A leaked demo reignites the internetās obsession with a pop starās rumored romance with an NFL quarterbackāand exposes the heartbreak they both tried to bury.
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3 (PART 1)
CHAPTER 3 (PART 2)
CHAPTER 4
| FERNCULTURE
The iconic, unfiltered era of Fernanda LetrĆ”nālouder, messier, and completely uncensored before the events of THE LEAK.
Obsessed
ONESHOT . . .
ā¢ ALL NIGHT
A quiet love, a missed moment, and a memory that still lingers ā long after the last glance, and long after the lights go out.
ā¢ INVISIBLE STRING
She didnāt know his name. Just that he was calm, collectedā¦ and annoyingly good. Years later, sheās dating him. And the internet just realized she manifested him on live TV.
ā¢ TYRANT
She was there before the fame. Now heās everywhereābut not with her.
ā¢ LITTLE TRAITOR
A football playerās worst nightmare? His son cheering for the other team.
ā¢ ALMOST
And he never thinks of meāexcept when you put me on TV. . .
Description: Dean wakes up to a messy kitchen, Theo running around like itās just another normal morning, and her moving through the space like sheās always been there, and nothing about it feels like it should be questioned.
Morning sunlight filtered through the tall apartment windows in slow golden streaks, spilling across the hardwood floors and settling into the corners of the kitchen like it belonged there. Outside, the city was already awakeādistant traffic, muffled horns, the steady movement of a day beginningābut up here on the twentieth floor, everything felt slightly delayed, as if the world had not yet decided to fully enter the morning.
Inside, the kitchen looked like it had already survived one.
Blueberries had rolled into places they didnāt belong, crushed near the sink and forgotten. Batter streaked the marble countertop in uneven lines, some wiped halfway through and then abandoned. A spoon sat beside a half-open carton of milk, and a faint sticky handprint marked the refrigerator at child height, smudged as though someone had tried to fix it but never finished the job.
Dean stood near the kitchen island with a coffee mug in his hand, leaning his weight into the counter as he watched everything unfold like this was simply how mornings were supposed to be.
Theo was on the floor, completely absorbed in arranging hockey cards into formations he insisted were strategic. He was serious about it in a way only a child could be, brows slightly furrowed, tongue poking out in concentration.
āYouāre using three goalies,ā Dean said after a moment.
Theo looked up immediately, offended. āItās defense.ā
āThatās not defense,ā Dean replied calmly. āThatās psychological warfare.ā
Theo grinned like that was exactly the point. āExactly.ā
A laugh slipped out of Dean before he could stop it.
From the stove, she glanced over her shoulder without fully turning around. One hand stayed on the pan, the other holding a spatula as she monitored both the food and the conversation like it was all part of the same task.
āPlease donāt encourage him,ā she said.
Dean lifted his mug slightly, innocent. āIām nurturing talent.ā
āYouāre creating a future menace to society.ā
Theo gasped loudly from the floor. āMommy!ā
Dean pressed a hand to his chest. āWow. That was fast.ā
Theo immediately abandoned the cards and ran across the kitchen in socks despite being told multiple times not to. The hardwood floor made it worseātoo smooth, too unforgiving. Dean opened his mouth to warn him, but it was already too late.
Theo slid sideways with a loud yell and collided directly into Deanās legs.
Dean caught him automatically, steadying him without thinking, one hand firm at his side before he could fall properly. The movement was instinctive now, something his body did before his mind caught up.
Theo burst into laughter immediately, completely unbothered. āIām okay!ā
āDebatable,ā she muttered without turning around.
Theo wrapped both arms around Deanās waist like nothing had gone wrong at all. āYou saw that save, right?ā
āOh, absolutely,ā Dean said seriously. āProfessional level recovery.ā
Theo beamed.
And something in Deanās chest tightened in a way he couldnāt quite name properly. Not sharp, not painful, but heavy in a way that made everything else feel briefly secondary.
Because for most of his life, he had never pictured anything like this.
Not in detail. Not in permanence. Not in a way that suggested it would actually exist.
Growing up, life had always felt temporary in ways he didnāt fully understand until he was older. Things changed without warning. People left without explanation. Even the things that felt stable eventually shifted into something else. He learned early not to assume anything would stay.
Even when he met her in college, he had treated the beginning like something fragile he wasnāt allowed to acknowledge too directly. Like naming it would make it disappear.
He remembered one night more clearly than most.
Second semester. Snow pressing against the dorm window. The room dim except for the glow of a laptop screen and the quiet sound of a show playing in the background no one was really watching. She had fallen asleep against him without meaning to, one hand still loosely gripping the sleeve of his hoodie.
Dean had stayed awake for hours.
Not because he was uncomfortable.
Because he wasnāt.
And that had been the problem.
Comfort had never been something he trusted.
Now comfort looked like this instead. A kitchen that was messy in a way that implied use. A child arguing about hockey strategy on the floor. Her standing at the stove in one of his old shirts, hair tied up messily like she had done it quickly and forgotten about it.
Ordinary things.
Things that should not have felt so important.
āYouāre staring again,ā she said suddenly without turning around.
Dean blinked. āWhat?ā
āThat look.ā
āWhat look?ā
āThat emotional one you get when you overthink.ā
āI donāt have an emotional look.ā
Theo pointed immediately. āYou do that when Mommy kisses you.ā
Dean narrowed his eyes slightly. āTraitor.ā
Theo laughed loudly.
She let out a quiet laugh too, finally turning around with a plate in her hand. There was flour on her cheek, faint and uneven, and she didnāt seem to notice it at all.
Dean reached out without thinking as she stepped closer.
His thumb brushed her cheek slowly, wiping it away. The motion was small, automatic, something done so many times it no longer required thought.
But it still lingered.
Her eyes lifted to his almost immediately.
And for a brief moment, everything in the kitchen softened around them.
Theo made an exaggerated gagging sound from the floor. āOh my God.ā
Dean didnāt look away. āYouāre ruining the moment.ā
āThere was no moment,ā Theo said. āThere was just weird couple energy.ā
She laughed under her breath, leaning her hip against the counter as she handed Theo his plate. The conversation continued around them easily after that, slipping back into normal rhythmājokes, small complaints, the kind of noise that filled a space without needing to mean anything more than what it was.
But Dean felt it again.
That quiet awareness that settled under everything else.
That this should not feel as natural as it did.
Because there had been a time when it almost didnāt happen.
He still remembered the day she told him about London.
The fellowship.
The opportunity that made her eyes light up in a way he didnāt see often enough to ever mistake it for anything else.
She had stood in his apartment holding her phone like she couldnāt decide whether to laugh or cry first. āI got it,ā she said, almost breathless. āItās in London.ā
Dean remembered the immediate reaction that hit him before anything else.
Not pride. Not excitement.
Panic.
Because suddenly, he could see what would disappear if she left.
Not just her presence.
Everything around it.
Mornings like this.
Noise in the kitchen.
Someone there without needing to be asked.
She had waited that night.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just enough to make it clear she was waiting.
Waiting for him to say donāt go.
Waiting for him to make it easier.
Instead, he had smiled too carefully, kissed her forehead, and told her she should take it.
Even now, the memory sat in him like something unfinished.
Because later, much later, he understood the part he had refused to see then.
She would have stayed.
If he had asked.
āDaddy?ā
Theoās voice pulled him back.
Dean blinked slowly. Theo was holding up a small jersey, waiting for confirmation like it mattered more than anything else in the room.
āCan I wear this tonight?ā
āYeah,ā Dean said automatically. āOf course.ā
āHe already packed it,ā she added casually.
Theo gasped. āYou werenāt supposed to tell him!ā
Dean leaned slightly toward Theo. āYour secrets are safe with me.ā
Theo nodded immediately, reassured.
Then the lights flickered once.
Barely noticeable.
Dean frowned slightly, glancing up without thinking. The sunlight shifted for half a second, dimming before returning to normal.
Theo didnāt react. He kept talking about hockey practice.
But Dean didnāt look away immediately.
Something in the air felt slightly off. Not enough to name, but enough to register.
A subtle wrongness, like the room had briefly lost balance and corrected itself too quickly.
Theo looked up again. āDaddy?ā
And then the kitchen disappeared.
No warning. No transition. Just gone.
Just silence.
The TV illuminated the room in flickering blue light. An old sports interview played quietly onscreen, younger Dean laughing at something a reporter said years ago.
Young enough not to know better yet.
Young enough not to know losing her would become the defining grief of his life.
Dean stared numbly at the screen.
āYou ever think about having kids someday?ā
Young Dean laughed easily.
Cocky grin.
Bright eyes.
Careless.
āMaybe someday. A little boy obsessed with hockey sounds terrifying.ā
Dean shut his eyes immediately.
Because he remembered exactly where that answer came from.
Winter break during senior year.
Her apartment.
Takeout containers everywhere because neither of them knew how to cook properly yet.
Sheād been curled beside him wearing one of his hoodies while snow fell softly outside the windows.
āWhat would you even name your kids?ā she asked absentmindedly.
Dean had laughed for almost ten minutes straight after that.
Deflected.
Joked around.
Pretended the question didnāt affect him.
Until eventually heād shrugged and said:
āTheo sounds cool.ā
And sheād smiled softly before repeating:
āTheo Di Laurentis.ā
Like she was trying the future on carefully.
Dean remembered how hard his heart stumbled hearing it.
Back then he thought fear was the worst thing love could give someone.
Turns out regret was infinitely crueler.
Because last week at Garrettās charity eventā
Dean saw her for the first time in nearly six years.
And beside her stood a little boy with dark curls and bright eyes and missing front teeth.
A little boy named Theo.
Just not his Theo.
Dean opened his eyes slowly.
The television continued playing unnoticed in the background.
Another interview now.
Another question.
āWhat makes somewhere feel like home to you?ā
Young Dean smiled easily.
Without hesitation.
āProbably a person.ā
Dean let out a quiet laugh that sounded closer to breaking.
Because every answer had always been her.
Every version of happiness.
Every version of comfort.
Every future he accidentally imagined.
Her.
Always her.
And somewhere tonight she was probably helping Theo brush his teeth while her husband cleaned up pancake batter from the kitchen counter.
Maybe Theo was talking excitedly about hockey again.
Maybe she was laughing softly.
Maybe she still remembered that stupid winter night when two college kids jokingly named children they would never actually have together.
Dean leaned his head back against the couch slowly, staring at the dark ceiling above him while the empty condo settled heavily around him.
Then, quietly enough that nobody but the silence could hear it, he whispered:
āTheo Di Laurentis wouldāve been a good name.ā
Pairing: Prince Valarr x Lannister!Reader (She/Her, "You" and "Y/N" referred )
Summary:
Everyone thinks she has the perfect life: the face, the jewels, the husband, the sons, the kind of future that kingdoms are built on. Married to the second in line to the Iron Throne, she is meant to one day stand as queen consort of the Seven Kingdoms.
So why does it still feel like she is standing at the edge of her own marriage?
What no one sees is the loneliness beneath it, or how a man can be faithful, trying, and still leave the woman beside him starving for something gentler, warmer, and finally spoken aloud.
Warnings:
āgood husband, terrible at being loved correctlyā marital grief, soft devastation, emotional neglect, arranged marriage, pain, old feelings that never died properly, domestic loneliness, beautiful wife, dumb man, devastating yearning, Valarr fumbling the woman of all time, Valarr being foolishness (unfortunately), Kiera bashing? (kind of), angst to the max
You had not been born cold.
That was the thing no one at court ever understood, though courts were forever mistaking silence for pride and reserve for disdain. You had been raised amongst lions, and lions were loud creatures even when finely dressed. Casterly Rock had rung with bright laughter through gilded halls, with splendid tempers, sharp tongues, and easy boasts, with uncles and cousins who embraced noisily, quarrelled noisily, and made peace just as noisily over wine. The Lannisters were beautiful in the way songs preferredāfair and golden, bright as hammered coin in sunlight, with green eyes clear as sea glass and crimson cloaks spilling from their shoulders in rich folds. Their guards were red cloaks, their banners red and gold, and their pride was as old as the Rock itself.
You were all of those things too. You had the pale gold hair, the emerald eyes, the fine bones, and the lionās pride.
You simply had not inherited your kinās ease with noise.
As a girl, you had often stood just behind the others, smiling softly while the room filled around you. You felt things too deeply and spoke too little. In the west, that had been understood for what it was: shyness, reserve, gentleness turned inward. Your mother would smooth your hair and call you tender-hearted. Your cousins would talk enough for three people and pull you laughing into their games regardless. At Casterly Rock, no one mistook your quiet for frost.
At Kingās Landing, they did.
By the time you came east, the match had already been measured in ledgers and whispered over at council tables. Prince Valarr had thought, in the vague, careless way young men often thought of futures not yet nailed down by older hands, that he might one day marry Keira of Tyrosh. Not for love, perhaps not at first, but because she had been there, and because she had been easy in his company in a way few women were. Keira was clever and handsome, and quick enough to laugh at him without making him feel small for it. He knew the tilt of her chin when annoyed, the cadence of her voice in gardens and hawking fields, and the little courtesies that had begun, over time, to feel like the first stones laid in the road of something more.
Then Prince Daeron was offered Keira instead.
It was called a finer match. A wiser one. A more useful one. Men with rings on every finger said so in grave tones, and women in jeweled sleeves nodded as though marriages were bolts of silk to be weighed and priced. For Valarr, as though some god in a bitter mood had chosen to salt the wound, there came a bride from the westerlands with Casterly Rock at her back and Lannister gold in her veins.
āLannister coin will strengthen the crown,ā Prince Baelor had said.
What Valarr heard was simpler and crueler: Keira is gone, and you are to be paid for in gold.
He said nothing, because princes were not reared to complain prettily when duty was laid upon them. He bowed his head, accepted the terms, and stood in the hall like something carved while men older than he was decided the shape of the rest of his life.
You arrived a moonās turn later beneath banners stirring in a dry black wind off Blackwater Bay. The day was bright and pitiless, all hard light on pale stone and brazen helms. You descended from your litter in crimson velvet lined with lion fur, gold thread at the hems, your hair partly hidden beneath a jeweled net. You came with a small train of handmaidens chosen by the royal household to ease your settling into courtāthough in time they would become far more than attendants.
You curtsied before the royal family with perfect grace.
Your hands did not tremble.
Your face was composed so beautifully that one might have mistaken calm for indifference.
Valarr looked at you as one might look upon a polished shield: fine enough, but cold to the touch.
You saw the look and hated him a little for it. You were already frightened, already trying not to show it, and the thought that the man you were to wed believed you proud and unyielding felt like one more weight laid on your shoulders before the marriage had even begun.
Their wedding, your wedding, was a splendid misery.
The sept was full. Candles burned in long pale ranks beneath crystal stars. Silk rustled. Swords whispered against scabbards. Lords in dark velvets and ladies crusted in gems watched with the bright, hungry stillness courts reserved for unions that mattered. The singers sang. The bells rang. The court smiled as though it had not just watched one bride exchanged for another like a treaty clause amended after midnight. Valarr did all that was expected. He cloaked you. He kissed you when the septon bade it. He danced. He drank. He smiled until his jaw ached.
Across the hall, Keira sat beside Prince Daeron in Tyroshi silk and pearls, graceful as enamel on ivory. Daeron leaned to murmur something in her ear. She laughed softly. Valarr saw it. He hated that he saw it. He hated even more that the sight of her followed him into the bedding chamber that night.
You sat on the edge of the bed in crimson silk, your back very straight, your hair half-unbound and spilling over one shoulder in pale waves that caught the candlelight. The chamber smelled of wax and spiced wine and crushed rose petals underfoot, with smoke from the brazier lingering faintly in the rafters. Outside, the distant noise of revelry rolled through the stone like surf.
āYou may look at me as though I am a sentence passed upon you,ā you said at last, ābut it will not make the door open again.ā
Valarr, half-undressed, turned toward you.
There was no tremor in your voice. No plea. No tears.
He ought to have admired that. Instead he said, sharper than he meant, āDid they teach you to say that in the west?ā
āNo,ā you answered. āIn the west they taught me not to beg where I am not wanted.ā
For one ugly moment, he almost laughed.
That should have warned him. That should have told him there was wit in you, and hurt pride, and some slender hidden softness held upright by sheer will. That should have been the beginning of something honest between you.
Instead, it became the shape of what followed.
And yet it was Valarr, strangely, who first saw the truth of you. Not in any song-worthy fashion, not by moonlight in a garden or with vows half-spoken into a kiss, but in the common, unbeautiful places where the heart sometimes showed itself despite all effort.
At your first feast in the capital, the great hall had been a roar of voices. Targaryens at one end, mighty lords at the other, silver dishes flashing beneath torchlight, musicians sawing at strings, courtiers pressing too near with curiosity dressed as courtesy. You bore it beautifully, because Lannisters did not tremble where anyone could see. You answered what was asked. You smiled when proper. You lowered your head when expected. But beneath the table your hands were clenched so tightly your nails bit crescents into your palms.
Valarr, seated beside you, went still after some time.
Then, without announcement and without looking at you, he said quietly, āYou need not stay until the final course. I can say you are tired from the journey.ā
You turned, startled.
He only reached for his cup as if nothing of consequence had passed between you.
But when the roasted swan came out and every eye in that end of the hall was drawn toward some drunk Reach lord making too much of himself, Valarr rose and offered you his arm with princely ease.
āMy lady wife has had a long day,ā he said to those nearest. āIāll see her to her chambers.ā
There was no mockery in it. No impatience. Only simple understanding.
It should have meant nothing.
It meant everything.
Later, in the corridor beyond the hall, where the noise fell away behind thick stone and a pair of servants hurried past carrying trenchers slick with grease, you let out one long breath you had not known you were holding. Torches hissed in their brackets. A draft from some stairwell touched your cheeks coolly through the heat left by the feast.
Valarr glanced at you. āYou looked as though you were about to bolt like a frightened doe.ā
To his surprise, you laughed.
Not the little polished court laugh women learned young, the one meant to smooth over a manās vanity. This laugh was warmer, younger, unguarded. It eased something in his face in answer.
āI may yet,ā you said.
āThat would be difficult in those skirts.ā
You looked down at the heavy fall of crimson silk and, for the first time since coming to court, smiled with your whole mouth.
That was how it began.
Not with passion. Not even with hope at first. Only with the dangerous tenderness of being seen.
He did other things too, all of them small enough that another woman might have called them nothing at all. You, being made as you were, made a home of them. He noticed you ate little at feasts and had simpler food sent up afterwardāwarm bread, honeyed apples, broth with herbsāsaying only that royal cooks ruined everything by over-seasoning it. In crowded corridors, he shifted so careless young knights and swaggering men-at-arms had to go around you rather than brush too close. Once, when you woke from a bad dream in the Red Keepāstrange stone, stranger bed, no sound of the sea, only the vast uneasy silence of a place full of watchersāyou found a lamp had been left burning low. He had noticed, on the second night of your marriage, that you slept poorly in darkness. He never mentioned it.
You loved him for that most of all.
You were not a woman who fell quickly, but you fell completely.
Quiet women often did. They loved in hidden, stubborn ways. They built whole cathedrals inside themselves and let no one hear the labour of the stone. By the time you were carrying your first son, you were already his in every way that mattered, not merely by law, nor by bed, nor by duty, but in that soft and terrible place where a wife begins to turn toward her husband before anyone else in the room, where she saves thoughts for him, where evening feels unfinished until his step sounds in the corridor.
The handmaidens chosen for you by the royal household saw it before anyone. Ellyn saw how you brightened when Valarr came unexpectedly to break his fast with you. Myria saw how you kept the books he favored nearest the chair by the window. Ysilla saw how you wore more black and red than crimson and gold after marriage, not because anyone asked it of you, but because you wanted to please him. They saw, too, how frightened you were of wanting too much.
And perhaps you had reason.
Because you were everything a prince ought to have wanted. Beautiful, dutiful, gentle, highborn, fertile. The court said so often enough. They praised your grace, your modesty, the calm way you carried yourself through the dragon-haunted strangeness of Kingās Landing. They said you were a good wife to the second heir to the Iron Throne. They said you would be a good mother to princes. In time, they would say you might even be a good queen.
You were lovely enough to be admired. Soft enough to be praised. Obedient enough to make old men nod in approval.
And still, in your husbandās eyes, you lived beneath another womanās shadow.
Keira.
Not because he was dishonorable. That was the misery of it. Valarr was married to you now. Keira was wed to Daeron. He did not touch her. He did not shame you with open disloyalty. He was too decent, and too proud, for that. He respected the life that had been laid before him. He came to your bed. He gave you sons. He stood where a husband ought to stand.
But sometimes respect was not the same thing as surrender.
Because Keira had not been some passing fancy. She had not been a pretty stranger glimpsed across a feast hall. She and Valarr had spoken first. Walked first. Laughed first. They had become close in the quiet, unguarded way two young people sometimes did before anyone named it aloud. There had been gardens, and hawking fields, and those long, easy conversations that taught one person the shape of another. By the time the court began speaking of them as a likely match, the ground had already been laid.
Then the plans changed.
Daeron was offered Keira.
Valarr was promised you.
No vows were broken, because none had been spoken. No betrayal had happened, because the world had cut them off before either could claim such a word. That only made it worse. Their story had not ended in scandal or sin. It had ended in silence, in duty, in a future folded away before it had fully begun.
And so it lingered.
Not in any way the realm could condemn. Only in the small, unbearable ways a wife noticed and no one else did.
In the way his face would still alter, faintly, when Keira laughed from across a room. In the way he never overstepped, never lingered too openly, and yet seemed to go still for half a breath whenever she entered his notice. In the way older courtiers still smiled sometimes when their names rose together in talk, as though remembering some gentler version of the future before politics had done what politics always did and laid human hearts out like pieces on a board.
And Keira herself was not innocent in it.
Not cruel, perhaps. Never openly. Never enough to disgrace herself. But darker than simple kindness allowed.
She moved through the Red Keep as though she belonged there, and that belonging itself felt like a quiet triumph. She spoke to Prince Baelor without seeming foolish. She laughed with Daeronās kin and was laughed with in return. At feasts, no one mistook her pauses for uncertainty. At hunts, she rode with the men, speaking over hoofbeats as though she had been born to it.
And when she looked at Valarr, sometimes there was still something there.
Not enough for anyone to name.
Only enough for you to feel.
Enough to make your stomach turn cold.
Enough to make you understand that though she had married Daeron, some corner of her still kept the memory of what might have been. Not because she wanted to take him from you now. Not because she meant to start some vulgar little war between women. But because certain feelings, once grown properly, did not die only because wiser people arranged otherwise.
That was the cruelty of all of it.
He did not cheat on you.
She did not tempt him.
No one crossed the line.
And still you knew, with the miserable certainty of a wife who loved too deeply, that you did not have him whole.
Once, after a feast where Keira had moved through the room with her usual easy grace, you found yourself alone with her by a bank of candles guttering low beneath painted saints.
āYou are well loved here,ā you said before you meant to.
Keira looked at you then, really looked, and some brightness went out of her face.
āNo,ā she said softly. āOnly well worn-in.ā
You blinked, startled.
She traced one finger along the stem of her wine cup. āDo not mistake fitting into a room for belonging to it.ā
Then, after the smallest pause, she said, āMen are not the only ones who learn to live with what they were given.ā
That was when you understood.
Keira had wanted him too.
Not foolishly. Not all at once. But slowly, in the dangerous way friendship became fondness and fondness became something neither of them had been allowed to finish.
You had married him.
She had not.
And still, some part of her looked at you and saw the woman who had been given the life she once thought might be hers.
That was the first time you hated her a little.
Not because she was cruel.
Because she was honest.
Because in that one quiet sentence, she told you she knew exactly what sat between the three of you, and had chosen to carry it so gracefully that no one would ever dare call it grief.
Then someone called her name, and she turned away before you could answer.
You thought of that moment more often than you wanted.
Because in the end, it seemed true of all three of you.
Keira had lost the life she might once have had.
Valarr was trying.
That was the worst part.
If he had been cruel, perhaps you could have hated him. But he was only blind, and there was no easy way to stop loving a man who kept reaching for the life before him and still failed to see it.
At first, you told yourself it did not matter.
Valarr had married you. He had come to your bed. He had touched your belly when your first son moved and smiled in wonder. He had stood over you after the birth, smelling of leather and wind and cold air from the yard, and bent to the babe with a softness you had never seen him turn on anyone.
āA son,ā he said.
You, white with exhaustion, damp-haired, aching from two daysā labor, looked up at him with something terribly hopeful still alive in your eyes. āYes,ā you whispered. āA son.ā
He touched the childās cheek. His face changed then, softened by wonder in a way that made you love him a little more, poor thing. You thought perhaps this was how doors opened. Through children. Through patience. Through quiet trying.
āWhat shall we name him?ā you asked.
Valarr did not answer at once. His fingers were still on the babeās face. āAelor,ā he said finally.
It was a princeās name. A good name.
You smiled, tired and radiant. āAelor, then.ā
Valarr kissed the childās brow. He kissed your forehead too, but only briefly, and perhaps only because the midwife stood watching.
You told yourself it was enough.
Women had made whole lives from less.
You learned his habits with the devotion of someone trying to solve a riddle no one else believed existed. You learned how he liked what wine he preferred during evening meals in the winter, what books he reached for when angered, how he hated too much noise at supper after council, and how he softened at the sound of a child laughing nearby. You kept his household well. You bore yourself with dignity among dragonlords and vipers. You learned High Valyrian lullabies, though the words felt awkward in your lionās mouth.
You wrote letters home and waited for letters back. At first, you wrote carefully bright things: the weather, the beauty of the royal gardens in spring, the little kindnesses of court, the way Prince Valarr had once noticed when you were overwhelmed at a feast and brought you away without embarrassing you, the way he warmed your side of the bed in winter, the way he smiled, once, when the babe first closed a hand around his finger.
The replies came late, smelling of cedar and sealing wax and distance.
Your mother wrote of her health, of which cousins were soon to wed, of a septon newly come to the Rock.
Your father wrote less.
When Aelor was born, the letter from the west was rich parchment and fine words. You have done your house honour. A son strengthens your place. The realm sees your worth now.
You read it twice.
Then a third time, more slowly, searching for something else between the lines. Are you well? Are you happy? Does he cherish you? Are you lonely?
There was none of that.
After Baelon, the message was colder still in its own polished way. A second son brings further pride to your name and secures your position admirably. You have done all that was asked of you.
All that was asked of you.
You folded the letter carefully, set it aside, and cried so quietly that Myria, seated only a few feet away with embroidery in her lap, did not at first understand what she was hearing.
There were moments, too, when you tried very hard to belong not only to Valarr, but to his world. You tried to sit with him when his kin were present, but Targaryen talk moved strangely around youāold names, old grievances, dragon memories you had no part in, glances that carried the weight of shared blood. You would add a word here or there, smile where you ought, ask a question politely, and feel at once the slight pause that came after, the subtle shifting of a conversation that had not truly expected your shape within it.
No one was unkind.
That was the misery of it.
Prince Baelor, your father-in-law, grave and measured in all things, would always speak to you with perfect princely respect. He was never unkind. That was part of the hurt. But when you tried, once, to ask his thoughts on some hawk from the Reach that Valarr had mentioned admiring, Baelor answered kindly enough and then turned almost at once to one of his brothers over some question of levies and patrol roads. You stood there smiling with your hands folded while their voices moved on around you like water over stone.
It was not that he disliked you.
It was worse.
You were dutiful. Quiet. Manageable. In a household crowded with louder tempers and more difficult kin, you were never thought likely to cause scandal, discord, or trouble. Others drew the eye because they were troublesome, glittering, or politically useful.
You were simply the one no one worried about.
And in a court like that, a woman who brought no trouble was too easily mistaken for a woman who needed nothing at all.
You felt foolish afterward for minding.
Foolish for wanting more than courtesy.
Foolish for thinking that becoming a wife ought to have made you less of an outcast in your own husbandās family than you had been on the day you arrived.
At first, Valarr noticed some of these things.
He simply did not understand what noticing required of him.
Then your second son was born.
By then, the court called yours a strong marriage. Fruitful. Fortunate. A prince with two healthy heirs and a lady wife who comported herself flawlesslyāwhat more could a man ask? Men toasted him for his good fortune. Women praised your grace, your gowns, your modesty, your sons. Singers called you the Golden Princess. Only those who watched closely saw that you smiled less.
Valarr still came to your chambers, though less often after the second child. At first, you thought it was weariness. Court had grown heavier around him. His father pressed more upon him. The realm always wanted something from men born too near crowns. Then one evening, while he fastened the clasp of his mantle before the fire and the nursery beyond the inner door murmured with soft child-sounds, you asked very gently, āWill you come to me later?ā
He did not even turn.
āI have heirs enough,ā he said.
The silence after was so complete that you could hear a torch sputtering in the corridor beyond and the faint scrape of a maidās slipper over the rushes outside the door.
You sat at your dressing table with your hair half-braided, staring at his reflection in the polished silver mirror. He had not meant, perhaps, for the words to sound as they did. Valarr had a rare gift for the wound he did not intend.
Still, he had said them.
Not, I am tired. Not forgive me. Only that.
As if you had been something to pass through, and now pass beyond.
He must have felt something of the change afterward, because he began bringing you gifts: a hawking glove from Myr, a comb of worked ivory, a length of sea-green silk, a carved cradle-piece for little Baelon, a silver mirror backed with lions and dragons twined together.
They were all costly. They were all beautifully made.
Not one of them was right.
The glove was stitched in the Tyroshi style Keira had once worn. The silk was a shade you despised against your skin. The comb was too delicate for the braids you favored. The mirror was a princely apology offered by a man too cowardly to speak plain words.
You thanked him for each one with perfect courtesy.
Then came the morning that killed something in you.
It was early, scarcely light. The room still held that bluish hush before dawn when everything seemed suspended between worlds. Your younger son had cried in the night and been carried off again by his nurse only a little while before. You had not gone back to sleep properly after. You lay awake beside Valarr, one hand resting over the ache in your side, watching the first pale seam of day beneath the curtains and listening to his breathing in the dark.
He stirred beside you then, not fully waking, his face still turned into the pillow. For one small foolish moment, you thought he was troubled. His brow had drawn faintly, and there was something strained in the way he breathed, as though some dream had hold of him. Without thinking, with the softness that had always been your ruin, you reached for him. Your hand came to rest on his bare shoulder, gentle, instinctive, almost tender enough to be a prayer.
And then, rough with sleep, still half-lost to whatever place he had wandered in dreams, he murmured one name.
āKeira.ā
The world did not shatter loudly.
That would have been kinder.
It only went very still.
Your fingers slipped from his shoulder as though you had touched iron in a flame. At first you thought you must have imagined it. You had to have imagined it. But the cold came at once, thin and sharp and absolute, running through you from the inside out like sea-wind in winter. Valarr breathed once more, deeper now, and opened his eyes a little. He saw you sitting upright. He saw your face.
And in that instant, he knew.
ā[Y/N]āā
You had already risen.
He pushed himself up, all sleep gone, horror rushing in where drowsiness had been. ā[Y/N], wait.ā
You crossed the chamber barefoot, one hand hard against your mouth as if to hold something inside yourselfānot anger, not words, but some smaller, uglier, more humiliating sound. That was the cruelty of it. You had reached for him to soothe him, thinking he was uneasy, thinking perhaps he needed comfort, and instead he had opened his sleep-ravaged mouth and given you another womanās name as though it lived somewhere truer in him than you ever had.
āListen to me,ā Valarr said, rising after you. āI did not meanāā
You turned then.
He had seen you grave, shy, dutiful, pale with childbirth, smiling with your sons, overwhelmed in crowded halls, but never like that. Never stripped so bare of composure. You looked as though he had struck you.
Not only hurt. Shamed.
Keira. Another womanās name, from your own husbandās mouth, spoken in your bed while dawn still lay over the marriage like a blessing not yet spent.
Your lips trembled once. āI know,ā you whispered.
That was what undid him. Not accusation. Not fury. Only that soft, awful answer.
I know. I know you did not mean it, which means it was true enough to live beneath thought. I know there is still a place in you where I am not the woman you wake beside. I know I reached for you in kindness, and you answered me with the shape of someone else.
Tears rose despite your pride. They came too quickly, too hot, too helpless. You turned away sharply, but not before he saw them. And once he saw them, you hated it all the more, because now even this griefāwhich felt private, humiliating, too raw to survive daylightāhad become something witnessed.
Valarr took a step toward you and stopped, because he did not know how to cross the distance he had made with one word.
ā[Y/N]āplease.ā
You laughed then, and it was a dreadful little sound, broken straight through. āDo not,ā you said, your voice shaking so badly you scarcely knew it for your own. āDo not beg me not to feel it. You have already said it.ā
He reached for you then, not boldly and not even with certainty, but like a man who had finally understood that you had not been made of stone, only taught to stand still while he hurt you.
You flinched from him.
That seemed to wound him too, but not enough. Never enough.
Your breath broke on the next inhale. You covered your mouth harder with your hand, but it was no use. The sound came anyway, small and torn and mortifyingly real. Not graceful tears. Not silent suffering. A wounded sound, the sound of a woman who had held herself together for too long and discovered too late that the thing splitting her open would not even have the decency to do it in private.
Then you fled into your dressing room and shut the door between you.
He heard you crying.
That was the worst memory of his life afterward. Not the name itself, though that would have been wound enough. It was the sound of you weeping on the other side of a door, where you thought he could not reach you, and his own uselessness before it. Prince of the realm, husband in name, and still unable to mend what he had broken because he had never learned how to kneel before grief he himself had caused.
Inside, Ellyn found you first. You had sunk onto the stool before the mirror, one hand pressed to your chest as though you might still your own heart by force. Your hair had fallen loose over one shoulder. Tears slid down your face helplessly, no longer quiet, no longer controlled. You had cried silently before. This was worse. This was breath catching and shoulders shaking and the miserable humiliation of being unable to stop.
Ellyn dropped to her knees at once. āOh, my sweet lady,ā she murmured.
That broke what little composure remained.
You bent forward and covered your face, and then you were sobbing in earnest, your whole body shaking with it. Myria came running at the sound. Ysilla shut the outer door and drew the curtains before any passing servant or curious groom in the corridor could glimpse you undone. No one asked you anything at first. They simply gathered around you. Myria held your hands. Ysilla fetched cool water no one drank. Ellyn pressed your head against her breast as if you were no princess at all, only a girl far from home who had loved unwisely and been made to know it.
When you finally managed to speak, it came out raw and small and ruined.
āI thoughtāā You had to stop. Your breath caught again. āI thought he was having a nightmare.ā
Ellyn made a sound then, one of those quiet wounded noises women make for one another when words are not enough.
āI touched him because I thoughtāā Your voice broke completely. āI thought he was troubled.ā
That was somehow worse than the name itself. Worse because it laid your tenderness bare. Worse because it meant you had gone to comfort him and been answered with another womanās ghost.
Then came the truth that had been choking you from the moment it happened, and once it was out you could not stop it.
āI tried so hard,ā you whispered. āI tried so hard to be enough.ā
Ellynās eyes filled. āYou were never meant to earn what should have been given freely.ā
After that, you changed.
Not at once. Not sharply enough that a man like Valarrāemotionally armored, proud, slow in all matters of the heartācould point to the very day and say, there, there is where I lost her. But the change came all the same.
You remained perfectly dutiful.
That was part of the tragedy. Had you screamed, or raged, or publicly shamed him, the court would have named it a quarrel and expected its end. You did none of that. If anything, you became more flawless.
You dressed with exquisite care. You stood beside him in public without misstep. You managed the household superbly. You gave him no scandal. You continued to be gentle with your sons, and soon the court began to praise you not merely as a great lady, but as the very model of what a princeās wife should be. Shy, they called you now. Reserved. Pious. A little sad, perhaps, but sweet with your children. And oh, how devoted you were as a mother.
That part was true.
People saw you in the gardens with Aelor and Baelon, your golden head bent while they chattered over pebbles and petals and insects caught in childish hands. They saw you kneel without complaint to tie a little shoe, to wipe a mouth, to kiss a scraped palm. They saw how your face softened for your sons in a way it never did for anyone else. Women at court began speaking of you tenderly. Poor shy Lady [Y/N]. So pretty. So well-mannered. Such a good wife. Such a good mother.
And because the world was cruel in ordinary ways, they praised you most just as you became loneliest.
After the second boy was born,
Valarr did not become cruel in any way that court singers would have understood. He did not raise his hand to you. He did not shame you before the realm. He did not bring whores beneath your roof or make a spectacle of betrayal. In some ways, that made it worse. He became, instead, the sort of man whose neglect could be mistaken for virtue.
He loved his sons.
Gods, how he loved them.
He would return from the yard smelling of horse and leather and cold air, and the moment he crossed the threshold of your chambers, his face would change for the boys in a way it no longer changed for you. Aelor would cry out and Baelon would reach with both arms, and Valarr would go to them at once, smiling with that unguarded tenderness you had once thought, in the first sweetness of marriage, might one day be yours too. He would lift one child high and settle the other against his hip, laughing when little hands caught in his hair or tugged at the chain about his throat.
You would rise when he entered, because wives did, because princesses did, because some part of you still did it in hope rather than habit.
Often, he would not even see that you had risen until after the boys had been kissed, admired, and praised.
āLook at you,ā he would say to them, warm as summer. āHave you tormented your lady mother all day? Have you eaten well? Has Baelonās cough eased? Has Aelor been brave?ā
Only then, sometimes, would his eyes flick to you.
āYou ought not keep them up too late.ā
āThey should have thicker cloaks in this wind.ā
Always through the children.
Always around you, rather than to you.
You learned there were griefs so small and daily that no one named them. To stand in your own chamber, hands folded in silk, and watch your husband smile as though the room had become blessed simply because his sons were in it, while the woman who had borne them stood only a few feet away and might as well have been another carved chair. To know he was not a bad man, not truly, only a man who had somehow placed all his softness in one part of his life and left the rest to starve. To be unable even to resent him properly, because the sight of him loving your children was beautiful, and you had prayed for that beauty before either boy had drawn breath.
That was the shameful part.
You were glad he loved them.
You only wished he did not seem to love them in place of you.
Once, in early autumn, you gathered your courage and asked if you might all go hawking togetherāonly the four of you. Your voice was careful when you said it, as if softness itself might save the request from being damaged.
āThe weather is fair,ā you told him. āAelor has been begging to see the birds flown, and Baelon loves the horses. Might we go, just us?ā
Valarr looked almost surprised, then agreeable enough. āIf you like.ā
For a day and a half, you were absurdly happy.
You chose warm wool for the boys yourself. You had little gloves lined in fur brought out for Aelor. You made certain Baelonās hood was mended where the stitch had loosened. You packed honey cakes and apples sliced small, a flask of watered wine for Valarr, and sweet milk for the children. You dressed not as a princess at court, but as a wife hoping to be a wife, in a dark green riding gown that would not startle the hawks. Even Ellyn smiled to see the color in your face.
When the morning came, the yard was crisp with cold and the sky pale as hammered steel. The horses were saddled. The boys were bundled and shining with excitement. You had Baelon in your arms and Aelor tugging at your sleeve when Valarr came down the steps.
He was not alone.
Prince Baelor was with him. So were two uncles, three cousins, and a knot of sworn men behind them. One of the hawk-masters came too, along with a pair of young pages, and by the time the little party moved out through the gate, it had become not a family day at all but something half progress, half princely outing, full of male voices and easy familiarity and the old blood-kinship from which you always stood a little apart.
Valarr seemed not to notice.
Or worse, perhaps he did notice and thought nothing was amiss.
āAelor, ride with your grandsireā Baelor said, and Aelor went delightedly, because he was a child and proud of such things.
One cousin took up a conversation with Valarr about hounds and a boar seen three days earlier in the kingswood. An uncle laughed over some old hunting memory. The hawks shifted and rustled. Leather creaked. Hooves struck the frosted ground.
You rode at the edge with Baelon before you and your little basket strapped behind the saddle.
Every now and then, Aelor would twist around in his seat to look for you, waving when he found you and shouting, āMother, look!ā each time a hawk lifted, or a dog barked, or a horse stamped. Baelon kept patting your gloved hand and leaning back against your breast as if, by childish instinct, he knew you needed the closeness more than he did. When the company halted near a thin stand of leaf-bare trees, you dismounted and laid out the food you had packed for the four of you.
The pages and grooms ate it too.
Valarr praised the cakes without realizing what he was saying. āThese were well thought of.ā
When you finally went to your chamber, Ellyn helped unpin your hair and found dried salt at your temples where the wind had touched tears you had never wiped away.
There was another time.
Months later, when you asked againānot for hawking this time, but for something simpler.
The market.
Nothing grand. Nothing intimate enough to frighten him, you thought. The city was lively that morning, the weather fair, and the boys were old enough now to be delighted by cluttered stalls and sugared almonds and toy sellers and little carved beasts. You thought perhaps that was safe enough. A family thing. A public thing. A modest thing. By then, you had learned not to ask for too much.
So you waited until Valarr had broken his fast and the boys were still talking eagerly over some little painted cart Aelor had seen from a window the day before.
āThere is a market near the Street of Flour,ā you said, keeping your tone light. āThe children would enjoy it, I think. We might all go together. Just for an hour.ā
Valarr was reading some note from council. He looked up only after a moment.
āThe market?ā
āYes.ā You smiled, because smiling made requests sound smaller. Safer. āAelor would like the toy stalls. Baelon loves anything with wheels. And there is a woman who sells sugared apples in the autumn. I thoughtāā
āIt is a good idea, wife,ā he said.
Your heart rose too quickly.
Then he added, in the same practical tone one might use when discussing cloaks or horses, āBut I think I should take only the boys.ā
You went still.
Valarr folded the note once. āThe streets will be crowded. It would slow things if all of us went.ā
The room remained warm. Somewhere behind you, Baelon was humming to himself over a crust of bread. Aelor had started talking about apples without understanding any of it.
You heard your own voice come out very small. āSlow things.ā
āI only mean,ā Valarr said, not quite looking at you fully, āwith guards and nursemaids and the children and you besides, it becomes more of an event than an outing. They will enjoy it better if it is simple.ā
If you are not there, the words seemed to finish.
You stood very still. āI see.ā
He must have heard something in your voice then, because he frowned faintly. āIt was not meant unkindly.ā
That almost made it worse.
āOf course not,ā you said.
Aelor looked up from the table. āMother, are you coming?ā
You smiled at him. You had become so very good at smiling. āNo, sweetling. Today you shall have your father to yourself.ā
Baelon, hearing only the uncertainty in your tone, stretched his arms toward you at once, and you took him up because otherwise you might have begun to cry before everyone.
Valarr rose. āHave them dressed warmly.ā
You nearly laughed again at that. Warmly. As if you had not already thought of their cloaks, their mittens, the scarf Aelor complained of but always needed. As if mothers did not live inside such details by reflex.
When he had gone, taking with him the sound and certainty of the outing, you stood in the middle of the chamber with Baelon on your hip and felt, for one humiliating instant, as though someone had slapped you.
Ellyn found you a little later in the dressing room, not yet changed, still with Baelonās little shoe in your hand because you had been the one lacing it when Valarr told you that you would not be coming.
āMy lady?ā she said carefully.
You did not turn. āHe said it would be slowed down if all of us went.ā
Ellyn closed her eyes.
You gave a thin, breathless laugh. āAll of us. I am all of us.ā
Then, because the boys were already laughing in the courtyard below and you could hear Aelor calling excitedly about horses and sweets and carts, you pressed the shoe to your mouth and cried without making a sound.
When they returned, Aelor came bursting in with stories about ribbons and nuts and a painted spinning top. Baelon had sugar on one cheek and a little wooden cart tucked in both hands. They were delighted. They loved you. They climbed into your lap at once and tried to tell you everything all at once, as if by saying it to you they could somehow include you after the fact.
You kissed them and listened and smiled in all the right places.
Then later, after they slept, you broke over the sight of the little market basket still sitting unused by the door.
These were the griefs no one wrote songs for.
The market basket untouched.
The riding cakes eaten by pages.
The waiting lamp gone dark.
The seat beside him filled by sons and cousins and fathers and not by you.
The way he would say good idea, wife and make you feel, for one heartbeat, chosen, only to brush you aside with perfect reasonableness the next.
You stopped trying to fill every silence after that.
At supper, you no longer told little stories from the west that no one in Kingās Landing understood. You no longer placed the choicest pieces on Valarrās plate before he could reach for them. You no longer reminded Aelor to tell his father what he had learned that morning. You ate what was before you and let the clicking of utensils fill the long spaces where a wifeās warmth had once been.
The boys noticed, though children never knew how to name what they noticed.
Once, Aelor climbed onto the bench beside you and asked, puzzled, āMother, why do you not give Father the honey anymore?ā
You nearly dropped your spoon.
āI think,ā you said after a long pause, āyour father can reach it himself.ā
The child considered that with solemn seriousness and then pushed the honey dish toward Valarr anyway, because children hated imbalance instinctively.
Valarr thanked him.
He did not understand why you looked away.
So the days went on.
The court went on mistaking your ruin for grace.
And still, you loved him.
That was the true humiliation of it.
That night, after the boys had finally been coaxed to sleep, you remained in the nursery long after there was any need for it.
Aelor had one hand curled into his blanket. Baelon had turned onto his side, cheek soft against the pillow, breathing in the deep, even rhythm of the truly sleeping. The brazier had burned low. Candlelight trembled against the walls and turned the carved beasts upon the bedposts into long, wavering shadows. You sat upon the floor between them, your back resting against the settle, one hand still lying loose upon Baelonās coverlet as though, if either child stirred, you meant to soothe him before he woke.
You did not hear Valarr come in at first.
It was only when he spoke that you looked up.
āYou will wake stiff there,ā he said quietly.
His voice was low enough not to wake the children.
You looked at him, then back at your sons. āI had not meant to stay.ā
But that was not true, and both of you knew it.
For a moment he said nothing. He stood in the doorway with one hand braced lightly against the frame, still in his shirt and half-undone doublet, as though he had come looking for you and had not expected to find you here like this, hidden amongst the little quiet breaths of your children.
Then he stepped inside.
The floor gave a faint creak beneath his weight. He stopped first at Baelonās bedside and drew the blanket a little higher over the childās shoulder. It was such a small gesture that it ought not to have mattered. But you watched his hands do it, careful and gentle, and felt that old ache move through you again.
When he turned back to you, he did not speak at once.
Instead, to your surprise, he lowered himself down before you.
Not onto the settle. Not into one of the carved chairs.
Down.
Kneeling.
That alone was enough to make your breath catch.
He did not reach for you. Perhaps he knew you might pull away. Perhaps he feared you would.
The nursery was very still. Beyond the shuttered window, somewhere in the yard below, a guardās step passed and faded. Aelor sighed once in his sleep and settled again.
Valarr looked at the rushes, then at his own hands, and only after that at you.
āI do not know how to mend this,ā he said.
You went so still it almost hurt.
His mouth tightened, as though even that much truth sat badly on his pride.
āBut I know,ā he said, more roughly now, āthat I have done you wrong in ways I was too blind to see while they were still small.ā
You stared at him.
He let out one slow breath. āI thought being dutiful to you was enough.ā
The words seemed to fall between you and stay there.
You looked away first.
The candle near Baelonās bed had bent low enough that wax had begun to spill crookedly down one side. You fixed your gaze on that instead, because looking at Valarr while he said such things felt more dangerous than you knew how to bear.
He spoke again, quieter now.
āI think perhaps I have hidden inside duty,ā he said, ābecause it was easier than admitting I did not know how to be better than dutiful.ā
Something in your chest tightened so sharply you had to press your hand against your skirt.
āYou do not need to say this now,ā you whispered.
āYes,ā he said. āI do.ā
That silenced you.
He swallowed once. In the low light, he looked younger somehow. Not softer, not quite, but less armoured. Less princely. Only a man at last standing before the hurt he had made and finding no clean way around it.
āYou have given me more grace than I earned,ā he said. āYou have given me sons. You have kept my house. You have borneā¦ā He stopped, and for the first time his voice faltered. āYou have borne me at my worst, and I let you do it alone.ā
Your eyes burned at once.
You hated that they did.
You hated more that some part of you, bruised and foolish and still too full of love, wanted so badly to believe him that it felt like another humiliation all its own.
Valarr looked at you then in a way he had not in a very long time. Not glancing. Not passing over. Looking.
āYou deserved more than courtesy from me,ā he said. āYou deserved to be cherished.ā
Your breath shook on the way out.
That was the word, then.
Not duty. Not kindness. Not patience.
Cherished.
You had not known until that moment how badly you needed to hear it spoken aloud, or how cruel it was that it should come now, when you were already too wounded to receive it cleanly.
For a moment neither of you moved.
Then, very carefully, as though approaching a frightened creature that might still startle and run, he lifted one hand and laid it over yours where it rested clenched in your lap.
His palm was warm.
You did not pull away.
That was the mercy you gave him.
Only that.
His thumb moved once, a small, unthinking stroke across your knuckles, and you nearly broke at the tenderness of it because it came so late, so simply, and from the same man who had taught you to live on so little.
āI cannot unsay what I said,ā he murmured.
No. He could not.
The wound of it still lived between you.
But he was here now, kneeling on the nursery floor while your sons slept only feet away, speaking as though duty had finally failed him and left him no shield but honesty.
You looked at your joined hands and said nothing.
After a long while, Valarr bowed his head over them.
Not a princeās bow. Not something formal. Only a tired, aching lowering of himself, as though shame had at last found the proper posture for his body.
When he spoke again, his voice was barely above a whisper.
āBut if you will let me,ā he said, āI would learn.ā
That was all.
Not a vow.
Not a promise grand enough to heal you.
Only a beginning so small it might have been mistaken for nothing.
And perhaps that was why it hurt so much.
Because even then, with his hand over yours and your children sleeping near enough to hear if either of you wept, hope still came like pain in another dress.
So when the red-cloak guard came,
it felt less like temptation than like grief taking on another shape.
His name was Ser Lucan Hill, though once, long ago in the warm sunlit yards beneath Casterly Rock, he had only been Lucan. A boy with wind-burnt cheeks and scraped knees and a wooden sword forever tucked beneath one arm. His mother had served a lesser household branch tied to the Rock, and Lucan had grown beneath lion banners all his life. As children, he had played with you in those half-wild, half-guarded ways children of unequal station sometimes did before adults remembered themselves. Once, when you were very small, you had given him one of your toys to shareāan old carved lion with one ear slightly blunted where you had dropped it on stone. He had treasured it absurdly. Beneath a stair-arch one hot summer afternoon, you had both made a childish promise over it, solemn as septons, that one day you would be husband and wife, because children thought love meant only I like you best, so you shall stay.
Then you had grown.
And he had not stayed.
He rose instead. Not high enough to dream madly, never that, but high enough for a crimson cloak and a sword at his hip and the grave reserve of a man who had learned the line between wanting and speaking.
You spoke to Lucan only once alone.
Not truly alone, of course. Nothing in Kingās Landing is ever truly alone. There are always footsteps somewhere beyond the turn of a passage, always servants with lowered eyes, always guards at a distance pretending not to listen. But for a little while, there are only the two of you beneath a narrow stone gallery where the late light slants red through the arrow-slits and paints bars across the floor.
He stands in his crimson cloak with his hands clasped behind his back, as if he is afraid to let them hang loose lest they betray him. He is broader now than the boy you once knew, quieter too, but some things have not changed. He still tips his head a little when he is nervous. He still looks at you as though your silences mean something and are not merely empty spaces for other people to fill.
āMy lady,ā he says.
You almost laugh at that, though there is nothing funny in it. Once, he called you [Y/N] with scraped knees and dirt on his cheek and a wooden lion clutched in his fist. Once you had both been small and foolish enough to think that liking someone best was the same thing as being allowed to keep them.
Now he calls you my lady.
Now you are a princeās wife.
Now he stands with the care of a man who knows exactly how dangerous tenderness can be when spoken aloud.
āYou need not be so formal with me,ā you say, though your voice comes out softer than you meant it to.
āYes,ā he says after a pause. āI do.ā
That hurts more than it ought.
For a little while neither of you speaks. Somewhere below in the yard a horse stamps. Farther off, a child laughsāone of yours, perhaps, though you cannot tell which. The sound rises bright and then is gone.
Lucanās eyes flick to you and then away again. āYou look tired.ā
It is such a small sentence.
No prince has asked you that in earnest in a very long time.
You lower your gaze to your hands. āI am well.ā
He does not insult either of you by pretending to believe it.
The light has shifted enough now to catch on the red of his cloak. It reminds you absurdly of summer at the Rock, of banners snapping over stone, of childish games in the yard. The memory comes so swiftly it almost steals your breath. You remember pressing the little carved lion into his hands because he had no toys of his own. You remember him looking at it as though you had given him the crown itself. You remember the two of you swearing beneath the stair-arch, with all the solemn stupidity of children, that one day he would be your husband and you would be his wife and the lion would sit between you so neither of you forgot.
You should not think of such things now.
You think of them anyway.
āLucan,ā you say, and the name feels dangerous in your mouth after all these years.
He goes very still.
You do not know why you ask it. Perhaps because you are lonelier than pride can survive. Perhaps because he is the only person in this place who ever looks at you and sees the girl you were before you became useful. Perhaps because some part of you wants to know whether you imagined that old childish tenderness, or whether it had lived somewhere real once.
āIf things had been different,ā you say quietly, āif we had found one another again when we were olderāā
Your throat tightens.
You almost stop.
But you have already come this far, and pain has made you reckless in small quiet ways.
āIf that had happened,ā you finish, looking not at him but at the bars of red light on the floor, ādo you think you might have been happy with me?ā
The silence after is terrible.
Not empty. Full.
When you finally force yourself to look up, Lucanās face has changed. There is grief in it now, plain and unhidden, the sort of grief only a man of low enough station and old enough love would ever dare carry before you without dressing it up as politeness.
He swallows once.
Then he says, very softly, āI liked you then more than I had any right to.ā
Your breath catches.
He gives a short breath that is almost a laugh and not a laugh at all. āGods, I was a fool for you.ā
You stare at him.
No one has ever said anything so simple to you in a way that felt so devastating.
Lucanās voice drops lower. āIf the fates had been kinder in this life, I think I would have loved you a very long time.ā He looks away then, jaw tightening once before he masters it. āAnd I think I would have spent that life trying to make you happy.ā
You shut your eyes.
For one hideous, suspended moment, it feels as though your heart is being torn cleanly in twoāthe life you have, and the life no one ever meant you to have, laid side by side at last.
When you open your eyes again, he is still standing where he was, but there is distance in him now. Restraint. The old hard wall of understanding built back up brick by brick.
āBut the fates were not so kind in this one,ā he says.
Then he bowed, and when he straightened, he was a red-cloak guard again, and nothing more.
Later, much later, after your family has gone and the castle has swallowed the day whole, Ysilla comes to your chamber with a little parcel in her hands.
You know at once it must be from him.
Your heart begins to pound.
āDoes Valarr know?ā you ask, too quickly.
āNo, my lady,ā Ysilla says.
Ellyn is already crying. Myria will not meet your eyes.
You tell them you ought not take it. You say it because it is what ought to be said. Because you are a princeās wife. Because you are a mother. Because somewhere beneath your ribs there is a small new heaviness you have not yet named aloud, though your body has already begun to know it in the queasy mornings, the strange weariness, and the way your gowns have started to sit differently across your middle.
Perhaps it is nothing.
Perhaps it is not.
You do not say a word of that either.
Myria kneels before you and whispers, āMy lady, please.ā
So you take the parcel.
Your fingers are trembling badly by the time you peel the wrapping back.
Inside is a small carved lion.
Plain wood. Smooth with age and handling. One ear blunted.
For a moment, the chamber disappears.
You are seven again in the Rockās summer heat, pressing your favorite toy into a boyās hands because he has none, because you like him best, because children think love means here, take what I treasure; I trust you with it. You hear your own little voice swearing that one day you will be husband and wife. You hear his answering promise, so earnest it had made you laugh.
He kept it.
All this time, he kept it.
Your hand closes around the lion, and the other goes, without thinking, to the slight tender secret low in your belly.
Then you begin to cry.
Not prettily. Not quietly, at first. It comes up through you like something breaking at last, and you bend over the little lion with your shoulders shaking while Ellyn catches you, Myria presses one hand to your back, and Ysilla turns toward the door to guard what little remains of your dignity.
Because he remembered.
Because he remembered the child you were.
Because somewhere beyond these walls there might have been a life in which that remembrance became a home instead of a wound.
And because, even now, with another child perhaps beginning its silent life beneath your heart, you know exactly where you will sleep tonight.
In the princeās chambers.
In the great cold marriage.
In the life the fates chose.
You cry until there is no breath left in you, the little wooden lion clutched so tightly in your hand that the carved ear bites into your palm. Ellyn says your name once, very softly, as if she fears you might shatter completely if spoken to any louder. Myria is crying too. Ysilla has turned her face toward the door, guarding your grief the way other women guard jewels.
But none of them can help you.
Because the worst part is not the lion.
Not the memory.
Not even Lucanās quiet voice in that red-lit passage, telling you that in a kinder life he thought he might have loved you a very long time.
The worst part is the hand that drifts, helpless and unthinking, to your belly.
The worst part is knowing that by this time next year, they will call you blessed again.
They would praise your beauty, your sweetness, your grace, your fertility.
No one would know that on the night you first held your third child beneath your heart, you were on the floor weeping over a little wooden lion and mourning the life you had never been allowed to live.
And that, perhaps, was the cruellest thing of all:
The realm would call her blessed for the very life she was mourning.
Description: After a career-threatening injury, a ballet dancer is forced into hospital rehab. There, she meets Joe Burrow, another patient quietly rebuilding himself.
The first sliver of dawn filtered through the tall windows of her apartment, painting thin golden lines across the polished wooden floor. Grace had been awake for nearly an hour, her body moving almost on autopilot, perfectly in rhythm with the silent music in her mind. Every morning was the same: precise, ritualistic, uncompromising. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, flexing her toes, feeling the small tremors of muscles already awake.
She moved to the barre she had installed along the wall, her reflection in the mirror perfectly framed in the pale light. Her eyes scanned herself like a sculptor studying a masterpiece, catching the tiniest misalignment ā her left shoulder slightly higher than the right, a subtle curve in her spine, the way her hips tilted just enough to disrupt a perfect line. Her fingers traced the contours of her calf and ankle, checking for any hint of tension.
Every breath was calculated. She inhaled deeply, lifted her arms in a smooth arc, and exhaled, letting her shoulders drop by mere millimeters, measuring perfection against an invisible standard she alone could see. Then, she pivoted, checking her balance, rolling her weight from one foot to the other. The muscles screamed slightly, tiny protests she ignored, because pain was only meaningful if it had purpose.
If every line isnāt right, then nothing is right.
Her gaze flicked downward at her feet. They were pale in the morning light, arches perfectly curved, toes aligned like delicate instruments. She pointed, flexed, and extended, counting silently in eights. Oneā¦ twoā¦ threeā¦ fourā¦ fiveā¦ sixā¦ sevenā¦ eightā¦ Then pirouettes ā slow, deliberate, turning on the balls of her feet, spotting the mirror at every rotation. A tiny shake in her ankle, barely perceptible, made her frown. She adjusted, corrected, tried again.
Minutes passed, then an hour. She barely noticed the sky brightening outside. Sweat began to glisten along her temples and neck, but she ignored it, focusing on form, precision, alignment, and rhythm. She listened to her breath as if it were part of the music ā steady, controlled, measured. She couldnāt remember the last time she had moved without counting, without measuring, without demanding perfection.
Her reflection stared back at her, flawless and cruel. It reminded her of every rehearsal, every performance, every audience she had ever faced. The applause, the gasps of admiration, the whispered critiques ā all memories of a life defined by exactness. She straightened her spine, tilted her head, and rotated her shoulders again, noticing a subtle asymmetry in her right shoulder blade.
If every line isnāt right, then nothing is right.
She sighed quietly, frustration tingling under her skin. She wanted to move faster, to spin higher, to land softer, to stretch farther. But her body reminded her gently that even perfection had limits. Yet she didnāt stop. She pushed through minor twinges of pain, ignoring the ache in her calf and the faint burn in her thighs.
After a long pause, she performed a series of grand battements, lifting her leg high, measuring the perfect arc against the horizon of the mirror. Each movement precise, each breath intentional, each landing controlled. She turned, adjusted, repeated, as the morning light shifted across the floorboards, catching the sweat on her skin and the focused intensity in her eyes.
Even as she moved, a small knot of unease had begun to form deep in her chest, one she refused to acknowledge. Something felt off, a tiny whisper that perfection could not fix everything. But she ignored it, because she had never been one to give in to whispers. She was Grace. She was discipline. She was precision incarnate.
And perfection, she believed, was everything.
The studio was empty, silent except for the soft hum of the overhead lights and the faint creak of the polished wooden floor beneath her feet. Grace entered, carrying only her water bottle and the faint scent of sweat and polish from previous rehearsals. She dropped her bag carefully in the corner, as if even its placement needed perfection.
Music began, a gentle piano piece, and she responded immediately, moving as though her body had absorbed every note before it sounded. Arms rose in flawless arcs, legs extended to the highest points her muscles would allow. She counted every beat silently in her head, eight counts, sixteen counts, twenty-four, spinning and landing precisely where she intended. The mirror along the wall reflected her, and she studied herself relentlessly: shoulder alignment, spine curvature, ankle flex, foot placement. Not a single line could falter.
She spun again, faster this time, pirouettes extending past the limit of control. She counted ā one, two, three ā the rhythm in her head perfectly synced with her heartbeat. She landed slightly off-center, catching herself with barely perceptible tension. Her jaw tightened. She repeated the move, higher, sharper, demanding perfection from her body like a drill sergeant commanding obedience.
Hours passed unnoticed. Sweat beaded along her forehead, dampened the nape of her neck, and streaked her shoulders. Yet she didnāt stop. Not for water. Not for breath. Not for the ache that had begun to spread in her calves and thighs. She moved as though every fiber of her being existed solely to perfect each motion, each turn, each fall and rise.
Her reflection was relentless. The dancer she saw was both her idol and her critic. She imagined the audience, the applause, the judgesā notes, the critique she could hear even in silence. Every minor flaw felt magnified, every misstep a personal indictment.
A faint pang in her ankle, sharper this time, made her pause mid-spin. She pressed a hand to the floor for balance, chest heaving with controlled breaths. She examined her weight on the injured foot, tested it carefully, then forced herself to continue. Pride would not allow her to quit. She could feel the tiny tremor of weakness creeping into her muscles, but she pushed harder, faster, higher.
She spun again, ignoring the subtle pain that whispered warnings she refused to hear. Landing perfectly this time, she held the final position, toes pointed, arms extended in a flawless arabesque. She stared into the mirror, chest rising and falling, sweat dripping into her eyes.
For a moment, she allowed herself a small, almost imperceptible smile. It was fleeting. She wasnāt perfect ā not yet ā but she had controlled her body, bent it to her will, ignored the warning signs. That was her truth. That was her discipline. That was who she was.
And yet, deep in the back of her mind, a small, unwelcome thought lingered: What if this time, perfection isnāt enough?
Grace sat on the edge of her couch, the apartment silent except for the faint hum of the refrigerator. Her ankle throbbed, each pulse reminding her that perfection had limits, that control was an illusion. She flexed it gently, testing the weight, the stretch, the tiny sparks of pain shooting up her calf. She had tried to ignore it in the studio, had spun, turned, and landed as if nothing were wrong, but now, alone, the truth pressed against her like a cold, unrelenting hand.
She wanted to cry, but pride held her back. Not tears, not surrender. Not here. Not ever. She pressed her face into her hands, fingers tracing the curve of her cheekbones, the lines that had once been lit by stage lights, now shadowed in morning gloom.
Her gaze drifted across the apartment. Photos of herself in full costume leaned against the shelves ā arms stretched, toes pointed, faces turned toward adoring crowds. Awards glimmered in their frames, reminders of a life measured in precision and applause. Ballet shoes rested neatly in their boxes, the leather worn from relentless practice. Each item was a fragment of her perfection, a tangible proof that she had been everything she was supposed to be.
Her chest tightened. If I canāt be perfect, who am I?
A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts. Her best friend, Mara, peeked inside, carrying a bag of groceries and a teasing smile.
āHey, injured ballerina. Mind if I come in?ā
āOf course,ā Grace said, gesturing stiffly. She didnāt want to sit and look weak, so she remained standing, adjusting her posture in front of the mirror.
Mara stepped in, eyes darting immediately to the swollen ankle. āWowā¦ that looks worse than I imagined. And here I thought youād just pulled a muscle again.ā
Grace forced a small smile, brushing past the comment. āIāll survive.ā
Mara plopped a bag down on the counter and tilted her head, her expression playful. āSoā¦ youāve been so busy with rehearsals and competitions, I have to askā¦ is there anyone?ā
Grace froze mid-breath, her hand tightening slightly on the counter edge. āWhat do you mean?ā she asked, tone controlled, calm ā but the edge of surprise betrayed her.
āYou knowā¦ a boyfriend. Someone keeping you company while you torture yourself in the studio?ā Mara teased, raising her eyebrows.
Grace shook her head, a small, tight laugh escaping. āI donāt have time for that. And honestly, itās not a priority.ā
Mara grinned knowingly. āRight, of course. Youād rather perfect your pirouettes than deal with anyone else. Classic Grace.ā
Just then, Maraās younger cousin, Liam, who had come along for the visit, leaned against the doorway. He gave Grace a small, mischievous smile. āHonestly, Graceā¦ youāre beautiful. I wouldnāt be surprised if someoneās chasing you constantly.ā
Grace blinked, momentarily taken aback. Her posture stiffened, fingers tightening around the counter. Compliments like that were not part of her world ā not during training, not during performances, and certainly not while she was struggling with an injury.
She shook her head slightly, brushing it off. āBeauty isnāt what matters. Discipline, focus, perfectionā¦ thatās what counts.ā
Liam raised his hands in mock surrender, grinning. āFine, fine. But donāt tell me youāve never noticed the way people look at you. Youāve got thatā¦ presence.ā
Graceās lips pressed into a thin line. She glanced at the mirror, seeing herself reflected ā the poise, the elegance, the strong lines of her body ā and felt a pang of isolation beneath the compliment. She had always been admired, but admiration had never been enough. Not now. Not for what she wanted to achieve.
āAnd thatās how it should be,ā she murmured to herself, more to her reflection than anyone else. āI canāt rely on anyone but me.ā
Mara rolled her eyes, sensing the wall Grace had built, and Liam shrugged with a grin. They didnāt push further. Grace flexed her ankle gently, checking the injured muscle, and turned her attention back to the mirror. Alone, again. The dancer she had been, the dancer she wanted to remain, stared back. She couldnāt falter. Not now. Not ever.
After a moment, the door clicked behind Mara and Liam as they left, the faint echo of their footsteps lingering in the apartment. Silence settled over the room, heavier this time, oppressive. The shadows in the corners felt closer, the air thick with tension. Grace pressed her hand to her ankle, flexing it carefully. She could feel the dull ache throbbing like a warning, persistent and unrelenting.
Her chest tightened. Pride demanded she ignore it, that she soldier on alone, but a small, undeniable part of her whispered that she had already gone too far. The quiet around her became suffocating. Every reflection in the mirror seemed to judge her, accuse her of weakness, even as she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.
A knock shattered the oppressive stillness. It was sharp, insistent, authoritative. Grace froze, pulse quickening. She straightened fully, chest high, shoulders squared ā every muscle braced for battle.
āGrace.ā The voice was low, commanding, carrying a weight that made the room shrink around her. Her coach stood in the doorway, clipboard in hand, eyes fixed on her with relentless scrutiny. There was no preamble, no pleasantries ā only the blunt truth she had tried to avoid.
āYou need to hear this,ā the coach said, stepping into the apartment. āYour ankle. Your recovery. Your career. There is no room for negotiation. Rehab, or you donāt perform again.ā
Graceās stomach dropped. Her jaw clenched, fingers tightening involuntarily around the edge of the counter. Pride, stubbornness, and fear collided violently inside her. She wanted to argue, to insist she could endure it alone, to prove that no one dictated her body, her movements, her identity.
But the ache in her ankle, the tension in her muscles, and the weight of the ultimatum pressed down like an immovable force. For the first time since the injury, she felt the raw edge of vulnerability she had spent so long denying.
Her chest heaved as she fought for control, her gaze locked on the mirror. She saw herself clearly now ā strong, proud, but human. And human had limits.
āIā¦ Iāll do it,ā she said finally, voice tight, reluctant, the words tasting like surrender. Not complete surrender, but enough. Enough to face the truth she had refused to acknowledge.
The coach nodded, eyes unwavering, expression unreadable. āGood. Donāt waste time, Grace. Pride wonāt heal you. Skill alone wonāt save you if your body canāt keep up. Youāve worked too hard to throw it all away.ā
Alone once more after the coach left, Grace sank to the floor, pressing her hands against the polished wood, the silence pressing in heavier than ever. The apartment, the mirror, the shadows ā all witnesses to the fracture in her control.
For the first time, she admitted it, even if only to herself: she couldnāt do this alone.
Fine, she thought, jaw tight, shoulders squared. Iāll do it. But Iāll do it my way.
The path forward was uncertain, demanding, and terrifying ā yet it was the only path she had left.
The apartment was quiet except for the faint hum of the refrigerator and the occasional creak of the floorboards under her weight. Grace stood in the center of her living room, music streaming softly from her phone. The melody was familiar, comforting ā a piece she had danced countless times, every note etched into muscle memory.
She flexed her ankle, testing it. Pain lanced sharply, but she ignored it, pressing her lips together. Itās fine. I can still do this. I have to. Pride, stubbornness, and desperation all mingled in her chest.
She positioned herself, arms extended, spine straight, toes pointed. Every line had to be perfect. Every movement precise. Every pirouette, every tendu, every arabesque had to echo the dancer she had been.
The first spin made her wince. The ankle protested sharply, a hot, stabbing pain that threatened to knock her off balance. She bit back a curse and pushed on, counting beats in her head, forcing the movement. Her foot slipped slightly on the polished wood, and she stumbled, barely catching herself.
She tried again. And again. Each repetition made the ache sharper, the swelling more pronounced, but she forced herself to keep going. Pride demanded it. I canāt stop. I wonāt.
By the third sequence, sweat was slick on her forehead. Her breathing was ragged, her muscles trembling from overuse. And then it happened ā a misstep, a slight overextension ā and pain shot through her ankle like fire. She collapsed onto the floor, clutching it, teeth gritted, body trembling not just from pain but from the realization that she had pushed too far.
For a long moment, she lay there, staring at the ceiling, chest heaving, tears threatening but not falling. Every thought in her head was a tug-of-war: I canāt stop. I wonāt. But Iā¦ I canātā¦ Pride whispered to keep going; reality screamed that she had crossed a dangerous line.
Her reflection in the nearby mirror mocked her stubbornness. The dancer she had been stared back, perfect and unflinching. And beneath it, the human who could falter, who could be broken, who had ignored every warning ā that version of herself she refused to face.
A faint buzz from her phone broke the silence. The coachās name flashed on the screen. Her chest tightened. Maybeā¦ maybe I canāt do this alone. The thought scared her more than the pain.
Slowly, painfully, she sat upright, pressing her ankle gently. Each small movement reminded her how badly she had injured herself. And yet, despite the ache, despite the pride bruised alongside her body, she whispered softly:
I wonāt stop. Butā¦ maybe I need help.
Grace sat on the floor, her back pressed against the wall, ankle throbbing, sweat still slicking her forehead. The music from earlier had stopped, leaving only the faint hum of the city outside her window. Every nerve in her body seemed alive with pain, but it wasnāt just physical ā it was the sharp sting of pride bruised alongside her ankle.
She flexed her toes slowly, wincing as a spike of pain shot upward. Her mind replayed the misstep over and over, every movement, every overextension, every insistence that she could push further than her body allowed. She had been so certain, so stubborn, so incapable of surrendering. And now, lying on the floor, she couldnāt ignore it.
Her eyes drifted to the mirror. The reflection mocked her in subtle ways: the dancer she had been, poised and unflinching, stared back, while beneath it, the human who faltered, who ignored limits, who had almost broken herself, trembled. For a long moment, she simply stared at herself, the silence pressing against her like a weight she could not lift.
The phone buzzed again. The coachās name flashed on the screen, sharp and urgent. She hesitated, thumb hovering over the call. Pride wanted her to ignore it, to insist she could manage alone, to deny the truth in every syllable. But somewhere deeper ā a part she rarely acknowledged ā she knew she needed guidance, structure, help she wasnāt willing to admit she couldnāt provide herself.
She exhaled slowly, pressing a hand gently against her ankle. Each pulse of pain reminded her how stubborn she had been, how much she had forced herself, and how badly she had overstepped. The pride that had once been armor now felt fragile, like a thin shell over something raw and unsteady.
Finally, she rose. Each movement was careful, deliberate, a negotiation with her aching body. She packed her bag: pointe shoes, rehearsal notes, bandages, water bottle ā a ritual that grounded her, a small semblance of control in a situation that felt frighteningly uncontrolled.
Standing at the threshold of her apartment, she paused. Outside, the morning air was crisp, indifferent, full of life moving without her. Every passing step of a stranger, every distant car horn, reminded her of the world that demanded she keep moving forward. Her ankle protested, a sharp reminder of her limits, yet she lifted her chin and squared her shoulders.
She exhaled, long and steady. One step forward, testing the weight, the pain, the balance. Another step. And another.
The rehabilitation facility loomed ahead, glass doors reflecting the cityās bustle. She stopped, hand hovering over the handle, heart hammering. Fear, pride, hope, and stubborn determination warred in her chest. She allowed herself a long moment to linger in that threshold, savoring the tension, acknowledging her fear, letting her body protest.
In the mirrored reflection of the building, she glimpsed herself: a dancer still, a human still, a soul on the cusp of something new. She drew in a steady breath, whispered to herself:
I will not stop. I may stumble. But I will move again.
She exhaled slowly, letting her gaze drift over the lobby through the glass. Patients moved methodically, stretching, testing their limits, guided by therapists whose eyes were calm but watchful. And then ā for just a heartbeat ā she noticed someone.
A tall figure near the mirrored wall, adjusting his posture, flexing cautiously, testing each movement. There was something deliberate in the way he moved, a quiet intensity, a rhythm that mirrored the caution she knew all too well. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second in the reflection. Grace felt a flicker of recognition ā not familiarity, not curiosity, just the subtle acknowledgment of another human quietly fighting their own limits.
She looked away immediately, shaking her head slightly, forcing herself to focus. Not now, she told herself. I donāt have time for distractions. I need to fix myself first. Pride and stubbornness flared, asserting themselves as shields over the raw vulnerability she felt in every step, every throb of pain in her ankle.
Another slow breath, a longer exhale, and she flexed her toes. The faint ache radiated upward, a reminder that she was fragile, human, and flawed. But there was no shame in that ā only the faint spark of determination that had carried her through every rehearsal, every misstep, every day she had refused to surrender.
Grace straightened, lifted her chin, and squared her shoulders. One careful step, testing the weight. Another. And another. Each step a negotiation between fear, pride, and stubborn hope.
The tall figure was still there in the reflection, but she refused to let herself think about it. Not yet. She had a journey to start, one step at a time. One careful, deliberate, painfully human step at a time.
Iām still alive lol. Iām just busy with my acads BUT I will update within this week or tomorrowā¦hopefullyā¦.(if Iāll be productive) ššš
