sire,” he answers quickly.
Ormund nods, pleased, and then turns slowly to you. A fondness flickers in his pale gaze behind the challenge in his eyes. “And you, my—” He catches himself half a breath too late; my love, he’d nearly said, though you cannot tell if it was an intentional attempt to rile his already aggrieved cousin. “My lady… Do you think me mad?”
Your brows bounce in response, though your gaze never lifts from your lap as your nails work relentlessly at the already torn skin of your thumb. “I don’t think you want me to answer that—”
You freeze in place when Ormund’s wide hand reaches suddenly to splay his calloused palm over the back of your knuckles. Your head whips in his direction. You struggle to tell if the action is heedless or entirely uncaring, as Gwayne sits close enough to watch the exchange on the other side of you. The man inhales sharply through his nose and straightens his spine as he reaches for his goblet, trying hard to pretend he hadn’t noticed it at all.
“Why do you insist on ruining yourself this way?” Ormund wonders lowly, as his thumb rubs soothingly over your marred one.
“Seems to be a common affliction as of late,” you answer distantly and draw your hands from beneath his touch. “Messing with things we ought to leave well enough alone…”
“You are aware—” Gwayne says gruffly as he swallows down his bitter wine, setting down his chalice with a bit more force than likely necessary. “—That while you’re all in here playing happy families, there’s a dragon sitting on the hill above us? And five more not thirty leagues away?”
“Why do you think we came here, cousin?” Ormund scoffs and waves his concern away with a lazy flick of his knife. “Rhaenyra will not burn her own subjects. She is a woman, after all. Squeamish, by nature.”
A short laugh spills suddenly from your lips. “Squeamish?” you echo. “Says the man who requires a milk bath twice daily, lest he make it everyone else’s burden to bear?”
The jab earns a proud smile from Gwayne that he tries hopelessly to bite back, and a small grin from Daeron that he conceals behind the rim of his goblet. Ormund swallows hard through the embarrassment strangling his throat, angled jaw clenching as he grits his teeth.
“Well… If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were taking up the usurper’s cause.”
“I’m not taking up anyone’s cause,” you mutter. “I just want to go home.”
“Oh?” Ormund hums with a feigned air of curiosity, though you do not miss the bite in his words as he wonders aloud, “And where is that precisely? King’s Landing? Oldtown?”
“Well, it’s certainly not here—”
“No,” he agrees instantly, warmth freezing over in an instant. “But when the usurper’s host comes here, we will fight on our own terms, on our own ground— turning King’s Landing against that overweening cunt, little by little, bite by bite… And when we expose her as weak and unsuited to rule, the great houses will flock to our side, and then, my lady, we can all go home.”
“Have any yet come?” Gwayne wonders knowingly. “Great houses, I mean.”
Ormund’s gaze snaps in his direction. “The patient hunter gets the kill, cousin,” he says through gritted teeth. “I’d have thought you’d learned that much by now.”
“Only one of us at this table has actually been hunted, if you’ll recall…”
“Yes, you have endured much,” Ormund huffs and returns to his boar. “Though I’m sure you find some solace along the road… with whores, perhaps, or your… brothers in arms…”
The insinuation sits heavily in the quiet, thicker than smoke and choking the three of you accordingly. Gwayne’s jaw tightens hard enough to make the muscle flex. Whatever retort had been rising in his throat at that moment is killed instantly by the sudden creaking of the heavy door across the room. Bold Jon enters, flanked by a couple of punier squires.
“My lord,” the older knight announces. “House Baratheon has sent an envoy. They mean to bend the knee to House Hightower.”
Ormund is aglow in an instant. The sourness of the previous moment rolls off of his broad shoulders as a newfound satisfaction kindles behind his blue eyes. “Let the Stormlands lead the way…” he mutters to himself, mouth curling into a grin. “Highgarden will have no choice but to follow…”
He flashes you a proud and knowing look as he rises from his seat. “Alright. Stand up,” he says and begins to round the small table. When no one follows him quick enough, he snaps, “Stand up! All of you.”
You rise at once, abandoning your plates as you follow him to the front of the dining table. The three of you fall into line beside the high lord, who stands just ahead to greet the incoming knights Ser Jon ushers in. The knights are caked in dirt from the long road; their yellow cloaks are crusted thick with mud, and their boots track dark prints across the fine pale stone beneath them. They smell like earth and sweat, hardly noticeable to you, though you spot Ormund’s shoulders tensing instantly when the stench hits him.
“Lord Ormund Hightower,” Roxton announces formally. “Beacon of the South, Defender of the Citadel, and Voice of Oldtown.”
“Well met, Ser Ormund," the head of the envoy greets with a polite nod, arms propped along the pommel of his longsword. “I come on behalf of Lord Borros Baratheon, Lord Paramount of the Stormlands.”
“Mm…” Ormund hums, ringed fingers fidgeting at his sides as he attempts to swallow through the invisible hand strangling him. “You are quite welcome, Ser…?”
“Ser Arrion Baratheon. Cousin to Lord Borros.”
You freeze at once. A newfound fear settles ice-cold in your veins. Your eyes squint as you study the stranger’s bearded face more closely — his curls, his eyes, his nose, his mouth. You find that he looks nothing like the Ser Arrion you had once met, at a tourney some several moons back; the one where you first laid eyes on Ser Gwayne Hightower.
The man himself tenses at your elbow. His jaw clenches tight with knowing as he turns slowly to flash you a single, silent glance. You communicate without words. His folded hands fall casually beside the sheathed sword at his hip; yours cross behind your back, as you reach blindly for the fruit knife idling somewhere beside the plates of supper.
“I most regret presenting ourselves to you in this state,” the stranger continues.
Your jaw clenches tight in frustration as your fingers miss the handle in several agonizing attempts. You slide it closer with the very tip of your middle finger, slowly so as not to draw attention, before your fingers close finally around the hilt. You grip the blade to your back, palm going clammy around the grip.
“The road was long and filthy, but I thought it best to speak to you immediately.”
“We are honored to receive you,” Ormund assures him, entirely unaware. “And what word does Lord Borros send?”
“House Baratheon offers its banners in alliance with House Hightower,” the envoy says. “I have been charged to swear fealty on Lord Borros' behalf.”
“Well,” Ormund grins. “Your lord has made a wise choice—”
“Ser Arrion?” you call at once, stepping forward and drifting instinctively in front of Daeron with your arm still tight around your back. The boy’s eyes widen when he catches sight of the blade behind you. Your smile remains as artificially sweet as ever, despite the way your heart hammers hard against your ribs. “You do remember me, don’t you?”
The man’s heavy brows furrow as confusion flickers across his bearded face. He musters a similarly fake grin. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, my lady—”
The hesitant answer is confirmation enough. Gwayne unsheaths his sword in a blink and slices the imposter across the neck before he can finish his sentence. His throat splits wide open, bright crimson blood gushing out instantly. You feel it splattering across your cheek as the man falls limp to the ground in front of you.
The dining hall erupts into chaos in a blink. The shouting of Baratheon imposters and Hightower knights fills the room at once. One lunges towards you, trying to get to Daeron, you figure, though he’s met with the small blade clutched in your trembling grip before he can.
You drive the knife into the first soft place you can find — his eye, you think, and then the side of his neck, before he crumples to the floor screaming.
“No!” Ormund’s voice shouts over the ringing of colliding blades, flashing a fiery look at Ser Jon. “Stop them, you fool!”
Daeron steps quickly in front of the older knight. “No!” he says to the man, small as he is, but standing his ground regardless.
“These are assassins!” Gwayne shouts over the clash of steel, kicking one knight down before striking him across the skull. “Sent for Daeron— and probably you!”
A pair of thick hands close hard around your wrist, cold and calloused and unforgiving. It yanks a memory from some buried place in your mind — spilled berries, wet earth, pooled blood in the mouth. You do not know whether or not he intends to strike you, or if he truly does, or if he only means to stop you. You only feel a girlish fury clawing its way from your throat as a buzzing adrenaline prickles at your burning skin.
The bloody knife in your fist cuts him clean across the face — his throat, his jaw, his cheek, his eye, his temple. He stumbles back against the wall, bloodied and unrecognizable, but still you do not stop. Your blade follows him as he sinks to the ground in a gurgling, limp ball. His blood splashes warm across your face, clinging sticky to your fingers, but you still do not stop.
“Enough, enough…” you hear a voice say from behind you, muffled through the ringing in your ears. You feel a warmth press against your side and a gentle hand curl around your wrist. Gwayne’s voice follows more clearly in your ear, “He’s dead… It’s over now...”
The adrenaline seems to ebb from your veins at once, with a raw sob sputtered from your mouth. The knife slips from your limp fingers, clattering audibly to the bloodied cobbles below. You feel something warm trickling across your forehead and reach to wipe it with the back of your hand; blood smears wet across your brow in its place.
Across the wrecked hall, Ormund hunches over the back of his chair on the other side of the table. His face has gone pale-white; made more ashen, perhaps, behind the drops of vivid crimson splattered across his face. The thick copper stench of it settles in the back of his throat, along with the sweat and mud and death and shit hanging in the air.
“How—” he chokes hoarsely out. “How did you know— These men were false?”
“I was nearly betrothed to Lord Borros’ son once,” you hear yourself answer, though the words sound a bit distant, like they’re coming from someone else’s mouth. “I met his cousin… Lord Arrion… at a tourney in King’s Landing years ago… I gave him my favor that day—”
“Right before I cut him down,” Gwayne adds through panted breaths, with a distant satisfaction in his voice at the memory. “The real Ser Arrion Baratheon has hair of light chestnut, stands near a foot taller and is, as it happens, far more comely."
Ormund makes a low, strangled sound in the back of his throat. “I will cleave the bitch— From crown to cunt—” he manages between heaving breaths “—She will die wishing she never dared to... dared to…”
His body seizes as he retches — once, then twice — before doubling over the table and vomiting his supper along the plates ahead of him.
Gwayne watches on with a grim sort of amusement. “Best wash up now, cousin,” he hums in jest, as drily as Ormund had to him earlier that day.
His amused smile fades when he catches you swaying in the corner of his eye.
The room seems to tilt on its axis under your feet. The cobbles sway softly beneath you, as if you were standing on water instead of stone. You reach blindly for the back of the nearest chair to steady yourself; you watch your fingers curl around the embellished wood, though you cannot feel it under your palms. Daeron’s quick hand catches you beneath the elbow in a small attempt to steady you.
“My lady?” he mutters softly, beneath Gwayne’s firmer, “Are you hurt?”
Your mouth parts, but it takes a moment for the words to come out. They fall from your tongue in strange slurs that sound nothing like your voice. “My back…” You trail off before choking on a whimper. It is not pain you feel, not completely, but rather a cold numbness blossoming wide along the left side of your spine.
Ormund perks instantly, swiping a hand along his chin and fighting off his own dizziness when he watches Gwayne close the distance between you. His long, pale fingers skim carefully along your shoulders as he examines the back of you. They settle finally just above the thin tear in your bodice, where the fabric of your borrowed dress starts to bloom a darker crimson from the blood spreading from underneath it — from where a soldier’s blade must’ve kissed you in the chaos.
“Gods…” you hear Gwayne breathe just behind you. “You’re bleeding— Someone call the maester!”
Your knees buckle underneath you as the strength spills from your body like sand through your fingers. Two sets of hands keep you upright; one smaller and trembling, the other wider and far more steady. They guide you into the seat before you can collapse. You watch Gwayne kneel into your vision with his palms resting firmly on your knees. The world continues swaying all around you.
“Let me see it,” Ormund says through panted breaths, gripping the table’s edge as he attempts to walk to you despite his own weakening state. He’s still pale and sheening with sweat from the blood clinging to his skin and nostrils.
“You can barely stand yourself,” Gwayne scolds drily. “She is my wife— I am more than capable of tending to her.”
Ormund attempts to laugh, though the chuckle comes out wearier than he means to. “Are you?” the older man manages to choke out. “Because you surely haven’t cared about tending to her while you were off playing at war—”
“Enough…” The word comes out slurred and hoarse from your mouth. The men fall silent at once. Their heads whip in your direction with matching expressions of concern that would’ve felt almost comical in any other moment.
The pain has started to sharpen now beneath the somewhat pleasant numbness. A hot, insistent throb begins to settle in its wake, searing through you like fire.
Your first instinct is to reach for Gwayne, but the guilt of what you’d done to him weighs on your hands like cement — what right do you have, you think, to reach for him now with bloodied hands, after months of reaching for another?
And then you think inevitably of Ormund and the particular safety you’ve always found in his hands, after he’s already seen you blood-soaked and broken and ugly from war, and never once flinched away at any of it. And then you think of the burned letters and the lies, and then of Gwayne’s departure with only a sliver of parchment left in his wake.
You reach, in the end, for neither of them.
“Daeron,” you call instead to the boy hovering beside you. You turn your swimmy gaze to his wide and frightened ones. Your voice is unnaturally thick in your throat as you ask him, “Can— Can you help me up to my chambers, please?”
The boy blinks and forgets to look to his uncle for approval first as he nods. “O-Of course, my lady,” he stammers and loops your arm carefully over his shoulder. “Lean on me…”
You do not look back at either man behind you as Daeron eases you from the chair and guides you slowly towards the door; but you do feel both of their eyes following you like twin points of heat searing through your dress, just like the soldier’s blade had. Neither Gwayne nor Ormund says a single word; the hollow sound of your fading footsteps fills the silence as you go.
The two of them are left standing alone together, amid the bloody wreckage of the unfamiliar hall, staring at the space where you’d once been.
to those of you who made it this far, thank you, i love you, and i'm sorry lol more to come soon!
This whole Gwayne thing is kinda crazy cuz even before this happened people were already writing him with male readers while he was supposedly “still straight” and no one was complaining.
Now people are shitting on others for writing him with a female reader just because it was implied that he might like men. It wasn’t a confirmation it was an implication made by his ass of a cousin and people are already labeling him as gay as if it were 100% confirmed.
People have this need to put a label on everything why can’t we just enjoy the content without turning it into drama.
We’ll never really know his sexual orientation for sure and all we can do is speculate whether he’s gay, bi, pan, etc. None of those interpretations make writers homophobic or mean they’re ignoring his queerness. Instead of shitting on people if you don’t enjoy a certain type of content just don’t consume it.
There will still be fics with gender neutral, female, and male readers and honestly if you ask me that’s a win win situation.
Let’s all just chill out and enjoy the work these amazing writers on this platform provide.
݈݇—Pairings: Ser Gwayne Hightower x Targaryen Princess!Reader.
݈݇—Themes/Warning: This is a love story with a tragic ending. Slow burn-ish?? Swoon-worthy. Eventual Smut. MUTUAL PINING. YEARNING. LONGING. Courtly romance. Strangers to lovers to forced-enemies. In denial reader. S1–S3 HOTD canon divergence. Inspired by "DAYLIGHT" by Taylor Swift & "PROVIDER" by Sleep Token.
Masterlist - Prologue
Author’s Note: For the sake of the plot, reader is of legal age. Pretend she and Rhaenyra are Irish twins or somethin 💀 This part is during Season 1, around the time of Rhaenyra's wedding to Laenor.
PAST
You had always been plagued with visions, just as your father was. Dragon dreams, Viserys called them. It comes in your sleep, though they are always half-formed things that never quite made sense until long after the moment had passed.
Though you knew with certainty, that your future husband was of nobility. You had seen the same images again and again: a single flame burning bright, the smell of salt and southern wind, the weight of a signet ring pressed into your palm. The visions never showed his face clearly. Still, you carried the unshakable feeling that when the time came, you would know him.
The night of Rhaenyra and Laenor’s wedding had been loud with music. The great hall of the Red Keep brimmed with the forced merriment that always followed when two people were bound for duty rather than love. You sat at one of the long tables near the high dais, a goblet of wine in hand, watching your sister dance with her new husband.
Rhaenyra moved with her usual fire, Laenor matching her step for step, their smiles bright enough to fool most of the room. But your gaze kept drifting again and again to Alicent.
Alicent sat beside you, dressed head to toe in deep, unmistakable green. The color of her father’s house. The color of challenge. It was a statement, and every soul in the hall knew it.
You took a slow sip of wine, then leaned slightly toward her with a smile that was all teeth and innocence.
“The young lords are rather handsome tonight, are they not?” you mused. “It is a pity how quickly some ladies are expected to surrender such sights. One day they are maidens, and the next... wives to men old enough to have watched those young lords be born.”
Alicent’s spine straightened so subtly most would never have noticed. You did. Her smile remained perfectly composed but her eyes flashed colder.
“Some girls are fortunate enough to choose,” she replied. “Others understand that duty asks more of them.”
You laughed, the sound bright and unbothered, and waved a hand as though brushing the entire exchange aside.
“Oh...Alicen—” You blinked as though only just realizing your mistake. “Your Grace.”
A small laugh escaped you, light as birdsong.
“You must forgive me. I forget that not everyone enjoys a jest.” You lowered your gaze to your goblet, swirling the wine lazily before looking back at her through your lashes. “Perhaps it is the wine. It has an unfortunate habit of loosening my tongue.” You smiled, all sweetness. “I shall endeavor to be more... dutiful.”
You lifted your cup in a delicate toast. “To duty.”
Before she could retort, King Viserys turned from his conversation nearby, his voice carrying that familiar note of paternal expectation.
“Why don’t you join the dance, my dear?” he asked, gesturing toward the floor with a genial smile. “The night is young, and there are plenty of fine young lords who would be honored to partner with you.”
You scoffed and said in High Valyrian, “You know I can’t dance, Father. Unless it is a swordfight.”
Viserys chuckled, though the sound held little true mirth. He was not deterred. “Cannot or will not?” he returned gently, still in the old tongue. “You are of an age where these things matter. You will be wedded soon enough. There are alliances to consider, matches to be made. You cannot hide behind your sister’s shadow forever.”
He continued on, listing names and houses in a well-intentioned flood. You rolled your eyes and let your gaze wander across the hall with deliberate disinterest.
“I don’t want a dance with any of these men,” you muttered, mostly to yourself.
Alicent spoke pointedly, the jab landing with perfect timing. “A second ago you were gushing about how handsome they are.”
You turned your head slowly, one brow arched. “I take it you do not speak sarcasm, Your Grace?”
Alicent’s lips pressed into a thin line.
“Oh! And who is this fine young lad with you, Otto?” Viserys’ voice carried over the music.
“Your Grace, if you would allow me to introduce my eldest son, Ser Gwayne Hightower.” The name barely registered before you turned at the sound of Otto’s voice and laid eyes on the so-called ‘son’.
Gwayne stood beside his father in dark green, torchlight catching the strong line of his jaw and the quiet confidence in his dark blue eyes. He was handsome, obscenely so—handsome in a way that made thoughts scatter like startled birds.
You straightened so sharply your goblet rocked. Suddenly you were aware of every inch of yourself—the drape of your gown, the loose strand of hair that had escaped its pins, the heat rising along the back of your neck. You lifted your chin the way Rhaenyra did when she wished to appear unmoved, and offered a silent prayer to the gods.
Do not let Father take ideas from this. Otto Hightower is a cunning little rat.
But Viserys was already leaning forward, eyes bright with that well-meaning enthusiasm that so often spelled trouble for you.
“Come now,” he urged, waving a hand toward the dancers. “You’ve sat there all evening. Go on—let someone spin you about before the night is done—Why not… young Ser Gwayne then? You might as well since he is here. Otto’s son has a fine step, I’m told.”
Otto inclined his head. Before you could form a proper protest, Gwayne stepped forward and offered an opened hand. His smile was small and genuine, free of the calculation his father wore so easily.
“Princess,” he said, “would you do me the honour?”
Your gaze dropped to his hand, then sideways to Alicent. The look you gave her was clear enough: A dance with your brother?
You caught the faintest twitch at the corner of her mouth. Whether irritation or reluctant amusement, you could not tell.
You looked back at Gwayne. Then, after a breath, you placed your hand in his. His fingers closed around yours. When he helped you rise, the simple contact sent a clean spark straight up your arm.
As he led you toward the floor, you glanced back once more. Alicent was still watching. You gave her the smallest, most wicked smirk you could manage.
The dancing itself was simple enough. Your feet knew the steps; your body followed the music without demand. It was the rest that proved the true trial—the weight of Gwayne’s hand at your waist and that gaze of his that refuses to wander was another matter.
From the first turn he had studied you openly, eyes tracing the line of your cheek, the downward sweep of your lashes each time you tried to look elsewhere. Every time your eyes lifted they met his, and each time your stomach gave an unwelcome, traitorous lurch.
Does the man not know it is rude to stare? you thought, irritation sharpening. And of all the men in this hall, must it be a Hightower who makes my blood behave so poorly?
Gwayne, either oblivious or deliberately cruel, tilted his head. That small, charming smile still curved his mouth.
“I must confess,” he said quietly, “I have noticed you seem most eager not to look upon your partner. Should I be insulted… or flattered that I make the princess so unsettled?”
Your gaze snapped to his. “How bold of you. You do not provoke such emotions in me,” you answered too quickly, the words tasting of denial. “I simply find it rude to stare.”
His smile deepened. “Is that so? Then you have my apologies. It is… remarkably difficult not to look at you.”
You gave a short, thin laugh. “Oh, please. Why don’t you admire the tapestries instead? Your sister is so very fond of them.”
“The tapestries,” he repeated, glancing toward one with clear amusement as he guided you through a turn so smooth your skirts brushed his legs. “An interesting choice, considering they have not moved in a hundred years… and are, if I am honest, rather obscene.”
Your eyes drifted almost against your will to the great Hightower banner hanging along the wall. You looked back at him, one brow arched in deliberate disdain.
“We Light the Way,” you murmured. “How very modest. One might think the rest of the realm stumbles about in darkness without the shining beacon of your house to guide our poor, lost feet.”
For a moment Gwayne only stared. Then, to your surprise, an unrestrained laugh burst from him. It startled the dancers nearest to you, and odd satisfaction unfurled in your chest. His eyes crinkled at the corners, and for the first time the polished mask slipped.
You hated that you noticed.
“Better than ‘Fire and Blood,’ I should think,” he countered, still smiling. “Though perhaps your house prefers to keep its blood… within the family.”
Your mouth fell open in mock outrage, but the laugh that escaped you was real. You recovered quickly, narrowing your eyes even as your lips threatened to curve.
“Careful, Ser Gwayne,” you warned. “Some might take such words as offensive.”
His hand shifted at your waist as he turned you again, the pressure light yet impossible to ignore. “Only if they lack a sense of humour, Princess. And from what I have seen this evening, you seem to possess one in abundance.”
“As do you,” you conceded, forcing the words past the tight coil in your chest. “Though I confess… I misjudged you, Ser. I thought the son of the Lord Hand would be as rigid and humourless as his father. It is… disarming. And I do not know what to do with that.”
Nor do I wish to know, you added silently, furious at the way your pulse answered him.
Gwayne chuckled.
“You could keep dancing with me for a while,” he suggested simply. “And perhaps… decide for yourself who I am. Not who you expected me to be.”
The final notes of the song faded into silence.
You stepped back first, a teasing smile curving your mouth even as your pulse thundered like war drums in your veins.
“Tell me, Ser Gwayne,” you said lightly and edged, “where exactly does your family find the audacity? It seems like an endless well.”
His eyes lit with amusement. “We keep it stored in the same vault as our humility, Princess. Next to the family tapestries.”
You almost laughed. Instead you tipped your chin, all cool composure, and delivered the rest like a royal decree.
“You may dance with me next time, if you insist. But do not look forward to it, for it will not happen again.”
Gwayne’s smile didn’t falter. He only inclined his head, the picture of perfect, infuriating compliance.
“As you say.”
You curtsied gracefully. His eyes followed the movement, burning with open fascination, but you turned before that look could root you in place.
Three steps.
That was all you managed before your traitorous gaze flicked back. He remained watching you, openly and without shame. Your mind was so consumed you nearly missed a step. You forced your eyes forward again, cheeks burning hotter than the nearest torches, and walked on as though your knees were not currently made of water.
By the time you reached the high table and slid into your seat beside Viserys, you seized your goblet, took a sip you did not taste, and ordered yourself to stop being ridiculous. You lasted all of ten seconds before your eyes drifted across the hall in search of him.
The corner of his mouth lifted the moment your gazes met again, as though he had been waiting for you to look. You looked away first, scowling and thoroughly inconvenienced by the entire affair.
—
From then on, you kept seeing Gwayne around.
You did not know what business had brought him to court, nor how long he meant to stay. Yet whenever you found yourselves in the same room, he greeted you with the same propriety. Sometimes he took your hand, pressed his lips to your knuckles, and held your gaze a moment longer than was proper. You answered with the barest politeness—a cool smile, a murmured “Ser Gwayne”—and told yourself the quickening of your pulse was only irritation at his presumption.
It was likely some scheme of his father’s. Another careful thread in the web Otto Hightower was weaving. So you kept your expression neutral and your answers brief, unwilling to give anyone—least of all yourself—reason to read more into it than there was.
Yet the telling did little good.
Your gaze sought him of its own accord. Across the training yard at dawn you would catch the flash of his sword and scowl at the strength in his form. In the throne room, through the press of courtiers, you would sense him before you saw him—and hate that you had sensed him at all. Even in the silence of the godswood, when he walked alone beneath the red leaves, your steps would slow without permission.
The rest of the world had grown strangely dull beside him. Conversations drifted past half-heard. Even the sight of your own dragon circling the bay could not hold you the way the mere turn of his head could. And every time you realised it you wanted to scream.
The thoughts were worse. They came unbidden, and persistent. You would be reading some dry account of the Conquest and find yourself wondering whether he preferred the yard or the library—then slam the book shut for the folly of it. At supper you would lose entire courses imagining the shape of his smile when no one watched. You could not help the brief, unwelcome relief that flickered through you when he laughed easily with the other knights. Relief that he was settling among them. And the moment the feeling registered, irritation followed hard upon its heels.
Why should you care whether Ser Gwayne found favour?
Why should the way he spoke with the other men leave you both soothed and strangely bereft?
You had no answer that did not shame you.
This time, you found him near the godswood.
The hour was late enough that the corridors had emptied, and the red leaves beyond the archway whispered in a thin evening wind.
Gwayne stood alone before a long tapestry set into the stone wall, head tilted slightly as though studying some great mystery. The torchlight caught the pale strands at his nape and the line of his shoulders, and for that unguarded moment your treacherous gaze lingered.
Again? you thought, irritation flaring sharp and familiar. Must every empty hall contain him?
You drew closer than you meant to. “What are you doing?”
He straightened and greeted you properly. Then one hand lifted in a lazy gesture toward the woven scene.
“Well,” he said mildly, “someone once told me to look at the tapestries.”
A startled, incredulous laugh escaped you and immediately you clapped a hand over your mouth a moment too late, eyes wide with the sheer gall of him.
Gwayne’s mouth curved, but he did not turn fully. Instead he tilted his head farther, studying the tapestry with the solemn air of a scholar confronted with an especially baffling text. The woven figures were impossible to misinterpret.
“I cannot imagine my sister taking any particular joy in this sort of work,” he murmured, almost to himself. “What, precisely, am I even looking at?”
You looked as well.
Your face twisted at once in pure, undiluted disgust. For a heartbeat you could only stare, appalled that anyone had ever thought to hang such a thing so near the godswood.
You looked back at Gwayne, who was still regarding the scene.
“Your sister’s favourite tapestries,” you said, voice dry as dust, “are in another gallery.”
“Ah,” he murmured. “That would explain a great deal.”
You scoffed, rolling your eyes with open disdain, and turned on your heel. Let him stand there staring at filth if it pleased him. You had better things to do than linger in empty corridors with Otto Hightower’s son.
“Would the princess mind showing me where that is?”
The question stopped you mid-step.
You turned back, incredulous. “You have been at court for months, Ser Gwayne. And you still do not know the way to the eastern gallery?”
He considered this with exaggerated thoughtfulness, one brow lifting just enough to be insolent. “I am a rather busy man…”
Busy.
As though that single word could excuse a Hightower wandering the Red Keep like a lost pageboy. You glanced about—half hoping some dutiful servant or idle knight might appear and spare you the task. The gallery remained empty save for the two of you and the godswood’s distant whisper.
A long, suffering sigh left you.
“Very well.” You turned away again, setting a brisk pace. “Follow me.”
—
You led him into the gallery without ceremony, then found yourself trailing a few steps behind as Gwayne moved along the line of tapestries. He paused before each one with the attention he had shown the indecent piece outside, but his gaze never truly settled. He looked without seeing—eyes gliding over hunts and battles and long-dead kings as though the woven scenes were little more than an excuse to keep walking.
You walked.
And walked.
And grew thoroughly bored.
The scenes blurred into one another while Gwayne studied each with unfocused attention, hands folded behind his back. He glanced over his shoulder matched with a small, knowing smirk that touched his mouth.
“Oh,” he said mildly. “You’re still here, princess?”
You blinked and felt heat climbing your throat. “What do you mean? You asked me to show you where the gallery is.”
“Indeed and you are right, you have.” His gaze returned to the nearest tapestry—a rather dull depiction of a stag at bay. “However I hadn’t expected you to continue to walk at my heels as though the boring sight of these walls somehow holds you captive.”
You stopped walking as the realisation settled. You had followed him. Mindlessly. From one tapestry to the next. You lifted your chin, grasping for dignity that felt suddenly thin.
“If you find them so dull, Ser,” you said, “why do you linger before them at all?”
Gwayne turned fully then.
The smirk softened as he regarded you instead. When he spoke, his voice had dropped, low enough that it seemed meant for no one but you.
“I have not been looking at the tapestries for some time now, Princess.”
Your brows furrowed deeply. “Then what are you looking at?”
He said nothing and only held your gaze with those blue eyes soft in the low light—softer than you had ever seen them. The silence stretched, thick and humming, until you felt the weight of it against your skin.
Then, without a word, he turned and walked on.
You stood frozen before your feet betrayed you once more. You followed him. Again. “I asked you a question, Ser Gwayne.”
“The hour grows late, Princess. These corridors are poorly lit after dark. I would not see you lose your way returning to your chambers.”
“I should be the one saying that to you,” you retorted, lengthening your stride just enough to keep pace. “I have walked these halls since I could stand. You have been here mere months. If anyone is in danger of losing their way, Ser, it is not I.”
A low, genuine chuckle came from him.
“Right again,” he said, the amusement warm in his voice. He glanced sideways at you. “Tell me, Princess… Do you enjoy arguing with me this much? Or is it simply that you cannot help yourself?”
“I do not!” you said too quickly, the words sharp with denial. “I find you insufferable. And presumptuous. And far too fond of your own cleverness.”
He only hummed softly, as though your protests were little more than confirmation.
That was enough. So you stopped walking.
“Good night, Ser Gwayne,” you said cool and final. You turned on your heel. “I hope you get thoroughly lost.”
“If I do,” he called after you, the faintest thread of humour still woven through the words, “I shall take comfort knowing the princess of the realm cares enough to hope for my misfortune—and I shall endeavour to lose myself somewhere you might find me again, Princess.”
You kept walking, chin high, heart beating far too hard against your ribs. And gods help you—you were smiling before you even realised it.
—
Where once you had kept to your chambers with a book or taken to the sky on Vaelys for hours at a stretch, you now found yourself inventing errands that led you through the corridors and gardens at the hours when Gwayne might be about. A forgotten book. A message for the master-at-arms. A sudden need to feel the sun upon your face. Each excuse felt flimsy even to your own ears, yet you offered them without shame for the chance of a glimpse—the turn of his head, the flash of his blue eyes across a crowded space, the way the light caught in the strands of his hair when he moved.
Rhaenyra was not so easily deceived.
One afternoon she caught you returning from yet another circuit, with a smile from ear to ear, skirts still dusted with the fine grit of the yard path. She arched her brow, looking sharp with sisterly suspicion.
“You have grown fond of walking of late,” she said, falling into step beside you. “Strange. I cannot recall the last time you left your rooms without either a book or a saddle. And yet here you are, out again. Has the Keep suddenly become so fascinating, or is there some other attraction drawing you from your usual haunts?”
You dropped your smile in an instant, though heat crept up the back of your neck. “The air grows close indoors. I find I prefer the open walkways.”
Rhaenyra’s smile was small and thoroughly unconvinced. “Of course. The open walkways. How fortunate that they seem to lead so often past a certain knight of the Reach.”
Your smile returned at once, bright and deliberately foolish.
“A knight?” you echoed, tipping your head in wide-eyed wonder. “And which knight might that be, sister? There are rather a great many of them about these days.”
Rhaenyra’s eyes glittered with pure mischief. She let the silence stretch before answering, soft and oh-so-innocent, “Why, Criston Cole, of course. Who else could so thoroughly capture a princess’s interest?”
You recoiled as disgust flashed across your face, unable to school it. Your lip curled. You turned on her with a full scowl, the expression so pure in its revulsion that Rhaenyra nearly laughed aloud.
“Do not be vile.” you hissed.
But before either of you could speak another word, a familiar voice carried from the far end of the gallery. You felt your chest clench when Gwayne rounded the corner a moment later, walking beside a dark-haired knight of the Kingsguard. The afternoon light caught in the auburn of his hair and turned it briefly to copper.
Panic flared hot beneath your ribs.
You forced a laugh and reached up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear. “You are so terribly funny, sister,” you declared, still laughing, the sound bright enough to ring off the stone. “Truly. I shall never recover.”
The laugh did its work. Gwayne’s head turned at the sound. His gaze found yours across the short distance, softness lighting up in his eyes.
Then both men inclined their heads in polite acknowledgement as they passed before continuing on their way down the gallery. You kept the smile fixed on your face until their footsteps faded. Only then did you risk a glance at Rhaenyra, who was no longer looking at you. She had turned her head and followed Gwayne’s retreating figure with a thoughtful gaze that held far more than simple curiosity.
—
At dinner one evening, Viserys turned to you between courses, wine cup in hand.
“How do you find Lord Matthos Tyrell?” he asked, the question light but not without intent. “He seems to have made a favorable impression in court.”
Your knife paused against the meat on your plate. For a moment you simply stared at your father, then your eyes flicked first to Alicent, then to Rhaenyra. Both women watched you with carefully neutral expressions, though you caught the faintest tightening around Alicent’s mouth.
You set your knife down with deliberate care.
“Why do you ask?” you said.
Viserys smiled across the table with that slightly vague smile he wore when he believed himself to be doing a kindness.
“It is nothing, my daughter,” he said, his voice gentle, as though the matter were already settled in his mind. “Only that your nameday draws near, and a match is important. These things cannot be left to chance in times such as these...”
He spoke of it so lightly, as though your life were a thread to be woven into some greater tapestry of his design. Rhaenyra had scarcely been bound to Laenor before the court’s eyes had turned to you, and already he spoke of matches and alliances as though the stability of the Seven Kingdoms rested upon nothing more than the rings upon his daughters’ fingers.
You felt the spark of irritation flare in your chest, hot and bright.
“You seem in a great hurry to marry off your daughters, Father,” you asked, and hated how vulnerable you sounded. “One might think the realm would fall to ruin should we remain unwed a moment longer than necessary.”
Viserys blinked, the smile faltering for the briefest instant, as though your words had caught him off guard. Before he could answer, Rhaenyra leaned forward from her place a little farther down the table, her eyes bright with that familiar glint of mischief and loyalty.
“What of young Lord Blackwood?” she suggested thoughtfully. “Samwell of Raventree Hall. He is near our age, and the Blackwoods have ever been stout friends to our house. A match there would bind the riverlands more closely to the crown, and he is said to be a fine young man—brave in the lists, true to his word. It would be a solid alliance, sister.”
A grimace flickered across your face at the thought of being sent to Raventree Hall, bound to some earnest young lord whose face you could not even picture, stirred nothing in you but instinctive recoil. Not when your mind kept drifting to the memory of another man.
Rhaenyra’s lips curved in a small, knowing smile, though she said nothing more. Alicent’s gaze flicked between you and your father, cool and assessing, while Viserys looked faintly disappointed, as if he had expected more enthusiasm for his well-meant meddling.
You reached for your wine, the taste of it suddenly too rich, too cloying on your tongue. Your thoughts were a tangle you had no desire to unravel here, beneath the weight of so many watching eyes, so you forced a small smile, though it did not reach your eyes.
“A generous thought, Rhaenyra,” you said, your voice light. “But I find I have little taste for being matched like a broodmare at present.”
You pushed your chair back with a soft scrape of wood against stone. “Father,” you said, rising with a graceful incline of your head, “I find I have lost my appetite this evening. The wine sits ill with me. If you will excuse me.”
Viserys looked up, concerned flickering across his face, but you did not linger for his reply. You felt Rhaenyra’s eyes on your back as you slipped from the hall, and you did not look toward Alicent at all.
Your father’s haste to see you matched and wed still prickled beneath your skin. Rhaenyra’s suggestion of young Lord Blackwood had been kindly meant, yet the thought of it had made your mouth twist. And beneath it all, Daemon’s dry, mocking voice lingered ever present in your mind since he had taken it upon himself to whisper truths and warnings into your ear whenever the opportunity arose.
Do not be a fool, niece. The Hightowers play the long game. Otto sends his son to smile and charm and bind you with pretty words while his father counts the dragons on the other side of the Narrow Sea.
You pressed your lips together, fingers tightening briefly on the fabric at your side. You weren’t some girl to be led by flattery or a handsome face. You had seen the way Gwayne looked at you, felt the spark that had passed between you like lightning before a storm. And that was precisely why you could not afford to trust it.
You rounded a corner too quickly near the entrance to the godswood and nearly walked straight into the solid wall of his chest. A startled sound escaped you as you stumbled back a step. Strong hands caught your elbows, stabilising your feet before you could fall.
Gwayne stood before you, close enough that you could see the faint sheen of exertion on his brow, the way a few dark strands of hair had escaped to cling to his temple. He wore a simple dark tunic and breeches, the sleeves rolled to his forearms, as though he had come straight from the training yard. Then he released you at once, as if the brief contact had burned him as much as it had you.
You jerked back as soon as he let go, your cheeks heating up. “Ser Gwayne.”
“Princess. My apologies. I…I did not see you.”
“Don’t fret, I am fine.” For a moment you were going to turn on your heel and walk away but your suspicions made you stop and turn right back around, “Ser Gwayne, may I ask the true reason you were brought to court?”
Gwayne blinked, the smallest flicker of surprise crossing his face. He studied you and you saw the moment he registered the edge in your voice. Then he straightened and met your eyes without evasion.
“My father asked that I remain at court a while longer,” he said plainly, carrying that same warm timbre you remembered from the dance. “To represent Oldtown’s interests in certain matters, and to learn what I may of the realm’s workings. Nothing more than duty, my princess. I am to be of service where I can.”
The suspicion that had coiled in your chest like a serpent loosened its grip. He studied you again, head tilting slightly, that perceptive gaze seeing more than you wished him to. The torchlight gilded the strong planes of his face, and when he spoke again there was a thread of gentle curiosity.
“Why do you ask?”
You swallowed, the words coming too quickly, “Nothing. Good night, Ser Gwayne.”
“Good night, Princess—”
You turned and walked away quickly, heart fluttering against your ribs like a caged bird. You did not look back, though you felt his gaze on you until the corridor curved and took you from his sight.
Only then did you allow yourself to breathe. You pressed a hand to your sternum as you walked, willing your pulse to slow.
× × × ×
The dreams have been coming more often lately. Always the same man, always turned away from you toward the daylight. And the more you saw Gwayne, the more he began to resemble the man in your dreams. Or perhaps it was only your own wishful thinking that stitched the two together.
The nameday feast had spilled from the Great Hall into the torchlit courtyard of the Red Keep, where the night air carried the scent of roasting meat and spiced wine. Banners of red and black stirred in the breeze. Music drifted from a gallery above, and a singer had spun tales of old Valyria, but the crowd’s attention had turned to the cleared circle marked in the center of the yard. A ring of honor had been defended through the evening with blunted steel and friendly contest, the current holder a young Reach knight whose boasts had grown louder with each victory.
You sat upon the raised dais with Rhaenyra at your side, gifts of silk and silver and dragon-carved trinkets piled at your feet. The weight of eyes upon you was familiar, yet tonight it felt heavier.
Gwayne stood among the knights and courtiers near the edge of the ring, his posture easy yet alert. As if he felt the weight of your attention, his head turned. Your gazes locked a moment too long. The same pull that had stolen your breath in the corridor after you had collided with him, stirred again in your chest.
You looked away first.
Rhaenyra’s shoulder brushed yours. Her voice was low, threaded with amusement. “You fancy him.”
“Who?” You kept your eyes on the ring, where the young knight was boasting again.
A soft laugh. “Do not play the fool with me, sister. I have eyes.”
Rhaenyra’s gaze shifted pointedly across the yard. Gwayne had turned back to the contest, but even as you watched, he stole another glance toward the dais. To you specifically. It was quick, almost careless, but it landed all the same.
You hit Rhaenyra’s arm with the back of your hand, but enough to make her stifle another laugh. “Stop looking at him,” you hissed under your breath.
“Then do not act so obvious,” she murmured, still smiling. “Or so blind. You have been dancing around each other for months.”
“I do not fancy him.”
Rhaenyra turned her head just enough to give you a long, knowing look, the kind only an elder sister could manage. “You invent errands that somehow always lead you past him. You linger in galleries and yards and corridors the moment he appears, then act as though the walls themselves have suddenly become fascinating.…yet your eyes seek him out the instant he is gone. I have watched you lose entire conversations simply because he is across the hall. And I have heard you sigh more times than a lovelorn maid when he smiles at another lady or takes his leave. Do not tell me you ‘do not’ fancy Ser Gwayne. Your body has been telling the truth even when your tongue will not.”
You opened your mouth to deny it again but the words died on your tongue as cheers rose from the yard. The current ring holder had been challenged. Gwayne caught the top rail with one hand and vaulted over it, landing lightly within the circle. He accepted a blunted sword from a squire, tested its weight once, and turned to face the ring holder. The yard silenced in anticipation.
Before the bout could begin, Gwayne addressed the gathered spectators, his voice carrying clear and strong across the courtyard.
“I claim the right to be the last challenger for the ring tonight.” He paused while his gaze lifted unerringly, to the dais where you sat. “And should I prove victorious, I shall place the victor’s token in the hands of the Princess, in honor of her nameday, as the occasion deserves.”
Rhaenyra made a small, delighted sound beside you as her fingers found yours and squeezed triumphantly.
The Reach knight laughed, too confident to be troubled by the announcement, and the fight began.
Steel rang against steel again in the night. Gwayne did not waste movement. He let the other man press, let him tire himself with showy swings, then answered with precise, economical strikes that forced the knight back step by step. There was no brutality in it, only skill and patience and intensity that made the crowd fall hushed.
You found yourself leaning forward without meaning to when he took a hit, your fingers tightening around Rhaenyra’s. Each clash of blades sent a jolt through you. The way he moved, the line of his body, the focus in his dark eyes.
The Reach knight overextended. Gwayne pivoted, hooked the man’s blade with his own, and sent it spinning into the dirt. A clean disarm. The yard erupted in cheers and applause.
Gwayne stood in the center of the ring, chest rising and falling, the blunted sword still in his hand. The herald stepped forward, but Gwayne did not wait. He turned, lifted the blade in a brief salute to the dais, and for one suspended second his eyes found yours across the torchlit space.
He accepted the token of the ring—a simple wreath of laurel and ribbon—from the herald. Then he crossed the yard toward the dais with unhurried steps, the crowd parting before him. When he reached the edge of the platform, he stopped, lifted the token, and offered it to you with a small, formal bow.
“For the Princess,” he presented, “on the day of her nameday.” Your fingers brushed his as you took the wreath. The contact was brief, but it burned.
“Thank you Ser Gwayne.” You said breathlessly. Your fingers were still curled tight around the laurel wreath. Gwayne inclined his head once more, the small smile lingering at the corner of his mouth, and stepped back into the press of the crowd.
—
Most of the lords and ladies had drifted back inside the Great Hall for more wine and music, the sound of it drifting faintly through the open doors like a distant tide. The courtyard was quieter now, the torches burning lower, their light softer and more golden. A cool night breeze stirred the banners.
You had slipped away without drawing notice, the laurel wreath still cradled in your hands. You turned it slowly between your fingers, tracing the curve of the leaves, the smooth ribbon that bound it.
You felt the weight of a gaze before you saw him.
Gwayne leaned against one of the pillars a little distance away, half in shadows, arms loosely crossed. He had removed the practice armor he had worn; only a clean dark tunic and breeches in their place. He straightened but did not move when your eyes met his. He simply watched patiently, waiting to see what you would do.
When you remained unmoving, he took it as permission. He pushed off the pillar and came toward you, stopping a careful distance away. His gaze dropped to the laurel wreath still held in your hands.
“I hope it does not displease you, Princess,” he said quietly. “The ring was only ever meant to be offered to you.”
You wanted to ask why. Why he had claimed the challenge before the entire court. Why he had looked at you the way he had when he raised the blade in salute. The questions tangled behind your teeth.
“It is… very fine, Ser Gwayne.”
His eyes flicked to your mouth when you said his name. Something shifted in them—subtle, but unmistakable. Heat unfurled low in your chest and began spreading.
You looked away first, clearing your throat.
“Did your father ask you to do this?”
You searched his face for the calculation you had been bracing for. Part of you wanted the answer to be yes, so you could step back behind the safety of suspicion. Part of you dreaded it.
Gwayne exhaled slowly through his nose, a sound almost like a laugh, but gentler.
“No, Princess,” he said plainly. Without flourish. “He did not.”
You nodded. The wreath felt heavier in your hands.
“And my father?”
He took a single step closer as he answered. The respectful distance narrowed.
“No.”
You drew a breath while the courtyard seemed to shrink around you. The music from the hall had grown distant, as if the night itself had drawn a curtain between you and the rest of the world.
You opened your mouth again, but he spoke first—soft, certain, as though he had already seen the next question forming.
“Nor your sister.”
The silence that followed was heavier than any of the words. A loose strand of hair slipped free and brushed your cheek. His gaze followed it. His hand lifted, fingers hovering for the briefest heartbeat as though he meant to tuck it back… then curled into a fist at his side instead.
You felt the denial of that touch like a physical thing.
You lifted your chin anyway, forcing stilness into your voice even as your pulse raced.
“And I am meant to believe a Hightower knight would single out a Targaryen princess before the entire court for no reason but his own?”
Gwayne’s mouth curved, soft and almost rueful. He closed the last of the distance between you until you had to tilt your head back to hold his eyes and you could feel the warmth of him now.
“You may believe whatever you wish,” he said. “But if this were only my father’s game, I would have pressed my advantage long before tonight. I would not have contented myself with stolen glances across crowded halls. I should have been far more persistent… and far less patient.”
His eyes searched yours intently.
“I see,” you whispered. “I think I have decided who you are, Ser Gwayne.”
His head tilted slightly. The curve of his mouth deepened, though his gaze remained serious—hungry, almost, for the truth of whatever you would say next.
“Who am I, then?” his voice dropped an octave as he murmured. “Who have you decided that I am, my Princess?”
He did not move. The choice remained entirely yours—to step back into safety, or to close what little space still remained.
The silence stretched thickly. Your gaze dropped to his mouth for the briefest moment before lifting again. Still he waited, utterly still, even as every line of him seemed drawn tight with the effort of restraint. You were royalty. Until you chose—or until the king gave leave—he would not presume.
Your fingers loosened on the laurel wreath. It slipped lower in your grasp. You leaned in, just slightly, the movement small and trembling with a courage you had not known you possessed. Your breath caught. The space between you was nothing now—a single heartbeat from vanishing entirely.
His expression softened further. His own breath hitched, but he remained motionless, giving you every chance to pull away.
You were going to kiss him.
The realization hit you at the same moment your body began to act on it. Your chin tilted higher, your lips parting on a shaky inhale—
“Oh—am I interrupting something?”
You and Gwayne stepped apart so quickly it felt ungraceful. The laurel wreath nearly slipped from your fingers before you caught it. Heat flooded your face. Gwayne’s expression closed at once, though the faint flush at the base of his throat and the tight line of his jaw betrayed him.
“Your Grace—”
Viserys stood a few paces away, blinking at the two of you with the vague, slightly glazed confusion of a man who had walked into a moment he had not meant to find. His gaze moved from your flustered face to Gwayne’s rigid posture and back again. Something like belated understanding flickered across his features.
“Ah,” he said, already beginning to retreat toward the archway, tipsy. “I was only… seeking a bit of air. The hall grows rather warm. But I see you are… otherwise engaged. Carry on. Or do not. Whichever you prefer.”
He gave a small, drunken wave of his hand, already turning as though he could outpace the embarrassment of the moment.
“Ser Gwayne. Daughter.”
And with that, the king all but fled back toward the light and music of the Great Hall, leaving the two of you alone in a courtyard that suddenly felt far colder than it had a moment before.
The careful distance between you had returned, as if the nearness of the almost-kiss had never existed. Yet the air still felt charged with it.
Gwayne was the one to break the silence. His voice was polite again—achingly so.
“Would you have me escort you back inside, Princess?”
Part of you wanted to refuse. Part of you wanted to remain in the cooling dark and see whether the courage that had nearly brought your mouth to his would return. The rest of you was still burning with the knowledge that your own father had nearly witnessed you close the space between yourself and a Hightower knight.
You lifted your eyes to him at last.
“Of course.”
He inclined his head. You walked in silence at first. The music from the hall grew louder as you approached, yet it felt distant, muffled beneath the quiet roar of your own thoughts.
“I am to return to Oldtown within the fortnight, Princess.”
The knowledge that he would soon be gone pulled taut in your chest. “So soon?”
Gwayne glanced at you, his step never faltering. “You think it is so soon?”
You forced your spine straighter, gripping the wreath a little tighter as you tried to gather the threads of nonchalance that had slipped through your fingers. You lifted one shoulder in what you hoped looked like a careless shrug.
“I suppose your stay here has already extended beyond what was intended,” you said, aiming for light and missing by a noticeable margin. Your voice sounded thin even to your own ears. “Oldtown will no doubt be glad to have their knight returned.”
The words tasted false on your tongue. You were dying inside, the almost-kiss still burning at the edges of your thoughts. You kept your eyes forward, refusing to look at him again, as though that might keep the truth from showing on your face.
You felt rather than saw the small nod he gave, “As you say, Princess.”
—
The hour of the wolf found you at the window of your chambers, heavy curtains drawn aside so the cool night air could wash over your face. Blackwater Bay stretched dark and endless below, the water catching faint glimmers of starlight and the pale moon. In the distance Seasmoke wheeled and dove, his silver-white form cutting slow arcs against the black sky.
You watched him for a long time, and the sighs came unbidden.
Every time you closed your eyes you saw the courtyard again—the way Gwayne’s gaze had followed the loose strand of hair across your cheek, the way his hand had risen and then curled away as though the act of not touching you had cost him something.
He was everything a true knight was meant to be. Honourable. Measured. Courteous even when the air between you had grown dangerous. And yet the shadows of his house clung to him whether he wished it or not. Otto’s ambition. Alicent’s green. The long game the Hightowers played so well. You knew better than to ignore those things. You had been raised to know better.
Still.
An unwilling smile touched your mouth as an older memory surfaced. Weeks ago in the training yard you had overheard him speaking to a young knight who had been boasting loudly of his own skill, swinging at a straw dummy as though it were a living foe. Gwayne had watched in silence for a time before offering, “A fine display, ser. The dummy is most certainly impressed. Perhaps next time you might try striking something that can strike back.”
The memory should have made you laugh. Instead it only made the ache sharper.
You pressed your forehead to the cool stone of the window ledge and closed your eyes. Within a fortnight he would be gone. Returned to Oldtown. And whatever had nearly happened in the dark of the courtyard would remain unfinished—an almost that would linger long after the sound of his footsteps had faded from the Red Keep.
Seasmoke cried out once more over the black water. You watched him until the sky began to pale, and the sighs still would not leave you.
—
The next day you woke in better spirits. A long flight atop Vaelys had done much to clear your head. She had carried you high over the bay until the wind stole every thought from your mind, and you returned to the Red Keep with peace settling in your chest.
That peace shattered the moment you were summoned to the small council chamber.
You entered expecting another discussion of duties or appearances. Instead, a young lord waited near the table. He bowed when you stepped inside—handsome enough in the way of well-bred sons, but his smile did not reach his eyes, and his posture carried the stiff certainty of a man who already believed the matter settled.
Your gaze moved across the chamber.
Gwayne stood near the wall, expression perfectly neutral. Yet his attention was fixed on you the moment you entered.
Your father sat at the head of the table, looking more weary than pleased.
“Daughter,” Viserys began gently, “House Tyrell has come to put forward a suit for your hand.”
“A suit?” you chuckled as if it were a joke.
The young lord stepped forward and began the practiced words of a man who had rehearsed them many times. You barely heard him. Your attention remained half-caught on the silent figure near the wall.
“No.” you shook your head.
A ripple moved through the chamber. The lord’s father smiled indulgently at first, the expression faltering when he looked to the king for support. Viserys opened his mouth, but you spoke before he could.
“How is it that you gave Rhaenyra the right to choose her own match, yet I am to be handed one like a bone tossed to a hound?” Your gaze swept over the young lord from head to toe, cool and unimpressed. “I do not even know this man’s name.”
Viserys shifted in his seat, discomfort plain. “You have made it clear, daughter, that you would not choose. Time and again you have turned away every proposal—”
You met his eyes without flinching.
“But what if I have chosen?” Your voice carried clearly. “Is the right of choice only for one daughter and not the other? May I speak the name now, before this council, and have it heard?”
A startled sound left Viscerys, edged with the irritation of a king who had not expected open challenge before his lords.
“You grow bold,” he said. The faint smile faded. His gaze moved across the chamber, lingering on the assembled men as though weighing the cost of what he was about to allow. “Very well. Who among those present—or any other you might name—do you desire to be matched with? Speak plainly, if you are so certain.”
Your eyes found Gwayne again, unbidden. Across the chamber, Otto turned his head slowly, gaze narrowing as it settled on his son. Gwayne met his father’s look with the same neutrality he had worn all morning, though a muscle tightened once along his jaw.
You drew a breath and spoke the words before fear could take them from you.
“Ser Gwayne Hightower.”
Silence held for a moment…then the chamber erupted.
You did not remain to hear it. You turned and walked out while the first shocked murmurs rose into outrage, while Otto’s voice cut sharply through the noise demanding order, while your father called your name. The heavy doors closed behind you with a resounding clank, shutting away the rising chaos—the careful web of alliances and expectations tearing at the seams because you had refused, at last, to play the part they had written for you.
ormund arrives in king's landing expecting to witness the corruption of daeron's siblings, just to find you---a shy, sweet-smelling targaryen.
obsessive!ormund and afab!reader, scent kink, imaginations of grooming, mentions of ormund dubconing you, good ol hightower sexism, male masturbation, no descriptions of reader are used, this is kinda giving frollo tf, // wc: 2.6K // drabble idea post // @cursed-carmine as credit for the divider // may turn this into a full-on fic idk but hope u enjoy
When Ormund is invited to King's Landing, he comes expecting a vile decadence that he will mislike and mislike only. He knows himself so. The court, he finds, is loud and gaudy. King Viserys is much weaker than Alicent's letters suggested. There was, unfortunately, no expectation that the man would reek of disease as much as he does.
But he expected Aegon to be exactly as...undisciplined as the rumors claim, and that's him being as munificent as he can. Aemond, on the other hand, Ormund can sense the boy's chaotic resentment without him speaking a word. This is no surprise.
He expected to find his cousin's children thoroughly spoiled by their father’s weakness and their own blasphemous blood, and although it is not in his right to crowly boast, he's sure all the effort he's put into raising Daeron has been a triumph.
That is true enough, looking at his brothers. This, again, he had all expected.
But Ormund does not think to expect you.
You are the youngest daughter of Alicent and Viserys, a soft-spoken princess hidden between your unabashed, strange siblings. He is more than aware of your letters to Daeron, ones he used to personally oversee earlier in the boy's youth until the scribbled nonsense of childhood conversation began to bore him.
It was unassuming enough that he didn't think much of you in concept, and that seems to be the same for the rest of your family.
Have you been overlooked often enough that gentleness somehow settles in you?
He watches you lower your gaze when others address you. You thank servants for the most meager of mandatory tasks. And Ormund is sure, when he makes the mistake of having his attention linger too long on you, that your cheeks warm without you helping it.
It lingers solely due to curiosity, really, because it is your scent that creeps around the corner before you do.
The first breath of you, through the stale smells of the Red Keep, seizes him.
Ormund would be right to claim that you smell of devilish temptation. Temptation has been given a body...of immense beauty. My, he has to keep hold of himself upright before you even curtsy.
What is this fucking nonsense that he has been met with?
"My lord."
He finds you to be a quiet, shy, gracious thing. Quiet, shy, gracious, presumably drenched in lavender and vanilla.
…Possibly something hazel-esque, something floral, but it's a pleasant feminine oil, he tells himself. Nothing more than an indulgence that any disciplined man like himself could withstand. He has dealt with the likes of common whores throwing himself at him. Your scent, your beauty. No fucking matter.
But...you bow your head, eyes lowered. Is he the first man of the day to make you timid?
The thought soothes Ormund from the way your scent seeps into his throat as you do.
What had seemed floral grows intimate on your skin, as if the sweetness rises from the pulse at your throat and escapes your lips! It clings, clings, clings to the inside of his nose. He can even still smell you after you leave the room, this isolent savor of a Targaryen girl. Have you left it to linger to test him? Must be.
Ormund's resentment of you grows quickly. Quiet, shy, gracious. He'd rather you be brazen, but no, no---you are what he deduces to be silently deceptive. How else would the Gods challenge him?
"I praise you for your propriety, princess."
A Targaryen princess cannot simply be gentle. If there is gentleness in such blood, it must be a lure. It could very well be that your Valyrian instinct has been only made subtle by Alicent's upbringing. In his time in the Red Keep, he witnesses all the signs of your mother's influence.
There is your careful words, reverence for the Seven...
Alicent has done commendable work. At the very least, she has managed to raise one dragon properly. You laugh when he tells you so.
"Your mother’s influence is apparent. She did well in caring for one Targaryen. As have I."
Well enough that the boy is more Hightower than anything.
"I presume my little brother is perfect?"
You humor Ormund with your tease behind your fingers, shyly. Do you think even your amusement requires apology? How intolerable.
How good.
The conversation delves into your wonder about your brother. Beneath all your courtly restraint is a painful hunger to know the boy. Ormund does not know what to make of your questions. Is he happy? Does he have friends? Why has he stopped drawing dragons and swords in his letters to you?
It is a mutually beneficial talk, as he answers with more pride than the questions warrant. He'd ask for forgiveness in the light of the Seven if his claims weren't true.
Daeron is very diligent. Courteous and devout. Well with a sword, regardless of the humble lies within his correspondence with you.
He speaks of you more than he speaks of his other siblings. Yes, that's not saying much, but it's as if he could possibly have any memories to miss you by.
"Oh, good! I'm glad he has had your love and care to bear, Lord Ormund."
At that, Ormund begins imagining what might have happened had you been sent to Oldtown too.
...He could have raised you more than properly.
The guardian he could've been to you, a firm hand set upon a promising but dark flower. The girl he imagines, rising in the Starry Sept and repeating prayers after him.
You'd learn his approval is a priority...
And that his displeasure demands the occasional punishment. He could've cut away every filthified tendency inherited from your father’s blood before it bloomed, even though he has not seen much of it from you, saved for the cunning scent.
By womanhood, obedience would come so naturally that you would never think to call it surrender or suffering, as young women who deny the natural order of things so often do. His voice might have lived inside your currently unknowable mind.
These thoughts horrify him, but only because they are a fucking waste. They are nothing more than fantasy, and it is fantasy that makes him feel cheated of the opportunity of taming you to be rewarded until pleasing him feels no different from virtue itself, if your mother did well enough to teach you virtue's importance.
Nevermind, to the bane of his being here.
"Might I ask what perfume it is that you wear, princess?"
You place a palm on your chest, and Ormund's gaze follows in a way he will never name as helpless.
"I do not know the exact mixture, my lord. My handmaid prepares it differently every other morning. Sometimes I think it is lavender, but I believe she will use vanilla. Do you...mislike it?"
"I find it pleasant, but excessive." He nearly slaps your hand when you reach for your neck, where you must've applied it earlier. "But there is no need to apologize or to alter your habits on my account."
You nod.
"...As you wish, my lord."
Those words follow him into the night. Your scent does too, along with the dangerous, indulgent thought that, perhaps, you are not beyond salvage.
Your soul, despite the dark of your blood, might still be trained into something as lovely as the way you smell.
It lingers in galleries after you have left and blooms in halls where you passed an hour before. He swears on it! It is through no fault of his own that he can scent your movements through the Red Keep like a fucking hound dog---which chair the princess has occupied at supper, that the flight of stairs he walks upon just had her in its grasp.
No. It is not his fault. You linger, and if this is all done with sneaked intention, Ormund would have every right to call you a cunning whore. To lead the overseer of Oldtown astray with some perfumed concoction, to play sweet and innocent to have him believe you good. Yes, every right indeed.
It gets to the very point that Ormund could also have every right to claim he is merely observing a threat. Temptation should be studied before it can be mastered, yes?
Yes, he shall lecture Daeron on this when he arrives home.
"You are the princess's handmaid, yes? I require a favor of you. She has informed me that you mix her oils yourself. What does it contain?"
The need to find the exact ingredients that cause him to bear this dangerous curiosity is great enough that he corners---happens upon your handmaid in a quiet passage.
She lists them. Ormund smiles.
"I require a vial. Just one."
"...A vial?"
"For examination only."
He certainly does not appreciate the cautious look that grows on the young woman's face. She blinks in confusion. "...My lord?"
"Do you require me to repeat everything? The fragrance is unusually strong, and I only wish to determine whether it may affect those sensitive to such things. I will compensate you for your efforts...as long as you do not trouble the princess with the matter."
The maid agrees. And how funny is it that a successfully coerced cooperation of a young bitch maid who can't keep her expressions to herself makes him fear the possibility that he was...diminished by said conversation.
No matter, he was not, even a scholar such as himself bears insecurities. The vial arrives that evening, carried by a servant in a cloth.
Ormund opens it and brings it to his nose. It is, up close, a wonderful scent.
...And utterly fucking lifeless!
Every ingredient is present, yes, yet it does not seize him nor make his blood simmer hot beneath his divine flesh as it did when you first bowed to him, and he to you.
There is no instant thought, with the vial to his nose, of your neck against his tongue or your skirts pushed above your thighs that he has yet to see. Where is it, sweet whore? That ravenous need to bury his face in your bosom and how deeply your perfume seeps?
The missing ingredient is you. Is it your warmth that causes your scent to thrive? Your skin? May the Seven forbid that it might be your filthy, ancient blood he has spent his life regarding as savage.
The irony in the thought is strong when Ormund knows you pass his chamber.
He is only rubbing the oil into his wrist with force just before you do, damning the thing to take him whole as you did, sniffing the---alright, pathetic attempt to reconstruct you from its lifeless ingredients while the fantasies worsen and turn his temper to frustration.
The laugh he hears you give as you pass follows your true scent.
It somehow floods the room and puts the counterfeit oil to shame. It upon his nose, his wrists...his elbows, it all turns offensive, to the point where Ormund rises from his chair so quickly that it screeches against the stoney floor as the life of your lush, warm savor burns itself into the back of his throat.
The moment when he nearly makes the weak mistake of opening the door is wild. The only moments a somewhat untrained Targaryen can produce, it seems.
He has half a tempted mind to call you inside under some pretense concerning your little brother. He imagines your eyes of startled confusion when you find the vial in his hand, your stammer when you realize he has obtained the scent you wear on your skin?
Would it give you a fright? Would it flatter you? Would sweat deepen the scent as blood rushed to your cheeks?
...And, hopefully, untouched cunt?
Ormund's cock hardens painfully at the thought.
He braces himself against the desk, breathing the last traces of you from the corridor. Cruelly, barely...it is enough to turn your slightest corruption of him into bodily need.
Ormund thinks it fair, he has given you the satisfaction of his temporary ruin, as well as happy thoughts of the brother you can only remember as a babe.
It is just enough.
He opens his breeches by the laces, yanking them and letting his cock spring free. He's already leaking at the tip when he turns the vial down to slather the thick oil over the length of his shaft. It's slick, warm, how he imagines the glide of your cunt would be.
He wraps his fist around himself and strokes at a brutal pace. His eyes close, and there is only the picture of you beneath him---shy no longer, your knees parted with force, your mouth trembling those little my lords until you are brave enough to say his name.
As he pumps with friction, the skin of his cock pulling in the twist of his sticky palm, there you are, arching your back as he claims you in fantasy. He would be gentle at first, you have to be with a woman in the beginning. He's sure he must convince you that there is no shame in yielding to a man better equipped to govern you.
The whole of you.
Ormund presses his scented wrist against his mouth. The oil is bitter upon his lips. Still wrong, and the inadequacy only drives him to pump faster, near frantic---he humps his own stroking, precum-covered hand.
Imagination is what he must make do with to supply your warm skin where there is only his own. The man can almost feel your cunt, tight, dripping the way the oil does against his thighs. Oh, how you would welcome his thickness while he whispers filth into your ear. Filth that will be forgiven.
Or easily justified. Well, welcomed? Welcomed...that Ormund cannot be too sure of.
Even with the mother of bastards leading the line to the throne as your half-sister, which is why he cannot also be sure of your own virtue...would you welcome him so easily? Seems unfathomable that you wouldn't, but...
...Once again, a firm hand comes to mind.
Only as his hips begin to jerk, boots sounding out against stone as he hunches over the desk.
Ormund would have to make you acknowledge what your scent has done to him, make you hold his gaze while your breath against the leftover mess you leave upon his aching cock, and if you were good enough, he would tell you how wickedly sweet you must taste, and that you must try you for yourself.
Firmness would do well enough to make you understand that kindness does not leave you harmless, nor does it mean you can move through any hall he paces, leaving your scent for him to find, and expect him to think you honorable of wholesome fucking thought!
...But there can be redemption if you confess what you have done.
Ormund's breath turns harsher, the tight knot in his balls demanding release. The thrusts into his fist burn violent, and he can only bite his lip and groan against his teeth. The oil fills his nostrils fully, and it brings him to the brink of his own pleasure.
"Gods!"
Past the point of no return, you bring him.
With one final, squeezing stroke, Ormund lets out a calmorous groan as his body shudders. His breaths come in quickened hitches, but his ropes of cum splattered across stone and wood in long ropes, long enough that he can pump himself through the mess.
He milks his cock and leaves himself completely spent once finished. If sin had a smell, it would be what he has to wash his shaft of. His wrist. His lips. He looks at the vial with disgust. He must be rid of the rest, surely...
The matter requires further thought, at least until morning---where, in your own chambers of the Red Keep, you wake without the faintest fucking idea that Lord Ormund Hightower has begun resenting...
Dreaming of how beautifully you will bloom under his hand.
content: It was no secret that Lord Ormund was fond of his uncle’s wife, but when she was sent back along with Daeron is was clear just how fond he was.
words: 2.5k
cw: MDNI 18+ allusions to sex, canon divergence, possessiveness, infidelity, Otto Hightower, we're going with a halfway between show and book, Daeron is like 5 when going to Old Town, talks of offing (💀) someone, not proofread, lmk if I missed any.
a/n: in other words Otto sends his wife to go play house with his nephew so they continue to have Old Town's support in his schemes!
The anger that surged through Old Town when it was announced you would marry Lord Otto Hightower, was still talked about even over ten years later.
Mainly Ormund's screams and the items that crashed against the walls. The threats that spilled from his lips to his uncle.
You had warded almost your entire life in Old Town. Growing among the Hightowers. It was no secret of young Ormund's fondness for you nor yours for him. It was thought that you would have been wed.
It was what made sense.
Until it all came crashing down when Lord Otto had struck a bargain with your father, for you to be his wife instead. It was abrupt. It was sudden, and even as the years passed it still made your gut churn in disgust.
It was not clear then why Otto had decided to marry you, but as the years passed it slowly clicked into place. He needed that reassurance when the time came Old Town would follow with his plans. That Ormund would follow his plans.
You were a pawn nothing more. Dragged to the capital to play further into schemes, but your true mistake came when proving just how well you fit the place of what he needed. You were more useful then he could have even imagined.
Your hands moved skillfully through Helaena's hair, braiding it, in the very way you use to do her mother's, when you were both girls. You liked the girl, loved her even.
Though she was often regarded as odd you always sought her out. You tried in ways her own mother did not. You went to her, often.
Then she started coming to you, and then it sort of became an every day occurrence. Her brother's were much the same. You gave them the love they lacked. Especially Aegon, molding and shaping him just the way Otto wanted. Or at least attempting too.
"Grandmother," she then called out, trying to turn back to you, but you kept her head straight.
The title was still an odd one. You were the same age as their mother. It felt wrong, but you would not correct it.
You never had.
"Why did you marry grandsire?" she asked suddenly.
Her words left you perplexed of a sort. You blinked slightly, your mouth opening as closing as you tied off her hair. You tried to think of an answer. One that would make it seem more like a piece of a fairytale then a broodmare being sold off.
You were never given the chance to answer when the door burst open revealing the said man. He stood there for a moment eyes flickering between the pair of you before he conjured a smile, that was merely for the performance of Helaena.
"Why don't you go to the gardens, get started on your findings and I will be right out to join you," you said, grinning gently.
She nodded eagerly not sensing the tension in the room or ignoring it before sprinting out, yelling something over her shoulder than went unheard to you.
The door shut with a loud thud as you both stared at the other. "Well. What is it?" you asked, standing to your feet. You watched him carefully seeing if you could guess what it is before he could say it, most of the time you could.
This time you would not, because the last thing you would have ever guessed came out of his mouth, "Ormund's wife has died," he suddenly declared. The words took only a second to register before you could hear your heart beat begin to pick up.
You kept your face neutral, something you had spent too much time practicing, "What does that have to do with me?" you asked, plainly, raising an unamused brow. "I am still married to you last I checked, unless this is how you plan to tell me you are finally dying."
He smirked unphased by the dig, "Daeron is being sent there…He will eventually squire for Ormund, and you will go alongside him."
"Otto," you warned, but he continued.
"I thought that marrying you would be all I needed to keep him in line. To remember exactly what I had over him, but after I have received some reports from Old Town, over the last few years I have been proven wrong. I only provoked the boy it seems."
You let out a laugh, shaking your head, "I would not regard him as much of a boy these days. Lord of Oldtown," you tilted your head, "What do you expect of me, husband. Speak plainly. 'Tis only us," you said, making your way toward him.
"I want you to be your charming self of course, and keep him…pleased," he decided on. He did not directly speak of what he meant, but you knew exactly what he meant nonetheless.
You let out a breath, "And what if he does not want me anymore? It has been years."
The old man only smirked, "I have no doubt that you can make him fall for your charms."His hand reached out grabbing your face, "My dutiful wife. You are more than I could have ever imagined," he whispered, his head tilting as his eyes drifted across you face.
A chill ran yo your spine, but you did not cower. He did not scare you, not anymore. "Why do you think this will make him compliant to our cause?"
"Because I have the very thing he wants…You will be in his grasps, and then I will remind him that I can take you back or keep you there depending on his behavior."
"And what if Ormund decides he wishes to kill you so he can marry me himself?" you asked.
"Then I trust you to carry on our work, dear wife," he said, his large hand tilting your head back before leaning down to press his mouth to yours.
Upon arrival back to Old Town, Daeron Targaryen was pressed into your side as if he was a second skin. He was frightened, and for good reason. He was boy of only five, in a place he had never been before, and the only person he knew was you. And Ormund Hightower never had looked like an soft, approachable person even in boyhood.
The Lord had not even spoken to you at first, nor had he spared you a second glance. His children on the other hand came to you as if you were a mother duck, but you could not blame them. So, you distracted yourself with them, tending to their needs as if they were one of your own.
And then that night, when most of Old Town had slept he finally sent for you.
You moved through the halls with muscle memory. You had grown up here. You had been suppose to live here forever. Though even as King's Landing turned into your home you still dreamed of this place.
You hesitated outside his door, not out of fear only preparation. You did not know what to say to a man you had not seen in over ten years. The one your mind often drifted to. The one that still held your heart despite the time apart.
Ormund did not look up to you when you entered his solar instead staring down at the chalice in his hand. He spun the liquid around watching it closely, as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. As if you did not stand a mere feet away after all these years.
"You are good with Daeron," he finally spoke, still not turning toward you. If there was anyone else in the solar you would have thought he was talking to them rather than yourself.
You stepped further into the room moving toward him. He sat by a small window, overlooking Old Town, not that you could see it fully with the darkness, but you did not have to. You could picture it from memory as this use to be his father's solar. Where the pair of you had snuck in a week after your arrival, and he showed you the view.
"He is my grandson," you replied, forgetting where you were for a moment. That this was not court and you were not expected to play Otto's wife here. Not in Old Town. Not with Ormund.
He let out a bitter laugh, "And yet you have no children of your own, but you are already a grandmother," he finally turned toward you, raising a brow.
You held his gaze, nodding slightly, "Otto has his children. He did not want anymore…nuisances," you quoted your husbands words that he had repeated back to you and others man times.
You watched his jaw clench as he finally stood to his feet, turning to look at you. He did not move from his spot, "Is it that or does his cock just no longer work from old age?" he hissed, his words turning into a blade ready to draw.
But you were not his target.
"It still sadly works," you told him, your lips turning down slightly. Before the anger could stew much longer you looked to the floor, trying to change the course of where this was headed. "You had a wife of your own. Four beautiful children."
You could hear his ragged breaths despite your heartbeat pounding loudly in your ear, "I did," he agreed, but said nothing more, waiting, watching to see what would come next.
"Did you love her?" you finally asked, not looking up from the floor.
Now he moved toward you, standing in front of you, not crossing that invisible line that would cause him to com crumbling down into your hands, "No," he answered without hesitation, "Every time I looked at her all I could think was this she was not you. She wore your perfume, she dressed like you, but at the end of everyday she was not you."
Ormund took a step forward, over the line, and just like that he was putty for you to mold. You held an arm out. He reacted instantly, falling into your warm embrace, his face immediately going to the flesh of your skin, his nose pressing against you.
Neither of you spoke for a moment, simply living in the the feeling of the other pressed into your bodies. "He has a treasure," he then confessed, quietly, the raw truth heard through each syllable.
You laughed. It was not a humorous one, but rather filled with the bitter resentment an danger you had felt sense the raven from your father had first arrived all those years ago.
It was an honor to marry the Hand of the King, he had deemed, and even now he still held the same opinion. Only it doubled after Alicent married Viseyers, as he became the father of a Queen.
And you become…"I am his dutiful wife nothing more," you replied.
He did not lift his face, but you could feel his anger coursing through him once more, "He is a fool for not realizing what he has," he whispered into your neck inhaling you as if you were the very thing he needed to breathe in to live. "I would have…" he trailed off not quite knowing how to put into words everything he felt.
"Show me," you whispered, as if you could read his mind.
It was the final confirmation he needed, before stepping over that line, and though he was a pious man. He did not see this as a sin. That thought did not even cross his mind that he was sleeping with another's wife. His very uncle at that.
Because you were always his, even now. Your heart. Your body. Everything was his for the taking, and you would not stop him even if Otto ordered it.
You had just put the children to the bed as you lounged back in the quiet of Ormund's solar. A book propped open on your lap, as your eyes scanned the words, but not truly taking them as your brain felt foggy from the tiredness of the day. Five children were, all under the age of seven, would be a lot to anyone, even a woman with help like yourself.
The door finally burst open, ruining the calmness causing your head to snap up. Ormund's fury was apparent as he held something clenched tightly in his fist as he paced the floor, likely to burn a hole through it if he walked any faster.
"I should kill him," he suddenly declared. You knew exactly who he meant, but had no context as to why.
"Why now?" you asked, standing to your feet slowly. You did not approach, letting him get some of the rage out.
"He has called you back to King's Landing! For some fucking event!" he continued, his hand bawling and un-bawling at his side indicating just how much you wished to wrap them around his own uncle's neck.
"Ormund," you then said, calm, breaking through the burning anger. He paused for a moment, taking it a deep breath, his entire body shaking. He closed his eyes for a second, two, three, and finally opened them looking to you.
"I do not like it when you leave," he confessed, and his voice sounded more boy then man.
You smiled sadly at him, "I will come back. I always do."
Otto did not this on purpose time and time again. Letting you settle into the comfort of Ormund's embrace, allowing him to play pretend for a time before drawing him back into the harsh reality every time.
You were not Ormund's wife, but Otto's and that was a truth that kept the Lord of Old Town up almost every night.
"I pray the stranger takes him," he muttered, shaking his head, his hand moved to rest against his forehead.
"In due time," you replied, calmly, moving toward him slowly. His jaw clenched, his eyes flashing as something crossed his mind, and you knew it would be only a moment before he confessed it to you. He never was one to hold his tongue, especially when it came to you.
"You were suppose to be mine," he grit out, his knuckles bawling at his side. The familiar sense of violence that filled him every time the thought crossed his mind.
You did falter from it, instead stepping into the storm. Your hand raised resting against his cheek forcing him to look at you, "I am, in everyway the matters," you whispered. Ormund let out a shaky breath, leaning down to rest his forehead against yours, as you both let the silence speak for you.
And you meant it, more than you had anything that had come out of your mouth in recent years, because it was not hidden in pretty words. It was the raw truth. That no matter what Otto expected of you, or any part you played, that at the end of the day your heart still lived and beat for Ormund Hightower.
summary: you nurse gwayne back to life again when the war leaves him for dead, and he finds himself in no hurry to be rescued from you. (5k)
characters: gwayne hightower / fem!reader
contents: strangers to lovers, hurt/comfort, domestic fluff, mutual pining, canon divergent, not proofread, cw for mentions of blood and injuries, smut 18+ (MDNI): sub!gwayne, unprotected sex, premature ejaculation, face riding (this man has been through enough i just need someone to take care of him okay)
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
Gwayne’s heavy eyes open first to a low, timbered ceiling made of clay and dry-rotted oak — certainly not the ornately embellished stone of the Red Keep, which would’ve suggested that Daemon’s army had won in their ambush and had since taken him hostage; but it wasn’t the sagging canvas of a war tent either, which also meant that no green army had yet come to his rescue. This place, wherever this place was, was small and warm and heavy with the scent of a home-cooked meal and the coppery tang of his own blood.
The hurt returns to him as slowly his consciousness does. His body aches in a way that tells him, a bit more clearly than his own memory could, that he had been long in the dying not too long ago. All of his bones feel rusted shut and heavy; each breath feels like gravel in his lungs and blades against his ribs.
“Where am I…?” Gwayne wonders aloud in a near-inaudible rasp, almost lost beneath the crackle of a fire and the soft hiss of a pot simmering somewhere close.
His heavy head lolls on the thin pillow beneath him. The cushion propping up his stiff neck smells like something floral and sweet, like a woman. As his eyes scan the room, he finds that this quaint house, if it could even be referred to as such, is made of only one room — there’s a dining nook crowded in the corner by the window, a cluttered living area in the opposite corner by the hearth, and apparently a sickbed in which he languishes now.
Through the haze still clinging in his vision, he spots a figure dressed in tatters stirring at a pot with practiced hands — sleeves pushed up to the elbows, faded skirts flowing just below the knee. You do not startle at the sound of his voice, nor do you turn to look at him right away as you crush a handful of dried rosemary into the bubbling water before you.
“Starry Hill,” you answer plainly, as though you were talking to an old friend rather than a half-dead ghost in your bed. You turn slowly over your shoulder and watch confusion twist at the man’s handsome features — (he’d studied every keep, holdfast, and port in Westeros his father told him to, and yet he’d never once heard of this one). “And no, you haven’t heard of it before.”
The grin is evident in your voice as you turn away to wipe your palms off on a rag. You catch the man’s glassy blue eyes darting around your home — over the crooked shelf of clay jars, past the mismatched chairs around the ancient dining table, and towards the narrow window where dim orange light falls in slanted rays. He cannot yet tell whether it’s dawn or dusk, and the notion disorients him further.
“Apologies for the mess, my lord,” you sigh. “If I’d known I was going to be housing a Hightower for three days, I might’ve tidied the place up a bit first.”
Gwayne’s auburn brows furrow slowly as his face twists in a deeper confusion — both at the thought of having spent three days unconscious in this place, and at the ease with which you seemed to know his name. His house. His blood. “How… How did you know I was a Hightower?”
Your head turns lazily on your shoulder to flash the man a narrow-eyed, almost pitying sort of look. Your gaze falls across his flaming copper hair, the aristocratic slope of his nose, and the inherited Hightower beauty that not even war, nor three days on his deathbed, could manage to take from him. Even halfway ruined, the man still looks like something bred for portraiture. And it would, perhaps, be so easy to tell him as much.
“Well, you were wearing the sigil all over your armor, to be fair,” you deadpan instead and turn back to your cooking.
Only then does Gwayne realize that the heaviness of his armor is long gone from his frame. All of his clothes, in fact, are gone — the pale canvas of his bare chest is on display now, carved lean from a lifetime in the training yard, and now sporting a square piece of plaster across his ribcage. Beneath the heavy quilt thrown over his legs, he can feel a pair of baggy trousers riding low on his hips that do not belong to him.
Which means you had to have undressed him; bathed him; patched up his marred skin. The thought alone is dizzying.
Panic wraps its hands around his throat as he rises onto his elbows, grimacing at the ache it puts in his side and somewhere deep in his bicep — where a linen cloth has been wrapped tight.
“How did I get here?”
“Your guess is as good as mine…” you huff without looking away from the pot ahead of you. “You’re the one who showed up half-dead on my doorstep, if you’ll recall— So I think I have more questions for you than you have for me, in truth.”
Gwayne’s eyes go glassy and distant as he strains to recollect the events that led him here.
He remembers Ser Criston’s words about a death march, and the sudden screeching of his horse when the first volley of enemy arrows came flying every which way. He vaguely remembers his mare rearing up and tossing him onto his back against the heavy forest floor, and the way the world erupted with the shouting of a hundred men or more all at once. But he does not know what became of any of them now.
“I need to leave,” he announces at once.
“Oh, I wouldn’t,” you wince as you watch the man fling the quilt from his body, visibly toned from years of knighthood but still pale from his lingering brush with death. “Not on that leg of yours— I’m still not sure I set the bone just right.”
Gwayne’s jaw clenches tight as he swings his legs over the side of the bed. His tired muscles pull taut in protest, though it doesn’t hurt him nearly as badly as his left shin does when his bare feet hit the ancient floorboards. A white-hot pain sears from ankle to knee; his chiseled face screws tight as he chokes on a scream.
He doubles over in agony and digs his trembling fists into the thin sheets of the down mattress, struggling to take stock of his injuries.
There’s a plaster just below his knee and a sickly yellow-green bruise blooming just below that, from where the bone came through when the weight of his horse fell on top of him, perhaps. There’s a hot, pulsing feeling beneath the plaster on his right arm — a small but concentrated signature that must’ve come from an arrow. And the length of the shallow scrape along his ribs suggests that it came from a kiss of an enemy blade.
All of it is dressed now in clean linen, from the same kind hands stirring supper across the room from him, entirely unbothered by his suffering.
“Seven fucking hells…” you groan, more to yourself than to him. “I forgot the bloody potatoes.”
Gwayne blinks wildly at your passing figure as you trade the wooden spoon in your hands for the dark, beaten cloak hanging beside the door. “P-Potatoes?” he stammers in response, because he can think of a thousand issues much more pressing than potatoes.
“Yes,” you nod, sliding your arms through the thick woolen sleeves gone soft and shapeless with age. “You can’t have rabbit stew without potatoes. It ruins the whole dish— I’d think you’d know that, as a pretty little lord and all.”
He perks slightly at the mention of it — of food, and of the thought that some other man must surely live here to have killed and skinned the meat for your stew.
“Where is your father?” he calls to your retreating form.
There’s a certain edge of command in his voice that tries to surface past the wavers of pain. He attempts to assert some Hightower authority in the walls of your home, despite being half-dressed and hunched over the edge of your bed and completely at your mercy.
“Or a husband, perhaps? Someone I can speak rationally with.”
“No father… No husband…” you sigh and tie the top of your coat, which is a size or three too big for you. “You can speak rationally to me, if you wish, though I fear your current hysterics might render conversation somewhat impossible… But I require no thanks for saving your life, to be sure.”
Your words carry a certain bite that pierces him straight through the chest; the devastating reminder of a debt he has not yet had any sense to acknowledge.
The door opens with a high-pitched creaking sound; the cool breeze that rushes in tells him that the day is ending rather than just beginning. You pause at the threshold, hand on the frame and hood half-raised
“If you’re going to leave, at least remember to shut the door behind you,” you tell him, detached but not totally unkind. “I don’t want the smell of supper bringing the animals down from the hill.”
The door screeches and clicks behind you, punctuating your leaving. The little house — smaller than his bathing chambers back in Oldtown — goes very quiet and very still with your absence. The eeriness unnerves a distant, boyish part of him that wishes most desperately for your return. The rest of him, however, wants nothing more than to be rid of this place entirely — from the strangeness of it and of you most of all.
Gwayne grits his teeth and hauls himself not-quite to full height. He’s doubled over and bracing his white-knuckled grip on the ancient wooden bedframe as he hobbles the short distance towards the door, fighting through the screaming ache shooting up and down his left leg. He makes it not even five steps before it gives out on him completely.
He crumples to the unforgiving ground in a graceless heap of limbs and injured pride, catching himself on instinct with the arm sporting the throbbing arrow wound going down.
He lies there, groaning and writhing and choking down cries of frustration with his cheek pressed to the cold floor. The sound of his ragged breaths fills the small, empty house as he watches the sunset dip low past the window, quietly waiting for the sound of the door to open — and for your presence to follow.
It opens at last; three minutes or three hours later. A silken breeze rushes in alongside you, as you enter with a basket of potatoes and other vegetables on your hip. You falter in the doorway at the sight of the man sprawled out on your floor, a crumpled puppet with all of its strings cut clean.
A strange, satisfied smile creeps across your face as you swipe your hood back with your free hand. “Well…” you croon lowly. “What do we have here?”
Gwayne lifts his heavy head. He looks up at you with watery blue eyes through the strands of wild auburn hair hanging over his brow. He loses every ounce of his composure in that moment, turning into a doe-eyed and pleading thing as his wet gaze peers at you from beneath his lashes.
“Please…” he rasps. “Help me…”
He doesn’t learn your name until the second day. He does not stand on his own until the fifth. And he does not bathe himself unaided until the seventh.
You do not coddle him for any of it. You clean his wounds and change his bandages twice daily, and scold him for flinching at the sting — telling him that he’d spent too many years being pampered by wetnurses and that was precisely why he healed so slowly. But, after that first week, he learned to walk the length of your small home without his leg buckling underneath him; though he still requires the cane you’d fashioned for him out of a stag’s antler if he plans on taking more than a step or two.
“Here. So you can stop looking like a newborn calf every time you cross the room,” you’d said when you gifted it to him. “It’s starting to get hard to watch, if I’m honest.”
He is, if he’s being entirely truthful with himself, entirely unused to being spoken to this way. The ladies of his acquaintance back in Oldtown — the soft, sweet-voiced daughters of high lords and ladies — would never have dared to call him hysterical to his face or handle his wounds with such unromantic efficiency. They never would have laughed, as you had, at the sight of him crumpled on the floor.
You’re nothing at all like the ladies he grew up with.
You swear like a dockhand; you name your goats like they're your kin; you wear your dead parents' old clothes without a trace of shame and speak of your own life with a bluntness that would scandalize every septa he'd grown up with. It should, perhaps, trouble him a great deal more than it does.
Gwayne knows he could’ve and likely should’ve left days ago. He suspects that you know it, too. Tumbleton was not far from here, you told him, and his kin held the fortress now — a real castle with a real maester to tend to him — rather than this strange, sharp-tongued woman with rough hands and a rougher sense of humor. But still, he does not go. He tells himself that it’s his leg; that the roads were surely not safe yet and that he’d be long in the dying should he cross Daemon’s army a second time.
So he stays, and he makes himself useful to you in the waiting, in whatever small ways he can manage. He could not do much, at first — he could not chop firewood or carry water; he could barely carry himself, in truth — but he could mend a fence while seated, and feed the farm animals while leaning on his cane, and shell the peas you bring in from the garden for supper.
Gwayne quickly discovers, to his own mortification, that he takes a strange satisfaction in it all. This was not a life meant for knights, certainly not one meant for a Hightower, but yet he can picture all the rest of his days playing out exactly like this — utterly unremarkable, but his just the same.
It has been three weeks since his arrival, give or take, and his days feel less like exile now and more like routine. He sits propped on the pillows after his bath, milky-white skin glimmering from your homemade oils, with nothing but a pair of borrowed trousers covering his lower half.
You sit on the edge of the bed beside him and redress the stubborn wound on his arm that refuses to heal — the worst of his injuries he came here with, Gwayne insists; a nerve-deep pain that he swears he can feel when he’s dreaming. But even still, weeks into the habit of tending to him, you are no gentler about it than you were that very first night.
“Ow—” Gwayne winces when you press too firmly against the wound. You catch his elbow before he can draw it away and urge it back into place with an unsentimental force.
“Stop squirming,” you scold and continue to dab the homemade, herb-flecked ointment onto the irritated skin.
“It hurts,” the man insists.
“It hurts because you’re squirming.”
Gwayne attempts to glare at you as you reach for the linen cloth on the table beside you. The playful frown softens with a soft smile despite himself. “Has anyone ever told you that your bedside manner is just extraordinary?”
“All the time…” you lilt back and slide the fabric around his arm, tying it off with one particularly harsh tug. “Usually right before they tell me that they're feeling much better and no longer require any of my help.”
“Well…” Gwayne croons, pale eyes glittering in the dancing candlelight. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you wanted me gone…”
You glance finally up at him from beneath your lashes, at the handsome knight sharing your house — with bright copper hair gone soft from his bath, and bright blue eyes a little too earnest for someone meant to be teasing — the kind of man that belonged in the fairytales you’d read as a child; not in your own home in your own bed.
Something in your sharp expression finally gives, like The Wall finally weeping after the first warm day of summer.
“You’re the prettiest thing I’ve seen in years, Ser Gwayne,” you hum lowly. “So if you haven’t realized by now that I’m keeping you hostage here, then I fear you haven’t been paying attention.”
A breathy laugh shakes his toned stomach, and the scar along his ribs no longer pulls to do so. He’s fairly certain that you’re jesting, but even still, he doesn’t think he’d care all that much if you weren’t.
“I find that…” he trails slowly off with a squinted look in his pale eyes, as if the realization were hitting him the moment the words fell from his mouth. His melodic voice carries a sort of airiness in it despite the soft confession. “That perhaps I wouldn’t mind it. Being your hostage… Staying here. With you… I don't think I'd mind that at all…”
“Well… That’s a very dangerous thing to say to a woman with nothing to lose, Ser Gwayne,” you murmur, propping your fists on either side of his waist as you lean in close to him — until he can smell the lavender soap on your skin and count the flecks of firelight in your gaze. “Your army has surely presumed you dead by now… No one will come looking for you here… So if you do not wish to be kept by me, the door is still open…”
Something in his chest flares hot at your words, at the thought of being kept by you.
“For how long?” he teases with an arched auburn brow, pink lips curling into a slow smile.
Your eyes flit away and back again. “…Roughly the next ten seconds.”
“Well…” he lilts as his hand lifts slowly from the blankets to cradle your jaw, urging you that much closer. “That seems like plenty of time.”
He leans off the pillow to press his mouth to yours. His nose smushes into the side of yours as his plush lips slot with your softer ones. Your tongue darts between them with little warning and a degree too eager, swiping against his like velvet on velvet. Gwayne exhales a heavy sigh through his nose at the taste of you — like supper and wine and something foreign that he chases with each languid kiss.
You kiss him long and slow, like biting into the sweet skin of an apple, and shift on the mattress to straddle his waist. Gwayne’s free hand shoves the quilt down his thighs to accommodate you upon them. Your fingers rest around his neck like a collar as you grind your hips over his, up his lap and down again. A groan rumbles like thunder in his throat.
His hands dart instantly for your waist, knotting his long fingers in the skirts pushed up to your thighs, as he pulls off of you with a quiet smack. “Don’t,” he hears himself plead.
“Why?” you pant, blinking back at him with heavy eyes.
“It’s been…” His adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “A long… long time.”
Your lips curl into a grin before your head ducks down again. Your mouth smears along his pulse in a sloppy kiss. “Three weeks isn’t so long, is it?”
A laugh sounds in his throat. You feel it rumbling against your mouth. “The war’s been going on for a lot longer than three weeks, my dear…”
“Don’t tell me Ser Gwayne hasn’t taken his fair share of whores on the road,” you quip against the milky white tendon of his neck.
He smiles with his nose in your hair. “Not many whores on the battlefield, I’m afraid…”
“Oh, you poor thing…” you croon as you pull slowly back from him, more gentle with him now than you were when he was half dead on your porch; though there’s still a playful air about you that he doesn’t yet miss. “No wonder you’ve been so uptight… You’ve just been looking for a little… release, haven’t you? Spit—”
Gwayne’s eyes widen as they flick between your expectant face and the hand you hold under his chin. Despite his obvious diffidence, he ducks his head and spits a glob of saliva onto your palm — and watches with held breath as your fingers dip under the hem of his trousers. They wrap around his cock, laying half-soft on his thigh, and use his spit to work him the rest of the way hard. He feels like heavy velvet in your fist.
His dizzy head tips back against the wall with a quiet thud. Your quiet giggling melts with his pleasured groan as he hardens slowly in your fist.
“I’ll bet you’ll cum the second I tell you to,” you laugh.
Gwayne nods slowly, adam’s apple moving in his long throat as he fights to keep his lidded eyes open. His breath catches in his chest when your thumb swipes over the sensitive tip of his cock.
“I’ll bet you’ll do anything I tell you to… Won’t you?”
Gwayne nods again, jerking in your fist at your words.
“Oh…” you huff a mixture of a contented sigh and a devilish laugh as you squeeze him harder in your fist. “I am going to have… so much fun with you, Ser Gwayne…”
He has little time to ponder the weight of your words when you shift on top of him again. You pull your fingers from his trousers and tuck the hem beneath his heavy balls. His eyes snap open to find you urging your dress skirts further up your thighs. He’s left mourning the warmth of your touch only for a moment, before your hand slides between your bodies once more to guide the drooling tip of his cock into your already weeping confines.
He’s long and slender — not nearly as thick as the butcher’s son in town who’s been tending to your needs for years, but an inch or three longer still — and made of meandering veins you can feel when you pierce yourself upon him. Your head tips back to exhale a moan at the ceiling, mouth curling into a lazy smile as you adjust to the length of him.
Gwayne chokes on a groan in his throat when your hips sit flush with his again, fingers clutching mercilessly at the plush of your thighs hard enough to etch bruises on the skin. The sound turns into a strangled whimper when you clench absentmindedly around him, warmer than velvet and drooling something fierce.
“I can’t…” the man whines, chiseled features twisting into a pained sort of look as he shifts his hips under your weight — trying to chase his pleasure and run away from it all at once. “I— I can’t— Seven fucking hells…”
You smile down at him when he tries and fails to get the words out. He misses the amusement flashing across your face with his eyes squeezed shut, hard enough to make white stars speckle behind the deep black of his eyelids. You clench around him again, just to hear him whimper for you again.
“Can’t what, my lord?” you coo to him, with a gentleness he didn’t think you were capable of before now. Your hands smooth up and around his neck until your fingers twist in the short auburn tendrils at the very nape of it. Chills erupt down the length of his spine in their wake.
“I don’t wanna cum yet,” he protests through gritted teeth. “’S too soon—”
“But I want you to cum,” you tell him, and punctuate your command with a calculated roll of your hips. You tighten around him once more when your clit brushes the coarse, dark-auburn hair above his cock. You swallow his subsequent groan in a sloppy kiss, more tongue than mouth, and run the tip of your nose along the bridge of his after. “And then… after I’ve milked your cock—”
“Fuck…” he swears, though it comes out more like a sob.
“—I’ll let you clean me up with your mouth,” you continue.
A moan tears through his throat at the thought — of pressing his mouth to your cunt until his nose is smushed against your clit, of lapping at the mixture of pleasure leaking out of you like honey, of your hands in his hair pushing him further into your pussy. He bursts at the thought, losing himself completely as he draws you into his bare chest with two strong arms wound up and around your back.
Gwayne hides his flushed face in your neck as he hugs you against him, meeting your thrusts with weaker ones of his own. He buries each of his pitiful moans into your pulsepoint while his cock jerks wildly within your unforgiving confines— spitting ropes of warm cum that your clenching cunt milks from him.
“I’m sorry,” he hears himself say as he shudders just against you. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry… Seven hells— I’m sorry…”
You pet at his wild hair as he comes down from his high, whispering murmurs of praise in his ear as the pleasure ebbs from his trembling body. “There you go… Good boy… That’s it— Give me all of it…”
Gwayne pulls his face from your neck once he’s fully spent. His trembling hands reach for your face again, cupping your cheeks between his calloused palms to meet your eyes with his wide, wet, and pleading ones. “I’m sorry,” he whispers again. “Let me make you feel good— I want to make you feel good.”
“I know,” you coo to him, almost sympathetically so. “On your back.”
Gwayne’s auburn brows knit softly together, but his body obeys like it was designed to submit to you. You remain straddled against him as he descends back onto the pillows. He watches down the bridge of his nose as your hands smooth up his milky white torso — past the fine trail of hair on his lean stomach, over the healed scar on his ribs, and towards his heaving chest.
Your eyes stay locked with his heavy ones as you shift your weight above him, inching up up up. You cage your bottom lip between your teeth as you reach for the hem of your skirt. You drag the heavy fabric of your dress up and over your head. Gwayne has little time to admire your bare body before you’re straddling your knees on either side of his face. His mouth waters instantly at the sight of your glittering pussy as it descends over his mouth — he curls his arms around your thighs to pull you further in.
He groans when the taste of you hits his tongue — a sweet-salty mixture of your combined pleasures — and you feel the vibrations of the sound from your cunt to the top of your spine. You keep one hand braced on the wooden headboard and your other woven through his silken auburn locks, guiding his mouth along your cunt.
“Yes…” you sigh when his mouth meets your clit. “Right there…”
Gwayne moans again at your praise and does everything in his power to make you give it to him again. He focuses on the bundle of nerves — lapping his tongue against it and suckling it between his lips. You make a noise for him he’s never heard before, a high-pitched cry that swells across the quiet room. “Keep going,” he hears you whimper when his mouth wraps around your clit. “Fuck yes, keep going like that—”
Your fingers twist hard in his hair as your hips grind down over his tongue. He moans when you give the strands an especially harsh tongue, and the sound makes you tremble on top of him. You cum for him with a strangled cry, and Gwayne sighs through his nose when a mixture of his cum and yours drops onto the velvety pad of his tongue.
He laps at every ounce of it with an eagerness that you can hear, a chorus of panted breaths and muffled suckling sounds.
He doesn’t stop until you’re shoving him away by the crown of his head.
You exhale a heavy breath and sit back on your haunches, resting your ass over his chest and propping your weight along his ribs. Your heavy eyes rake over his face — cheeks flushed red, pale eyes glassy with desire, pink lips swollen, chin glittering with your cum, hair wild from the pillow and your fingers alike. An angel carved from in.
A lazy smile tugs at the corners of your mouth as you shake your heavy head down at him. “You’re not going anywhere, Ser Gwayne… You understand that, right?”
“Gwayne,” he corrects, glittering lips curling upward. “Not ser.”
“You’re not going anywhere… Gwayne.”
“I’m glad to hear it, in truth…” he confesses on an exhaled breath. “I was starting to like it here anyway…”
─ pairing: Ormund Hightower x dreamer Targ!reader
─ summary: cursed with dreams you cannot outrun, you find the only peace you have ever known in the arms of the man who believes you deserve to suffer.
─ warnings: 18+ MDNI | explicit content | age gap | Targaryen reader (Rhaenyra's daughter) | he is NOT a trusted adult | dragon dreams | emotional manipulation | religious fanaticism | propaganda | jealousy | toxic relationship | power imbalance | grooming | she trusts him...she shouldn't | hair color mentioned | begging | guilt | shame | he lowkey is the one that actually needs her | girl run
─ word count: 2.5k
─ a/n: I have nothing to say for myself. I'd do it again.
The stone hallway stretched ahead, your bare feet unsteady on the frigid flagstones. Each breath came in shallow gasps, your chest constricted, the roar of dragonfire still echoing in your skull. Tears blurred the dim passage. You pressed your palm against the rough stone for balance, the grit anchoring you, pulling you back from the smoldering wreckage that haunted your vision.
You reached his door and pushed it open without hesitation. No need to knock — you never did anymore. The room enveloped you in its familiar warmth — amber firelight, the scent of lavender, and there, at the table, Ormund sat hunched over his work, quill scratching methodically despite the late hour.
The quill's scratch persisted for a few beats before his free arm lifted from the table, opening to the side. A silent invitation. Come here.
You crossed the room on trembling legs and settled into his lap. Your arms wrapped around his neck, your face burying itself in the hollow between his shoulder and jaw. His arm encircled you, firm and sure, pressing you against the solid warmth of his chest. Neither of you spoke. The fire crackled, a log shifting, sending sparks spiraling up the chimney. His hand moved in slow, absent strokes along your back. Your tears soaked into his tunic, dampening the linen against your cheek, but you didn't care. You inhaled deeply, the clean scent of his skin grounding you — and the smoldering ruin behind your eyes began to recede.
"What did you dream?"
His voice was low, the vibration of it resonating through his chest.
You shook your head against his shoulder. "It doesn't matter. I just — I need you."
The quill stilled. You heard it set down, the faint clink against the inkwell. Then his hand cupped your face, fingers tilting your chin upward so you met his gaze. His blue eyes traced the tear tracks, the reddened lids, the trembling of your lower lip despite your efforts to steady it. His thumb brushed your cheekbone, catching a stray tear.
"No. I cannot help you if you do not tell me."
You said nothing, your fingers tightening in the fabric of his tunic, your eyes locked onto his as if memorizing him. He leaned forward, pressing a dry, warm kiss to your temple. When he pulled back, his gaze held yours again.
"Poor girl," he murmured. "It's not fair, is it?"
You shook your head, another tear slipping free.
"Please," you whispered. "Help me."
His hand remained at your jaw, his stare unwavering. "Did you say your prayers?"
You nodded. "Yes."
"Are you certain? The gods would not have punished you today had you been dutiful."
You blinked, your brow furrowing as you replayed the day in your mind. You had risen early, knelt at the sept, spoken your prayers. You had attended your lessons, eaten modestly, spoken kindly, maintained your composure. The day had been ordinary. Devout.
"I was good today," you murmured, your voice cracking. The tears welled again, spilling over. "I was good."
He watched you, his expression unyielding, though his thumb moved across your cheek, wiping away the wetness with practiced patience. "What did you pray for?"
"I prayed for the Father to watch over me. Where my own father could not." You swallowed. "I prayed to be returned home. To my family."
His jaw tightened, the muscle along his cheek clenching. His eyes narrowed slightly. His hand dropped from your face.
"You wish to leave?"
"I —" You faltered. "I surely cannot stay here forever. My mother will be Queen one day, and I —"
He scoffed, the sound sharp, cutting through the warmth of the room. His hands gripped your waist, lifting you off his lap and setting you on your feet. The motion was not rough, but it was final. You stood before him, arms hanging at your sides, your sleeping gown loose around your frame, swaying against your calves.
"Perhaps the Father who delivered you to me finds your desire to abandon the care of a man who has given you everything, to return to a den of sin, offensive." His voice turned cold, the detachment settling over his features like armor. "As I do."
You reached for his shoulder, your fingers brushing the linen, trying to climb back into his lap. He turned his head away, his profile stark against the candlelight — straight nose, sharp jaw, the hard line of his mouth pressed flat.
"I can do nothing more for you," he said, still refusing to look at you. "Return to your chambers."
"I'm sorry." The words tumbled out, breathless. "I meant no offense — I wasn't thinking, I just —" You moved forward again, straddling him, your knees pressing into the chair on either side of his thighs. You leaned in, your nose nearly touching his, your breath warm against his lips. Your hands gripped his shoulders, fingers digging into the muscle beneath the linen.
"Please," you whispered. "Make them stop. The way you do."
His eyes met yours. You watched as his gaze dropped to your lips — just for a heartbeat — before returning to your eyes. Something shifted behind the cold blue, a flicker, dark and hungry. His jaw worked, his throat moving as he swallowed. You felt the tension in his thigh beneath you, and something else — the faintest twitch of his cock beneath the leather of his breeches, a swelling that pressed against your inner thigh.
"You need me?" His voice was rough.
"Yes."
He tilted his head slightly. "Say it."
Your fingers tightened on his shoulders. "I need you."
He stared at you, unsatisfied. You knew the words he craved. "I need you, Ormund. Only you."
His hand cradled the back of your head, fingers threading through your hair — firm, possessive. His palm warmed your nape. His gaze flicked to your lips, then back to your eyes.
"You shall have me," he murmured, "once you tell me what you saw."
You tried to lean away but his other arm wound around your waist, holding you fast.
"I saw dragons," you began, voice trembling. "Born from the same egg. They danced, their flames consuming everything." Your fingers dug into his tunic. "Then they fell from the sky. All of them dead."
Your eyes searched him for reassurance. Behind you both, the hearth crackled; beyond the window, a lone night bird cried.
"When you were young, you learned of the Great Doom, didn't you?" he asked. You nodded. "The Targaryens should have perished with the other dragonlords." His thumb traced slow circles at your hairline. "But your ancestor dreamt of that destruction and fled — her first act of cowardice."
You swallowed hard, your grip unyielding.
"But the gods do not forget," he said softly. "Balance must be restored. Your time approaches."
You brushed tears across your cheek. "Please. I do not wish to see more, or think of any of it." You pressed into him, as though you could vanish inside his warmth. "I only find peace with you."
"Peace, protection, salvation," he said. "I give it all to you."
He held your gaze a moment, then slid an arm beneath you, lifting you effortlessly. Your legs curled around his waist, your face pressed to his throat as he carried you to the bed and laid you down. Your white hair fanned across the dark linens.
He stood over you, slipping the straps of your nightgown off your shoulders.
"Isn't it a pity," he murmured, "that one so beautiful must endure such suffering?"
He leaned down, lips brushing the hollow of your collarbone — warm, dry. You whimpered, small and involuntary.
"How fortunate you are," he whispered against your skin, "that the gods in their mercy brought you to me."
Your hands gripped his shoulders. "Thank you," you breathed.
He had told you, when the dreams began, that they were divine punishment. To be a Targaryen was sin enough; to be a bastard, an affront the gods would not tolerate. You prayed morning and night for silence, for peace, for relief — but he said the gods had turned away, that your blood was too tainted by your ancestors' sins. You believed him.
One desperate night, you came to him weeping, clinging, begging. He knew he shouldn't, but he gave in. That night, you slept without dreaming. Every time after, when he took you, the nightmares stayed away. He told you that your union cleansed you — that through the sacrifice of his body, you found absolution.
He pulled the sleeping gown down your body, past your hips, your thighs, over your feet, tossing it aside. It landed in a crumpled heap on the floor. His hand moved up your calf, the calloused palm rough against your smooth skin. His fingers traced over your knee, along the outside of your thigh.
"What else did you pray for?" he murmured.
Your breath caught. "I asked the Mother for mercy. To save me from a marriage to a man I do not desire."
His hand stilled on your thigh. "Did you now."
"Yes."
His jaw tightened. "And why should it be your choice?" His voice was flat, hard. "You don't know what you need. You cannot protect yourself."
"I only meant —"
"You will marry whomever I see fit," he cut in, "and you will carry out your duty without complaint."
"Yes, sire." The words slipped out small and hollow. You stared at the bedclothes, your lashes brushing your cheeks.
He watched you — your downcast eyes, the slump of your shoulders, the tremor of your lip. He cupped your jaw, tilted your face up, and pressed his lips to yours with firm warmth. You sighed against him, fingers curling around his wrist.
He withdrew. "You think me cruel? Even though I do this for you?"
He guided you onto the bed and knelt above you, still in his clothes.
"No," you whispered. "I don't think you cruel."
"Then why do you wish to leave me?" His fingers slipped between your thighs, finding you wet and slick. You gasped as your body opened for him, your hips arching against his touch.
You reached for him, clutching his tunic. "I don't want to leave you."
"You do," he said, his voice quiet, almost sorrowful, even as his fingers pressed inside you. "You pray for your father. Pray for a husband. You wish for any man but the one who clothes you, feeds you, loves you. Me, you insult. Discard."He pushed two fingers into you. You cried out, your back arching off the bed, fingers twisting in the linens.
"I'm sorry," you choked. "I'm sorry —"
He bent to brush your lips with a delicate kiss while his fingers moved in a slow, deliberate rhythm. The wet sounds of your body filled the hush around you.
"Never pray to leave me again," he whispered against your mouth.
"I promise," you breathed. "I won't, I promise." You arched back into the pillow as he curled his fingers inside you, pressing against the spot that set your vision swimming. Your moan was long and unguarded; your thighs clamped around his hand, your hips rolling to meet each curl of his fingers.
He watched your face — lips parted, brow drawn in what looked almost like pain — and murmured, "Good girl. You're so beautiful like this."
His thumb found your clit, tracing maddening circles. You sobbed as your body clenched hard around his hand, your slick dripping down his knuckles and pooling onto the dark sheets.
He pulled his fingers free. You whimpered at the loss, your body clenching around nothing, empty and aching. Then he pulled his tunic over his head and dropped it to the floor.
He stood to remove his breeches, his hands working the laces unhurriedly as you watched, propped up on your elbows. He pushed the leather down over his hips.
His cock sprang free — thick, hard, the head flushed and glistening. "My girl," he said, his earlier coolness gone, warmth in his voice. "You are almost perfect. But these dreams — they are the physical manifestation of the stain upon your soul." He climbed back onto the bed, crawling over you, his cock hanging heavy between his thighs. You opened wider for him, your knees falling apart, your folds slick and swollen, glistening in the candlelight.
"It is not your fault," he repeated, his voice almost tender.
He knelt between your thighs and took himself in hand, dragging the head of his cock through your folds — slow, unhurried — parting you, coating himself in your slick. You felt him catch against your entrance, press there without pushing in, the broad head stretching the rim of you just enough to make your breath stutter.
"Please." The word was wrecked, breathless, barely a sound.
He gave you a soft smile, the line of his mouth easing. The candlelight caught the blue of his eyes, and for a moment he looked at you with a hunger that resembled adoration. You were shaking beneath him, your inner walls fluttering around nothing, your thighs trembling on either side of his hips.
"How can I refuse," he said softly, "when you ask so sweetly?"
AUTHOR’S NOTE — I wrote an alphabet like this for Gwayne back in the day and decided his sexy cousin needs one as well. 💚 Ormund is living in my head rent free so much these days, I should start charging! 😭
WORD COUNT — 1,940
🔞 THIS FIC IS 18+ 🔞
ENGLISH IS MY SECOND LANGUAGE.
A = AFTERCARE (what they’re like after sex)
I don't think Ormund is much into it. If you had sex in the evening and he is not in a hurry to go anywhere after, he would let you rest your head on his chest as he plays with your hair and rubs your back. However, after a quickie during the day, all you can count on is him patting your cheek and saying my good girl.
B = BODY PART (their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)
Ormund loves every part of his body. He knows he is handsome, strong and capable. And he knows you find that attractive. About you he loves your hair the most. It is soft and smooth and smells deliciously. He often buries his head in your hair when he leans down to kiss you on top of your head to let you know he is proud of you.
C = CUM (anything to do with cum, basically)
He wants children. He wants a lot of them. He needs male heirs of House Hightower, he needs the future Lord of Oldtown but he also needs beautiful young ladies that would be his pride and one day create powerful alliances. Therefore, Ormund likes to keep you full of his cum. He'd breed you early in the morning after waking up and before sleep in the evening. Sometimes he'd take you somewhere by the wall during the day just to keep your womb full of his seed.
D = DIRTY SECRET (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)
He enjoyed brothels back in the day, when he was younger, before marrying you. A nasty sanctuary of debauchery full of smoke and horrible scents mixed with cheap incense. You would have never guessed that and you'd struggle to imagine him there yet he was fascinated with those places in his younger days and he learnt a lot from there.
E = EXPERIENCE (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)
I certainly think he is well-experienced. As the heir of Oldtown and a handsome young man, many young women were all over him. Perhaps he was not disnhonouring noble ladies but I can see him messing around with maids in The Hightower and sleeping with women in the brothels he was visiting.
F = FAVOURITE POSITION (this goes without saying)
He likes to be the one in control. Ormund loves you on your knees with your hands clasped behind your back and your mouth open as you look up at him with watery eyes. He loves to take you from behind while pressing your back to his chest by grabbing your throat. And he certainly loves it when you take him missionary style like a good little wife he expects you to be for him.
G = GOOFY (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)
I don't think he gets playful much. He might tease you here and there but he won't giggle and he will discipline you if you does. Sex is serious and quite mechanical to him.
H = HAIR (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)
He is extremely clean and properly groomed. He pays lots of attention to his image and his hygiene.
I = INTIMACY (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)
On some days Ormund would feel more romantic. He might lift you up when he fucks you missionary to make you sit up and face him as he thrusts into you. He will wrap his arms tightly around you and look deep into your eyes as he whispers sweet things to you but all of those mention the way you belong to him fully and completely.
J = JACK OFF (masturbation headcanon)
Because you have sex a lot, I don't think he needs to take care of his own needs. And when you are unaivalable to him, I also think he can go for a long time without using his hand because he is a master of self-restraint.
K = KINK (one or more of their kinks)
Choking. It's a part of him being in control over your body. It's the thrill he feels when he knows your life is in his hands when he can feel you breathe and swallow under his hand. Cockwarming. Because he can restrain himself for a long time, he loves to teach you a lesson about patience as well. Ormund loves you to sit on his lap when he's answering letters with your dress pulled up as you warm his cock. He often invites you to take baths with him and he expects you to sit still astride him with his hard cock deep inside of you. Spanking. Because he feels like he's responsible for your behaviour and what you represent. And he loves to scold you, give you lessons and then reward you for being good. Your scent. Natural sweet sweat mixed with your perfumes. He would often sniff your clothes.
L = LOCATION (favourite places to do the do)
Bathtub because you're both clean and smell good from all the scented oils in the water. His chambers because they're the most private part of the whole Hightower and he can do whatever he wants with you there.
M = MOTIVATION (what turns them on, gets them going)
Ormund sees sex as a way to punish you, to remind you who you belong to and to put you in your place, therefore each time you misbehave, his eyes darken with lust. If you don't agree with him in public or smile too much at another man, he will make sure to teach you a lesson later. Despite him claiming how righteous and religious he is, he also gets excited when your corset squeezes your breasts tigther than usual. He will scold you for that but he will certainly be all over your chest later.
N = NO (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)
I don't want to say he would not hurt you because we all know what he is like but I genuinely think he would not hurt you knowingly. He sees himself as righteous and honourable, therefore he would not want to hurt his Lady Wife who is under his protection. He might teach her a lesson, he might put her in her place... But he doesn't hurt her for sport or because he enjoys the act of hurting itself.
O = ORAL (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)
He expects to get his cock sucked quite a lot because this degrading position it puts you in makes him feel even more powerful. He is not against eating you out, though, but it happens less often. He usually does that when you've been a good girl for him as some sort of a reward. He is obsessed with the natural scent between your legs mixed with the smell of the body oils rubbed into your thighs.
P = PACE (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)
Ormund is rough and fast, systematic and nearly mechanical most of the time. He can get slower but it is still rough with long strokes. He's not the one to make love like a delicate and gentle knight. He fucks like a man who knows his worth and his position. He is a cocky lover but he's good at it so he has every right to be. He will tease you if you find the pace too overwhelming. But he won't stop.
Q = QUICKIE (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)
He often grabs you by your wrist or waist and drags you to a dark corner to pull your dress up and fuck you against the wall. It's his way of reminding you throughout the day that you're his wife and to keep your womb full of his seed. It's also his way to get lost in your scent. He usually uses you like this when he gets angry at something or he's frustrated with someone.
R = RISK (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)
Ormund likes to experiment with the new ways of dominating you. He likes to test your boundaries and introduce new things gradually. He loves to see how much you are willing to do to please and satisfy him. He will put you in degrading positions, he will make you ride his thighs, hump his boots, tie you up and make you crawl.
S = STAMINA (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)
One very long round for him during which you cum two or three times or two shorter rounds where you both cum at the same time. However, he regenerates quickly.
T = TOYS (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)
I’m not sure if they have any sex toys in Westeros but I think Ormund is a type of a man who finds them to be a threat or a dishonour for his Lady Wife to use such things when his cock is all ready and available.
U = UNFAIR (how much they like to tease)
A lot. He might edge you for hours or leave you without cumming so you struggle to focus on your daily tasks and all you can think of is how he will let you cum in the evening. It's another way of him controlling you.
V = VOLUME (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)
He talks dirty in low whispers as he gives you commands, praises you or scolds you. That's mostly during the foreplay, though. When he's actually fucking you, he tries to be quiet to keep his cold image but he will end up grunting into your ear as he thrusts.
W = WILD CARD (a random headcanon for the character)
It is something he would never admit out loud because he is so religious and righteous but sometimes when he catches you with your maids giving you a bath, dressing you up or rubbing scented oils into your skin, he imagines you making love to a woman. On the other hand he would hate to share you with anyone, so he keeps this fantasy entirely to himself.
X = X–RAY (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)
I think he's quite big. He walks like it's big and like he knows it is. Quite thick as well. Nothing extreme but big and thick enough for him to feel confident about it. You always struggle to take it, especially down your throat.
Y = YEARNING (how high is their sex drive?)
As I mentioned before, two times a day usually – once early in the morning and then before sleep in the evening. Occasionally, a quickie here and there throughout the day. However, some days of course he is too busy or you are unaivalable to him. Those are rare situations, though.
Z = ZZZ (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)
He usually gets up right after fucking you in the morning and he goes back to his business right after having a quickie with you during the day. But after fucking you in the evening, he will lay in bed and stare at the ceiling for some time while caressing your back. He thinks about his day and schemes about the future but he rarely shares those thoughts with you. He eventually falls asleep but most of the time it happens when you're already in the land of dreams in his arms.
summary: you are sent to ward in oldtown when the war begins; ormund finds that his attempts to erase your targaryen heritage cannot reach the strange prophetic dreams you cannot seem to control. (5k)
characters: ormund hightower / fem!reader, daeron targaryen, mentions of rhaenyra targaryen and otto hightower
contents: targ!reader (unspecified relationship, no physical descriptions), enemies to lovers, angst, hurt/comfort, possessive!ormund, dragon dreamer!reader cw for manipulation, mentions of reader relying on alcohol, brief mentions of attempted assault, allusions to smut 18+ (MDNI)
You part from the Red Keep in a gown of Targaryen black and crimson; the silver dragons embroidered along the bodice worked by your cousin Helaena’s own hand. The small beaded stitches are, perhaps, the only piece of home you were allowed to carry with you across the narrow waters. Your heart has still not yet caught up to the news that sent you here — a family cracked down its center, each of them vying for a throne made of swords, all of them destined to cut their hands in the reaching.
And you, the only child of a middling southern lord and a Targaryen mother who stood dozens of names removed from any crown, had little blade to lend to either side of the war. So you were sent away from it, to ward with your cousin down south in Oldtown — whom you only met once when he was a small babe, though your parents insisted no one with your blood could ever be a stranger to you. Not in the midst of war anyway.
A hooded cloak of Hightower green and gold is draped over your head and shoulders upon your arrival — a kindness, you thought at the time, though you’ve come to understand it as more of a shroud these days. You’re led through winding streets and ivied alleyways to a pale-stone tower that descends high into the clouds — where Lord Ormund Hightower receives you, in a hall full of idle banners and stained-glass windows that turn the sunrays to shades of emerald green.
“My lord,” you said as you dropped into a practiced curtsy before the long table he sat behind, feeling the ache in your legs on the descent after three long days at sea. You fought to remember the words your father told you to repeat, because he’d fought alongside Lord Ormund once, and knew much of his peculiar propensities. “My family thanks you for… providing me shelter here, among family, in such… troubled times.”
“Family,” Ormund scoffed in amusement. His mouth curled into an amused grin as he rose from his chair, wooden legs screeching along the cobbles. He rounded the table in slow strides and shook his dark-auburn head. “No, child— Daeron is family.”
He motioned to the chairs behind him with a lazy, ringed hand as he approached you. It was not hard to find which men sitting there belonged to your cousin; he was the youngest of them, to be sure, and wore a slightly more masculine version of Alicent’s face upon his rounder one.
“You, my girl, are a guest,” Ormund corrected with an artificial kindness that made your stomach feel sick.
Sicker still was the smell of candlewax and salt and sea brine stained on the walls. The scent of bathing oils and incense filled your lungs the moment Ormund planted himself before you, with two wide palms splayed on either side of your arms. His chiseled features, carved from stone, looked almost apologetic when he ducked his head into your eyeline.
“I do this as a favor to your father, and to my nephew,” the older man confessed. “Daeron has seen little family over these years, save myself— and I will not deny him the comfort of the blood he still has left to him.”
His voice was warm with a knight’s tenderness, though there was little of it in his words.
His fingers were tender, too, as he drew them around the hood upon your head to pull it back from your hair — but the way he examined the Valyrian-silver strands between them was far less than kind. His strong jaw clenched; his pale eyes hardened; his chest rose and fell beneath his coat with a huff.
“Mm,” he muttered in disgust.“We’ll have to do something about this.”
Your hair is dyed a shade to complement your skin tone two days later. Your wardrobe is stripped of its Targaryen silks and replaced with Hightower green and gold within a week. You study the Hightower histories, you pray to the Hightower gods, you speak the way Hightowers speak. Within a month at Oldtown, you are stripped of any remnants of your Targaryen identity — a fact which seems to please Ormund, whose praise comes more and more frequently these days.
In his own accounting of the matter, he sees it as good work. Godly work. To have tamed a wild Valyrian beast, who rides no dragon but carries the blood of one all the same. They say Targaryens are destined to destroy, never create. And yet, Ormund has made a civilized thing out of you — fit for suppers at his tables, fit for silence everywhere else.
But he does not yet know about the dreams.
You have always had them, or at least, since you were capable of comprehending their existence. They come less like sleep and more like drowning — fires not yet lit, soldiers not yet dead, rulers not yet born. You haven’t yet found a safe way to say I dreamed it and be believed, or be forgiven in the saying. So you do not say it.
Instead, you drink.
It started as a cup of Arbor Gold to sand down the edges of a dream when it still clung to you at breakfast, the only remedy the maesters could summon to ease your temperament. That turned into silver flasks tucked into the boning of your bodice — to be snuck during lessons and meetings and dinners with middling ale, to quiet your mind whenever the dreams began to claw at it.
That, inevitably, turned into passing out at bars and brothels only to be woken over the shoulder of a soldier carrying you back home again.
It’s how you learned of Ormund’s keen nose, when he insisted he could smell the scent of ale on your breath from a hall’s length away, and could perfectly name which wine you’d snuck from the cellar accordingly. His worry for your obvious excess comes masked as irritation — because he is the one who had built you so carefully, and still he is the one watching you come apart at every seam he had sewn so carefully for you.
When you go missing one day until sundown, and Bold John interrupts the lord’s supper with news of your whereabouts and your refusal to return, Ormund goes to get you himself. He finds you a half-league outside the city, in a half-rundown pleasure house that wreaks of smoke, sour ale, and very heavily of sex — stale air humid from golden candles and naked bodies pressed too close together.
Ormund presses an embroidered handkerchief to his nose as he weaves through the crowd, spine straight and chin level. He finds you in the very back of the den of sin, slouched alone at a table with empty mugs of ale scattered all around you. Your dyed hair is half-loose from its pins as your heavy head lolls on your fist. With your tired eyes fluttering open and closed, you don’t realize the man’s towering over your table until he slams his fists upon it, jostling the cups standing there.
“Why, in the name of the Mother, are you in a brothel?” Ormund spits in place of a greeting.
Your eyes lift slowly to meet his sharper ones. The man’s angry features are softened slightly by the haze of alcohol clouding your vision. “This is the only ale in the city that isn’t watered down…” you shrug and can’t quite tell if you’re slurring or not.
“Well,” he scoffs a not-quite laugh. “I would hate to ask how many establishments you must’ve visited to figure that one out—”
His head whips over his shoulder when a woman wearing nothing above the waist drifts past him, trailing her manicured fingers across the curls twisting at the nape of his neck — surely mistaking him for a rich lord in want of company. He flinches from her touch as if it had burned him. His chest flares with embarrassment and rage alike when you bury your laugh behind your cup.
“This is not godly, what you’re doing to yourself. Do you know that?” he scolds lowly, features twisted in disgust. “I have given you a home, a place at mine own table, and yet you repay that gift by—”
He cuts himself off and exhales hard through his nose before the anger can get the best of him. He tilts his chin to peer down at you from the bridge of his nose as his long fingers twitch at his sides.
“Perhaps Oldtown was the wrong place for you after all,” he concludes in a more even tone. “Perhaps you are better suited elsewhere, somewhere more able to accommodate your… temperament—”
“It’s the dreams,” you blurt, as if the words had been pushed out of you at his disappointment — at the thought of being abandoned, again. Your features crumble as you peer up at him with glassy, wet eyes. “Drinking is the only thing that helps… I cannot stop them, but I cannot bear them sober—”
“Dreams?” Ormund repeats, chuckling with a newfound amusement. “You’ve ruined yourself over a few childish fantasies?”
Your chest burns red hot at his laughter. The embers prickle at your skin and the backs of your eyes. “I dreamt of Rhaenyra,” you spit through gritted teeth. “Sitting the Iron Throne.”
“There!” Ormund chuckles, shrugging with his palms splayed ahead of him. “A dream, indeed— A woman upon the Iron Throne.”
“The news of King’s Landing’s fall will come with the news of your uncle’s death,” you continue lowly, hardly audible over the bustling brothel, without once taking your eyes off of his. “Slain by Rhaenyra’s own hand… And it will not be a swift death, either, my lord…”
Ormund’s features flicker under the weight of your words — a look of distant horror gone again in a blink. He shakes his head with a smug sort of smile. “My uncle is at Highgarden. Securing the Tyrell’s loyalty. He will return, in time, with gold and bannermen, though I’m sure you will have drunk yourself to death by the time they arrive.”
Rhaenyra takes King’s Landing a month later.
A raven is sent with haste, disclosing that her very first act as Queen was to slay the catalyst of this very war. Otto Hightower’s head sits now on a pike outside the Red Keep, the scrawled parchment says, which Ormund reads with a frightening sort of composure about him.
“Sire?” Daeron presses the other side of the desk, anxious hands trembling behind his back. “Is everything alright?”
Ormund’s eyes lift slowly to look at him. “Your grandsire is dead,” he answers plainly and without reservation. “Slain by Rhaenyra the Usurper, who now sits the Iron Throne— where is your cousin, pray tell?”
Daeron’s wide eyes flit away and back again, pink mouth parting as he tries to make sense of the sudden news and his uncle’s strange question. “My— I’m not sure— In her bedchamber, perhaps— But why—”
Ormund rises from his chair and storms out of the room before the boy can finish his stammering. He makes a beeline directly for your chambers; a small space near enough to the servants’ quarters where the handmaidens can keep an eye on your comings and goings. He slams the heavy door open with so much as a knock to announce himself — it strikes hard against the wall with a resounding bang that shudders the glowing candle flames beside it.
You sit up straight in the center of your bed, blanketed by quilts and already donned in your pale white nightgown. The heavy novel on your lap slides from your thighs as you lurch suddenly in fright.
You have little time to make sense of the sudden intrusion before Ormund closes the distance between you, wrapping a firm hand around your throat to pin you back against the pillows again — he holds you not with cruelty, but with fear. And you can feel it in the way his long, cold fingers tremble around your throat.
“You knew,” he snarls.
Your wide eyes flit back and forth between his narrow ones as your weak hands attempt to pry his calloused fingers from your neck. “Knew what—?”
“My uncle’s slaughter,” Ormund shouts over your fearful wavering. “I cannot believe I allowed a traitorous Targaryen dragon to sit at my table— to sleep under my roof—”
“I only dreamt it, my lord,” you choke out.
“Liar.”
You whimper when his fist closes tighter, but you do not fight him. Instead, your pleading gaze searches within his raging one for something that feels halfway human.
“You wept the night your mother died,” is the first thing you think to say — the first dream you had the first night you slept within these walls. Ormund falters instantly at the sudden confession. “Not at her bedside, because you didn’t want to look weak in front of your father, but after. In the Godswood. Where no one would think to go looking for a Hightower.”
Ormund’s hand slackens slightly around your throat. A look of surprise softens his features.
“That’s why you keep the Seven so close now,” you continue tearily. “Because you still feel guilty that you turned to the Old Gods, and you worry that doing so disappointed your father, even though you’re not sure he ever caught you—”
“How—” Ormund chokes on the simple word. It gets lost somewhere in his throat and turns to ash on his tongue as his wet eyes dart between both of yours. “How do you—”
“I dreamt it…” you repeat again, voice thick with tears.
His calloused hands gentle around your throat. The pads of fingers ghost along your pulse as they drift to the edge of your jaw, and up to your temple where your silver roots begin to show through the dye. He looks half-horrified and half-bewildered.
“I have… dreamt of you,” Ormund confesses distantly, breathing fanning warm along your cheek. “I thought it madness at the time, a man dreaming of his own ward, but… It was you in my head, was it not? Or— was it only mine own guilt wearing your face to taunt me?”
“I cannot help it,” you answer vaguely, voice trembling. “I’ve never been able to stop it.”
“I do not want you to stop it,” Ormund shakes his head, firm with reverence as he clasps both warm hands around your jaw. His touch is solid enough to make you tense but still achingly tender in his way. “This is the work of the gods… I thought I was doing some small kindness for Daeron’s sake, taking you in, but…”
The rough pad of his thumb smooths gently over your burning cheek as he trails off.
Your eyes widen at his words, at the madness swimming in his glittering gaze. The same man who stormed in here minutes ago with the intent to hurt you, now one confession shy of dropping to his knees and worshiping you like the gods themselves. He touches you softly now, for perhaps the first time since you set foot in Oldtown. And you, having gone so long without any gentle touch at all, almost let yourself take sanctuary in it. Almost.
“Do you have any idea what we could do with this mind of yours?” He smiles wide until his eyes squint at the edges. “We could rule the world entire if we wished.”
We, he says, and you don’t know whether to be comforted or frightened by the implication.
“I don’t want to rule the world,” you tell him in a small, shaking voice. “I just… I want to rest.”
“Then rest,” Ormund nods with a smile that creases the corners of his pale eyes as his hands slide down to rest around your neck like a collar. “But dream. For me.”
The war leads the Hightower host to Tumbleton, where the town’s ancient castle is seized for Ormund’s use alone. The army idles there in wait for Aemond’s arrival and for Vhagar’s great shadow to fly in overhead. And in that waiting, you’ve seemingly become one of Ormund’s most trusted confidants.
He visits your chambers more nights than not now. Enough that you’ve grown used to waking with him already beside you — with his warm weight settled into the mattress and his arm heavy across your waist, prepared to hold you through the nightmares that find you more regularly these days. You spend the bulk of your days with him, too, standing at his elbow before his campaign maps and his questions of whether the visions have given you a day, a name, or a river crossing to avoid.
You have told him of your limits far more than once, though he seems to forget in his unrelenting hunger for victory. “I cannot see everything, my lord,” you told him in the bath, as his gentle fingers smoothed fresh dye into your silver roots. “It only comes to me in sleep, and I cannot— summon an answer from them at command the way a maester can summon an answer from his books.”
“And yet…” Ormund crooned, dipping his stained hands into the warm water beside your bare chest, and washing the swirling dye from his fingertips. “You have given me more than any maester I have ever paid for in gold.”
You peered up at him with teary eyes. “I fear you place too much faith in me, my lord.”
“And I fear you place too little,” he grinned.
You spend a slow morning hunched over a chessboard with Daeron — the only true companion you’ve managed to find in all your time away from home, other than Ormund perhaps. The morning sun spills in silver-gold rays from the narrow windows, falling over the carved pieces ahead of you and turning the boy’s long hair a more flaming shade of Hightower red.
“You’ve cornered my king again…” you croon within a feigned sigh of defeat, head lolling on one hand while your other drifts lazily over the wooden board. “You’re getting rather good at this, cousin.”
Daeron glares playfully at you beneath his lashes, green eyes glinting with amusement as his lip twitches with the hint of a smile. “You moved your bishop away from my king last turn. And now you’ve sacrificed your queen to a pawn.”
“Have I?” you hum in faux-puzzlement, brows lowered and lips jutted.
“If you’re going to let me win, you could at least be convincing about it—”
The door swings wide with a rusted screeching sound. Ormund’s shadow falls over the board like a cloud crossing the sun. “Leave us,” he tells his nephew in lieu of any actual greeting and leaves little room for argument as his broad form lingers at the entrance.
Daeron tenses instantly at the man’s sudden presence and rises from his seat without a word. He flashes you a quick glance that looks almost like trepidation at leaving you alone with him, but obeys his uncle nonetheless. The door shuts behind the boy with a quiet click. The remaining oxygen in the room goes with him.
Ormund flashes you a polite smile from across the room, though you aren’t looking at him to see it. “You weren’t in bed last night,” is all he says.
“I fell asleep in the library,” you tell him and hope he doesn’t notice how the words catch briefly in your throat. You reset the board ahead of you with anxious hands and hear the soft scrape of his boots along the cobbles as he approaches you.
“And what of your dreams?”
You shake your head, gaze averted. “Nothing of importance, my lord.”
“But you have seen something?” he presses.
You inhale sharply through your nose. “I saw a… a village in the Riverlands— burned down to its bones— women wailing over children with no faces left to grieve over,” you confess, more of a half-truth than a whole lie. “It concerns no war of yours, my lord.”
Ormund says nothing as he descends into the seat Daeron had left warm and watches you arrange the bone-carved pieces into their proper squares. His eyes crease at the edges with a quiet sort of tenderness. “Tell me, then,” he hums with an airiness you see rarely from him. “Will I win this round?”
Your eyes lift finally to his narrowed ones. “You will,” you answer, but do not tell him how.
He makes the first move, plucking his pawn between two fingers and moving it to the center. You answer with your pawn of dark onyx. “Have you ever heard of Meria Martell? The Yellow Toad of Dorne?” he asks as he pushes his knight forward.
“No,” you hum and advance your bishop, a fine move but admittedly not the best one. “I don’t believe I have.”
“Shame…” Ormund sighs and ponders his next move, pale fingers drumming lightly over the table. “She was the only woman ever to have been gifted with a truly military mind… Though the gods divested her of beauty in turn— hideous, hairless, thick of waist, blind.” He advances his knight again, claiming the territory undefended by your bishop. “She does not sound so formidable, but when Aegon the Conqueror claimed her lands, she swore that Dorne would ever be unbowed, unbent…”
Your fingers push your rook a square shy of where it ought to go. You swallow hard and look at Ormund through your lashes, wondering if he’d noticed. But he’s too deep in his ramblings to realize.
“Then a great host descended from the Red Mountains— us Hightowers regrettably among them,” he explains and claims your rook from the board, setting it to the side with a satisfied click. His quiet pride at himself eases the unrelenting panic in your chest. “Meria poisoned her own wells, hid her soldiers in the sand. Her castle, when they found it, was empty. The thought she was vanquished, but… She rose from the darkness and slaughtered them all in their beds.”
You meet Ormund’s amused smile with a wearier one. “Was she a hero, then? Or a villain?”
You move a pawn forward instead of the knight that would’ve threatened his king. A flicker of hesitation crosses his strong features at the tactless move, but he dismisses the oversight a second later and plucks his ivory queen forward two squares.
“The Targaryens knew nothing of our civilization— the Faith, the Citadel,” Ormund answers, and seemingly forgets that you, yourself, are Targaryen by blood in his ramblings. A smile sits loosely on his mouth as he watches you consider your next move. “What they had, what they still have is strength. Their armies, the… obscenity of their dragons… But Meria outwitted her enemy. Because a cunning mind can resist the most savage of…”
You advance your remaining undefended piece, opening a path across the board for Ormund’s taking. His features screw in confusion a second later.
“What are you doing?” he scolds, brows lowered over his narrowed eyes.
You blink owlishly at him. “What do you mean, my lord?”
“That piece,” he spits and points a ringed finger at the board. “Why would you move it there when you very well could’ve taken my queen?”
Your breath catches somewhere in your throat, which feels like it’s tightening more and more by the second. Daeron was right, you think to yourself. You could stand to be a bit more convincing.
“I-I’m sorry, my lord,” you stammer. “I didn’t notice—”
“Oh, don’t patronize yourself by playing the fool,” Ormund scoffs. “You are letting me win— Like I’m some child who cannot stomach the thought of losing.”
“We can start again, my lord,” you assure him, fingers trembling as you reach across the board.
Your body jolts when he catches your wrist in a blink, quick like a snake going in for the strike. The sudden sweeping motion sends pieces from the board scattering to the cobbles below. Fear flashes hard across your face. Ormund softens at the sight of it, with a practiced breath in and out through his nose. His long fingers loosen slightly around your wrist, but they do not yet draw back.
“You should always want to win,” the man lectures you firmly, but without the bite in his voice from before. “Never hand a victory to anyone. Not even to me. The gods did not grant you that gift of yours so that you might spend it sparing another man’s pride.”
You shake your head, features crumbling at words. “It is not a gift,” you tell him in a tiny voice.
Ormund softens for you instantly. He rises slowly from his seat and pulls the adjacent one nearer to you. His knees brush your dress skirts when his hands again find yours. All the anger from before is gone from his touch now, as he warms your cold fingers between his warmer ones.
“You’ve seen something,” he says — not quite a question, but not an assured statement either.
You shake your head and turn back towards the table. “It was nothing—”
Ormund watches you for a long moment. A fond smile twitches at the corners of his mouth as he ducks his head to catch your averted gaze. “You always look away when you lie. Did you know that?”
Your eyes snap to his on instinct. Your chest flares with a mixture of embarrassment and something that feels like intimacy, at the thought of being so noticed in such a small, simple way.
“Tell me,” he coaxes gently. “Tell it plain, however brutal it may be.”
You inhale deeply through your nose and try to will the words past the invisible hand around your throat. “I saw your death,” you waver and watch as his broad shoulders inflate with a breath he forgets to let go. “Here. At Tumbleton. Against a northern army— a bleeding man missing one arm.”
For a long moment, Ormund just looks at you. The edges of his eyes soften slightly just before his pink mouth curls into a slow smile. A laugh sputters from his lips all at once, more disbelieving than unkind.
“A one-armed man?” he repeats, aglow now with amusement. “I have fought hundreds of whole men and lived to tell it over supper afterward— I’m sure I can manage a rogue short one limb.”
When your weary look doesn’t soften to match his own ease, Ormund gentles again with a more sincere answer. “But… now that I know it, I can simply… step around it now. Can’t I?” he mutters. “Is that not the true use of your gift?”
You’re not all the way certain that’s how the “gift” works — if a dream can ever be undreamt — but you don’t tell him as much now. You’d much rather go on believing his truths over anyone else’s
“Is this why you’ve been avoiding me?” Ormund wonders quietly, brows lowering over his glimmering eyes. “Because of what you’ve seen?”
You nod once.
“And now… looking at me… do you see it still?”
You nod again, slower this time.
For one blink, Ormund’s features go grey and slack before your eyes — his curls are matted to his forehead with blood, and his throat is cut open and weeping from a blade. Then you blink once more, and he’s Ormund again; whole and breathing and alive. The constant change is disorienting. You can never quite be sure, from one blink to the next, which face is truly his.
His broad hands rise to your face, cupping your jaw between his calloused palms with a gentleness that threatens to undo you completely. “I am here,” he tells you sternly, though his thumb smooths along your cheekbone much sweeter in comparison. “I am still whole, and I plan to stay that way for a great while yet— especially now that I know precisely what’s coming.”
You feel your hands reach up towards his own. You fold your fingers around his wrists and clutch him hard by the sleeves of his coat. You try hard to feel the steady thrum of his pulse under your touch, to remind yourself that his heart’s still beating.
“See?" he mutters. “I’m still here."
He draws you in and presses his forehead against yours. A whimper swells in the back of your throat at the foreign act of tenderness, though it turns into a stuttered breath on the way out.
Your eyes flutter shut as you breathe him in — the sun-fresh linen of his clothes, the sweet soap from his bath, the mint leaves on his breath.
Ormund shifts slightly and turns his head until his nose brushes your hair, smelling of earthy dye and bathing oils. His eyes drift towards the narrow window and the sliver of blue sky beyond it; where Vhagar has not yet come, and where Rhaenyra’s dragons could appear at any moment.
“We could sit that throne,” he breathes suddenly into the quiet. “Daeron, as the rightful heir... Myself as his Hand… And you, at my side…”
You go very still against him.
“Think of it," Ormund presses. “A king who need not gamble at war the way every other fool king before him has— Rhaenyra sits a throne she cannot see one single day into. But we— We could sit together and never once be surprised by anything the world sends our way ever again."
Ormund draws back just far enough to look at you properly. His calloused hands are still tender on your cheeks, but something much more mad in comparison swims in his eyes now.
“We would bring the realm a peace it has not known since its creation. We could stop a war before it’s ever started— famine before the granaries empty— rebellions before the first man raises his sword.” The words tumble quickly from his mouth, as if he were seeing the future unfold behind his own eyes. “Daeron is kind; he’s righteous. He’d be the first king to sit that throne in a hundred years and truly deserve it… And we could help him restore peace to the Seven Kingdoms… Is that not what you want?"
“I don’t know what I want,” you waver, features crumpling under the weight of your burning tears as his face turns corpse again. “I just want it to stop—”
His expression gentles past his wonder, twisting sympathetically as he draws you back into him again.
“Then let me make it stop,” Ormund mutters, tracing the bridge of your nose with the tip of his. “And if I cannot make it stop, at least let me carry it… So that you will never have to bear the weight of it alone again—”
He turns his head to swallow your mouth into a searing kiss. You sigh through your nose at the firm weight of it, and at the sweet-mint taste on his tongue when it finds yours in a long, languid lick.
You hold him hard by the wrists and kiss him back even harder, burying all your withheld fears and desires into his mouth. His hands drop to your waist, and yours settle behind his neck on instinct, fingers toying at the auburn curls coiled at the nape of his neck.
Ormund guides you up from your seat and against the table’s edge without taking his lips off yours. The last of the scattered pieces fall to the ground as he urges you upon it, bending down over you until your back is flush against the cool oak below. Then he kisses down, down, down your body — smearing his lips along your jaw and neck and chest and the lace of your corset.
You hear his knees hit the cobbles with a quiet thud, and feel his cold hands pushing your skirts up your warm inner thighs, right before his wet mouth kisses the most sensitive part of you.
Your back arches off the table as your hands dart immediately to his curls, keeping him pressed against you there. A broken moan tumbles gracelessly from your mouth. It’s the first time in your life that you’ve ever felt almost human — held — whole.
