Pairing: Gale x Tav
Summary: When Morena Dekarios offers Tabitha Cauldart a place to stay following the death of her mother, Tabitha is not expecting to be housed in the abandoned tower of Morena's dead son. Nor does she expect to come face to face with a very alive Gale Dekarios through a seemingly enchanted mirror. (Angst with a happy ending)
VP by my angel @carnivaley
Chapter Five (NEW)
Or start for the beginning here (AO3)
Chapter Five
Tabitha is unsure how long the silence stretches between them as she stares, open-mouthed, at the Wizard. Her gaze flits back to the ring in her palm. The silver is slightly tarnished; it's old. There is a small engraving inside it, though she cannot read it. It is not in Common. Other than that, it is quite plain. And yet she cannot stop glancing back at it. This ring that she most definitely plucked from under the floorboard. This ring that most definitely had not been there before Gale had dropped it in on his side of the mirror.
His side.
Her gaze skirts around him, behind him. She had noted before that the room didn't look quite right, that it wasn't a perfect reflection of hers. Because it's not. It never was. It is not a mirror in function. It is a window.
"Remarkable." Gale says, hand reaching out just out of view, though she assumes he is tracing the outer frame just as she did.
"Impossible." Tabitha murmurs more or less at the same time. The urge to cover the mirror up again is rising, right alongside the impulse to simply shatter it. Breaking the mirror would likely, knowing Tabitha's recent run of luck, mean disaster - at the very least she might cut herself on the glass, at worst there's probably some gods awful curse written into the enchantment should anyone try to tamper or destroy it.
"I surmise that you are in the future. Or, rather, from your perspective it likely looks like I am in the past." Gale palms his stubble, looking thoughtful, excited. Tabitha's stomach threatens her with the prospect of violently revisiting her lunch.
Taglist: @saylofwaterdeep @bladesingerlily @ele-millennial-weirdo @fireflyeyes @chaoswritesthemultiverse @stareitdown @mitth-eli-vanto @baelthi @jbenn656 @spillingteanotpermitted @actualdeathcleric @asheratoftheseas, @carnivaley @aerin67 @toomanyfamiliars @theendofanerror @gortashsrighthand
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I clicked on this fic from my notifications because I am on the tag list, read the chapter twice because it was so good, and then had the inspired thought “wow I should get on the tag list for this.” Safe to say that the chapter had me hooked 😂
Includes: modern!Baelor x f!reader / modern!Maekar x f!reader
Warning(s): ModernAU, kind of a crack!fic really (i wish my dad kept bees)
GIF by @sakuraspoke
The thing about Valarr, sweet, naïve Valarr, was that he had absolutely no survival instincts.
"He's just reading," he said, from beside you on the kitchen counter, stealing grapes from the bowl between you with the casual ease of someone who had decided you were close enough friends that your food was his food. "It's not that interesting."
"He's got two pairs of glasses on," you said.
"He does that." Valarr ate another grape. "He loses one pair, so he puts on another and then he finds the first pair and instead of swapping them he just—" he gestured vaguely, "stacks them."
You looked back through the kitchen window into the living room where his father was arranged in the armchair by the lamp with the particular quality of a man who had achieved a level of comfort he intended to defend unto death. Dark hair, threads of white catching the warm lamplight. Two pairs of glasses. A book that appeared to be roughly the size of a brick, held with the careful reverence of someone deeply personally invested in its continued structural integrity.
He had a cup of tea on the side table that he had not touched in forty minutes because he kept forgetting it existed.
"What is he reading," you said.
"Something about Byzantine military strategy."
You stared.
"For fun," Valarr added. "He does it for fun."
Baelor turned a page. The lamplight shifted across the lines of his face — the strong bearded jaw, the particular set of his brow when he was concentrating, the slight movement of his lips because he occasionally read difficult passages quietly to himself without realising he was doing it, a habit Valarr had told you about once with the fond exasperation of someone who had grown up watching it and could no longer imagine its absence.
He reached for his tea without looking. Missed it by four inches. Patted the table twice, frowning faintly at his book, and then looked down with an expression of mild surprise at the existence of the cup, like he had genuinely forgotten he had made it.
"Oh no," you said quietly.
"Yeah," said Valarr.
Baelor took a sip of the tea, realised it was cold, made a face of profound personal betrayal directed at no one, set it back down, and returned to his book.
You were experiencing something you didn't have a clean word for. It sat somewhere in the vicinity of I would like to bring this man a fresh cup of tea every day for the rest of my natural life and considerably south of that as well, if you were being honest with yourself, which you were trying not to be.
He turned another page. Murmured something to himself. The lamplight caught the line of his jaw and the silver in his hair and the careful way his hands held the book, and you were, genuinely, a little embarrassed about yourself at realizing that you were, in fact, biting your lower lip.
"Valarr," you said.
"Mm."
"Your dad is—" You stopped. Tried to start again. Stopped again.
"Is…" Valarr prompted, with the patience of someone who had been watching this unfold for the better part of an hour and had popcorn, metaphorically speaking.
You watched Baelor reach for his tea again. Miss it again. The same four inches. The same faint frown. The same expression of mild existential surprise upon locating the cup.
Something in you gave way entirely.
"Valarr," you said. "I want to fuck your dad."
The grape Valarr had been eating went somewhere it was not supposed to go. He coughed. You waited. He held up a finger, collected himself, and turned to look at you with an expression that cycled through several distinct phases — shock, offence, processing, reluctant resignation — in the space of approximately four seconds.
"That's my father," he said.
"I know."
"You just said that about my father."
"I'm aware of what I said."
"He's reading about Byzantine military strategy."
"I know! But him being a nerd isn’t helping," you yelled-whispered to your friend.
You looked back through the window. Baelor had found his tea again, remembered it was cold, and was now looking at it with an expression of genuine philosophical sadness, as if looking at it would eventually warm its content again.
Valarr stared at you for a long moment. Then he looked at his father through the window. Then back at you. The reluctant resignation had settled into something that looked almost like the beginning of a plan.
"He needs a fresh cup of tea," he said slowly.
"He really does."
"Someone should bring it to him." A pause. "He likes it with a splash of milk. No sugar. He'll look up when you come in and forget what he was reading for a moment because he's polite like that, and when he takes his glasses off to look at you properly he'll probably—" Valarr stopped himself. Pinched the bridge of his nose. "I cannot believe I'm doing this."
"Valarr—"
"The kettle's right there," he said, getting off the counter and leaving the kitchen with the dignity of a man washing his hands of a situation while absolutely enabling it. "I'm going to be upstairs. Not hearing anything. For a very long time."
You were already filling the kettle.
GIF by @prettysharwood
You had come over to study.
That had been the plan. That was still, technically, the plan, in the same way that standing in Daeron's kitchen doorway staring into the back garden while your notes sat untouched on the kitchen table was still, technically, adjacent to studying.
"What are you looking at," said Daeron, from somewhere behind you, in the tone of someone who already knew and was choosing to witness it anyway.
"Nothing," you said.
"You've been looking at nothing for six minutes straight."
Through the kitchen window and the glass of the back door, Maekar was in the garden.
He was doing something to a raised bed that appeared to involve a great deal of focused activity — kneeling in the dirt in old jeans and a worn grey t-shirt that had not survived contact with the garden soil in any meaningful way, hands dark to the wrist, white hair shoved back from his face with what appeared to have been a forearm and was now sticking up at an angle that should have looked ridiculous and did not. He was frowning at the soil the way, Daeron had once told you, he frowned at everything that failed to immediately cooperate with his intentions.
He said what seemed like a profanity by the look on his face under his breath. Adjusted whatever he was doing. The frown deepened fractionally.
The t-shirt was doing a lot.
"He's been out there since eight," Daeron said, now beside you with a mug of coffee and the expression of a young man who had made his peace with his life. "Something about the drainage not being right."
"Does he garden a lot?"
"He acts like it's a tactical problem he's been assigned to solve." Daeron drank his coffee. "Last month he made an Excel spreadsheet."
"A spreadsheet."
"For the tomatoes." A pause. "It had conditional formatting."
Outside, Maekar sat back on his heels and looked at the raised bed with his arms resting on his knees and dirt on his beard and the particular expression of a man reassessing a situation and preparing a revised approach. The late afternoon light was doing something entirely unreasonable to the line of his shoulders. His forearms were right there. Existentially. Just present in the world, doing that to your composure.
You needed to get a grip.
"He looks like that when he's cooking too," Daeron said conversationally. You wondered if he wore an apron. "And when he's parallel parking. And when he's doing the crossword. Basically, whenever he's concentrating on anything he gets that—" a vague gesture toward the window— "face."
"The face," you repeated.
"You know the face."
You knew the face. The face was a problem. The face combined with the forearms combined with the dirt on his bearded jaw combined with the knowledge that he had made a colour-coded spreadsheet for his tomatoes was creating a situation inside your chest that you were not equipped to manage.
You did not get a grip.
"Daeron," you said.
"Mm."
The words were out before you made a decision about them. "I want to fuck your dad."
The silence that followed had genuine texture.
Daeron lowered his coffee mug with the slow care of a man buying himself time. He looked at you. You looked at the garden. Outside, Maekar was frowning at the soil again, entirely unaware that his drainage problem was the least of what was currently happening in his kitchen.
"That's—" Daeron started.
"I know."
"He's my dad."
"I know."
"You came over here to study."
"I am studying."
A long pause during which Daeron appeared to conduct an internal debate of some complexity. You watched Maekar stand, brush the dirt from his jeans, push his hair back from his face with one forearm, and survey his raised bed with his hands on his hips. The t-shirt. The forearms. The hair. The frown.
"He's going to be insufferable about the drainage for the rest of the evening," Daeron said finally. "He needs something to redirect his attention."
You said nothing. You let that sit.
"He doesn't know you're here," Daeron continued, in the tone of a man constructing a case for something he will deny constructing. "I could go tell him. He does this thing when he's surprised — not bad surprised, just caught off guard — where he kind of—" another vague gesture— "resets. Stops frowning. It's a good moment."
"Daeron."
"I'm just providing information."
"You're facilitating."
"I'm going to go tell my dad you're here," he said, setting his mug down and heading for the back door with the air of someone who has made peace with their choices. "And then I'm going to remember that I have somewhere else to be. Urgently." He paused with his hand on the door. "He likes it when people are direct, by the way. He has no patience for anything else."
"I know," you said.
Daeron looked at you with suspicious eyes, like how long has this woman been observing my father without me noticing kind of eyes. He preferred not to walk down that line of thought and went to open the back door instead.
"Dad," he called, "look who came to visit!"
Maekar looked up from his raised bed. Found you through the glass. The frown shifted into something else — not quite a smile, but the suggestion of one, that fractional movement at the corner of his mouth that you had learned was as much as you usually got and had discovered was entirely sufficient.
Daeron brushed past you back into the kitchen, collected his jacket from the chair, and pointed at you on his way to the hall.
"I want absolutely no details," he said. "Like ever. Under any circumstances."
"Obviously," you said.
"Not even a look. Not a grin. Nothing."
"Daeron."
"I mean it,” he directed one final look to you from the front door. He turned on his heels and, with that wicked smile he usually saved for when he wanted to get under your skin, said: "Go on, pup, go get your toy."
Your eyes widened at the audacity of the man. But, when the front door closed behind him and you looked back through the glass at Maekar, who was still watching you with that fractional almost-smile and the dirt on his jaw and the forearms, you smiled and decided, for maybe the first time in your friendship, to not argue with Daeron.
So, you opened the back door.
I am completely normal about these men. Yeah. Completely normal.
Summary: Having returned to Waterdeep a hero, Gale embarks on his next challenge; avoiding his mother’s renewed attempts in finding him a bride
Chapter Ten (NEW)
Or read it from the start, here.
Tabitha
Hriiat’s is busy. It always is. There are two women at the counter bickering over who has the bigger honeycake, whilst a rowdy queue of hungry (and growing increasingly impatient) customers behind them snakes around tables and out through the entrance, all hoping to snatch a sweet treat before they sell out.
Vajra and Tabitha are fortunate enough to have their own table by the window reserved for them each Fifthday. A privilege since Hriiat’s does not allow for reservations, but the two of them have been coming here together for just over a year, and that having the Blackstaff dine regularly at your premises is likely seen as a glowing recommendation. Not that anyone pays much mind to them; everyone else’s attention is turned towards the quickly dwindling baked goods. It is a tradition they picked back up almost immediately after she had come home to Waterdeep two years ago. Prior to that, it had been ten years since she’d seen Vajra in the flesh.
That Tabitha is somewhat soothed by the bedlam in the bakery-come-cafe is not so unusual. She doesn’t mind crowds; used to fantasise about getting lost in one. Swept away by a torrent of chaos and disorder, away from the repetition and rigidity inside that tomb of a townhouse in Baldur’s Gate. She’s still waiting to learn what became of it, though she is not holding her breath. The city is still in disarray — not that it was in great shape when she left two years ago — and likely will be for some time; she has no plans to return anytime soon.
Summary: Years ago, Maekar chose another woman and you both went your separate ways, your brief love story ending before it ever really had the chance to begin. You hadn’t seen him in years and hadn’t thought much about him since, but when he sees you again, he starts to wonder if he made the right choice after all.
Pairing: Regretful! Maekar x Unavailable! Stark! reader
WC: 8.0k
Warnings: 18+, non-canon, dragons are still alive (maekar rides vermithor and baelor rides meleys), reader has a direwolf and so do her siblings, council drama, smut, betrayal, maekar is questionable, dyanna is still alive and so is jena, arguments, mentions of violence, talks of depression, hurt, angsty, unresolved feelings, manipulation, fade to black at the end, mentions of white walkers, descriptions of grief, slightly proofread.
part5/?| part one part two part three part four
“Dyanna is dead.”
Those words from Lyonel hung in the air and made your ears ring.
What were you supposed to say? What were you supposed to think? Things couldn’t have been worse than they were in that moment.
Before you could form a thought or even say anything, Lyonel grabbed your hand and whisked you away.
You glanced back at Maekar, whose eyes met yours instead of looking at Baelor.
Lyonel brought you back to your room, shutting the door behind the two of you.
You walked towards the edge of your bed, leaning against the footboard— your heart in your throat.
“Did Maekar kill her?—“
“Did he kill his own wife?” You asked, your voice coming out small.
Lyonel stood near the chairs and table, shaking his head as he poured himself some wine.
“Not that I know of. He apparently said that he’d come to check on her again after her being ill and she was cold to the touch.”
“Perhaps he should’ve killed her, after her outburst yesterday.” He mumbled.
You closed your eyes, a deep sigh leaving your lips— your fingers twisting the pendant on your necklace.
“May the old gods watch over her, may she never be forgotten.” You whispered.
Lyonel hovered over the table near him, the goblet still in his hand and a scowl on his face.
“You pray for her?—“
“The woman that threatened to take your child from you in her last day of life.”
“I pray for her children, especially the young ones that are now without a mother. I pray that her death does not break them, that Maekar can guide them.” You replied.
You walked to your window, tears falling down your cheek.
Your tears weren’t of sadness or for you, but for him— for how he’d feel at the end of all of this.
Lyonel sipped wine from his goblet and laughed in the midst of doing so.
Your eyes flickered over your shoulder towards him.
“They ruin everything that they touch, even ruining the simple life that we had planned. You pray for them as if they deserve it, it’s nonsense.”
You wiped your face, staring back out the window at the snow and ice covering the ground.
“I may be many things, but I’m not cruel. It never hurts to be sympathetic to their loss.”
He put down his goblet, wiping his lips.
“I have no sympathy left for any of them, especially after that stunt that she pulled. She threatened our—“
His words were interrupted by a knock at the door, the door opening with Baelor standing there.
“Lady Stark, I’d like to speak with you.”
You turned to face Baelor, your mouth opening and closing as your words failed you.
You nodded, leaving the room with Baelor and the two kingsguard that he had present.
You walked down the hall with Baelor, your eyes watching as servants walked with purpose. Your home felt unrecognizable for many reasons outside of the obvious.
It was a mess and too quiet, like everyone had forgotten how to breathe after the news broke.
Baelor walked you to the council meeting room, guiding you in as the kingsguard posted outside of the door.
You didn’t know what to expect, not really.
Inside the room Queen Myriah sat in one of the chairs, waiting on the two of you.
The door shut with a loud thud behind you, your palms beginning to sweat.
Baelor took a seat, gesturing for you to sit as well.
“Lady Stark, I am sure that you have heard the news of Dyanna’s passing.” He spoke.
“Yes, I have and I’d like to offer my deepest sympathies to your family.” You replied, your voice shaky.
Queen Myriah stared at you, her eyes bloodshot as if she’d spent hours crying.
“I just want to say that what happened at that meeting should not have happened. No one wanted to take Rhaenyra from you..but there was a tabled discussion on how to handle the situation.” Baelor informed you.
You stared at him, your tongue pressed against your teeth.
“This whole ordeal was supposed to be a simple thing. We were to discuss and handle the matters that pertained to the realm, have a few grand feasts, resolve the issues, and return home—“
“I’ve instead been disappointed by my son and by you.” Queen Myriah admitted, staring at you.
Her words of disappointment made your stomach turn into a knot. It was like you were hearing the words from your own mothers mouth. You never intended to disappoint anyone, it was never supposed to happen this way.
Baelor tapped his fingers against the table, his focus on you.
“My brother's wife has died and we’re only a few days into our stay.”
You shrugged, wiping the tears before they fell from your eyes.
“Yes, that is unfortunate— but it has nothing to do with me. I am unsure of the need to summon me over this.” You responded, your voice coming out in a higher pitch.
“You are not summoned about the death of Dyanna.” Queen Myriah commented.
“You are here because we need to discuss Rhaenyra.” Baelor added.
You bit your tongue, your head hung in defeat— a laugh escaping your mouth before you could stop.
All anyone cared about and wanted to talk about was Rhaenyra, like it was the only word anyone knew. She was yours, why couldn’t they just let well enough be?
“I never intended for any of you to find out about her in truth, I didn’t mean to cause any harm or concern. I wanted us to be fine here and left alone..”
“We knew peace before the arrival of the royal family, let us get back to that.” You boldly admitted.
Queen Myriah’s eyes widened, her shoulders pulled back.
Baelor’s lips twitched, his fingers no longer tapping against the table.
“One doesn’t have to intend harm to do it, Lady Stark. You should not have indulged my brother by lying with him.”
You scoffed, pinching the bridge of your nose.
“I have had plenty of nights to sit with my reckless decision, to understand the life that I have given my daughter. I do not need your judgment, Baelor.”
“We are not here to cast judgment as no one in this room is perfect—“
“Given the fragility of the situation, we have to ask something of you. I am unsure how you’ll respond to this request, but we ask you to consider it nonetheless.” Queen Myriah interjected.
“With the untimely passing of Dyanna and the revelation of Rhaenyra, there has now been a constant tension. Rhaenyra is blood of the dragon, bore from a woman of a great house.” Baelor continued.
“We want you to marry Maekar.”
Your eyes felt like they could bulge from your skull as you stared at him.
“What?—“
“Is this a jape?” You frowned.
“No, far from. The stability of our house is fragile and this request does not come lightly.” Myriah responded.
You stood from your chair, your brows furrowed.
“This is an ugly, vile request and I will not consider it! I am to marry Lyonel.”
Baelor chuckled, low and deep in his throat— shaking his head in disbelief.
“Lyonel Baratheon? This stay is getting more interesting as the hours pass.”
“It is only a request at this time, Lady Stark. However, Rhaenyra shall be connected to her family. I doubt the king will have it any other way, it is only his abundance of care that this is a request to begin with—“
“It might not be one for long though.” Myriah confessed.
You pulled your shoulders back.
“He would demand it?”
She shrugged her shoulders, wiping her eyes as they watered.
“If he felt it necessary, considering the two of you cannot stay away from one another. He does not want to though.”
“I’d like to be excused.” You asked, your heart racing.
She nodded.
You left the room, your heart feeling like it was in your throat. The walk to your chambers was hazy, everything felt off and wrong— you felt off. When you reached your room, you were thankful that it was empty.
You slammed the door behind you, startling the servants.
The room felt like it was closing in on you and your veins burned with rage.
You knocked everything off of your desk, glass shattering as it hit the stone.
“Fuck!” You yelled, your tears flowing from your eyes.
This situation had spiraled beyond your reach, far beyond what you could control and understand. Dyanna was barely cold and they were already preparing for you to marry Maekar.
Maekar sat in Dyanna’s chambers, her cold body only being taken away a few moments prior.
She was here one moment and gone like a whisper in the wind the next.
There were no true words to describe his feelings, none that could explain how weird it was for him. Weird to now be without the woman that he’d been married to for years, but relief because he was now free.
He was at a loss, no idea how to begin getting his children through this loss.
What was his life supposed to be like now? What was he supposed to say in response to people’s sympathies?
For the first time in his life, he was lost— lost navigating something that he’d never been prepared for.
He sat there in the seat near the bed, staring at the stone as if it would change into something else.
Even in the time alone in that room, you crossed his mind. His wife had just died, yet he thought of you and your child. It was disgusting and he was ashamed, it was a special kind of torment.
Winterfell was now in mourning, your home felt colder than it usually did. All meetings and realm dealings were to be paused until after the funeral. Your home hadn’t felt this way since your own mother had died years prior.
Rhaenyra sat on your bed, playing with the small wooden toys that Lyonel had made for her.
You knelt beside your desk, placing the things that you had knocked off back onto it. Your hands shook as you picked up the big shards of glass that were scattered across the floor.
The glass being broken into small pieces is how you felt, you felt like something broken— something that was broken beyond repair. Your life would never be what you wanted, not anymore.
Your life was a complete mess, the entire thing. It was never perfect before, but it was yours. It was your small, quiet, and ordinary life. It may not have been normal or fitting for a lady to others, but you loved it— every part of it.
Once you picked up the glass, you grabbed the broom and began to sweep the smaller pieces.
Your mind went back to the conversation with Queen Myriah and Baelor, what they asked of you. Their solution to the problem that you had dumped in their lap.
You wanted to blame them, be angry that they’d suggest it— but this was all on you. Your selfishness, your lack of restraint, and respect for yourself.
How were you going to tell Lyonel? Gods, you couldn’t even figure out where he belonged in your life at that moment. What the two of you had before was perfect, it was simple and now it was chaos. You didn’t want to ruin it or ruin him.
Rhaenyra babbled on the bed, trying to chew on one of her toys. She was completely unaware of everything that had happened, she was happy and smiling.
You emptied the glass into the waste bin beside your desk, the door to your room opened— small footsteps against the stone.
“Lady Stark..”
“I wanted to meet my sister.” A small voice spoke, his words coming out small and unsure.
It was Aegon with Rhae right beside him, both of them standing in front of you with only one thing on their mind. They stood in front of you, their faces puffy and eyes red— looking at you like they couldn’t bear you telling them no.
Your expression softened staring at them.
“Does your father know that either of you are here?”
Egg looked at Rhae and they shook their heads.
You walked over to the bed, picking Rhaenyra up— holding her in your arms.
Egg and Rhae mustered smiles as you knelt in front of them with Rhaenyra.
“She looks like me, Egg.” Rhae spoke with a giggle.
Rhaenyra walked to the center of the carpet and sat down, grabbing more of her toys from the basket.
You smiled at the sight of her, but your smile faded at the sound of sniffling. Egg stood in front of you, tears streaming down his pale cheeks and onto his neck.
“Oh, Egg.” You mumbled, walking over to him and giving him a hug.
Rhae sat on the carpet by Rhaenyra pulling out toys for her and Egg tightly wrapped his arms around your waist, clinging to you as he sobbed— his tears wetting your gown.
Your heart broke for them, the loss of a parent was unlike any other kind. You rubbed his head, trying to comfort him as you held back tears yourself.
“I am so sorry about you losing your mother.” You muttered, trying to overcome the tears that wet your waterline.
Hearing his sobs shook you in a way that you hadn’t expected. He was such a joyous boy and now he clung to you, his world falling apart.
He pulled away from you, wiping his face. You knelt again, staring into his violet eyes.
“Do you need me to get your father?”
He shook his head, taking a deep breath— trying to calm down.
“I just want to spend time with you and my sister, if that is okay.”
You nodded with a teary eyed smile.
The servants brought food to your chambers at your request, you hoped to keep the children occupied and to provide any comfort that you could.
“Will father be okay?” Egg asked.
You looked up from the scroll that was on your desk, staring blankly.
“Only time will tell, but he is strong— as are you and your siblings. I think that with time all of you will be okay.”
Egg didn’t smile or anything, he just stared at you— his mind clearly at war with his feelings.
After a bit of playing and plenty of laughs from them as they were amused with Rhaenyra, Rhae gave you one of the books that you had. It was the book that you often read to Rhaenyra before bed.
“Can you read this to us?”
You were a bit shocked, but willing to if they genuinely wanted it.
“Do you really want me to read this?”
Rhae nodded, “please.”
You, Rhae, Egg, and Rhaenyra laid in your bed as you picked a chapter from the book to read. They wanted to hear the chapter that talked about the conquerors, which you obliged.
You read it to them, your voice animated— taking your time while they looked at the drawings on the pages.
That chapter had come to an end and all the children were asleep, you even found your eyelids feeling heavy. You fell asleep after fighting it for a few minutes.
The day was just barely in the afternoon and all of you were tired, completely worn thin.
You slept peacefully, completely losing track of time— but your door swung open.
“Have you seen—“
Maekar stopped in his tracks at the sight of you. You laid there in the bed, a book propped against your chest and the children sleep around you.
He had begun to panic when he was told that no one could locate them, but it was clear that they went where they thought best.
Maekar didn’t want to disturb you, so he sat on the window seat — watching as all of you slept. The sight of you and his children finding comfort in each other made him feel a small amount of ease, not because he’d depend on you— but because at least they weren’t entirely alone.
In some world this was the life for the two of you— multiple kids, no scandals, no grief, just the kids and bliss.
When you awoke, Rhae and Egg were gone. It didn’t worry you much as you figured that the servants had come to get them or they left on their own.
You slept good for the first time in a while, you slept and didn’t cry yourself to sleep beforehand.
Rhaenyra pulled your cheeks, “mama.”
You chuckled softly, a smile coming onto your face at the sight of her. Your precious daughter that mattered more than anything else in that world.
After a few minutes of laying in the bed, you prepared your chambers for the night and had dinner brought to your room for both of you.
The night had come quicker than you had expected, but even then the day still felt never ending.
You sat with Rhaenyra in one of your chairs, Greywind walking in your room behind a servant as they placed supper on the table.
The room was quiet with the exception of the fireplace and Rhaenyra humming as she ate her potatoes. It didn’t take long before she got fussy and didn’t want the rest, so you fed it to Greywind.
You took Rhaenyra to her own room and helped prepare her for bed. She kissed your cheek when you tried to lay her down in her bed, giggling when you kissed her cheek. She held your finger and fidgeted around in her bed— trying to fight her sleep, but you watched as her blinks lasted longer with each one. Within a few minutes she was sound asleep.
She looked so beautiful as she slept, her silver hair all over the place. In some lights, she looked exactly like Maekar and nothing like you.
While you sat there, you had a bath prepared for you in your chambers.
You thought about what Queen Myriah said, you thought about your own feelings, and Rhaenyra’s life.
Would you be cruel to keep Rhaenyra from them? Would she resent you or Lyonel? Would they resent you for it?
There was no perfect answer and that was what drove you mad, what made you feel hopeless— because no one knew what the outcome would be.
When you returned to your chambers, you were ready to relax in the bath and maybe have a nice cry alone.
Lyonel stood in your room, waiting for you.
You shut the door, a huff of air leaving your mouth.
“I did not expect you to be in here, I figured you would have run off after earlier.” You mumbled, walking towards your bed.
Lyonel looked down at his feet and back towards you.
“I must admit that was not my finest moment earlier. I am sorry.”
You pulled your boots off, listening to him while he spoke.
“It’s fine, Lyonel.”
He rubbed his beard, trying to find the right words.
“My love, I shouldn’t have been so crass earlier and I am truly sorry—“
“I should’ve been sympathetic.”
You walked towards him, placing your hands into his and staring into his eyes.
“I forgive you, my love.” You whispered, stepping even closer to him.
He loved when you called him that, but the way that you went about it was what turned him on most. How you stood in front of him, staring at him through your lashes — your voice laced with need.
Lyonel stepped closer, his body pressed against yours.
“Hmm.” He hummed.
His hand cupped your face, both of you lost in the moment and nothing else mattering.
“You look so beautiful, so fucking beautiful.”
You couldn’t help but smile, glancing away from him.
“You’re just saying that, hoping that you’ll get your cock wet.” You teased.
He chuckled, his lips brushing against yours— his breath warming your skin.
“Even without fucking you, I am the luckiest man in the seven kingdoms. You are the love of my life, the woman I’d go to the ends of this world for.”
You pressed your lips against his, your fingers gripping his doublet.
He kissed you back, his arm wrapping around your waist.
You felt so good with him, yet your heart was conflicted— torn between two men.
“Can I share the bath with you?” He asked, pulling his lips away from yours.
You nodded.
The water steamed around the two of you as you sat down in the tub, you sat in between Lyonel’s legs with your back pressed against his chest.
“I dream of many nights like this with you.” Lyonel confessed.
You smiled, rubbing your finger against his thigh.
“You do?”
“How could I not? What man wouldn’t want to end his night with a fierce wife beside him.” He added.
Lyonel helped wash your back— telling you a story about how he’d met some large knight, who wasn’t really a knight a few moons back. A man named Ser Dunk, which sounded incredibly silly to you.
He cupped water onto your hair, a smile on his face.
“You laugh, but I’m serious. His name was Dunk and he was..”
“Something.” Lyonel trailed off.
“I imagine that he was, especially if he called himself Dunk.” You laughed again, the kind of laugh where tears welled in your eyes. The story sounded ridiculous, but Lyonel was serious.
After your bit of laughter that went on for what seemed forever, you rested your head against his chest.
You realized that you still hadn’t told him about what the king had requested of you.
“Lyonel.” You spoke.
He rubbed his hand against yours. “Yes, darling.”
You took a deep breath, trying to find the right words and hoping that you wouldn't upset him.
“When Baelor asked to speak with me earlier, he brought me to the council room where Queen Myriah was also waiting.”
“The queen summoned you?” He asked.
“Something like that..”
“She and Baelor needed to speak with me about Rhaenyra.”
His hand stilled against yours, “what about her?”
“They want me to marry Maekar.” You hesitantly answered.
“Oh—“
“I see.” He muttered. You could hear the way that your words instantly affected him, how he seemed heartbroken already.
There was a silence, a silence that felt like the two of you were frozen for a beat. He didn’t say anything or move and neither did you.
“What did you say to that?” He questioned.
You turned in the tub, water splashing onto the stone. You faced Lyonel, staring into his eyes.
“I told them that I am to marry you.”
He nodded, his fingers resting on the edge of the tub.
“I take it that they did not like that revelation?”
You looked down at the water, looking at your reflection— your eyes watering again.
“What if they make me marry him? Force my hand?”
He stared at you, his own eyes watering.
“What is a man to do when he loses the love of his life to someone who is unworthy?”
You tilted your head slightly, a frown on your face.
“Lyonel..”
“Is what I speak not the truth?” He questioned.
You couldn’t bring your eyes to face him, it was like they were unable to in that moment— like you felt guilty to agree with him.
“You are.. magnificent in every way, that is the truth. You give me hope that there is more for me out there, that I can take a wife that I’m proud to have—“
“I know that you are torn and I’d be a fool to pretend that this isn’t the case, but I cannot compete with him.. not when you keep your heart closed to me.” He continued, the words leaving his mouth slowly as he knew that he might regret them.
Your eyes met his instantly.
“You don’t think that my heart is open to you? That I don’t love you?”
He sighed, trying to grab your hand.
“That is not what I meant.”
You pulled away, standing in the tub— the water falling from your body. Your bare skin exposed to Lyonel, disrupting any thoughts that he had only a moment ago.
The water splashed across the stone as you stepped out, grabbing your robe.
“I only meant that—“
“Save it, Lyonel.”
Lyonel stood in the tub, following you— completely bare while you prepared the bed.
“I did not mean to offend you, but it is obvious that you still care so deeply for him.”
You stopped what you were doing, facing Lyonel and keeping your eyes on his face.
“I am to marry you, Lyonel. I figured that it was clear that you were who I chose? That you were who I wanted?”
“Am I what you want? or do I simply provide you a means to run away and prevent the evident temptation that brews between the two of you?” He pried.
Your mouth fell open slightly, your eyes widening with disbelief.
“I.. cannot believe that you just said that, that you’d even think that of me— that you think I’m merely only using you.”
The regret on his face was instantaneous.
“I should not have said that, I did not.. I didn’t mean it.”
You bit your tongue and kept from expressing the true thoughts that came across your mind.
“It is a shame that you think so lowly of me, Lyonel. I welcomed you into my life, my daughter's life, and talked to you about a future. Maekar returning wasn’t even on our minds, it has always been real with you.”
His mouth opened and closed, his heart racing fast.
“But he did.. he did return. He returned and you still can’t admit that you’re done with him, can you?—“
“Were to be wed, but the thought of him still sends shivers down your spine! You also fucked him since he’s been back!” His voice raised.
You gasped, being completely taken by surprise at him saying that.
“My Love.. I am not upset over that—“ he stammered, wiping his face.
“You clearly have drunk too much.” You scoffed.
Your ears felt warm to the touch as Lyonel continued to speak, your heart in your throat. You stared at him blankly, stumped on what to say.
“I shall bid you goodnight. I am quite tired.” You mumbled, pulling the cover back on your bed.
“I don’t want to end our night on a sour note.” He replied.
You scoffed, “you should’ve thought about that.”
Lyonel put his clothes on and exited your chambers, a lingering silence in the air. A distance between the two of you that didn’t exist beforehand now consumed the room.
Your relationship with Lyonel was quite simple and different in some ways, but that’s what made it work so well. He accepted you and you accepted him.
The two of you never argued or yelled at one another, not really— but that night you did. Something in your relationship snapped, something that you had no control over. You just knew that maybe he needed space and maybe you did too, from both of them.
The passing of Dyanna had everyone feeling off, it changed everything. Even in the days after, you had still avoided Maekar. There was nothing you could say to make anything easier and it’d probably only continue to get complicated. He needed plenty of things, but condolences on his wife from you was not one of them.
Maekar looked for you, but he found it painfully clear that you were avoiding him and did not wish to speak.
It was finally the day of Dyanna’s funeral.
You stood outside in your black gown, holding Rhaenyra— amongst the royal family, your family, Lyonel, and other noblemen. All of you gathered outside to join the royal family in their mourning.
Vermithor stood near the pyre where she laid, a loud roar leaving him as he moved closer.
Maekar stood close to the pyre, looking like a man that had been cut in half— a man that was lost at sea. You doubted that it was just grief that troubled him, maybe it was everything all at once.
Lyonel stared at you from afar, an apology on his mind and lips— but paralyzed with guilt.
You adjusted Rhaenyra on your hip, watching as Vermithor burned Dyanna on the pyre in front of him— the sounds of the fire cackling and the smell of burning flesh seared into your mind.
After the funeral, you handed Rhaenyra off for a nap and retreated into your chambers. You took off your boots and began to unlace your gown when there was a faint knock at the door.
“Come in.”
Maekar opened the door and walked inside, shutting it behind him.
“You’ve been avoiding me.” He spoke, not completely accusing you— but leaving no room for you to say otherwise.
Your fingers stilled against your laces.
“I decided to let you be.”
“Who told you that I wanted that?”
You turned your head at an angle, the crack of light just barely catching his scarred face.
“No one told me, it is what I know. Dyanna just died and it would be improper for me to come to you.”
His eyebrows raised with a scoff, “improper is it?”
You rolled your eyes, untying the rest of the laces to your gown as he walked towards the window.
“Don’t start, please.”
“No one ever tells you what to expect when a wife dies.. how you might feel or how you might move on later—“
“They tell you nothing about it, even when it’s a common occurrence.” He trailed off.
You pulled off your gown, standing in your shift and gently folding it.
“You are strong, you will recover and so will your children.”
He pushed the shutter open further, glancing out.
“My children..” he started and then stopped.
You placed your folded gown on your desk and took a seat in the chair, your shift just barely hiding your figure— not that it mattered much.
“What about them?” You followed up.
He hesitated, like he was afraid to finish his sentence.
“Nothing.” He grumbled.
“I saw that my youngest son and daughter came to visit you.”
You sat back in your seat, pulling the pins from your hair. “Aye, they did.”
He turned from the window, his focus and saddened eyes fully on you.
“Why did they come to you? Were they okay?”
You glanced at him and placed one of the pins on the desk.
“They were fine.. they wanted to meet Rhaenyra.”
“And how did that go?” He questioned.
You pulled out the last pin, running your fingers along your scalp to ease the tension that you had felt all morning.
“Unlike most adults, children are not inherently cruel. They were just excited to have a sister and to take their minds from their mothers passing.”
He nodded, his eyes lingering at his feet.
“That’s.. good.”
He walked over to the desk, standing in front of it and you. He had that look on his face, the look that you knew all too well.
“Do you still intend to marry Lyonel?”
You chuckled as if a joke had been told, maybe one had— one that not even he could understand.
“I do. I intend to marry Lyonel and get away from this place, away from your family.. away from you.” You finally admitted.
He looked like you had struck him with an arrow, like you had torn a string that was within his heart— like you truly meant those words.
When you saw his reaction, your face dropped— not in horror or fear, but sadness. As harsh as your words may have been, they were true— you wanted to be away from it all.
“Don’t turn your back on me.” He muttered.
“I should’ve saved myself the heartache and did exactly that moons ago.” You argued.
“Queen Myriah and Baelor asked me to marry you.. for the goodness of the realm I suppose.” You confessed.
His brows furrowed, the scars of his face deepening.
“They did what?”
“They said that it was necessary for you, for Rhaenyra—“
“They didn’t tell you?” You asked.
“No, I was not informed that my mother and brother asked you to marry me immediately after Dyanna died.”
You didn’t respond, because in this instance you didn’t know how to.
“Please, do not marry Lyonel.” He pleaded, his eyes looking at the desk in front of him.
“I will.” You replied plainly.
He looked at you as if you had betrayed him, his eyes glassy.
“Why?—“
“I am right here.. asking you not to.”
You stood from your chair, your footsteps slow and methodical as you walked over to him.
“You are here now, but there were many nights where you weren’t.. where I was alone.”
“But, you’re not alone now.” He added.
“It’s too late.”
He grabbed your hand, bringing it to his chest — his glassy eyes staring into yours. His gaze felt as if you were being sucked into his tide again, unable to escape the way that the water would feel against your skin— the way that you wanted to welcome it.
“I cannot fix the past, but I can promise that I’d never leave your side again—“
“Only in death and then I’d still wait for you, if the gods let me.”
You pulled away, a tear streaming down your cheek— your lip beginning to quiver.
“It is far too late, Maekar!—“
“I chose you the first time around and you didn’t choose me. You could’ve been a selfish prince and chose me, but you didn’t.”
He wiped the tears that fell down his own reddened cheeks.
“I thought of you everyday, regretted my choice everyday.”
“Regretted it so much that you fucked six children into her?” You swore.
He began to frown, biting his lip to keep from getting angry at your words.
“That’s not fair..”
“What’s not fair is loving someone so much that you wanted to die when they broke your heart. What’s not fair is having to watch them get the life that the two of you romanticized.”
“What’s not fair is that despite everything, I wasn’t enough for you to choose me first.” You sputtered.
His hardened facial expression softened, his expression reminding you of how he looked at you years ago.
“I cannot—“
“You are correct, you cannot! I do not wish to do this with you anymore, Maekar.”
“I am asking for us to do it right this time.” He corrected you.
You began to sob, turning away from him— your hand covering your mouth to muffle it. Maekar stood and watched, knowing that there were no words that could undo that damage he caused.
You grabbed your gown and swiftly put it back on.
“We were so close.. so fucking close, Maekar.” You mumbled, wiping your nose with the back of your hand.
“I know.” He replied.
You turned back around. “I choose Lyonel this time, I choose him because I have a choice—“
“Because he chose me and Rhaenyra first.”
Maekar stepped closer to you, his chest pressed against yours.
“Tell me that you do not love me anymore.”
Your brows furrowed, head tilting.
“It was never about me not loving you, it was the fact that I do love you— that was the problem.”
He pressed his lips against yours and you slightly kissed him back, but you pulled away.
“I have spent far too much time dwelling on the past with you, I won’t continue this—“
“Don’t you see it? See that everything around us and our relationship is a tragedy?”
He winced at your words and their finality, watching as you slowly stepped away from him and made your way to the door— opening it and leaving him standing there.
He had lost you and he’d lose the daughter that the two of you shared, a loss that would make him crumble.
You left Maekar standing in your chambers, but when you left you didn’t feel happy or even content. It felt like there was a weight on your chest, a pressure that no herb could heal.
He was the relentless and unstoppable pain that coursed your body, the wound that was etched onto your heart.
Despite the history between the two of you, you wanted to choose something special— a person that made you want to dance, a person that made you laugh, a person that loved even the ugliest parts of you.
You walked the hall, nodding with still wet eyelashes as the staff spoke to you.
You took your time walking, trying to gather your thoughts and hopefully put everything properly into words. You stopped in front of the heavy double doors, giving a gentle knock.
“Enter.”
When you entered the room, your father and brother were in the middle of a conversation.
“Oh, I did not realize that you were in the middle of something. I can come back .”
“No, I’m glad that you are here. I must speak with you.” You father mentioned.
Your brother stared at you, an unpleasant stare like he’s cross with you.
“What is the matter?”
“I have been told that you refused the request of the royal family.” He replied.
Your brows raised and then furrowed.
“The request to marry Maekar?—“
“Yes, I did.”
“May I ask why?”
“I do not want to, I want to marry Lyonel.” You mumbled, your fingers clasped in front of you.
“Are you fucking serious?—“
“This is downright embarrassing for the family. You get to finally marry the man that you’ve been whoring with and you say no?” Your brother snapped.
“Excuse me?” You fumed, your shoulders pulled back.
“Son, walk that back. You apologize to your sister this instant, I will not have this.” Your father demanded.
Your brother sighed.
“You are spoiled and the only thing that saves you from a harsher fate is because King Daeron does not wish to have you suffer! You parade around your—“
“My what?—“
“Say it brother.” You challenged.
“You parade around your bastard and everyone turns a blind eye to it, everyone has to act like this is normal—“
You walk over in two strides and slapped him across the face with all your might.
“She is your niece! My child!—“
“and I may not be perfect, but she will not be talked about like that by you.”
“Enough!” Your father spat, slapping his hand on his desk.
“This family doesn’t treat each other this way and I won’t tolerate it.”
Your brother's face was red like a tomato, his hand rubbing against his cheek.
“Father, I—“
“A request from your king is not something that should ever be taken lightly. He has good reason to want you to marry Maekar.” He interrupted.
You shook your head, twisting your fingers.
“I understand and I know what I am asking of you, father. I just ask that you support my decision.. my decision to marry for love.”
Your father and brother shared a look.
“This is—“
“Please, I do not want to lose him.” You begged, your eyes watering.
Your father looked at you, the look that he always gave you when he felt as if he couldn’t deny you.
“What of my granddaughter? What of her not being around her family?”
“We are her family, Lyonel is her family—“
“He loves her like she is his own, she loves him. He has never looked at her differently or made comments about her parentage, do you think that family will be the same?”
“Aerion knew of her for only a few hours and was already making comments.. and he’s her brother.”
Your brother's eyes flickered over to you, noticing your eyes— how you genuinely seemed fearful that he wouldn’t support you.
“I will talk to King Daeron. Perhaps, we can have it arranged to be sooner rather than later— putting this entire matter to rest. I will support your decision to marry Lord Baratheon, only because I know that you love him.”
There was a sigh of relief that escaped your chest, you walked over to your father— wrapping your hands around him to give you a hug.
“Thank you so much, father. I truly cannot thank you enough.”
He gave your arm a quick pat.
“Anything for you.”
You quickly left the room and walked with a purpose to Lyonel’s chambers.
When you reached Lyonel’s chambers you barely knocked before entering, surprising him as he paced around the room.
“My love?”
You shut the door behind you with a loud thud, walking to where Lyonel stood.
You grabbed his hands, holding them in yours.
“I don’t want to fight with you.”
He looked at you with some confusion, he couldn’t tell if you were upset or if something had happened.
“I don’t want to fight with you either. I take no pleasure in it.”
“Is something wrong, darling?” He questioned.
You shook your head with a small laugh. “No.”
“I told Maekar.. I told him that I choose you.”
The look on Lyonel’s face was different from any of the other expressions that you see, it was as if multiple emotions were hitting him at once.
“You did?” He asked, his brow raised.
“Aye.” You smiled, your eyes filled with tears.
“I just.. I cannot lose you. I want to be selfish with you, I want Rhaenyra to grow up with you as a father.. I want to live a life with you.” You confessed.
Lyonel grabbed your cheeks and pulled you into a passionate kiss.
“Loving the two of you is the best choice that I’ve ever made.”
You pulled away, breaking the moment of passion.
“I want you to be sure about this, my father said he’d talk to the king—“
“You will never have to ask if I’m sure about this, what could be better than living in Storm's End with my girls?”
You stared at him for a moment, your chest rising and falling fast— his eyes never leaving yours.
“I’m sorry about before, I shouldn’t have been rude.” He admitted.
You shook your head.
“I don’t want to worry about what happened before. It’s just me and you. I forgive you.”
You pressed your lips back into his, your tongue pushing past his teeth.
“Hmm.” He groaned.
“Fuck me, Lyonel—“
“Right now.” You breathed, already reaching for your laces.
Lyonel wrapped his arm around your waist, lifting you off your feet and carrying you to his bed.
“No need to pull all of that off.” He smiled, laying you down gently on the bed.
You pulled up your gown as he unlaced his trousers with complete precision.
The cool air pressed against your exposed skin while you watched Lyonel’s cock spring free, the veins lining it prominent in the light.
Lyonel came between your legs, his lips meeting yours as he teased your entrance— making you whine.
“Please.” You rasped.
He chuckled, “please what?”
You rolled your eyes, a gasp suddenly leaving your mouth as he thrusted inside you.
“Hmm, you feel so good.” He whispered.
He pushed your legs up further, pushing them back as far as they go— watching his cock slide in and out of you.
“Fuck—“
“You’re so deep.” You whimpered.
“Yeah?—“
“I’m so deep inside that pretty cunt of yours, darling. It’s so tight and wet, just for me.” He grunted, his rings pressed into your thigh.
Watching his cock snap in and out of you almost made him finish quicker than he intended.
He kissed you fiercely, his tongue gliding against yours as he claimed your mouth.
“I love you.. I love you so much.” You moaned.
He kissed the side of your face, his warm breath mingling against your skin.
“Love is not a strong enough word for how I feel about you.”
“Gods, I am not going to last long this time.” He moaned.
Your mouth widened, your toes curled as you unexpectedly reached your peak— your cunt gripping his cock intensely.
“Already?—“
“So needy.” He teased.
His grip on your legs tightened, his thrusts got messier and faster— his breaths ragged.
“Gods.”
“I want you to finish inside me.” You begged, staring at him through your lashes.
He glanced at you, his words caught in his mouth— unable to think past the feeling of fucking you.
“How can I say no to you when you’re looking at me like that? Hmm?”
He thrusted into you three more times, a deep groan escaping his throat as his seed spilled inside you.
Once he came, he fucked his seed deep inside you— riding out the high.
You kissed him like you couldn’t get enough, his hands finally leaving your legs— an indent from his rings on them.
“I love you, darling.” He grinned.
You smirked, “I love you too.”
Once he pulled out, the two of you laid on his bed for a bit— laughing and enjoying the moment between the two of you.
“I will talk to my father, but once the wedding happens I want to leave for Storms End. I don’t think me not being present will be an issue.”
He pushed a stray hair from your face, looking at you like you were a perfect statue.
“You’re ready to leave?”
You nodded, rubbing your fingers against his.
“More than ready.”
“I’m going to freshen up, would you like to join me on a walk outside here shortly?”
His tongue swiped his bottom lip, “of course.”
You went to your chambers and freshened up, the smile on your face unable to leave.
At first you were worried about things between you and Lyonel, worried about Maekar— worried about everything but what you truly wanted. You’d allowed yourself to be blinded, but realizing that Dyanna died and just understanding how precious moments are— you didn’t want to waste any more time.
You met Lyonel outside, the two of you holding hands— your boots crunching against the snow.
“I can’t believe I’m going to leave this.”‘ You mentioned.
He glanced around at all the snow and ice coating everything, then back at you— his eyes fixated on the small snowflakes in your hair.
“Take it in, Storm’s End is nowhere as pretty as this.”
You chuckled, “I might grow to love it.”
“Doubtful.” He argued.
“I cannot wait to make you mine, shout to everyone about my lovely wife..” He added.
Your heart jumped in your chest listening to him talk about you in that manner, the way that he loves you so deeply and effortlessly— a love that you never thought you’d experience.
The snow continued to come down, a bit heavier than you had anticipated— but nothing that would deter your walk with Lyonel.
The words that you wanted to say were hung in your mouth when you heard commotion and the horn.
You looked at Lyonel, listening to the noise— but confused.
The horn blew once, then twice, then a third time.
People in the area began to run in various directions, “Three times is for… wildlings.”
All of sudden you winced and felt a sharp sting against your body, heat radiating through you.
You let go of Lyonel’s hand, touching your body— only to see blood on the glove when you pulled it back.
“Wildlings!” A man yelled.
It was as if everything was in a haze, figures moved through the snow and you could hear swords clashing.
Your eyes slowly looked at Lyonel who stood in front of you, “My love.” He mumbled.
Two arrows sticking out of him as he collapsed into the snow.
You tried to take a step, but your legs wobbled— feeling like sand.
You fell into the snow beside Lyonel, hearing dragons roar in the distance and everything fading away.
I am once again asking the universe for more crumbs of the 2007 Donmar Warehouse production of Parade. I will do anything. I need to see Bertie as Leo Frank.
*channels John Adams from 1776* IS ANYBODY THERE??? DOES ANYBODY CARE???? DOES ANYBODY SEE WHAT I SEE??? GOOD GOD.
Pairing: Maekar Targaryen x f!lady in waiting!reader
WC: 9.9k
Warning(s): +18 MDNI, Explicit sexual content, oral sex (giving and receiving), P in V sex, AFAB reader, power imbalance, touch-starved, mutual pining, argument to lovers, emotional vulnerability, size difference, praise kink (light, reader to character), rough sex (consensual, explicitly negotiated), scar worship, dirty talk (mild), male restraint / loss of control, confident reader, oblivious/avoidant pining, second person / reader insert (no use of y/n), no beta we die like Viserys
The hour had grown shamefully late by the time you decided you were done waiting.
Three weeks. Three weeks of turned backs and engineered absences and the particular cruelty of a man who could fill a room with his presence even while pretending to be entirely unreachable within it. Three weeks of watching Prince Maekar Targaryen look straight through you with those violet eyes and finding nothing in them that acknowledged what had been building between you for months.
You found him at dusk.
The armoury sat quiet at that hour, the training yard beyond it emptied of squires and knights alike, nothing remaining but the last copper light bleeding through narrow windows and the distant sounds of the castle settling into evening. Torches guttered softly along the walls, catching the dull gleam of hanging steel and leather.
Maekar stood at the far end with his back to the door, methodically checking the edge of a blade with the focused attention of a man determined to be unreachable.
He had been unreachable for weeks.
“You have been avoiding me,” you said. The words landed flat in the quiet. Maekar did not turn around.
“I have been occupied.”
“You walked out of a room yesterday because I entered it.”
“I had somewhere to be.”
“Maekar.” His name left you with enough weight that his shoulders stiffened visibly. “Look at me.”
He set the blade down with deliberate care and turned. His expression was exactly what you had expected — closed, guarded, wearing that particular blankness he deployed when he wanted to be mistaken for someone who did not feel things.
You knew better. You had always known better when it came to him.
“Whatever you believe you need to say,” he said flatly, “I would ask you to reconsider.”
“I have reconsidered for three weeks.” You closed the door and stepped further into the room. “I am done reconsidering.”
“Then be brief.”
“Why are you pulling away?”
“I am not pulling away. I am exactly where I have always been.”
“You are a liar.”
Something dangerous flickered in his violet eyes. “Mind yourself.”
“Or what?” You crossed your arms. “You will glare at me? You have been doing that for months and I am still here.”
“Clearly.” The word came out clipped, almost cruel. A deliberate blade.
You refused to flinch from it. “Something happened. Three weeks ago you were—” You stopped, steadied yourself. “And then suddenly you were gone. Present in body and completely absent in everything else. I want to know why.”
“Nothing happened.”
“You are lying again.”
“I am not accustomed,” he said with cold precision, “to being called a liar repeatedly.”
“And I am not accustomed to being deliberately shut out by someone who—” You stopped again.
Maekar’s eyes sharpened immediately. “Someone who what?”
The silence stretched taut between you.
“Someone who matters to me,” you finished quietly.
Something moved across his face so quickly you almost missed it. Pain, naked and immediate, there and gone before he could fully suppress it. His gaze dropped briefly to the floor.
“You should not say that.”
“Why not? It is true.”
“It is—” He stopped. Started again. “Unwise.”
“Unwise.” You stared at him. “That is what you have for me.”
“It is the honest answer.”
“No.” You took another step closer and watched him resist the instinct to step back. “It is the coward’s answer, and you are not a coward. Try again.”
Fury crossed his face instantly, the way it always did when he felt cornered. “You presume too much.”
“Then correct me.”
“I am correcting you by telling you this conversation is finished.”
“It is not finished.”
“I say it is.”
“And I say you are running away and dressing it up as dignity.” Your voice had risen now, heat climbing through your chest. “For weeks, Maekar. Weeks of barely a word, barely a look, and you cannot even give me the courtesy of an honest reason—”
“The honest reason,” he said sharply, “is that this—” his hand moved between you, a short furious gesture— “should not continue.”
“What should not continue? We have done nothing—”
“Exactly.” The word came out ragged at the edges. He turned away from you immediately, a hand pressed hard against the nearest table. “Exactly nothing. And it should remain that way.”
You stared at the rigid line of his back.
“Why?” you asked quietly.
“Because I am not—” He stopped.
“Say it.”
“Leave it alone.”
“Say it, Maekar.”
“Because I am not built for this.” The words came out low and furious and slightly broken at once. “Is that what you wanted to hear? I am the fourth son. I have been trained since birth to be useful, to be the sword, to stand behind better men and serve the family’s purpose. That is what I am for.” His shoulders had drawn up tight beneath his doublet. “Not—” A rough breath. “Not this.”
The silence that followed was enormous.
You stood inside it and felt something build in your chest that you did not immediately have a name for. Hot and painful and expanding outward until your hands had begun to shake with it.
“Not this,” you repeated softly.
“No.”
“You are not built for being cared for.”
“I am not built for—”
“You are not enough.” The words came out barely above a whisper. “That is what you mean. That is what you actually believe.”
Maekar said nothing. Which was its own answer.
And that was when it happened.
Something white and furious ignited behind your ribs entirely without permission. Not sadness. Not heartbreak. Pure blazing rage on his behalf, at every person who had ever let him believe that, at every comparison and every dismissal and every moment that had carved this particular damage so deep into him that he recited it now like scripture.
You crossed the distance between you before thought intervened.
Your hands hit his chest and pushed.
Maekar’s back met the stone wall with a dull impact, his eyes flying wide with pure shock — not at the force, though that seemed to surprise him too — but at you. At the fact that you had done it at all. That the person standing before him with their hands fisted in his doublet and fury written plainly across every feature was you, someone half his size, someone he could have moved aside with one arm—
He did not move at all.
“Do not,” you said. Your voice shook with it. “Don't you dare say that to me.”
“I—”
“No.” Your hands tightened against the fabric of his doublet, knuckles pressing hard against the solid warmth of his chest beneath it. “You do not get to stand there and tell me you are not enough. You do not get to decide that. You do not get to spend weeks pulling away from me because some ancient cruelty convinced you that you were made only for function and nothing else—”
“You do not understand—”
“I understand perfectly.” Your eyes were burning now. Furiously. “I have watched you for months. I have seen what you are when you stop performing severity for long enough to simply exist. And you are—” Your voice cracked slightly. You pushed through it. “Maekar, you are extraordinary. Not despite what you are. Not in comparison to anyone. Yourself. And the fact that you cannot see it—”
“Stop.” His voice had gone rough. Unsteady.
“The fact that you have been standing in this family your entire life believing yourself a sword and nothing more—”
“I said stop.” Rougher now.
“It makes me want to—”
“Stop.”
He kissed you.
Not gently. Nothing like gently. His hands came up and caught your face and his mouth found yours with the sudden desperate urgency of a man who had simply run out of other options — who had used every deflection available to him and found you still standing there, furious and certain and refusing to let him be small, and had no idea what to do with that except this.
It lasted one stunned breathless second.
Then he pulled back.
His hands still cradled your face. His breathing had gone ragged. Those violet eyes searched yours with something almost panicked in them — the expression of a man who had just done something irreversible and was only now calculating the consequences.
“I should not have—” he began roughly.
You kissed him back.
Not as apology. Not gently either. You pulled him down by the front of his doublet and kissed him with the full force of everything you had just said and everything you had been holding quietly for months and felt the exact moment the last resistance went out of him completely.
Maekar made a sound against your mouth that you felt in your spine.
His hands slid from your face into your hair, tilting your head back, and suddenly he was kissing you like a man discovering water after a drought — not with careful reverence but with something rawer and more desperate beneath it, like he could not quite believe this was allowed and intended to have all of it before someone told him otherwise.
He broke the kiss with a ragged breath, forehead dropping against yours. His hands were shaking. You could feel it where they cradled your head.
“I have been—” His voice was wrecked completely. “Gods. I have been trying—”
“I know,” you breathed.
“You should have let it be.”
“No.” Your hands slid up his chest, feeling the hard planes of him beneath the fabric, the rapid thumping of his heart betraying every bit of composure his expression had ever pretended to. “I should not and I will not.”
A rough sound escaped him.
His eyes searched your face in the torchlight — violet and open and utterly unguarded in a way you had never seen from him in any council chamber or training yard or castle corridor. The severity was gone. The careful blankness gone. Just a man, terrified and wanting and finally, catastrophically out of excuses.
“You mean this,” he said quietly. Not quite a question.
“I have meant it,” you said, “for a very long time.”
Something in his expression broke entirely open.
His mouth found yours again, slower this time, deeper — and gods, the difference of it. Still hungry but the panic beneath it easing now into something that felt dangerously close to wonder. His hands moved through your hair with a care that contradicted every rough and prickly thing he had ever said or done, like beneath all of it, beneath the sword and the severity and the practiced distance, there had always been this.
Someone who simply needed to be told he was allowed.
“Maekar,” you murmured against his mouth.
A shudder moved through him at his own name spoken like that.
“Gods help me,” he said roughly. “I do not know how to—” He stopped. The admission visibly cost him. “I do not know how to do this.”
Your heart turned over completely.
“Yes, you do,” you whispered. Your hands found his face, thumbs brushing the line of his beard, the old scars beneath it. He exhaled shakily at the contact, eyes falling briefly closed. “You already are.”
That alone seemed to cost him — you could feel it in the rigid tension held through his entire body, in the way his hands remained carefully at his sides where he had lowered them despite the kiss deepening between you. Like he had given himself permission for this much and was terrified of reaching for more in case it proved too much to ask.
So, you decided for him. You took his hands. He went completely still as you lifted them from his sides and placed them — slowly, deliberately, holding his gaze the entire time — against your waist.
Maekar stared at you like you had done something incomprehensible.
“You are allowed,” you assured quietly.
His throat moved. His fingers remained motionless against your waist for one suspended moment, barely making contact, as though the fabric between his hands and your skin was the only thing keeping him tethered to composure.
Then, haltingly, his grip tightened.
Just slightly. Just enough to feel the warmth and solidity of his hands spanning your waist, large enough that his fingers nearly met at the small of your back.
The breath that left him was unsteady.
You rose onto your toes and kissed the corner of his jaw. Felt the muscle there jump immediately beneath your lips. His hands tightened further at your waist, involuntary, like his body was responding entirely without his permission.
You kissed along the sharp line of his jaw toward his ear, unhurried, feeling the roughness of his beard against your lips and the warmth of his skin beneath it.
“You are—” His voice had dropped to almost nothing. “You should not—”
“Maekar.” You pulled back just enough to look at him. His face was flushed, violet eyes dark, every line of him radiating the strain of holding himself still. “Stop telling me what I should not do.”
His jaw tightened. But he said nothing.
You kissed his cheekbone. The high plane of it, just above the beard, where the old pox scars tracked faintly beneath your lips. He made a sound so quiet you almost missed it. Something helpless and involuntary swallowed almost before it could exist.
Your hands moved to the front of his doublet, working the fastenings with steady fingers while his breathing deepened above you. Each button gave way and Maekar stood and let it happen, stood and watched your face with those dark eyes like a man waiting for the dream to end.
You pushed the doublet from his shoulders. It fell in the narrow space between his back and the wall, behind him. Beneath it, linen stretched across broad shoulders and a chest that rose and fell with increasing unevenness. You spread your palms flat against it and felt his heart hammering beneath them, rapid and entirely beyond his control.
Something deeply fond moved through you at that.
“Still with me?” you murmured.
“I think so,” he said roughly.
You laughed softly and felt him exhale shakily in response, his hands sliding fractionally further around your waist like they were making decisions independently of him.
You kissed his throat then. Open mouthed, slow, just below his jaw where his pulse beat rapidly against your lips. Maekar’s head tipped back slightly, an involuntary concession, his fingers pressing harder against your waist.
You kissed lower. The rough scrape of his beard gave way to the warm skin of his neck, and you felt the shudder that moved through him at the contact, felt his grip on you tighten to something that was no longer gentle—
You bit him.
Not hard. Not cruelly. A deliberate scrape of teeth against the curve where his neck met his shoulder, your lips pressing warm against it immediately afterward.
The sound that left Maekar was nothing like anything you had heard from him before. Low and rough and dragged from somewhere entirely beyond his composure. His entire body went rigid for one suspended second—
Then it was like watching a dam break down.
His hands moved.
Suddenly, completely, with a decisiveness that stole the breath from your lungs. One arm swept around your waist and hauled you flush against him with a sureness that made the floor feel uncertain beneath your feet, the other hand sliding into your hair and tilting your head back, and then his mouth was on yours and gods—
Gods.
Nothing hesitant in it. Nothing careful. He kissed you like the last three weeks of distance had been a physical pressure he had been holding back with both hands and your teeth against his skin had finally, catastrophically, released it all at once.
You made a startled sound against his mouth. Maekar just swallowed it and kissed you harder.
He walked you backward through the armoury with complete certainty, steering you through the low torchlight without breaking the kiss, one hand spread wide and immovable at the small of your back and the other still tangled in your hair. The back of your thighs met the edge of the long wooden workbench, and he lifted you onto it without apparent effort — large hands spanning your waist and depositing you there like you weighed nothing of consequence — and stepped immediately between your knees.
The new height brought you almost level with him and he took immediate advantage, cupping your face in both hands and kissing you with a thoroughness that made rational thought extremely difficult.
“Maekar—” you managed between kisses.
“No.” The word came out low and absolute. “You had your turn to talk.”
You laughed and he caught the sound with his mouth and made a rough noise against your lips that sent heat rushing straight through you.
His hands left your face and began moving — not hesitantly now, not waiting for guidance. Large and warm and entirely purposeful, sliding from your jaw down your throat, tracing your collarbones with a focus that suggested he intended to learn every inch of you and had decided to begin immediately.
When his fingers found the lacing at the back of your gown he paused for just a moment, just long enough to pull back and find your eyes. The question was there without words. Still him beneath the urgency. Still that fundamental core of a man who needed to know he was not taking something without being allowed to.
“Yes,” you said before he could ask it.
Something moved across his face. Raw and unguarded and painfully honest.
Then his hands resumed with steady, certain fingers, unlacing slowly at first, then faster as the fastenings gave way.
“You have no idea,” he said roughly against your temple, voice low enough to vibrate through you, “what you have done to me.”
“Tell me,” you breathed funnily.
His hands stilled briefly at your back. “Months.” The word came out almost pained. “I have spent months trying to—” He exhaled roughly. “And you simply—” A sound of frustration. “You walked into a room and I forgot how to be sensible.”
The confession hit somewhere directly behind your sternum.
“Good,” you whispered.
A rough laugh escaped him. Short and startled and entirely real. You felt it against your cheek and stored it somewhere permanent.
His hands resumed their work.
“You are,” he muttered, the lacing finally giving way entirely, “the most inconvenient thing that has ever happened to me.”
You pulled back to look at him. The torchlight caught the flush beneath his beard, the dark intensity of his eyes, the silver threaded through pale hair falling slightly over his forehead. He looked thoroughly undone and absolutely furious about it and so devastatingly his that your chest ached with it.
“Likewise,” you said softly. The look he gave you afterward nearly stopped your heart.
Because beneath the urgency and the feral edge of finally having broken loose — there it was. What lived underneath all of it. What had been living underneath all of it for months in training yards and castle corridors and cold battlements at dusk.
Not just wanting. Something far more dangerous than that.
His forehead dropped against yours.
“I do not know,” he said quietly, the roughness in his voice now carrying something almost bewildered beneath it, “how to be careful with you.”
Your hands rose to his chest. “Then don’t be.”
The breath that left him was long and shaking.
“I may not be able to stop,” he warned lowly.
“Maekar.” You held his gaze. “Do not make me bite you again.”
He stared at you for one moment.
Then something shifted in his expression — the last fragment of restraint dissolving into something that was equal parts exasperated and consumed and desperately fond — and he kissed you again with the full and undivided attention of a man who had just been given permission to stop pretending he wanted anything else.
The lacing gave way beneath his hands with gratifying speed.
Maekar worked with focused single-mindedness, fingers steady now where they had mildly trembled earlier, the fabric loosening incrementally as the fastenings came undone. You sat on the edge of the workbench and let him, your hands resting against his chest, feeling the heat radiating through the linen still covering him and the rapid thumping of his heart beneath it.
The gown loosened around your torso.
Maekar’s hands moved to your shoulders, sliding beneath the fabric to push it downward, and then his patience — which had already survived considerably more than it was built for tonight — ran completely out.
The sound of tearing fabric split the quiet armoury like a small thunderclap.
Maekar went absolutely still.
You bit the inside of your cheek against the laugh trying to escape you.
A beat of silence.
“I—” he began.
“Don’t,” you said.
“The seam—”
“Maekar.”
He looked at you. The expression on his face was genuinely extraordinary — caught somewhere between mortification and the barely contained urgency of a man who had not actually stopped wanting what he had been reaching for, the two things warring openly across his features in the torchlight.
“I will have it mended,” he said roughly.
“I am sure you will,” you agreed pleasantly.
His eyes narrowed slightly at your tone. Then the fabric shifted and his gaze dropped and every coherent thought visibly left his head at once.
You were bare beneath it.
Completely. Deliberately. The torn gown pooled at your waist, the torchlight warm and gold across your skin, and there was absolutely no question that this had not been accidental.
Maekar stared. The silence stretched long enough to become something else entirely.
“You,” he said. His voice had dropped to something low and rough and barely functional. “You planned this.”
“I have absolutely no idea what you mean,” you said serenely.
His eyes dragged slowly back up to your face with an expression that suggested he was reconsidering everything he thought he knew about you and finding the revision both alarming and catastrophic in equal measure.
“You came here tonight,” he said slowly, “without—”
“Maekar.”
“Deliberately.”
“The armoury can get quite warm,” you offered.
Something shifted in his expression then. The mortification burned away entirely, replaced by something darker and more focused, and the look he gave you was nothing like anything you had seen from him before. Not the prickly severity. Not the careful blankness. Something that had been living underneath all of that for months, patient and hungry and entirely done waiting.
“You,” he said quietly, “are going to be the absolute death of me.”
Then his hands were on you.
No hesitation this time. None. Large and warm and completely certain, sliding up from your waist and cupping your breasts with a directness that dragged a sharp breath from your throat. His thumbs moved and your head fell back immediately, a sound escaping you that echoed faintly off the stone walls.
Maekar made a low rough noise in response.
“Gods,” he breathed. The word came out reverent and wrecked at once, his eyes moving over you in the torchlight with an intensity that felt almost tangible. His hands moved with growing urgency, learning the weight and warmth of you, and you could feel in every touch the months of restraint finally broken loose — not gentle, not careful, just present and consuming and entirely focused on you.
His head bent.
His mouth found the curve of your breast and your fingers flew immediately into his hair, loosening whatever order remained in it and sending pale silver-threaded strands falling forward as he pressed an open mouthed kiss against your skin.
The groan that left you was embarrassingly immediate.
Maekar responded to it like a man receiving confirmation of something he had suspected and filed carefully away — his mouth moving with sudden purposefulness, tongue warm against your nipple while his hands held you steady against him.
Your grip tightened in his hair.
He groaned against your skin and the vibration of it shot straight through you.
“There,” he murmured roughly against your breast, the word low and satisfied in a way that was entirely new from him. Like he had discovered a language he had not known he spoke. “I want to hear that again.”
You gave him exactly what he asked for.
His mouth moved across your chest with growing confidence, learning what made you gasp and returning to it with focused intent, his large hands spanning your ribs and holding you exactly where he wanted you with an ease that made you feel impossibly, wonderfully small against him.
At some point his mouth travelled upward again, kissing the curve of your throat, the line of your jaw, finding your mouth with sudden renewed urgency while his hands remained occupied and his thumbs moved in ways that made coherent thought genuinely difficult.
You broke the kiss with a rough breath. His forehead dropped against yours, both of you breathing unevenly in the warm torchlit dark.
“The dress,” you managed. “You owe me a dress.”
A sound escaped him. Short and low and startled — that real unguarded laugh again, the one you had been collecting like something rare.
“Add it to my debts,” he said roughly against your mouth.
“Your debts are mounting, my prince.”
His right index and thumb pinched the sensible mount of your breast and stole whatever you had been planning to say next directly from your throat.
“Then,” he murmured, low and certain and devastating, “allow me to begin repaying them.”
Your hands found the hem of his linen shirt. Maekar pulled back slightly at the contact, just enough to look down at your hands, then back up at your face. Something flickered briefly in his expression — that old reflex, the instinct to stop this before it became something he did not know how to carry.
You held his gaze and pulled the shirt upward.
He let you. Lifted his arms without being asked, a concession so simple and so enormous from him that something ached sweetly in your chest at the sight of it. The linen cleared his head and you dropped it somewhere behind him without ceremony.
Then you looked at him and forgot, momentarily, what you had been about to say.
The torchlight caught him gold and shadow — broad shoulders, the hard planes of a chest dusted with pale hair, the evidence of years of training written into every line of him. A scar crossed his left side, old and long-healed, another at his shoulder. Marks accumulated quietly over years, worn without comment, without complaint.
Your hands rose before thought intervened.
You pressed your palms flat against his chest the way you had through the fabric earlier, except now there was nothing between your skin and his and the warmth of him nearly stole your breath.
Maekar went very still beneath your hands. You felt his heartbeat. Rapid and entirely beyond his control, hammering against your palm with a candour the rest of him would never willingly allow.
“You are—” He stopped. Something worked in his jaw. “You should not look at me like that.”
You dragged your gaze up to his face. “Like what?”
“Like—” The words seemed to cost him. “Like you find something worth looking at.”
The ache behind your ribs sharpened immediately into something almost painful.
“Maekar.” Your hands slid slowly upward across his chest, feeling the warmth of him, the solid reality of all that restrained strength beneath your palms. “I have found something worth looking at since the first time you glared at me on a battlement.”
His throat moved.
“That was not—” He stopped again.
“You are breathtaking,” you said quietly, a faint smile accompanying your words.
Something shifted in his face. The vulnerability flickering through before the familiar impulse to suppress it could fully engage. Your fingers traced slowly across his shoulder, following the line of the old scar there with deliberate gentleness. Maekar’s breath caught.
“Does it bother you?” you asked softly. “When I touch them?”
A long pause.
“No,” he said roughly. Then, quieter, “That is the problem.”
Your heart turned completely over. You leaned forward and pressed your lips against the scar at his shoulder. Felt the sharp intake of breath above you, felt the hands at your waist tighten convulsively.
Then you kissed across his collarbone. His chest. The old, healed line at his ribs, your lips warm and unhurried against each mark while Maekar stood and endured it with the expression of a man being quietly and thoroughly dismantled and lacking any remaining means of defence.
“You are doing it again,” he said. Strained.
“What?”
“Being—” A rough exhale. “Kind. About things that do not require kindness.”
You looked up at him from where your lips rested against his ribs. “They require it from me.”
The flush that climbed his face was immediate and violent, spreading beneath his beard and straight to the tips of his ears. He looked furious about it in the way he always did when caught feeling something he had not prepared for.
You rose back up at the workbench’s edge and kissed the line of his jaw, his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth.
His hands slid up your bare back, warm and spanning and pulling you closer against the heat of his chest, your skin against his now with nothing between you and the contact stole a soft sound from you both simultaneously.
Maekar pressed his mouth against your temple.
“You are going to ruin me,” he said quietly. Not an accusation. Something far more honest than that.
Your arms wound around his neck.
“I think I already did,” you murmured against his jaw. Then you found his throat again — the place you had bitten before, still faintly marked — and pressed your tongue there deliberately.
The sound that left him resonated through his entire chest as his arms tightened around you completely.
“Again,” he said. Low and immediate and entirely without shame this time. The commanding quality back in full force, the vulnerability of a moment ago folded back underneath it — except now you knew it was there, now you had seen it, and no amount of authority in his voice could fully conceal it from you anymore.
You smiled against his throat and obliged.
His hands had been moving through your hair, your mouth still warm against his throat, when you leaned back from him and slid slowly, deliberately, from the edge of the workbench.
You felt the exact moment he realised what you intended when he looked down and saw how your knees met the stone floor.
The expression that crossed his face was unlike anything you had ever seen from him. Not the flush of embarrassment. Not the guarded severity. Something rawer than open shock, moving through every feature while his hands remained suspended where they had been, hovering uselessly in the air where your hair had been a moment ago.
“What are you—” His voice came out entirely wrong. Rough and halting and stripped of every trace of the commanding certainty of moments ago. “You do not have to—”
“I know,” you said simply.
Your fingers found the laces of his trousers.
“I want to,” you added, and looked up at him while you said it, held those violet eyes deliberately while your fingers worked the fastenings loose, and watched the words land somewhere so deep inside him that his jaw tightened against whatever sound tried to escape.
“You—” He stopped. Tried again. Failed again.
The laces gave way.
Maekar inhaled sharply through his nose, a sound so controlled it betrayed exactly how much effort the control was costing him. His hands had found your shoulders now — not pushing, not guiding, simply resting there as though he needed something to hold onto and you were the only solid thing available.
You freed him slowly.
The rough sound that left him at that alone nearly undid you entirely.
He was already hard — he must have been for some time, you suspected, given the considerable evidence — and warm and heavy and when you wrapped your hand around him and simply held for a moment, looking up at his face, the expression you found there stopped your breath completely.
Wrecked did not cover it.
Maekar looked like a man who had been struck. Colour high beneath his beard, eyes dark and blown wide, chest heaving with the effort of breathing evenly. His hands on your shoulders had tightened to something that might leave marks and you found you did not mind that even slightly.
But beneath all of that — beneath the hunger and the shock and the barely contained urgency —
Something bewildered. Something terribly, painfully young. Like he was genuinely unable to comprehend that you were here, on your knees, looking up at him like this. Like the image of it did not fit inside any version of himself he had ever been allowed to imagine.
“You do not—” he tried again, jaw working. “I am not—”
“Maekar.” Your thumb moved over the tip of his cock and his entire sentence dissolved instantly. “Let me.”
A shaking breath left him.
You held his gaze one moment longer. Making sure he saw it — the intention in your eyes, the complete and utter absence of reluctance, the certainty that this was chosen and deliberate and wanted.
Then you leaned forward and took him into your mouth.
The sound he made was immediate and violent and nothing like anything that had left him all evening. His head fell back against the shelving behind him with a dull impact he seemed entirely unaware of, a rough broken noise tearing free from his chest as his hands flew from your shoulders into your hair — not gripping, not guiding, just holding, fingers tangled and shaking against your scalp like he needed the contact to confirm this was real.
You took your time. Deliberately. Thoroughly. The way you had kissed his scars earlier — with a focused attention that communicated unmistakably that this was not obligation, not performance. That you were here because you wanted to be here, on these cold stone floors, with this impossible prickly furious man coming completely apart above you.
“Gods—” The word came out shattered. “Gods—”
His hips shifted forward fractionally, involuntary, immediately arrested as though he had caught himself. Still trying to restrain even now. Still terrified of taking too much.
You took him deeper in direct response.
“Seven hells—” The curse left him in a rough exhale, every muscle in the hand tangled in your hair tensing simultaneously. “You— I cannot— gods, you have to—”
He did not finish the sentence. Could not, apparently. You looked up at him through your lashes and that was what finished it.
Meeting his eyes from where you knelt — watching the full devastating wreckage of his composure written openly across his face, the flush and the parted lips and the shaking jaw and the violet eyes looking down at you with an expression that contained hunger and wonder and something so much larger than either that it had no clean name—
Maekar made a sound that came from somewhere entirely beyond dignity.
“Please,” he said roughly. Barely audible. The word seemingly startling him as much as you, like it had escaped without permission — Prince Maekar Targaryen, the sword of the family, the prickly unmovable fourth son, pleading to the ceiling of an armoury with his hands shaking in your hair.
Something triumphant and tender and desperately fond moved through you simultaneously.
You gave him everything.
He lasted considerably less time than his pride would probably prefer, which you found entirely endearing. The hands in your hair tightened with sudden urgency, a rough warning that was also half a question, and you answered it by staying exactly where you were and he broke apart above you with your name leaving his mouth like something torn free from the centre of him.
Not gods. Not a curse. Not a prayer. Your name. Just your name, rough and wrecked and reverent all at once.
The silence that followed was enormous.
Maekar stood against the shelving breathing like he had run a considerable distance, chest heaving, one hand still tangled loosely in your hair and the other against the wall, almost as if he needed it to keep balance. You rose slowly from the floor, brushing stone dust from your knees with the composure of someone who had absolutely planned all of this, and looked up to find him staring at you.
The expression on his face nearly made your heart stop.
Not the satisfied blankness you might have expected. Not even the lingering hunger. Something bewildered and open and completely undefended, sitting raw across every feature in the torchlight. Like what had just happened had rearranged something fundamental inside him and he was still taking inventory of the damage.
His mouth opened. Closed.
“You,” he said finally. His voice was completely destroyed. “You are—” He stopped. Seemed to genuinely lose the words.
His hans moved to your face, slowly, cupping your jaw with fingers that still trembled slightly. His thumb traced once beneath your cheekbone.
“I did not know,” he said quietly, “that someone would—” He stopped again. Jaw tight. “That I could—”
“You can,” you said softly.
His eyes closed briefly. You rose onto your toes and kissed the corner of his mouth. Maekar exhaled shakily against your cheek.
Then his hands found your waist with renewed purpose and he walked you backward toward the workbench again. The look in his eyes when he pulled back to find yours was nothing like the bewildered wreckage of a moment ago.
Certain. Focused. Warm beneath the hunger in a way that was entirely new from him.
“Your turn,” he said quietly.
He lifted you back onto the workbench like you weighed nothing.
The ease of it still sent heat rushing through you — the casual certainty of those large hands spanning your waist, the complete absence of effort, the way he stepped immediately between your knees and looked at you in the torchlight with that focused unhurried attention that had migrated from training yards and council disputes and settled here, on you, with its full undivided weight.
“Maekar—”
“No,” he said. Quiet and absolute. “You had your turn.”
“You said that already.”
“And I meant it both times.”
His hands found the fabric pooled at your waist — the ruins of your gown, the torn seam still hanging where his impatience had destroyed it — and pushed it further down your hips with steady purposeful fingers. You lifted slightly to allow it and the fabric fell away entirely, leaving you in nothing but the torchlight and his gaze.
Maekar looked at you.
Slowly. Completely. With the focused thoroughness he gave everything — as though you were something that deserved to be properly examined before anything else could proceed.
The flush climbed your own face this time.
“You seem to be gaping, my prince,” you said conceitedly.
"Perhaps," he said lowering his mouth again to your sternum and upwards. "Or perhaps I am simply wondering how you manage to be so insufferably, distractingly beautiful," he murmured against your lips and closed the distance again.
His kisses were slower than before. Deeper. With the particular quality of a man who has just had something enormous confirmed and is no longer in any hurry to pretend otherwise. His hands moved across your bare skin with a thoroughness that suggested he intended to learn every inch of you and considered this a reasonable allocation of his evening.
His mouth left yours and travelled downward yet again.
Your throat. Your collarbone. The curve of your breast where he had been earlier, returning with renewed focus, and the sound you made when his mouth found your nipple again was immediate and entirely undignified.
Maekar made a low satisfied noise against your skin.
“There,” he murmured. The word vibrated warm against you. “I have been thinking about that sound.”
“You—” Coherence was becoming genuinely difficult. “You have?”
There was no response to your question, him being entirely focused on savouring your breasts to a point where you thought he would devour them entirely,
“Maekar—” you pressed whining.
“Mm.” Not really listening. Occupied.
His hands slid down your sides, your waist, the curve of your hips, with an attentiveness that made your skin feel oversensitive everywhere he had not touched yet. He took his time. Deliberately. Like he was paying something back with interest and intended to be thorough about it.
His mouth followed the same path downward, pressing open kisses across your stomach while you sat on the edge of the workbench and tried to remember how breathing worked.
When he lowered himself to his knees in front of you the sound that escaped you was involuntary and immediate.
Maekar looked up.
The sight of him there — this enormous severe prickly man, on his knees, violet eyes finding yours from below with an expression of complete and utter focus — nearly stopped your heart entirely.
“Consider it returned,” he said quietly.
Then he pulled your thighs over his shoulders and lowered his head to tour core, and every coherent thought you possessed simply ceased to exist.
He was not tentative. Not uncertain. Maekar approached this the way he approached everything — with complete commitment and zero interest in half measures — and the wet, filthy sounds filling the quiet armoury within moments were yours and entirely beyond your control.
His hands held your hips with firm certainty, keeping you exactly where he wanted you with an ease that made you feel helplessly, wonderfully at his mercy. His mouth and tongue moved with focused intent, learning what made your breath catch and returning to it immediately, cataloguing every reaction with the same attentiveness he gave a training yard or a tactical problem.
“Gods—” Your hands flew into his hair, fingers tangling in the pale silver-threaded strands. “Maekar—”
He made a sound against you that vibrated through your entire body. Your grip tightened. He did not seem to mind even slightly.
“Look at me,” he said against your inner thigh, pulling back just enough to speak. His voice had dropped to something rough and low that resonated somewhere in the base of your spine. “I want—” A brief pause. Something working in his jaw. “I want to see you.”
You looked down and found his eyes already waiting.
He held your gaze and resumed and the combination of it — those violet eyes watching your face with naked focused intensity while his mouth worked with devastating thoroughness — unravelled the last remnants of your composure completely.
The tension coiled so tight it became almost unbearable.
“Maekar—” His name came out broken. “Please—”
Something moved in his eyes at that.
He pressed closer, arms wrapping around your middle and pulling you against his mouth with sudden decisive urgency, and the tension snapped apart all at once. You came with his name on your lips and your hands fisted in his hair and your entire body shaking with it, and Maekar held you through every tremor with steady certain hands like he had always been built for exactly this.
Like he had been built for you specifically and simply not known it yet.
The silence afterward was soft and golden and full of your uneven breathing. Maekar rose slowly from his knees.
He stood before you in the torchlight, flushed and thoroughly dishevelled, pale hair falling loose around his face, and looked at you with an expression so open and unguarded that it nearly made your eyes sting.
Not the bewilderment of earlier. Something that had moved past bewilderment into something quieter and more settled. Like a man who has just understood something he had been refusing to look at directly for a very long time.
You reached for him.
He came without hesitation — no flinching, no deflection — and let you pull him in until his forehead rested against yours and his hands settled at your waist and the warmth of him surrounded you entirely.
“Still think,” you murmured softly, “that you are not built for this?”
A long pause.
“No,” he said roughly. The word came out almost wondering. Like the answer had surprised him.
Your hands found his face. Thumbs tracing the line of his now wetted beard, the scars beneath it, the high flush still colouring his cheekbones. He closed his eyes briefly the way he always did when you touched him there.
“Good,” you whispered.
His hands tightened at your waist.
“We are not finished,” he said. Lower now. The commanding quality returning beneath the softness, threading through it rather than replacing it.
Heat rushed through you immediately.
“I thought so,” you agreed.
He pulled back to look at you, something certain and hungry and devastatingly focused sitting in those violet eyes. He had you on your back against the workbench before you had fully processed the movement.
One moment upright, the next flat against the worn wood with Maekar’s hands braced on either side of your head and the full commanding weight of his attention pinning you as effectively as anything physical could have managed.
The torchlight caught him from above — flushed, breathing hard, pale hair falling forward around his face, every trace of the prickly guarded prince burned away entirely — and gods, the sight of him like this did something catastrophic to your ability to think clearly.
His forehead dropped briefly against yours.
“I want—” He stopped. Something working visibly in his jaw. “I need you to tell me.” His voice came out rough and strained and carefully controlled. “If I—”
“Maekar.”
“I am not—” Another stop. The flush deepening. “I do not want to hurt you.”
The vulnerability beneath the urgency hit somewhere directly behind your sternum. You reached up and took his face in both hands.
“You will not hurt me,” you said clearly.
“You do not know that.” His eyes searched yours with an intensity that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with that bedrock quality of him — the thing that made him reposition himself between danger and others without thinking, that made him remember injuries, that made him protect fiercely everything he considered his. “I am—” A rough exhale. “It has been some time. And I—” He stopped completely. The flush had reached his ears. “I do not do things gently when I—”
“Good,” you said. He blinked. “I do not want gentle,” you said. Plainly. Clearly. Holding his gaze so he could see every word landing true. “I want you. All of it.” Your thumb traced his jaw and felt the muscle jump beneath it. “Do you understand what I am telling you?”
Maekar stared at you.
“You are—” The words seemed to fail him entirely.
“I am certain,” you said. “I am telling you I want it rough. I am telling you I have been waiting weeks for this and I am done waiting.” A beat. “I am also telling you that I am considerably less fragile than you seem determined to believe.”
Something shifted in his expression so completely it was almost visible as a physical thing — the last protective restraint dissolving, replaced by something dark and focused and entirely done being reasonable.
“You are certain,” he repeated. Not a question this time.
“Maekar.” You held his gaze. “I came here tonight practically naked.”
A sound escaped him that was almost a laugh and almost something else entirely. Then his mouth found yours and whatever he had been about to say disappeared completely.
He kissed you with the full pent up force of weeks of deliberate distance, of every turned back and every carefully engineered absence and every moment he had spent convincing himself he was not allowed — and you felt every single day of it in the urgency behind it, in the hands sliding beneath your thighs and repositioning you against the edge of the workbench with sudden decisive purpose.
He settled between your thighs and you felt him — all of him — and the sharp breath that left you was immediate and involuntary.
Maekar stilled.
“Still—”
“Yes,” you said firmly.
His jaw tightened. His hands gripped your hips. And he pushed forward slowly, carefully despite everything, a concession to that bedrock protectiveness that apparently even weeks of pent up wanting could not fully override—
The sound you both made simultaneously when his cock went smoothly into your dripping cunt echoed off the stone walls.
“Gods,” he breathed. Barely audible. The word stripped of everything except pure involuntary honesty. His forehead dropped to your chest, both hands gripping your hips hard enough to anchor you both to reality, every muscle in his body held in rigid check while he gave you a moment to adjust.
You felt— full. Completely. Wonderfully overwhelmingly full, the stretch of him settling into something that sat on the precise edge between too much and exactly right.
“Maekar.” You wrapped your legs around him. “Move.”
Something in him simply let go.
He drew back and thrust forward and the workbench scraped against the stone floor with the force of it and you cried out into the quiet armoury with absolutely zero remaining concern for who might hear.
Maekar groaned low against your throat.
“Again,” you managed.
He obliged.
And again. And again. The careful deliberateness of moments ago burning away entirely as the rhythm built — deep and certain and relentless. The workbench protested steadily beneath you while his hands held your hips exactly where he wanted them with a grip that would leave the memory of his fingers on your skin for days and you found you wanted that. Wanted the evidence of it. Wanted to carry it back to Queen Myriah’s chambers tomorrow like a secret pressed beneath your skin.
Maekar was not quiet about it.
That surprised you — this man who guarded every reaction, who suppressed every sound, who had spent a lifetime performing composure — coming apart above you with rough broken noises pressed against your throat that he seemed entirely beyond managing. Low and urgent and devastatingly real, dragged free by every movement, every sound you made in response, every time your hands gripped the back of his neck and pulled him closer.
Like he had been holding all of it for so long that now the dam had broken there was simply nothing left to hold with.
“You feel—” His voice came out wrecked and wondering against your jaw. “Gods, you feel—”
“Don’t stop,” you breathed.
A rough sound. “I could not.” Said with complete and utter certainty. “I physically could not.”
Your back arched off the workbench.
His hand slid beneath it immediately — that same instinct, even now, even like this — supporting you, keeping you from the hard edge of the wood while the other gripped your hip and his rhythm deepened into something that stole rational thought entirely.
“Look at me,” he said roughly.
You found his eyes.
Violet and dark and completely unguarded, holding yours with an intensity that had nowhere left to hide — every wall down, every practiced blankness burned away, just Maekar looking at you like you were the only solid thing in the room and he was holding on accordingly.
The expression on his face finished you.
Not the hunger, though that was there, overwhelming and undeniable. But underneath it — wonder. Still wonder. Even now. Like he still could not entirely believe this was real and had decided to look at you directly until it became impossible to doubt.
“I see you,” you whispered. His rhythm faltered for one broken moment.
Then his mouth found yours and he kissed you with everything he had left and the hand at your hip tightened, the workbench scraped and you stopped thinking in words entirely.
The tension had been coiling for weeks — through every turned back and every engineered absence and every moment of deliberate distance — and when it finally broke it broke completely, your whole body arching against him while his name tore free from your throat in a way that would absolutely echo and you found you did not care even slightly.
Maekar followed you over the edge moments later, his cock throbbing inside you and filling you up so deliciously.
Your name again. Just your name, the same as before — rough and broken and said like it was the only word he had ever been certain of.
The silence afterward was vast and golden and full of ragged breathing.
He did not move immediately. Simply rested his forehead against yours, both hands gentling from their grip to something that was almost cradling, chest heaving against yours while the torchlight flickered its slow indifferent commentary across the walls.
You lay on a workbench in an armoury with a discarded torn dress and a thoroughly dishevelled prince and the distant sounds of the castle carrying on entirely without you.
“Maekar,” you said eventually. Soft, nails gently caressing his scalp.
“Mm.” Not fully returned yet.
“The workbench survived.” A long pause.
Then that laugh. Low and startled and utterly real, resonating through his chest and into yours where you were still pressed together.
“Barely,” he said.
You smiled into his shoulder. "Think this thing is sturdy enough for a second assault?"
His laugh deepened against your throat where his face had finally landed. His arms tightened around you once — brief, fierce, communicating something he did not yet have words for — before he pulled back enough to look at your face with that new expression. The one that had moved past bewilderment into something quieter and more permanent.
“You are—” He stopped. Looked almost frustrated by his own inability to finish the sentence.
“I know,” you said gently.
He looked at you for a long moment.
“No,” he said quietly. “You do not.” His thumb traced once across your cheekbone. “But I find myself— wanting to explain it to you.” A pause in which he seemed to surprise himself. “Eventually.”
Your heart turned completely over.
“I am not going anywhere,” you said.
Something settled in his face at that. Deep and slow like a foundation finding solid ground.
“No,” he agreed. “You certainly are not.”
The next morning, you had managed the dress. Barely.
The torn seam had required creative pinning in places that would not have survived close examination, which meant you had changed entirely before dawn and disposed of the evidence with the focused efficiency of someone who had absolutely thought this through.
You had not, however, thought about what your face could tell.
Queen Myriah’s chambers sat warm and bright in the morning light, the fire already built up against the early chill, and her grace herself sat composed and unhurried before her mirror while you worked through the familiar ritual of her morning hair with hands that were almost entirely steady.
Almost.
You had been telling yourself for the better part of an hour that you were perfectly fine. That nothing in your bearing communicated anything unusual. That you were a consummate lady in waiting with complete command of your own expression and the events of last night were entirely invisible on your person.
You were doing very well at believing this.
Until the door opened and Maekar stepped into the room.
He had managed himself considerably better than you — composed, dressed, every trace of last night’s dishevelment erased, only the faintest shadow beneath his eyes suggesting the hour at which he had eventually sought his own chambers. His gaze found you immediately, the way it always did now, and something shifted briefly in his expression before the careful blankness reasserted itself.
Your hands stilled in Myriah’s hair for exactly one betraying second. Heat climbed your face with the subtlety of a siege engine.
You resumed immediately. Smoothly. Professionally.
In the mirror, Queen Myriah’s eyes moved from her son’s face to yours. Then back to her son’s. Then back to yours.
The silence lasted approximately four seconds.
“Maekar,” she said pleasantly. “How unexpected. You rarely visit before council.”
“I had correspondence to discuss.” His voice was admirably even. “If you have a moment.”
“Of course.” Myriah’s eyes returned to her own reflection, her expression settling into something that was almost serenity and was in fact the most dangerous thing you had ever seen on a human face. “Though you look tired, my son. Did you sleep poorly?”
A beat.
“I slept adequately.”
“Mm.” Her grace examined her reflection with great interest. “And you—” this to you, in the same pleasant tone— “you look rather flushed this morning. Are you well, my child?”
“Perfectly well, your grace,” you said. With tremendous composure. “The fire is just warm.”
“It is, isn’t it.” A pause. “Maekar, does she not look remarkably well this morning?”
The silence that followed was catastrophic.
You did not look up from her hair. You focused on it with the complete and total dedication of someone whose life depended on a particular arrangement of pins.
“She looks—” Maekar stopped. Cleared his throat. “Fine.”
“Fine,” Myriah repeated thoughtfully.
You could feel her smiling in the mirror without looking at it. The specific quality of it radiating outward like heat from a particularly self-satisfied fire.
“Your correspondence,” you said to her reflection. Firmly. “Shall I fetch it after I have finished your hair, your grace?”
“There is no hurry.” Her grace was the picture of morning leisure. “Maekar, sit. You are making the room feel crowded standing in the doorway like a man who wishes to be somewhere else.”
He sat. With the expression of someone accepting a siege they know they cannot win.
You finished the final pin with hands that were absolutely trying not to shake.
“There,” you said. “Your grace.”
Myriah examined her reflection. Turned her head slightly left. Then right. The gesture of a woman entirely satisfied with her hair and entirely unconcerned with that being the subject under discussion.
Then she looked at you directly in the mirror.
“You may take a moment as well,” she said pleasantly. “You have been standing since dawn.”
“I am perfectly—”
“It was not a suggestion, my dear girl.”
So you sat.
The three of you existed in the warm morning quiet of the solar for one extraordinary moment — Queen Myriah composed and radiant, you studying the middle distance with tremendous focus, and Maekar to your left apparently finding the grain of the table deeply fascinating.
“Well,” said Myriah eventually. In the tone of a woman setting down a winning hand at cards. “This is very pleasant, is it not?.”
Maekar’s ears went red. You became very interested in your own hands.
Her grace looked between you both with the expression of a woman who had navigated the politics of two great houses, raised four sons, and survived the court of King Daeron with her dignity entirely intact — a woman, in short, who had seen absolutely everything and could not currently be less surprised by any of it.
The smile she was not quite suppressing was the most Dornish thing you had ever witnessed.
“I always did think,” she said lightly, returning to her own reflection and touching one pin with a satisfied air, “that the armoury at dusk was terribly romantic.”
The silence that followed had texture.
“Mother—” Maekar began.
“The correspondence can wait,” said Myriah serenely, already rising from her seat and making for the door. “Enjoy your morning, children.”
I just had to make Maekar's version more reader-domineering, I could not resist myself. So, what are your thoughts on this one??
germansingergirl
dailybridgerton
jbbartram-illu
titsay
baratheonpilled
vaporwave
