A woman blinded by vengeance! That's what we usually get, but not this time. Our ice princess is on her way to becoming an icy Empress. Half the time it's hard to tell if her potential Emperor even loves her. His violent shows of favor could be mostly politics, because she is his perfect bride. If so that's alright. Love will never be her main goal.
Medea fell madly in love...with the second prince. She gave him everything. Land. Her army. Her holy magical philosopher stone treasure. The use of her royal seal. Two healthy children. All of her money. She became an assassin. A hunter. A woman beyond peer. All for the man she loved and her children.
Alas, it was never enough. Her beloved second prince would have never become Emperor without her, but he gets rid of her anyways. Her devotion and perfection infringed on his little ego, and he's actually been waiting for a chance to be rid of her....and his two children. For years.
Her love cost her everything while he took every benefit, and here is the result.
An Emperor with the power to throw her away.
Time turns back because our princess was a fool. Beloved by her brother. Given an unlimited party budget during wartime. Her cousin happily invited her out to plays while the veterans were starving and turning into rebels. She had no idea. Everyone hated her except her beloved family...and her new fiance. That's why she gave him everything. She thought she was some unwanted black sheep. Totally unaware of the fact that her uncle and cousin had destroyed her reputation on purpose.
The holy stone gives her one last chance.
It's nice to see this story delve deep into what being an "innocent princess" really means. It means you're a bad negotiator. It means you're easy to take advantage of. Your precious innocence can cost people their lives. Medea's brother is definitely at fault for sheltering her in her first life, but he was afraid with good intentions. Their parents get assassinated in both timelines. Being a good king sucks almost as hard as being an innocent princess. It's good that the new version of Medea is very motivated. Side characters like her nanny's daughter straight up no longer matter to her. She stops letting people take advantage of her because it's the REAL right thing to do. Sucking up to her friends, family and fiance got her nowhere in life.
Her spoiled old pal doesn't see the blade coming.
Instead, Medea prioritizes her allies. She embraces life as a politician during wartime. No one ever respected her in her previous life, but now she has all the training and insider information needed to succeed. She saves her knight first and foremost. She was so depressed and useless before that.....well her loyal protectors died to sheild their useless innocent princess.
She won't let that happen again.
Medea then wins her grandmother's favor back, but their familial closeness never returns. Uncle tricked grandmother into believing that princess Medea is a lush, stupid, irresponsible princess. All by simply pinning all the party and shopping bills under her name. In the end Medea receives an unbreakable steel fan weapon from grandmother, and the woman is clearly wrecked by guilt, but its not enough.
Medea accepts grandmother as another ally, but they barely speak.
The real prince and the second prince. It was a miracle that Medea's loser ex won anything last time. It was all her doing. She thought her man was so great, but she was so blind. Her ex-husband was never a match for the First Prince.
He only won the throne because a petrification curse froze the competition, and he tricked an excellent wife into slaving away for him.
Medea often feels...numb. Overwhelmed by the loss of children that were never real. The loss of her own childhood, and the guilt that comes with accidentally starving thousands of war veterans. She can see the other royals of the realm as they are now. Opulent scum who don't know their true role. Which is to die and fight on the battlefield for the glory of their citizens. In this setting most royal children learn magic or aura sword skills. Medea was a spoiled exception. She is disgusted by how snooty the other royals act, because she knows exactly what happens to pretty princesses that don't serve the people.
She proves that she means it. That her body and soul belongs to a real princess. She duels with another snotty princess. Not for her own glory, but for war supplies. Her army is in need. Her nation is small. Her brother is away on the war front as he should be. Feeding the troops is of much higher priority than anything.
Yes...even her revenge and her life.
This direction muddies the water a bit. I didn't think all of the royal families were war dogs, but that seems to be the case.
Does the cursed first prince destroy for her sake? Out of interest in her, or because of their shared values? I'm not sure, but the flag of the enemy army is no normal engagement gift. Dueling to the death for your honor isn't either.
Maybe this isn't quite yandere, but a violent kind of political love that I just don't understand. Every day is a battle for these characters, stuffed with drama, and just reading it made me tired.
Summary: A noble lady from a disgraced house that supported Blackfyres is married off to Lord Bloodraven as a reward for his loyalty and prowess in battle. But he prefers to occupy his time with duties as the Hand of the King. Comfortable but lonely, she befriends one of his ravens. Part 1 here, part 2 here.Warnings: arranged marriage, yearning, angst, fluff, childbirth, blood, Westeros politics.
The ravens were behaving oddly. You noticed them before Brynden did, which was unusual, given that Brynden noticed everything. But you were the one who spent your mornings in the gardens now, walking the gravel paths with a hand resting on the swell of your belly, and you were the one who saw them gathering in the trees. At first it was only a few, Pebble and his usual companions from the Tower rookery. Then it was a dozen. Then two dozen. Then so many that the branches bent under their weight, and the garden rang with their hoarse, chattering cries.
"They are watching me," you told Brynden one evening, settling into the chair beside his desk. "The ravens in the garden. Every time I walk there, they turn their heads and watch. It is a little unsettling."
Brynden looked up from his parchment. His single eye swept over you, then drifted toward the window, where the evening sky was thick with wheeling black shapes.
"They are my ravens," he said, as though that explained everything.
"Yes, I know they are your ravens. But they are not behaving like your ravens. They are behaving like…" You searched for the word. "Like courtiers waiting for an audience."
He set down his quill. "Come here."
You rose and crossed to him, and he took your hand and drew you down onto his lap. It was a familiar position now, one you had grown to love: his arms around you, his chest solid against your back, his chin resting on your shoulder. His hand came to rest on your belly, a gesture that had become natural to him.
"They are curious," he said. "They can sense the child. My child. It calls to them."
"Your child is the size of a pie. How can a pie call to ravens?"
He was quiet for a moment. "I do not fully understand it myself," he admitted. "But the old gods are in my blood. The blood of the First Men, the blood of the greenseers. It passes from parent to child. And while the child grows within you, some of that blood…touches you. Just a little. Enough for the ravens to notice."
You turned your head to look at him. "You mean I am becoming like you?"
"No." His hand tightened on your belly. "You are carrying something like me. There is a difference. But the ravens do not make fine distinctions. They know what they feel, and they are drawn to it."
You considered this. The thought of sharing even a fraction of your husband's strange gifts was not entirely unwelcome. You had watched him work his magic, if magic it was, and the fear you had once felt had long since given way to something closer to wonder. If your child was to share his nature, you would love that child no less for it.
"Ravens better not start leaving droppings on my new gown," you said.
He laughed, that rusty, still-rare sound that never failed to warm you. "I shall have words with them."
The dreams began a fortnight later.
At first, they were ordinary. The strange, disjointed dreams of pregnancy that the septas and the older ladies of the court had warned you about. You dreamed of falling, of drowning, of losing the baby in a dozen different ways. You woke gasping and tearful, and Brynden was always there, hand on your brow, his voice low and steady in the darkness.
"It is only a dream," he would say. "The baby is safe. You are safe. I am here."
You would burrow against him and let his heartbeat lull you back to sleep, and by morning the nightmare would be nothing but a fading wisp.
But then the dreams began to change.
You dreamed you were flying. Not as yourself, but as something with wings that caught the wind and eyes that saw the world in different colors. You soared over the Red Keep, over the city, over the bay, and you saw ships with crimson sails and men in golden cloaks and a woman weeping on a balcony. The dream was so vivid that when you woke, you could still feel the wind in your feathers, the ache in your wings, the strange, sharp hunger in your belly.
"The ships," you murmured, still half-asleep. "The ships from Lys. They are bringing silks. And the woman...she has a bruise on her wrist. Her husband gave it to her. She is going to poison him."
Beside you, Brynden froze.
"What did you say?" His voice was carefully neutral, the voice he used when interrogating a suspected traitor.
You blinked, the dream already fading. "I…I don't know. Ships? There was a woman…" You yawned, the exhaustion of pregnancy pulling you back down. "I think I was dreaming about flying. It was rather nice, actually."
You fell asleep again before you could see the expression on his face.
The next morning, you found him standing at the window, his back to you, three ravens perched on the sill before him. He was speaking to them in low tones, and they were answering in soft croaks. When he heard you stir, he dismissed them with a flick of his wrist and came to sit on the edge of the bed.
"How do you feel?" he asked.
"Well enough." You stretched, your hand drifting to your belly. The baby was kicking: tiny flutters, like the wings of a moth. "The babe is active this morning. Here, feel."
You took his hand and pressed it to the spot. He waited, patient as ever, until a small thump greeted his palm. His expression softened.
"Strong," he said.
"Stubborn, more like. Just like his father."
"Or her father."
You smiled. "Or her father."
He was quiet for a moment, his thumb tracing circles on your belly. Then he said, without looking up: "The ships from Lys arrived this morning. They are carrying silks, as you predicted. And the woman on the balcony, Lady Staunton. She has a bruise on her wrist. Her husband gave it to her. The servants found poison in her chambers last night. She was planning to kill him."
You stared at him. "What?"
"You told me. Last night, in your sleep. You spoke of ships with crimson sails and a woman weeping on a balcony." His eye lifted to yours. "I saw those things through a raven's eyes three days ago. I did not tell you. There was no way for you to know."
The room felt very cold suddenly. You pulled the blankets up around your shoulders. "That is not possible."
"I would have said the same, once." He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. "You are seeing through my ravens. Or rather, the child is. The connection I spoke of, it is stronger than I realized. The old blood is waking in you, channeled through our son or daughter. You are dreaming my dreams."
"Am I becoming a sorcerer?" Your voice came out smaller than you intended.
"No. You are carrying one." His hand cupped your cheek. "I am sorry. I did not expect this. I did not know it would affect you so directly."
You sat with the knowledge for a moment, turning it over in your mind.
"Is it dangerous?" you asked. "For the babe?"
"I do not believe so. The magic is in the blood. It is not a sickness. It is simply…more active than I anticipated."
"Then I do not mind." You leaned into his touch. "It is only dreams. And they are not nightmares, not really. Flying was beautiful."
Brynden's expression was unreadable. "You are not frightened?"
"A few strange dreams will not send me running."
His eye closed for a moment, and when it opened again, there was a brightness in it that might have been relief. "You are remarkable."
"I am pregnant and tired and my feet hurt. But I am also, apparently, a little bit magic. I shall add it to my list of accomplishments."
"I will watch over you," he kissed you. "More closely than before. If the dreams trouble you, if anything feels wrong, you must tell me immediately."
"I will."
"And the ravens, if they become too much, I will keep them away."
"Let them come." You settled back against the pillows. "They are only curious. I do not mind the company when you are away."
The ravens always followed you now. They lined the branches like black leaves, watching you with their bright, knowing eyes, and you spoke to them as you once had spoken only to Pebble.
"You are all Pebbles now," you told them. "I cannot possibly name you all. You shall have to share."
One of the ravens croaked. It sounded almost amused.
Pebble had taken to perching on the arm of your chair, keeping watch over you with a vigilance that belied his lazy nature. You were fairly certain Brynden had given him orders. When you asked, Brynden only said, "He is your raven. He does as he pleases."
You laughed, then winced as the baby kicked hard against your ribs. "Your child is trying to break my bones."
"Our child." He knelt before your chair and pressed both hands to your belly. The baby kicked again, and his lips curved into that small smile he reserved for moments like this. "Restless. Eager to be born."
"Like his father. Always wanting to know things before anyone else."
"I have already seen her."
You blinked. "What?"
"I have seen her," he repeated. "A glimpse, in the godswood, when you were sitting under the oak tree. The future is…unclear. But I saw a child with silver hair and your smile. A girl."
Your heart squeezed. "A girl?"
"I could be wrong. The visions are not always reliable." But his voice was thick. "But I think we shall have a daughter, my love."
You covered his hands with yours. "Alysanne?" You had discussed names. Alysanne was a name that had been given to a Targaryen, Blackwood and Reach ladies alike.
"Yes." He looked up at you, and his eye was wet. "Alysanne."
The pains began in the ninth month, three weeks before the maester had predicted.
You had been in the godswood, as had become your custom, sitting beneath the old oak with your hands folded over the great swell of your belly. The ravens were there, of course. Pebble was on your knee, dozing, his round breast rising and falling.
The first pain came like a fist closing around your spine.
You gasped. Pebble startled, flapping his wings in alarm, and the ravens in the branches above set up a sudden, raucous cawing that echoed through the godswood like a storm of angry voices. The pain faded, and you pressed a hand to your belly, your heart hammering.
"It is too early," you whispered. "It is too early."
The second pain came ten minutes later, as you were struggling to your feet. It was sharper this time, a tearing sensation that made you cry out and clutch the trunk of the oak for support. The ravens erupted into the sky, a black cloud of wings and screaming. Pebble was shrieking. Somewhere in the distance you heard footsteps running.
"My lady!" It was one of the gardeners, a boy of perhaps four and ten, his face white with terror. "My lady, are you...should I fetch the maester?"
"The babe," you gasped. "The babe is coming. It is too early..."
The third pain took your legs out from under you.
Brynden was in a meeting of the small council when the ravens came.
He told you later how it happened. The window of the council chamber had suddenly filled with black wings, the birds had battered themselves against the glass with a frenzy that made Lord Tyrell knock over his chair and the Grand Maester drop his papers. He had felt them through the bond that connected him to every raven in his network, a surge of animal panic.
He did not wait for the king's dismissal. He ran.
By the time he reached the godswood, you were on the ground, surrounded by a ring of servants and guards, your face twisted with pain. The gardener's boy had found a septa, the septa had sent for the maester, someone had brought blankets, someone else was crying, and the ravens were still circling overhead in a great black wheel, their cries drowning out every other sound.
"Move, you blithering..." Brynden started, panicked, but the crowd parted before him like water before he could finish. He knelt at your side, his hands found yours. His face was tight with a fear you had never seen in him before.
"I am here," he said. "I am here. You are going to be fine."
"It is too early," you sobbed. "Brynden, it is too early, the babe..."
"The child is strong." His voice was steady, but his hands were trembling. "You are strong. I will not let anything happen to you. To either of you." He looked up at the servants, his single eye blazing. "Where is the maester?"
"Coming, my lord," someone stammered. "He is coming."
"Then someone run faster."
A guardsman sprinted toward the maester's tower. Brynden turned back to you, his hand came up to cup your cheek, his thumb wiping away the tears that were streaming down your face.
"I cannot do this," you whispered. "It is too early. What if something is wrong? What if..."
"Do not." His voice was fierce. "Do not go there. Stay here. With me. Look at me. We are going to get through this. You are going to bring our child into the world, and I am going to be here, and the maester is going to do his job, and everything is going to be fine. Do you understand me?"
You nodded, though the next contraction was already building, a wave of pressure and pain that made your vision swim.
The maester arrived, red-faced and breathless, his chain clanking. "We must get her inside," he said. "The birthing chamber..."
"Then carry her," Brynden snapped. "Carefully."
It was the Grand Maester himself who organized the litter, who directed the servants, who spoke to you in calm, measured tones about breathing and pushing and time. But it was Brynden who lifted you onto the litter himself. He refused to leave the birthing chamber, even when the septas clucked their tongues and the maester suggested, gently, that the Hand of the King might be more comfortable waiting outside.
"No," he said, and there was no arguing with that voice. "I am staying."
The labor was long and hard. You lost track of time. There was only the pain, coming in waves.
Brynden's did not leave your side. He did not flinch at the blood or the screams or the chaos of the birthing chamber. He held your hand and murmured to you in a voice so low that only you could hear, a stream of words that wove together love and reassurance and the occasional threat of violence against anyone who did not do their job properly.
"If the maester drops his instrument one more time," he said at one point, his voice perfectly conversational, "I will have him reassigned to the Night's Watch."
A startled laugh burst out of you, cut short by another contraction. "You cannot send the Grand Maester to the Wall."
"I am the Hand of the King. I can do whatever I want."
Hours passed. The sun sank below the windows and rose again, and still the baby did not come. The maester's face grew grave, and the septas exchanged worried glances, and you were so tired, so terribly tired, your body wrung out like a rag.
"I cannot," you gasped, after what felt like an eternity. "I cannot do this anymore. Please. Please."
Brynden leaned close, his forehead pressing against yours. "Yes, you can," he said. "You are the bravest person I have ever known. You walked into this court alone, into a marriage with a man you had every reason to fear, and you made a life here. You made a home here. You made me love you." His voice cracked. "You can do this. One more time. For me. For our daughter. One more push. I am here. I am not leaving."
You pushed.
"A girl," the maester announced after a few more excruciating minutes. "A healthy girl."
You collapsed against the pillows, body shaking, vision blurred with tears and exhaustion. You heard a thin cry.
The septas bustled around you, cleaning and swaddling, their voices a distant murmur. Brynden was there, he was holding something small and white-wrapped, and his face...You had never seen his face like that.
He looked young. Younger than you had ever seen him, the lines of worry and weariness smoothed away, his eye bright with a joy so pure it made your heart clench. His hands, those long, pale, clever hands, cradled the tiny bundle with a reverence that belonged in a sept.
"She has your eyes," his voice was hoarse, broken, wonderful. "She has your eyes and my hair. She is absolutely perfect."
"Let me see her," you whispered. "Please. Let me hold her."
He brought her to you, settling the bundle into your waiting arms with infinite care. And there she was, your daughter, Alysanne, small and squalling, with a tuft of silver-white hair on her tiny head.
"Hello," you breathed. "Hello, my love. My little one. My Alysanne."
Alysanne was a hungry, loud baby, who seemed to have inherited her father's distaste for sleep. She nursed eagerly and often, and when she was not nursing, she was wailing, and when she was not wailing, she was watching the world with those uncanny eyes that seemed to see more than any infant's eyes should see.
But she was healthy. The maester pronounced her strong and well-formed, with no signs of the frailty that sometimes plagued early babes. "She is small," he admitted, "but she has a fighter's spirit. She will grow quickly."
You were too tired to do much more than nod and smile and fall asleep at odd hours, the babe cradled against your chest. The septas and the wet nurses hovered, offering to take Alysanne so you could rest, but you could not bear to let her go. You had waited so long for her. You had dreamed of her and carried her and labored to bring her into the world. You were not about to hand her off to strangers now.
Brynden, for his part, had become utterly insufferable.
It started the day after the birth, when you tried to sit up in bed and he appeared at your elbow as if conjured by magic, which, you supposed, he might well have been.
"What are you doing?" he demanded.
"I am sitting up."
"You should not be sitting up. The maester said you need to rest."
"The maester said I need to recover. Recovery involves moving occasionally."
He hovered, his hands outstretched as though he expected you to collapse at any moment. "Let me help you."
"Brynden, I am sitting up in bed. It is not a complex maneuver."
"Nevertheless."
You sighed and let him arrange the pillows behind your back, his long fingers tucking and adjusting with the meticulous care he usually reserved for intelligence reports. When he was satisfied, he stepped back and surveyed his work with a critical eye.
"There," he said. "Is that comfortable? Do you need more pillows? A blanket? Some water? Are you hungry? The kitchens have prepared a broth..."
"Brynden."
"..and there is bread, fresh bread, and cheese, the maester said you should eat to regain your strength..."
"Brynden."
He stopped, his mouth still half-open.
"I am fine," you said, as gently as you could. "I am tired, and I am sore, but I am fine. You do not need to fuss."
"I am not fussing." He paused. "I am attending to my wife's needs."
"You sent a servant to fetch the maester because I sneezed."
"Sneezing can indicate a number of underlying conditions. It is important to be vigilant."
"You threatened to have the cook executed because the broth was too salty."
"It was inedible. I merely suggested that he might benefit from a change of career. Possibly in a location with a colder climate and fewer cooking implements."
You stared at him. He stared back, his single eye wide and earnest. He had not slept, you could see the shadows beneath his eye, the slight tremor in his hands. He had been awake for three days straight, by your count, attending to you and the baby and the affairs of the realm with the manic energy of a man who had decided that sleep was for people with fewer responsibilities.
"Come here," you said.
He came, and you caught his hand and pulled him down to sit on the edge of the bed.
"You are exhausted," you said.
"I am perfectly fine."
"You are not. You have been running yourself ragged taking care of me and the babe and the entire Seven Kingdoms, and you have not slept since before I went into labor."
"The realm does not pause for..."
"The realm can wait." You squeezed his hand. "Your wife and your daughter need you alive and healthy. You cannot pour from an empty cup."
He was silent for a moment. Then, slowly, he sagged, the tension draining from his shoulders. "I was afraid," he admitted. "When the ravens came, when I found you in the godswood...I was afraid I was going to lose you. Both of you. And I could not..." He stopped, his jaw tightening. "I could not bear it."
"You did not lose us." You lifted his hand to your lips and kissed his knuckles. "We are here. We are safe. And we need you to rest."
"Perhaps," he said, "I could lie down. Just for a little while."
"Just for a little while," you agreed.
He removed his boots and his doublet and climbed into the bed beside you, moving with the careful deliberation of a man who was trying very hard not to jostle anything. When he was settled, he reached out and pulled you gently against his side, your head coming to rest on his shoulder.
"This is nice," he murmured.
"It is."
"I should do this more often."
"You should."
His arm tightened around you, his breathing began to slow. "I love you," he murmured, the words slurring slightly. "I love Alysanne. I love…" He yawned. "I even love that wretched raven of yours."
"Pebble is your raven."
"He was my raven. Now he is a nursemaid. He watches the cradle. Did you notice?"
You had. Pebble had barely left the cradle since Alysanne had been placed in it. He perched on the rail, his head cocked, his black eyes fixed on the baby.
"She has already charmed him," you said.
"She charms everyone." His voice was fading, sleep pulling him under. "Like her mother."
You smiled and pressed a kiss to his cheek.
He did not answer. He was already gone, his face slack with exhaustion, his arm still wrapped protectively around you.
The wet nurses had taken Alysanne for the night.
It was a practice that had become routine in the weeks since her birth, though you still felt a pang of guilt every time they carried her away. The maester had recommended it: your body was still recovering from the early labor, and the interrupted sleep was wearing on you more than you wanted to admit. Alysanne was a hungry baby, demanding and vocal, she woke every two hours with the relentless regularity of a water clock. The wet nurses could feed her through the night while you rested.
"You need your strength," Brynden had insisted. "The wet nurses are here for a reason. Use them."
So you had relented, and now, two months into your daughter's life, the night feedings had become a ritual. The maids would come at the hour of the bat, lifting Alysanne from her cradle, and Brynden would pull you back against his chest and murmur sleepily into your hair until you relaxed.
It worked, mostly. You slept more deeply than you had since before the birth. But your body had not yet adjusted to the new rhythm, and your breasts still filled with milk at the hours when Alysanne would normally feed, heavy and aching and sometimes leaking despite the cloths you tucked into your nightgown.
Tonight was one of those nights.
You were dreaming. You stirred in your sleep, turning onto your side, and the movement pressed your heavy breast against the mattress. A warm wetness spread through the linen of your nightgown.
Beside you, Brynden stirred.
He was a light sleeper at the best of times, a lifetime of vigilance had made sure of that, and the early days of fatherhood had sharpened his senses. The slightest sound from the cradle could pull him from sleep, his hand reaching for the dagger he kept on the nightstand.
But this was not a sound. This was a sensation. Wetness, seeping through the sheets, warm against him where your body pressed against his.
His eye snapped open.
In the darkness of the bedchamber, his mind, still fogged with sleep, still caught in the grip of whatever dreams a greenseer dreamed, registered only one thing. Something wet. His first memory was of the battle of the Redgrass field, his mind flashing back to grass painted red with sticky blood. Then he sensed something leaking from his wife's body. His wife, who had labored early and nearly died, who had bled and screamed and clutched his hand with a grip like iron. His wife, who was lying still and silent beside him, and there was wetness spreading between them, and...
Blood. His mind supplied the word with cold, absolute certainty. It's blood. She's bleeding. She's...
He sat up so fast the blankets tangled around his legs. His hands found your shoulders, he turned you onto your back, his heart hammering against his ribs, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps.
"Brynden..." Your voice was thick with sleep, confused, your hands coming up to push weakly at his. "What...what is it..."
"Where are you hurt?" His voice was urgent, his hands already moving over your body. He pushed aside the blankets, ran his palms down your arms, your torso, your legs, searching for the wound, the source of the wetness. "Tell me where you are hurt."
"I am not hurt..."
"There is wetness." He was babbling now, his usual composure shattered. "I felt it. You're bleeding. I can feel it."
"Brynden." You caught his wrists, stilling his frantic examination. "Brynden, stop. Look at me."
He looked at you. In the dim light of the dying fire, his face was a mask of barely controlled terror. His red eye was wild, the pupil blown wide.
"I am not hurt," you assured. "It is not blood."
"Then what..."
You released one of his wrists and guided his hand to your chest, pressing his palm against the damp fabric of your nightgown. "Milk," you said. "It is only milk. Alysanne did not feed tonight, and I am…full. It happens sometimes. It is perfectly normal."
He stared at you. Then at his hand, which was cupping the curve of your breast, the wetness seeping through his fingers. Then back at you.
"Milk," he repeated.
"Milk," you confirmed.
The tension drained out of him so suddenly that he slumped, his forehead dropping to your shoulder, his breath leaving him in a shuddering exhale. "I thought you were bleeding. I thought...Gods, I thought I had lost you. I felt the wetness and I thought..."
"I know." You lifted your hand and stroked his hair, the silver strands slipping through your fingers like silk. "I know what you thought. But I am fine. I am not going anywhere."
He was silent, his face pressed against your shoulder, his hand still resting on your breast. When he spoke again, his voice was muffled and miserable.
"I am a fool."
"You are a husband."
"A fool of a husband."
"A husband who loves his wife." You pressed a kiss to the top of his head. "There is no shame in that."
"I woke you."
"You did. Rather rudely, I might add. You grabbed me like a sack of grain."
"I am sorry."
"You will make it up to me." You shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position, and winced as the movement sent another small gush of milk soaking into your nightgown. "Oh, for the love of..I am going to have to get up and change. The sheets will need changing too. I should probably pump, or the maids will have a mess to deal with in the morning..."
"Wait."
You paused, halfway to sitting up. Brynden was looking at you with an expression you could not quite read, curiosity, you thought, but hesitant.
"You do not need to get up," he said.
"Brynden, I am leaking all over the bed."
"The wet nurses will not come until morning. And you are tired." His hand, still resting on your breast, moved in a slow, almost unconscious circle. "I have heard that milk…that it is sweet."
You felt heat rise to your cheeks. "You have heard?"
"I hear many things." His voice was regaining some of its usual dry composure. "I am the Master of Whisperers. It is my business to know things."
"And the Master of Whisperers has made a study of breast milk?"
"The Master of Whisperers is curious." He paused, the hesitation was back. "And you are in discomfort. I do not want you to get up. I thought perhaps I could…help."
The silence stretched between you. Brynden was asking, with the awkward hesitancy of a boy asking for his first kiss, if he could taste your milk.
"All right," you said softly.
He blinked. "All right?"
"All right. If you want to."
"I do not want to make you uncomfortable..."
"Brynden." You cupped his cheek, the marked one, the one he had spent so many years believing made him monstrous. "You are my husband. You have seen me through childbirth, nightmares and ravens roosting in my hair. I think we are past the point of being uncomfortable with each other."
The last of the tension left his shoulders. He lowered his head to your chest.
His lips were cool against your skin, a familiar sensation after years of marriage. He hesitated for just a moment, as though giving you one last chance to change your mind, then his mouth closed around you.
The sensation was strange at first, not unpleasant, but different from the eager, demanding pull of Alysanne's tiny mouth. Brynden was tentative, as though he were afraid of hurting you. His eye closed.
Then the milk let down, and he made a small sound in the back of his throat, surprise, maybe, or satisfaction.
"It is sweet and warm," he murmured, the words vibrating against your skin.
"I told you."
He lowered his head again, this time with more confidence. His mouth worked gently, drawing the milk from you in slow, rhythmic pulls, you felt the ache in your breast begin to ease.
When he finally pulled back, his lips were wet and his expression was drowsy and peaceful.
"Better?" he asked.
"Better," you confirmed. The pressure was gone, and the wetness had stopped. "Thank you."
"Mm." He settled against you, his head coming to rest on your chest, his arm draped across your waist. He dozed off quicker than Alyssane.
Pebble was upset.
Alysanne was four months old now, a plump and solemn baby who had recently discovered the joy of grabbing things. Specifically, she had discovered the joy of grabbing Pebble's tail feathers and yanking them with the surprising strength of an infant who had inherited her father's stubbornness. Pebble, for his part, bore this treatment with the long-suffering patience of a creature who had been spoiled rotten for years and knew, on some fundamental level, that he deserved this.
But even the most patient of ravens had limits.
You were in the nursery, rocking Alysanne in your arms while she gummed at a silver rattle, a gift from her father, who had commissioned it from a smith and had it engraved with tiny ravens in flight. Pebble was perched on the windowsill, his feathers ruffled, his black eyes fixed on the baby with an expression that could only be described as wounded dignity.
"She pulled out three feathers," you told him. "Three. That is hardly any feathers at all. You have hundreds."
Pebble made a sound that was distinctly indignant.
"You are being dramatic."
Another indignant caw, this one accompanied by a pointed turn of his head.
"Pebble. Look at me."
He refused. He stared resolutely out the window, his round body silhouetted against the pale morning sky. You sighed and shifted Alysanne to your other hip. The baby had abandoned her rattle and was now reaching toward the raven with both hands, making the grabby motion that Pebble had learned to dread.
"Fine," you said. "Go. Do whatever it is ravens do. But be back before sundown, do you hear me? I do not want to have to send Brynden after you."
Pebble turned his head just enough to give you a look that said, clear as words: you would not dare.
"I would dare. I have dared before. Ask your master."
The raven let out a croak, spread his wings, and launched himself from the windowsill. You watched him go, a black shape against the blue sky, wheeling once over the Tower before disappearing into the maze of rooftops and chimneys.
"Your brother is very dramatic," you told Alysanne. "I hope you do not learn that from him."
Alysanne responded by grabbing a fistful of your hair and yanking.
"Ow. You have inherited enough from your father already, thank you."
Pebble did not return by sundown.
You noticed his absence at dusk, when you went to close the nursery windows against the evening chill. The perch by the window was empty. The little dish of shredded meat that you always left for him was untouched. The sky outside was a deepening purple, the first stars pricking through the velvet darkness, and there was no sign of a fat black raven winging his way home.
A small knot of anxiety tightened in your chest.
"He is probably hunting," you said aloud, to no one in particular. Alysanne was already asleep in her cradle. "Or he found a particularly interesting bit of rubbish to investigate. You know how he is about rubbish."
You went to bed, telling yourself that Pebble would be back by morning. He always came back. He had been your companion for years now, your confidant and your comfort, the first friend you had made in this cold stone Tower. He would not abandon you. He would not.
You did not sleep well.
Morning came. Pebble did not.
You stood at the window in your nightgown, your hands pressed against the cold glass, scanning the sky for any sign of a returning raven. The sun rose over Blackwater Bay, painting the water in shades of gold and rose, and the other ravens began to stir on their perches in the Tower rookery. But none of them were Pebble. None of them were your raven.
The knot in your chest became panic.
He was domesticated. That was the problem. Years of sleeping on silk sheets and eating from your fingers had softened him. He was plump and slow and accustomed to having his meals delivered to him on a silver platter. What if a hawk had caught him? What if he had flown into a window and broken his wing? What if he had gotten lost, confused by the winding streets of King's Landing, unable to find his way back to the Tower?
What if he was hurt? What if he was dying? What if he was already dead, and you would never see him again, and the last thing you had said to him was that he was being dramatic?
By the time the maids arrived to take Alysanne for her morning feeding, you were in a state of barely contained distress. Every few minutes, you went to the window and looked out, hoping to see a familiar black shape flying toward you.
Nothing.
At midday, you went to find your husband.
Brynden was in his solar, bent over a stack of parchments with a quill in his hand. The ravens on their perches stirred as you entered, cocking their heads at you with their bright, knowing eyes. Brynden looked up, and the moment he saw your face, he set down his quill.
"What is wrong?"
"Pebble is missing."
He blinked. "Missing?"
"He flew away yesterday morning, and he has not come back. He always comes back. He has never been gone this long." The words came out in a rush, tumbling over each other. "I am worried about him. He cannot survive in the wild. What if a hawk got him? What if he is hurt? What if..."
Brynden rose from his chair and crossed to you, his hands closing around your upper arms. "Breathe," he said. "You are spiraling."
"I am not spiraling. I am concerned."
The corner of his mouth twitched, but his eye was serious. "Pebble is a raven. He was bred for long-distance flight. He is capable of surviving outside for more than a day."
"But he is not a normal raven. He is domesticated. You said so yourself. You said I made him into a lap-raven."
"I may have been…exaggerating."
"You said he was spherical."
"That was also an exaggeration." He paused. "A slight exaggeration. He is merely…robust."
You pulled away from him and began to pace, your skirts swirling around your ankles. "Can you find him? You can see through the eyes of your ravens. Can you look through their eyes and find Pebble? Can you tell him to come home?"
Brynden watched you pace, his expression unreadable. "I could," he said slowly. "But it would require me to divert my attention from several rather pressing matters of state. Lord Greyjoy is making noises about reaving again, and there is a trade dispute in the Vale that requires my..."
"Please." You stopped pacing and turned to face him, and you felt the sting of tears in your eyes. "Please, Brynden. I know it is foolish. I know he is just a raven. But he is my raven. I love him. I cannot bear the thought of something happening to him. Please."
"Come here," he said.
You went to him, he pulled you into his arms. "I will find him. I will look through the eyes of the flock and locate your errant raven. But you must promise me something in return."
"What?"
"You must stop tormenting yourself with worst-case scenarios. Pebble is a grown raven. He has survived this long despite your best efforts to turn him into a feathered housecat. He will be fine."
"You do not know that."
"I know that he is too stubborn to die. He learned it from you."
You let out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob. "That was almost sweet."
"I am capable of sweetness. Occasionally." He pressed a kiss to the top of your head. "Now sit. I will do my work, you will wait here. I will tell you the moment I find him."
You sat in the chair by the fire, the same chair you had sat in during the early days of your marriage, when you had been too shy to speak and he had been too preoccupied to notice you. It felt like a lifetime ago. Now, you watched your husband close his eye and reach out with his mind, his consciousness spreading through the network of ravens.
The minutes stretched. The fire crackled. You twisted your hands in your lap and tried not to think about hawks, about broken wings, about small black bodies lying still in dark alleys.
Then Brynden opened his eye.
"He is in Flea Bottom," he said.
"Flea Bottom? What in seven hells is he doing in Flea Bottom?"
"It appears he has made friends with a baker. A baker who gives him day-old pastries." Brynden's mouth pressed into a thin line. "He is sitting on the baker's windowsill, eating pumpkin filling, and he appears to be...singing."
"Singing? Ravens do not sing."
"They can mimick sounds. The baker has taught him a tune. It is obscene."
A laugh bubbled up in your throat, startling and slightly hysterical. The tears that had been threatening spilled over, but they were tears of relief now, not fear. "He is not dead."
"He is emphatically not dead. He is, in fact, having the time of his life."
"Can you make him come home?"
Brynden was quiet for a moment, his eye distant. "I have sent a command. He is...ignoring it." A pause. "He has just finished the pumpkin pastry and is now begging for another. The baker is obliging him."
"He is ignoring a direct command from the Hand of the King?"
"It appears that your influence has made him immune to authority." Brynden's voice was dry, but his expression was fond. "He has become a creature of pure appetite. He goes where the food is and he does not care about the consequences. He will come back when the pastries run out or when he remembers that he has a warm perch and a woman who loves him. Whichever comes first."
"You are certain?"
"I am certain. In the meantime, you are going to eat. You missed breakfast, and I suspect you missed supper last night as well."
"How did you..."
"I have my ways." He helped you to your feet and guided you toward the door. "The kitchens have prepared a lamb stew. You will eat it, then you will rest, and by the time you wake, your raven will be back on his perch, fatter than ever and smelling of Flea Bottom."
You let him lead you, too drained to argue. "You are very good at this."
"At what?"
"Taking care of me."
He paused at the door, his hand on the frame. "It is my privilege," he said quietly. "And my penance."
"Penance?"
"For the time I did not." He did not look at you as he said it.
You reached up and touched his cheek, turning his face toward you. "You have more than made up for it."
"I am still making up for it." He leaned down and pressed his lips to your forehead. "Now come. Lamb stew. Rest. Then tonight, when your raven has returned and you have stopped fretting, I intend to have you to myself for a few hours."
"Have me to yourself?"
"The wet nurses have Alysanne for the night. The small council is not meeting until tomorrow. There are no pressing crises requiring my attention." His eye met yours, there was a glint in it that made your stomach flutter. "I intend to take full advantage of the situation."
You felt heat rise to your cheeks. "I see. Then I shall eat quickly."
He smiled. "See that you do."
Pebble returned at dusk, just as Brynden had predicted.
You were sitting in the solar, finishing the last of the lamb stew, when you heard the familiar scratch of claws on the windowsill. You looked up to see a black shape squeezing through the narrow opening, a rather tighter fit than it used to be, you noted with a mixture of exasperation and affection. Pebble tumbled onto the perch with a graceless flop, his feathers ruffled, his beak smeared with pumpkin paste.
"There you are," you rose from your chair. "You wretched, ungrateful, insolent bird."
Pebble cocked his head at you and let out a croak that sounded distinctly unrepentant.
"Do you have any idea how worried I was? I thought a hawk had eaten you. I thought you had broken your wing. I made Brynden search for you with his magic."
Pebble preened his breast feathers, utterly unimpressed by your scolding.
"You smell like a bakery. You have jam on your face. You are..." You broke off, your voice catching. "You are home."
You crossed to the perch and scooped him up, holding him against your chest. He was warm and slightly sticky.
"Do not do that again," you whispered into his feathers. "Do not disappear like that. I cannot lose you too."
You had not meant to say that last part. It had slipped out, unbidden, a truth you had not quite acknowledged to yourself. You had lost so much already: your home, your family's honor, the life you had expected to lead. Pebble had been your constant through all of it, your small, feathered anchor in a world that had been cold, strange and unwelcoming. The thought of losing him, even now, even with Brynden and Alysanne to love, was more than you could bear.
Pebble, for once, did not squirm or complain. He let you hold him, his black eyes half-closed, and when you finally set him back on his perch, he reached out with his beak and gently preened a strand of your hair.
You laughed, a watery sound. "I forgive you. But you are not getting any more cakes for a week."
Pebble's eyes snapped open. He let out an indignant caw.
"A week," you repeated. "Maybe two. We shall see how repentant you are."
From the doorway, a voice spoke. "I would not count on repentance. He looks entirely unashamed."
You turned to see Brynden leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed, his expression wry. He had changed out of his formal doublet and was wearing a simpler black tunic, his silver hair loose around his shoulders.
"He came home."
"I see that." He pushed off the doorframe and crossed to you, his eye flicking to Pebble with an expression of mild exasperation. "You," he told the raven, "have caused my wife considerable distress. I hope the pastries were worth it."
Pebble made a sound that strongly implied they had been.
"I am going to put him on a diet," you said. "A proper diet. No more scraps from the kitchen. No more pastries from bakers in Flea Bottom."
"An excellent idea. I will believe it when I see it." Brynden's hand found the small of your back, his touch warm through the fabric of your gown. "But that is a project for tomorrow. Tonight, as I recall, you have other obligations."
"Obligations?"
"To your husband." He leaned down, his breath against your ear. "Who has been very patient. And Pebble..." He shot a pointed look at the raven. "...is going to stay on his perch and not cause any more trouble."
Pebble tucked his head under his wing with an air of supreme indifference.
Part 4: coming soon...
a/n: I decided to unite two parts so sorry if it's a bit choppy. There will be smut in the next chapter. Please don't let this flop guys, I have an entire series planned out. Comments, reblogs and likes are appreciated! <3
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Maekar wakes up in 205AC, in bed with his wife. Dyanna is confused about why he is sobbing and clutching at her. She finds out that the child she carries leads to her death and all the horrible things to come to the Targaryens before Maekar himself died.
She immediately starts planning on having more help with the birth and surviving, and if she doesn't, then matters need to be handled.
The next day, both are surprised to find three of their children, also remember: Daeron, Daella, and Aemon. Aerion luckily shows no sign of remembering, which makes everyone hope they can curb his more "crazed" beliefs early this time. Aegon also shows no signs of having future knowledge.
Later, they learn that Baelor and Kiera of Tyrosh also remember. Baelor and Maekor spend a long time sequestered while Maekar keeps apologizing in between telling Baelon what happened after his death. Kiera and Daeron are awkward around each other but she is currently pregnant with Valarr's child, so Dyanna decides to also increase her prenatal care as well. Aemon suspects that Brynden Rivers and Shiera Seastar also remember, but neither give any indications, just vague words. Aemon does start researching things that will help but also limits how much he tells the rest, stating he will tell them when it is necessary but doesn't want to influence anything negatively. Brynden starts hinting that Aemon should train to be his successor.
Maekar is surprised to have Ser Arlan of Pennytree at the gates of Summerhall, claiming to have been summoned. Aemon confesses it was he who sent the raven. The family gathers to greet their new arrivals in the great hall. It is then that Aegon bolts towards the squire, screaming, "Dunk, Dunk, Dunk!!!", and to everyone's surprise, the squire shouts back, "Egg!!!!".
one of the more interesting things about the lead up to the first blackfyre rebellion imo is how similar in age the great bastards were with daeron's children. they're recorded as having trained together with baelor and maekar, and i'm very entertained by the thought of them clashing in the yard, especially aegor and maekar who feel tailor made to get on each other's nerves.
i personally imagine daemon and baelor initially being friendly, then things becoming more and more tense as rumours begin to artificially elevate daemon's position over baelor.
The Westerlands and The Reach def have similar styles bc they’re so close to each other and have similar climates. Like with their hair, they love showing off their wealth and opulence, so gowns are made from the finest fabrics and are heavily detailed with embroidery, puffed sleeves, and short bodices
The North is so big that what a person wears definitely influenced by location (near the wall, near the vale, or near the riverlands) but in general, there are a lot of high necked, tight fitting gowns for practicality. Made of thick, heavy fabrics but with wide sleeves and lots of embroidery to make it look pretty!
Dorne is full of colors to offset the beige of the desert. They use a lot of long, loose, airy fabrics so that they can have detailed and intricate outfits but still be covered from the sun and not be overheated. Location determines how covered up they are because of the heat. Detailing is VERY big, especially golden embroidery and lining.
I think in the Stormlands, clothing is more durable than anything else, no wispy fabrics here.They’re fairly similar to the north, with thick and sturdy fabrics, high collars, and long sleeves to keep out the constant rain. However I think they love metal accessories and jewelry on their gowns, and put it everywhere
And the Riverlands have a much more “casual” silhouette than the Reach or the Vale, with a drop waist or a loose dress than only gives you figure when you wear a belt. Low necklines and long sleeves I think, because the weather is not freezing but not Dornish either. I think a lot of soft fabrics too, for those who can afford velvet and such
In YiTi, I think very high, loose waistlines are popular in order to give the illusion of a long and slim figure. Long, big sleeves are definitely in too, the more money you can spend on extra fabric to just throw around the higher status you are. Also colors!! A lot of the richest dyes come from Essos, and they’re a major trade center
The Dothraki definitely wear more layers than just a vest and pants, they need sturdy clothes to protect themselves from the elements and their constant travel. Natural dyes they can find in the Dothraki sea!! There are lots of pockets to hold their tools, and maybe they have bells on their clothes too that they also have to get rid of whenever they cut off their braid.
In the Valyrian tradition, I thinks there’s a mix of both opulence and practicality. Clothes are often sturdy enough for a person to be able to hop on their dragon without having to change. I think that unmarried women wear looser and flowing clothes, while married women will wear thicker, heavily embellished dresses, but both denote their status through rich fabrics and metal detailing
The Ironborn probably aren’t winning any awards for fashion. They’re eternally struggling, and their clothes will always be more about practical use. Sturdy cotton and wools, leather armor, no fancy dyes or extra fabric, etc etc. Things that can handle the battering of wind and water and also be suited for both work and reaving
Braavosi fashion is definitely an offshoot of their former slavers, a melting pot of a bunch of different cultures from around the Freehold. Shorter skirts and pants are very common, so that people can move around the water easier without getting their clothes wet. Fabric tends to be thicker bc of the cooler climate, and Braavosi like to show off their wealth through large metal details and jewelry.
In the Vale, they like to wear dresses made of brocade and damask fabric because of all the intricate detailing (so they can show off). I think fur lining is popular because of the chill, especially in the Eyrie, but they still like to be fashionable and have these V shaped necklines and high waists that make them look slimmer and taller
Qartheen fashion is a quite representation of wealth. There can’t be too many heavy layers, due to the heat. Expensive silks and chiffons lined with gold leaf and such, it’s fairly simple but still clearly very expensive. Obviously they love colors here, and I think blues and purples are most popular, to offset the dryness of the red waste.
The main thing ab the Summer Islands is that there is so much color! Since they love their bright feathered cloaks, I figured the rest of their clothes would be equally as rich in color. The clothing itself is fairly simple and allows air flow for work, but fabric is usually patterned, or people will add beaded jewelry and gold bangles to make it fancier
Pentos is a mix of a bunch of different influences since they’re a port city, but in general I think there’s beaded gowns, thin fabrics, and rich colors. Quality of fabric and brightness of the dyes probably indicate wealth. Thin and long silhouettes are in fashion, so waists are pushed higher and skirts are flat rather than shaped.
In King’s Landing, there’s definitely inspiration taken from both Margaery and Cersei, but obviously there’s bound to be changes. The general shape is less extreme, with lower waists, flatter sleeves, and slightly more modest necklines. However, the rich fabrics and heavy details definitely crossed over from the west
This is the RIVERLANDS we BETRAY OURSELVES FOR NOTHING and DIE in our THOUSANDS NAMELESS and PURPOSELESS and FORGOTTEN BY THE NARRATIVE in the MUD and they will SING NO SONGS OF IT take your sensitive ass back to the reach!!!!!!!
Growing Strong series: Growing Strong Married Life Clandestine Meetings Deep in the Meadow Growing Familiar Dragon Dreams Perzys ānogār Awakening Aegarax In the name of the Father Valyria's Legacy What good is a throne?
Modern AU: The Family Brand Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Headcanons Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 The Wedding
Baby Come Home Part 2
Oneshots: Road Trip White Tee
Ghost AU: The Prince in the Candleflame Part 2 Part 3
Ongoing series: Dragon Dreamer and Greenseer part 2 part 3 Part4 Part 5 Part 6
On the Road to Summerhall
Valarr Targaryen:
Oneshots: A Really Good Friend (Modern AU) A Really Good Boyfriend (Modern AU) Bedtime
Finished series: Dragons Caught in the Storm Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6
Summary: A noble lady from a disgraced house that supported Blackfyres is married off to Lord Bloodraven as a reward for his loyalty and prowess in battle. But he prefers to occupy his time with duties as the Hand of the King. Comfortable but lonely, she befriends one of his ravens.Warnings: arranged marriage, yearning, angst, fluff, Westeros politics, Shiera.
King Daeron's court was full of whispers, and the whispers about the Hand and his lady wife were among the most persistent.
You heard them, of course. You could not help but hear them. The serving girls who thought you out of earshot, the lords who forgot you were standing in the shadow of a pillar, the ladies who smiled at you sweetly with acidic eyes. They spoke of the Oakheart girl who had married the sorcerer, who had been given to the one-eyed bastard as punishment for her family's treachery. They pitied you, mocked you, or marveled at your composure in the face of such a grotesque match.
What they did not know, what they could not see from their distant tables and their whispered huddles, was that you were quite happy.
It was an odd thing to admit, even to yourself. Brynden Rivers was not a man who inspired joy in the hearts of maidens. He was strange and secretive, pale as a corpse, with his missing eye and his wine-stain birthmark and his unsettling habit of knowing things he should not know. He did not dance, did not laugh loudly, did not shower you with the flowery compliments that other lords bestowed on their ladies.
Yet you woke each morning in his bed, your head pillowed on his chest. He rarely slept, you had learned that his strange nature included an ability to go for days with only the briefest snatches of rest, but he would lie still for hours in the darkness, one hand resting on your back, his heartbeat slow and steady beneath your ear. Sometimes you would wake in the small hours and find his single eye open, watching the ceiling. You would murmur his name and feel his hand tighten on your shoulder in wordless acknowledgment.
"Am I keeping you?" you would ask, in the early days.
"No," he would answer every time.
This morning was like the others. You woke to dawn light filtering through the narrow windows of the Tower, to the familiar scent of old parchment and candle wax, to the gentle rise and fall of your husband's chest. His arm was around you, his long fingers splayed against the curve of your waist. His eye was closed, his breathing even. He looked, in these rare moments of counterfeit sleep, almost peaceful.
You propped yourself up on one elbow and studied his face. The birthmark that others whispered about, the blotch of deep red that climbed his neck and pooled on his cheek, no longer seemed odd to you. It was simply part of him, like the silver of his hair or the pale arch of his brow. You traced a finger lightly along its edge. His eye opened.
"Good morrow," you said.
"Good morrow." His voice was rough with disuse. "You are staring."
"I am admiring."
A faint crease appeared between his brows, his version of a puzzled expression. "There is little to admire."
"There is everything to admire." You leaned down and pressed a kiss to his forehead, then to the bridge of his nose, then to the scarred hollow where his missing eye had once been. He held still for this ritual, as he always did, and when you reached his mouth, his hand came up to cup the back of your head and hold you there for a moment longer.
"You are very odd," he said when you pulled back.
"I am your wife. I am allowed to be odd."
"Hm." The sound was almost amused. He released you and sat up, the sheets pooling around his waist. The morning light caught the pale angles of his torso, the lean muscle. "I have something for you."
"You always have something for me."
He rose from the bed and crossed to his desk, where a small wooden box sat beside a stack of parchments. You watched him, the way he moved with that uncanny grace, the way his silver hair fell across his bare shoulders. When he turned back, the box was in his hands.
"For you," he said, placing it on the bed beside you.
You opened it. Inside, nestled on a bed of black velvet, lay a necklace. The chain was white gold, so fine it seemed spun from spider silk, and from it hung a pendant of deep green emerald, carved into the shape of a leaf. Oak leaves. Your house sigil.
"Brynden." Your voice caught in your throat. "This is…where did you find this?"
"A craftsman in Myr. I commissioned it some moons ago. It arrived by ship yesterday."
The emerald caught the light, flashing green fire. You lifted it reverently, and the chain slithered through your fingers like water.
"It is beautiful," you breathed.
"You said once that you missed the Reach. The trees, the green." He was standing awkwardly now, his hands clasped behind his back, his eye fixed on your face with slight anxiety. "I thought perhaps you might like to carry a piece of it with you."
"I love it." You rose from the bed and went to him, the necklace clutched in your fist. "Put it on me please."
He took the chain with careful fingers and fastened it around your neck. The pendant rested against your collarbone, a small green anchor to the home you had left behind.
"There," he said. "It suits you."
You looked down at the emerald leaf, then up at your husband's pale, strange, beloved face. "You give me so many things," you said. "The ruby bracelets, the sapphire hairpins, the pearl drop earrings. The ivory comb from Volantis, the silk shawl from Yi Ti. My jewelry chest is overflowing."
He tilted his head, that familiar birdlike gesture. "Do you not like them?"
"I adore them. Every piece." You reached up and touched his cheek, the smooth skin beside the birthmark. "But you do not need to bring me treasures every week, Brynden. I am not Shiera."
The name hung in the air between you. It was the first time you had spoken it since that night in the solar, the night everything had changed. You watched his face carefully, looking for the flinch, the shadow of old pain. It flickered there for a heartbeat, and then it was gone.
"I know you are not," he said.
"I only mean that I do not require rare jewels to be happy. Shiera collected beautiful things. I…" You hesitated, searching for the right words. "I collect moments."
He was silent for a while, his eye searching your face. Then, slowly, he leaned down. It was a gesture he had developed in the first weeks of your true marriage, when he had noticed how you stretched onto your toes to reach his mouth. So he had taken to bending toward you whenever you were close, a small, unconscious courtesy.
You kissed him. When you pulled back, he looked thoughtful.
"I see," he said.
"I am not ungrateful…"
"You are not." He touched the emerald leaf at your throat. "But I have been foolish. I have been courting you with the wrong currency."
"Brynden…"
"I have a meeting with the Master of Coin this morning." He was already turning toward his wardrobe, reaching for his doublet. "It will be tedious and I will likely have to threaten someone before it is done. But afterward…" He paused, his shirt half-buttoned. "Afterward, I have no obligations. The afternoon is clear."
You blinked at him. "It is?"
"I have ensured it." He finished the buttons. "I thought we might take a walk in the gardens. I have heard there is a new fountain, some ghastly thing from Braavos with mermaids. I would like to hear your opinion on it."
A walk in the gardens. Such an ordinary, unremarkable thing that any husband might do with any wife. Yet your eyes stung with sudden tears, because you understood what he was offering. Time. His time, which was the rarest treasure of all.
"I would like that," you said, and your voice came out steadier than you felt. "Very much."
He nodded, a crisp, businesslike gesture, but you had learned to read him now. The faint relaxation around his mouth, the slight softening of his red eye. He was pleased.
"Good," he said. "I shall send for you when the meeting is done."
He crossed to the door, then stopped, turned, came back to you and leaned down again, pressing a kiss to your forehead.
"Wear the necklace," he said. "It truly does suit you."
True to his word, Brynden sent a servant to fetch you in the early afternoon. You had dressed with care, a gown of pale cream silk, simple in cut but elegant in drape, the emerald necklace displayed against the bare skin of your throat. Your hair you had left loose, the way he seemed to prefer it. When you descended the Tower stairs and found him waiting in the courtyard, his single eye swept over you with an intensity that made your cheeks heat.
"You look lovely," he said.
"You look like you have just threatened the Master of Coin."
The corner of his mouth twitched. "I did. He was most cooperative afterward."
The gardens of the Red Keep were beautiful in the afternoon light, the roses in full bloom, the lemon trees heavy with fruit, the sea breeze carrying the salt-tang of Blackwater Bay. Lords and ladies strolled along the gravel paths, their silks and velvets a shifting tapestry of color. As you walked at Brynden's side, his arm tucked through yours, you felt their eyes on you. The whispers, too, rising like the hum of insects.
"…the Oakheart girl and the sorcerer…"
"…look at his face, gods be good…"
"…she seems happy enough, poor deluded thing…"
You had learned to ignore them. More than ignore them, you had learned to pity them, for they could not see what you saw. They could not know the quiet sweetness of the man beside you, the way he described the Braavosi fountain in a dry, precise deadpan that made you laugh aloud. The way he paused to point out a particularly clever raven perched on a fig tree, explaining how it had been trained to deliver messages. The way his hand tightened on your arm when you stumbled on an uneven stone, steadying you before you could fall.
"That fountain," he said, gesturing to the marble monstrosity ahead, "The mermaids were supposed to spout water from their mouths. As you can see, they are spouting from their…elsewhere."
You clapped a hand over your mouth, but the laugh escaped anyway, bright and startled. The mermaids were indeed spouting water from anatomically dubious locations, their stone faces frozen in expressions of eternal surprise.
"Who commissioned this?" you managed.
"Lord Redwyne, as a gift to the king. I suspect it was revenge for the wine tariffs."
You laughed again, and the sound drew stares from a nearby cluster of ladies. You did not care. You were walking in the gardens with your husband, your arm in his, he was making you laugh, the afternoon sun was warm on your face, and the emerald leaf was a cool weight against your skin.
"Brynden," you said, when your laughter had subsided.
"Yes?"
"Thank you. For this afternoon."
He was quiet for a moment, his eye on the fountain. The mermaids continued to spout water from various unseemly places.
"I have been thinking," he said, "about what you said this morning. About collecting moments. I have realized that I do not know how to be a husband. All of my tools are wrong." He turned to face you. "I gave Shiera jewels because jewels were what she wanted. I gave you jewels because I did not know what else to give."
"You give me plenty," you said, touching the emerald. "I was not complaining."
"But you were teaching me." He took your hand, his cool fingers wrapping around yours. "And I am a quick learner."
He lifted your hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to your knuckles, right there in the middle of the garden path, with half the court looking on. The whispers rose to a crescendo, but you did not hear them. You only heard the beat of your own heart, the soft intake of your husband's breath, the rustle of the wind through the trees.
"Come," he said, releasing your hand but keeping your arm in his. "There is a bench by the sea wall. I am told the view is tolerable."
It was more than tolerable. It was magnificent, the bay spreading out before you in a sheet of hammered gold, the sails of ships glinting in the distance, the sky a pale, washed blue. You sat together on the stone bench, your shoulder brushing his, and watched the waves.
"May I ask you something?" you said after a while.
"You may."
"What do the ravens see? When you look through their eyes?"
He was silent for a moment, and you worried you had overstepped. But then he spoke, his voice low and contemplative.
"It is difficult to describe. It is like…being in two places at once. I am here, with you, but I am also above the city, riding the wind. I see the rooftops and the streets and the people going about their lives. I see ships coming into harbor and carts rumbling along the roads. I see a thousand small moments that no one else notices, all happening at once." He paused. "It is overwhelming, sometimes. It is why I do not sleep well. There is always something to see."
"Does it hurt?"
"No. It is simply…much." His eye found yours. "Does it frighten you? Knowing that I can see through them?"
You considered the question. "It should," you admitted. "But I have grown rather fond of ravens."
"One raven in particular, I suspect."
"Pebble is a good friend."
"Useless creature."
"You could stand to be kinder to Pebble."
Brynden Rivers laughed. It was a small sound, rusty, as though his throat had forgotten how to make it. But it was unmistakably a laugh, and it transformed his face. For a moment he looked young.
"I shall endeavor to be kinder to the raven," he said. "For your sake."
"Thank you."
A raven fluttered past, disappearing into the dusk sky towards rookery. You slipped your arms around his waist, pressing your cheek to his shoulder.
"Bad news?" you asked.
"No. Merely information." He turned in your embrace, his hands settling on your hips. "Lord Butterwell has been buying up land. I will need to look into it."
"Tomorrow."
He blinked. "Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow." You reached up and traced the line of his jaw. "Tonight, you are mine."
His eye softened, the red dimming to something warmer. "Am I?"
"You are." You tugged gently at his collar, pulling him down. He leaned obligingly, bending to your level, and you pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "We are going to have supper. You are going to eat more than three bites. And then we are going to sit by the fire, and you are going to tell me about the most ridiculous thing you have seen through your ravens this week."
"The most ridiculous thing?"
"Surely there must be something. Courtiers are absurd creatures."
He considered this. "Lord Bracken was seen attempting to serenade a milkmaid last Tuesday. He fell into a cow pat."
You laughed, delighted. "There. That is exactly what I mean."
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Very well," he obliged. "Supper. And cows. And…being yours."
"Good." You kissed him again. "Brynden."
"Yes?"
"I am happy."
"So am I," he said, and there was wonder in his voice, as though he had only just realized it was true.
The hour was late, and the Tower of the Hand was silent save for the crackle of the fire in the hearth and the distant cry of gulls over Blackwater Bay. You had retired to your chambers hours ago, leaving Brynden to his endless parchments and his murmured consultations with agents who came and went like shadows. You had grown accustomed to these nights, they no longer stung the way they once had, back in the cold early days of your marriage, when every empty hour had felt like a rejection.
Now, you simply waited. You knew he would come to you eventually.
You were half-drowsing when you heard the door open and close, the soft tread of boots on stone. The mattress dipped as Brynden sat on the edge of the bed, and you heard the familiar sounds of him undressing: the rustle of his doublet, the soft thump of his boots hitting the floor. You kept your eyes closed, a small smile playing at your lips, savoring the anticipation.
He slid under the covers beside you, and his hand found your hip in the darkness. His touch was urgent in a way it rarely was. Usually, he came to bed with a kind of restrained gentleness, as though he were still learning the language of intimacy and wanted to pronounce every word correctly. Tonight, his grip was firmer, his body pressing closer, his voice was rough with a weariness that went beyond the physical.
"I need you," he muttered. "Today was…I need to not think. I need to be here. With you. Only you."
Your heart clenched. You knew his burdens, the weight of a kingdom pressing down on his shoulders, the endless schemes and counter-schemes, the dark whispers that followed him wherever he went. You opened your eyes to tell him that you were here, that you would always be here, that he could lose himself in you as much as he needed…and then you remembered.
"Brynden," you whispered carefully. "Wait."
His hand had been sliding up your thigh. It stopped. "What is wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong. It is only…" You bit your lip. "There is something under the covers."
He went still. You felt the shift in him, the instinctive alertness of a spymaster who had survived a dozen assassination attempts. "Something," he repeated.
"A friend."
"A fr…" He stopped. His eye, adjusted to the darkness, dropped to the lump in the blankets between your bodies. A small lump.
From beneath the covers came a soft, contented squawk.
Brynden reached over and pulled back the blankets with a sharp flick of his wrist. There, sprawled across the soft mound of your stomach, wings spread as though drunken, lay Pebble. The raven's eyes were closed, his beak slightly open, his round belly rising and falling with each tiny breath. One of your hands was still resting on his breast feathers, frozen mid-stroke.
There was a long silence.
"My lady," Brynden said, in the tone of a man who was choosing his words with extreme care, "why is there a raven in our bed?"
"He was lonely."
"Lonely."
"He was tapping at the window. It is cold outside tonight. And you were working so late, and I was alone, and he looked so sad with his little beak pressed against the glass…"
"So you brought him into the bed."
"I put down a towel," you said weakly. "In case of…accidents."
Brynden stared at Pebble. Pebble, perhaps sensing that he was the subject of discussion, opened one bleary black eye, regarded the Hand of the King with casual insolence, and closed it again.
"He is lying on your stomach," Brynden said.
"He likes to be close to me."
"He is lying on your stomach in our bed, where I was about to…" He stopped himself, took a breath, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "My love. You have made my raven into a lapdog."
"He is not a lapdog. He is a raven."
"A lapraven, then. A creature that does not exist in nature. You have invented it." He reached down and scooped Pebble up with one hand. The raven let out an indignant squawk, his wings flapping uselessly. "This bird was bred to carry messages across the Seven Kingdoms. To fly through storms and evade hawks. To serve as my eyes and ears in places no man could reach. And now he sleeps on silk sheets and eats from your fingers."
You sat up, clutching the blankets to your chest. "He still carries messages."
"Once a fortnight. To the kitchens. Begging for scraps."
You tried to look dignified. It was difficult when your hair was mussed and your husband was holding your pet like a naughty child. "I will put him back on his perch," you offered.
Brynden sighed. It was a long, tortured sigh of a man who had spent the day dealing with treasonous lords and bickering councilors and who had come to bed wanting nothing more than to bury himself in his wife's warmth, only to find a plump bird in his place.
"Stay," he said. He crossed to the perch near the window and deposited Pebble onto it with more gentleness than you had expected. The raven ruffled his feathers, gave Brynden a reproachful look, and tucked his head under his wing with the air of a monarch who had been grievously insulted.
Brynden returned to the bed. He did not lie down. Instead, he sat on the edge, his back to you, his silver hair catching the firelight. The scars on his shoulders, old and pale, traced patterns you had memorized with your fingertips.
"I am not angry," he said, without turning around.
"I know."
"I am…concerned."
You crawled across the bed and knelt behind him, wrapping your arms around his chest and pressing your cheek to his back. He was tense, the muscles hard. "Concerned about what?"
"Pebble is not a pet. He was never meant to be a pet. He is a tool that has forgotten its purpose. And you…" He paused, and his hand came up to cover yours where they rested on his chest. "You have made him forget. With your kindness, with your attention, with your need to nurture something."
"Is that wrong?"
"It is not wrong. But it is…misdirected." He turned, shifting so that he faced you, his single eye found yours in the dim light. "A raven cannot love you back. Not truly. It can only take what you give and grow lazy on it. You deserve something that can return your affection."
"Pebble returns my affection."
"Pebble returns to anyone who feeds him. I have seen him beg from the kitchen maids."
You wanted to argue, but the image of Pebble waddling after the scullery girls, croaking pitifully for bacon rinds, was unfortunately vivid. "I like ravens," you said instead, a little defensively. "They remind me of you."
Brynden went still. "They remind you of me."
"Your eyes. Your cleverness. The way you tilt your head when you are thinking." You reached up and touched his cheek. "When you are away, which is often, Pebble is…a piece of you that stays with me. A small, feathery, ill-behaved piece. But a piece regardless."
"Then perhaps," he said slowly, "what you want is not a raven at all."
"What do you mean?"
He took your hand from his cheek and held it in both of his.
"Perhaps what you want is a child."
The word hung in the air between you. A child. Your breath caught, your heart stuttered, and you felt the blood rush to your cheeks.
"I…" you started, and stopped. "I did not mean to suggest…"
"You did not suggest. I am suggesting." His thumb traced circles on the back of your hand. "You have made this Tower warmer than it has ever been. You have filled it with your laughter and your gentleness and your stubborn insistence on loving things that are not easy to love." His eye met yours, and there was something almost vulnerable in its depths. "A child would be lucky to have you as a mother. And I…" He hesitated. "I would be honored to give you one."
Your throat tightened. "Brynden, you do not have to…you said once that you were not a man given to tender feeling. That you were strange and secretive and cold. If you do not want children…"
"I did not say that."
"Then what are you saying?"
He leaned closer, his forehead nearly touching yours. "I am saying that I have spent my life serving the realm. I have given my eye, my youth, my conscience, everything I have, to the Iron Throne. And I would do it again. But there is a part of me that is tired. A part of me that wants something that is not duty." His hand tightened on yours. "Something that is ours."
Your eyes were burning. You blinked rapidly, but a tear escaped anyway, tracing a hot path down your cheek.
"You want a child with me?" you whispered.
"I want a family with you." He said it simply, as though it were a fact he had long since established and was only now reporting. "I want to see you holding our son or daughter in your arms. I want to teach them to read and to shoot a bow and to understand the language of ravens. I want to watch you be the mother I know you will be: patient, kind, fierce when you need to be." He paused, a ghost of a smile crossed his lips. "And I want to stop finding birds in my bed."
A laugh burst out of you, wet and startled. "That is what this is about? You are jealous of Pebble?"
"I am not jealous of a raven."
"You are. You are jealous of a useless raven."
"I am not…" He stopped, his smile widened involuntarily. "Perhaps a little. He sees more of you than I do, some days. And he is always on your stomach."
You laughed again, it the tears spilled over. You threw your arms around his neck and kissed him. He caught you and kissed you back with a fervor.
"You are a ridiculous man," you murmured against his mouth.
"I am a pragmatic man. I see a problem, I propose a solution."
"A child is a solution?"
"A child is many things." He pulled back just enough to look at you, his red eye bright in the firelight. "A legacy. A hope. A piece of us that will outlast all the schemes and wars. A child is the one thing that matters more than the realm." He brushed a strand of hair from your face, his touch gentle. "You asked me once what I wished for. I told you I had wished for foolish things. But this…this is not foolish. This is the wisest thing I have ever wanted."
You kissed him again. His hands slid up your back, pressing you closer, and you felt the tension drain from his shoulders as he let himself sink into you.
"What about Pebble?" you asked breathlessly as his lips traced a path down your throat.
"Pebble," he said between kisses, "can sleep on his perch tonight. And every night hereafter. Our bed is about to become considerably less accommodating to ravens."
"That seems unfair to him."
"I will buy him a larger perch. The finest perch in the Seven Kingdoms." He lifted his head and looked at you, his expression was serious now. "But this is not about the raven. This is about us."
Part 3: coming soon...
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Summary: A noble lady from a disgraced house that supported Blackfyres is married off to Lord Bloodraven as a reward for his loyalty and prowess in battle. But he prefers to occupy his time with duties as the Hand of the King. Comfortable but lonely, she befriends one of his ravens. Warnings: arranged marriage, yearning, angst, fluff, Westeros politics, Shiera.
The raven was a greedy, ungrateful beast, and you loved it dearly.
You had named him Pebble, for no greater reason than the smooth grey of his breast feathers, which reminded you of the stones along the Mander where you had played as a child. He came to your windowsill each morning, croaking his hoarse demands, and you obliged him with crumbs of bread and shreds of cold meat saved from your supper. In return, he permitted you to stroke the ruff of his neck and mutter your foolish secrets into the space between his blinking black eyes. It was a small, pitiful comfort.
The Tower of the Hand was a cold place, despite the braziers that burned in every chamber. You had been given rooms near the top, close enough to the Hand’s own solar that you might, in theory, encounter your husband on the winding stair. In practice, you saw his servants more often: the silent men in their grey wool cloaks, the Raven’s Teeth who guarded his door with bows strung across their backs. They nodded to you when you passed, respectful but distant, as though you were a ghost they had been instructed not to disturb.
You were a ghost, in a way. A shade drifting through the Red Keep in your pale gowns, your House’s green and gold folded away in chests because wearing them felt like a provocation. Oakheart. The name sat heavy on your tongue these days, a fruit gone bitter on the branch. Your father had played his double game during the rebellion and lost, and you were the price of his redemption, a trueborn daughter gifted to a legitimized bastard, a man who had not wanted you, who had asked for another woman’s hand a thousand times and been refused, and who had accepted you as a lord might accept a parcel of land he had no intention of farming.
You tried not to think of Shiera Seastar. It was impossible.
Her name was everywhere in the Red Keep, whispered by serving girls and sung by minstrels, painted in miniature on ivory pendants that his paramours wore at their throats. The most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms, they called her, and when they said it in your hearing, their eyes would dart to you with something between pity and amusement. See the Oakheart girl, their glances said. See how plain she looks beside the memory of Seastar’s shimmer.
Back in the Reach, you had been called beautiful. You had believed it. Here, you were a candle held up against the sun. Back in the Reach, you were praised as a proper lady, and Shiera was called a shameless whore with nothing more than derision. But King's Landing valued influence, the ability to captivate and draw interest, which Shiera had in abundance.
You did not hate her. Hatred required energy you did not possess. But you feared her. You feared the day she would return to court, trailing silk and scandal behind her, and you would have to stand beside your husband and watch his single eye follow her across the hall. You feared the quiet, courteous dismissal that would surely follow. You had married a man who loved another woman. It was a common enough fate for highborn ladies, you knew, but knowing it did not make your marriage bed any warmer.
You spent your days wandering. The gardens, with their rose trellises and marble fountains, their sharp-scented herbs and imported lemon trees shivering in the sea wind. The library, where you read histories of the Seven Kingdoms until the words blurred before your eyes. The sept, where you knelt before the Maiden and asked for guidance that never came. And the stairway that spiraled up to the Hand’s solar, where you would sometimes sit on the cold stone steps with a book open on your lap, close enough to hear the murmur of voices beyond the iron-banded door, the scratch of a quill, the rustle of parchment. You never knocked. You were too afraid of being turned away.
It was on one of those steps, three moons into your marriage, that Brynden Rivers finally spoke to you about the raven.
You had Pebble on your knee, feeding him strips of roasted capon you had wrapped in a napkin and smuggled from the kitchens. The bird was growing stout, you could see it in the way his breast swelled over his claws, the way he waddled rather than hopped when he moved along the windowsill. You had noticed but you had not cared. You had to keep feeding him so he wouldn't leave you as well.
“What am I doing, Pebble?” you whispered. “What am I doing here? My husband does not want me. The court does not see me. My family’s name is a jest and a warning both. I am a wife in name only, and I do not know how to become anything more. I was not taught how to be a wife to a man like him. I was taught how to be a wife to a lord who wanted a gentle lady to manage his household and bear his children. But Lord Bloodraven has a household that manages itself and no desire for children of his body, or so they say.” You paused, your fingers stilling on the raven’s feathers. “Perhaps he would want children if they were Shiera’s.”
The raven croaked.
You stroked the raven’s feathers again, and your voice cracked. “I am even afraid that you will leave me, Pebble. You are the only friend I have in this place. Please do not fly away.”
The door to the solar opened. You scrambled to your feet, the napkin falling from your lap, capon scattering across the stone. Pebble let out an indignant caw and flapped onto the windowsill, his wings laboring under his weight.
Lord Bloodraven stood in the doorway.
His hair, silver-white, fell straight to his shoulders, and his skin was so pale it seemed to drink the light. The red birthmark that crept up his neck and cheek, the source of his name, was vivid as a splash of wine against snow. He wore black, and the eye that fixed on you now was the deep, unsettling red of dying embers.
The other eye was gone. A pale, smooth scar ran from brow to cheekbone, and beneath it, a dark hollow that seemed to see more than any living eye could.
“My lady wife,” he said. His voice was quiet, precise, each word placed as carefully as a stone on a cyvasse board.
“My lord.” You dropped into a curtsy, your heart hammering. You had not expected him to emerge. He rarely did before the hour of the bat. “Forgive me, I did not mean to disturb you. I was only...”
His gaze had moved past you to the raven. Pebble was worrying at a shred of capon, his beak tearing at the meat with smug contentment. Bloodraven’s expression did not change, but the air shifted, a faint tightening like the pause before a thunderclap.
“That is my raven,” he said.
“Yes, my lord. I hope you do not mind. He comes to my window, and I...”
“He is fat.”
The words fell like a stone into still water. You felt heat rise to your cheeks, the familiar burn of mortification. Your fingers twisted in the folds of your skirt, a pale lavender silk, pretty and demure. Here in the grey light of the tower it seemed washed-out and childish. You were a woman grown, a wife, and yet you felt like a girl being scolded by her septa for some minor transgression.
“I have been feeding him,” you admitted in a small voice.
Bloodraven stepped forward. His movements were unsettlingly smooth. He lifted one long-fingered hand, and the raven, your Pebble, your greedy, ungrateful Pebble, fluttered up to perch on his wrist without the slightest hesitation, as though you had never existed.
“A raven of the Tower must be lean,” Bloodraven said, stroking the bird’s breast with one pale thumb. Pebble closed his eyes in bliss. “He must fly swiftly over distances that would exhaust a lesser bird. He must carry messages through weather that would kill a hawk. He must be quick, clever, and sharp as a blade.”
He turned that burning red eye back to you.
“You have made him useless.”
The words struck harder than they should have. You had not thought yourself capable of tears, you had not wept once since leaving the Reach, not at your wedding, not on your wedding night when your husband failed to come to your bed, not in all the lonely days that followed, but now your throat tightened and your vision swam. You blinked rapidly, fighting it down, but a single tear escaped and traced a burning path down your cheek.
You ducked your head, hoping he had not seen. The silence stretched, unbearable.
“I am sorry,” you whispered. “I did not know. He came to me. He seemed friendly. I only offered him kindness.”
“Friendly.” He said the word as if it were a foreign concept. His blood-eye seemed to gleam in the half-light, and for a moment you could have sworn you saw the raven’s reflection in it, a dark bird within a darker pool. “Ravens are tools, my lady. They are not pets. This one has been made useless by your kindness.”
The word useless stung again. You dropped your gaze to the floor again, studying the worn flagstones beneath your slippers. “I apologise. I will not feed it anymore.”
You did not wait for a response. You gathered your skirts and fled down the winding stair, your slippers slapping against the stone, your breath coming in short, hitching gasps. You did not stop until you reached your chambers, where you threw yourself onto the great empty bed and buried your face in the pillows and wept until there was nothing left inside you.
You did not go to the Tower the next day, nor the day after that. You kept to your rooms, claiming a headache when your maids inquired. You took your meals alone, the food tasteless on your tongue. You did not open your shutters, though you heard the scratch of claws on the sill more than once. You could not bear to see Pebble, to see the raven who had abandoned you as easily as breathing, who had flown to his master’s hand without a backward glance.
It was on the third day that a servant knocked at your door and informed you that the Hand of the King required your presence in his solar.
You dressed carefully, your hands trembling on the laces of your gown. You chose a dress of pale green, the color of new leaves, the closest you dared come to the Oakheart colors. You pinned your hair up in a simple coil. You looked, you thought, like a woman preparing for an execution.
The solar was warm, lit by a fire in the great hearth and by candles in iron holders. Books lined the walls, more books than you had ever seen in a private chamber, their spines cracked and worn from use. Maps and charts covered a long table, and in the corner, a perch held three ravens, their heads tucked under their wings.
Bloodraven sat behind a desk of dark oak, a quill in his hand. He did not rise when you entered, but he set the quill down and gestured to a chair across from him.
“Sit,” he said.
You sat. Your hands folded in your lap, the picture of a well-bred lady. You had been trained for this, after all: to be still, to be silent, to be pleasing. It was the only weapon you had ever been given.
Bloodraven regarded you for a long moment. In the firelight, the port-wine stain on his cheek seemed to shift and writhe like something alive. His eye, that terrible red eye, seemed to see straight through you, past the careful composure and the pretty dress and into the hollow ache at your center.
“You have not been to the Tower,” he said.
“I did not wish to disturb you, my lord.”
“You have not been to the gardens, either. Nor the library. Nor the sept.” He leaned back in his chair, steepling his long fingers. “My birds tell me things.”
Your heart lurched. The ravens. Of course. You had forgotten, in your misery, the whispers that surrounded your husband like a cloak of shadows. He could see through the eyes of his birds, they said. He could watch the whole of the Seven Kingdoms from his Tower, and nothing escaped his notice. You had thought it a fanciful tale, a legend spun to explain the unerring accuracy of his spy network. But the way he looked at you now made you wonder.
“I have been tired,” you said, which was not entirely a lie.
“You have been crying.”
The words were blunt, without softening. You flinched, your gaze dropping to your hands.
“My lady,” Bloodraven said, his tone had shifted. It was not kind, you did not think kindness was in his nature, but it was less cold than before. “Look at me.”
You raised your eyes.
“The raven,” he said. “You named him.”
It was not a question. You nodded anyway.
“Pebble,” you said, your voice barely above a whisper. “Because of his breast feathers. They reminded me of home.”
Bloodraven was silent for a moment. Then he rose from his chair and crossed to the window, his back to you, his silver hair catching the firelight.
“I have had many ravens,” he said. “Hundreds, over the years. I breed them in the Tower, train them, dispatch them across the realm. They are tools, nothing more. I have never given one a name.”
He turned, his single eye finding you again.
“No one has ever named one of my ravens before.”
You did not know what to say. You sat frozen, your heart beating a nervous rhythm against your ribs.
“He is not useless,” Bloodraven said, and there was something akin to curiosity in his voice. “I examined him this morning. He is plump, yes, but he is healthy. His plumage is glossy. His eyes are bright. He is more docile than the others, more accustomed to human touch. There are uses for such a raven.”
He took a step toward you, then another, until he stood before your chair, looking down at you with an expression you could not read.
“I have been a poor husband,” he said.
Your mouth opened but no sound came out.
“I did not ask for this marriage,” he continued, “and neither did you. We were both bound by the king’s will, and I have not made the binding easier for you. I have been…absent. Preoccupied.” He paused. “Unkind.”
“My lord, you have been...”
“Do not,” he said, lifting a hand to stop your protest, “be polite. I am surrounded by polite people. I find it exhausting.”
You closed your mouth.
Bloodraven lowered his hand. “I loved Shiera,” he said, and the name was a blade between your ribs. “For many years. I asked for her hand more times than I can count. She always refused. Perhaps she was wise.” His jaw tightened, a flicker of old pain crossing his pale features. “But she is not my wife. You are.”
He reached down, and before you could react, his fingers closed around your hand. His skin was cool, dry. But his grip was steady.
“I cannot promise you love,” he said. “I am not a man given to tender feeling. The whispers about me are not all false. I am a sorcerer, of a kind. I do see through the eyes of my ravens. I have done things that would make you flinch to hear, and I will likely do more before I am through. I have little patience for the courtly games that fill the days of most highborn ladies.”
He paused, and his thumb brushed once across your knuckles.
“But I am not cruel without cause. I do not take pleasure in suffering. And I have watched you these three moons, my lady. Through the eyes of my ravens, yes. I have seen you in the gardens, sitting alone on the stone benches. I have seen you in the library, reading the same page over and over because your mind is elsewhere. I have seen you feeding my raven, speaking to him as though he were a friend, because you had no one else to speak to.”
Your face was burning. You wanted to look away, to hide, but his eye held you as surely as a pin holds a butterfly.
“I did not intend to spy,” he said, and there was a note in his voice that might have been regret. “At first, I was merely curious. Then I was...concerned. You are withering, my lady. Like a flower deprived of light. And I am the one who has kept you in the dark.”
He released your hand and stepped back.
“I would like to propose a truce,” he said. “A beginning. I will not pretend to be something I am not. I will always be busy with the affairs of the realm, always be strange, secretive and perhaps a little frightening for your liking. But I will make an effort to be present. To speak with you. To…know you.” He tilted his head, a gesture eerily reminiscent of his ravens. “If you will permit it.”
You stared at him, your heart pounding so loudly you were certain he could hear it. This was not what you had expected. This was not the cold dismissal, the polite abandonment, the quiet return to separate lives. This was an opening, a crack in the armor.
“I would like that,” your voice came out steadier than you had hoped. “My lord.”
“Brynden,” he corrected. “If we are to attempt this, you may as well use my name.”
You swallowed. “Brynden.”
The corners of his mouth twitched, the barest suggestion of a smile. “See? Not so difficult.”
He returned to his desk and picked up his quill, but he did not dismiss you. Instead, he gestured toward a smaller table near the fire, where a tray of fruit and cheese and a pitcher of wine had been laid out.
“Stay,” he said. “Eat. You have been hiding in your rooms for three days, and I suspect you have not been eating properly.”
You rose from your chair, your legs unsteady beneath you. As you crossed to the table, you saw a perch near the window, separate from the others. On it sat Pebble, his head cocked, his black eyes fixed on you with reproach.
“He has been sulking,” Brynden said, not looking up from his parchment. “He does not understand why you stopped coming.”
You reached out a trembling hand and stroked the raven’s breast. Pebble made a soft sound and pressed his head against your fingers.
“I am sorry,” you murmured to him. “I am here now.”
Behind you, you heard the scratch of the quill pause for just a moment, and then resume.
From that day, you took your evening meals in the solar with Brynden, sitting at the small table by the fire while he worked at his desk. He did not speak much, but he answered when you asked questions, and sometimes he would pause in his writing to ask one of his own. Small things at first: how you found the Red Keep, whether the sea air agreed with you, what books you had been reading. You answered honestly, and he listened with a focus that was almost unnerving, his eye fixed on you as though every word you spoke were a piece of intelligence to be filed away.
Then he started inquiring about your life, so you told him. Your father had pledged fealty to both King Daeron and Daemon Blackfyre, sending one gold and the other men. King Daeron had kept his crown, and House Oakheart's reputation had suffered. Instead of emerging unscathed either way, as Lord Oakheart had intended, the King inflicted punishments on him. His eldest son, your older brother, was assigned to become a Kingsguard. He had to refute his title, land and future of marriage and instead serve as a guard to the same King he had fought against. You, the eldest daughter, were given to Hand of the King as a reward he didn't ask for. A legitimate lady to solidify his standing. Your mother had acted as if everything was fine, which you suspected was for your sake, although you didn't want such strained treatment. And you scarcely saw your brother since arriving in King's Landing, even though you both lived at the Red Keep.
You learned things about him in return. He had been born with the birthmark, with hair already white, and his mother had wept when she first saw him. He had been a poor swordsman as a boy, too thin and frail, so he had turned to the bow out of desperation. He loved his Blackwood sisters. He did not sleep well. He never had.
One evening, a fortnight after your conversation in the solar, you gathered your courage and asked the question that had been burning in your throat since the day you arrived.
“Do you wish I were her?”
The quill stopped. The fire crackled in the silence. Pebble, perched on the back of your chair, shifted his weight from one claw to the other.
Brynden set the quill down slowly. “That is a foolish question.”
“I am not afraid of the answer.” You were, of course. You were terrified. But you had spent months living in the shadow of a ghost and you could not do it any longer.
He rose from his desk and came to stand before the fire. The flames cast his face in red and gold, the birthmark nearly invisible against the glow. His back was to you.
“I wished for many things,” he said at last. “I wished for her to love me. I wished for her to choose me, just once, over all the others. I wished for a great many foolish things that a wiser man would have let go long ago.” He turned to look at you. “But I do not wish you were her. You are not her. You are nothing like her, and that is…not a bad thing.”
“I have heard she is the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms,” you said, and you hated the smallness of your voice, the jealousy that crept in despite your best efforts.
“She is,” Brynden said, and your heart sank. “But beauty is a strange thing. Shiera’s beauty is like wildfire: brilliant, consuming, and utterly indifferent to what it destroys. I spent years burning in it, and I have the scars to show. You are different. Your beauty is like…” He paused, searching for the word. “Like the first green shoots after winter. Blooming. Steady. Something that grows rather than blazes.”
You did not know what to say. Your face felt hot.
“I am not good at this,” Brynden said with a flicker of frustration in his voice. “I am no poet. I do not know how to court my own wife.”
A laugh bubbled up in your throat, unexpected and slightly hysterical. You pressed your hand to your mouth, trying to stifle it, but it escaped anyway, a small, surprised sound that made Brynden’s eye widen a fraction.
“I do not know how to be courted,” you admitted. “I was taught to be a lady, not a wife. No one ever told me what to do with a husband who did not want a wife.”
“I never said I did not want a wife.” He took a step toward you. “I said I did not ask for this marriage. There is a difference.”
“Is there?”
Another step. He was close enough that you could smell the faint scent of ink and old parchment that clung to his clothes. Close enough that you could see the tiredness around his eye.
“I am learning,” he murmured, “that I may have wanted something I did not know I did.”
His hand rose, and this time, he did not stop at your fingers. His cool palm cupped your cheek, his thumb brushing the corner of your mouth with a gentleness that contradicted everything you had heard about him: the cold sorcerer, the ruthless spymaster, the man who had killed Daemon Blackfyre and his sons with arrows guided by dark magic. In this moment, he was only a man, touching his wife’s face for the first time.
“You are trembling,” he said.
“I am afraid.”
“Of me?”
“Of this ending.” Your voice cracked. “Of Shiera returning. Of waking up tomorrow and finding that you have remembered you do not want me after all.”
His eye searched your face. You had the unsettling sensation that he was seeing more than your skin and bone, more than the fear in your eyes. Seeing into you, the way he saw through the eyes of his ravens.
“Shiera is in Lys,” he said. “She left months ago, before our wedding. She may return someday, she always does, but she is not here now, and she has no claim on me. Whatever I felt for her, it is done. I have been a fool for her long enough.”
He leaned closer, his forehead nearly touching yours.
“As for waking up tomorrow,” he murmured, “that is simple. You shall wake up in my bed.”
Your breath caught.
“The bedding ceremony was waived,” he continued, “because I requested it. I did not think it fair to subject you to the court’s crude jests when we were strangers. But we are not strangers now. Not entirely. And I find that I am tired of sleeping alone in my cold solar while my wife sleeps alone in her cold tower.”
His thumb traced the line of your jaw.
“If you are willing,” he added, and the hesitation in his voice, the faint uncertainty, undid you completely.
“I am willing,” you whispered.
He kissed you. His lips were cool, like his hands. The kiss was cautious, almost experimental, as though he were tasting a new wine and trying to decide if he liked the vintage. But it deepened, slowly, his hand slid from your cheek to the back of your neck. You felt a knot of tension loosen in your chest.
When he pulled back, his breathing was slightly unsteady.
“You will not be alone.” He took your hand again, this time, he laced his fingers through yours. “I have a thousand eyes. Some of them will always be watching over you.”
It was perhaps the strangest declaration of affection any woman had ever received. But you found yourself smiling anyway, a real smile, the first you had worn since leaving the Reach.
That night, you did not return to your lonely tower rooms. You slept in the Hand’s bed, in the Hand’s arms, and though he did not sleep, he had told you he rarely did, he held you in the darkness, his fingers tracing idle patterns on your shoulder.
In the morning, you woke to find him already dressed, standing at the window with the pale dawn light on his hair. He turned when he heard you stir.
“Good morning, my lady.”
“Good morning, Brynden.”
He crossed to the bed and sat on its edge. From behind his back, he produced a single winter rose, its petals white as fresh snow, its center a deep, vivid blue.
“There are no winter roses in King’s Landing,” you said, taking it with trembling fingers. “How did you...?”
“I have my ways,” he said, the faint smile on his lips was no longer tentative. It was the smile of a man who had unraveled a mystery and found the answer rather pleasing.
You lifted the rose to your nose and breathed in its sweet, cold scent. Through the window, you saw a raven circling against the pale sky, not Pebble but another, its black wings cutting the air with swift precision. It was returning home, carrying something in its beak.
“What is he bringing?” you asked.
“A letter,” Brynden said. “From the Arbor. Lord Redwyne is plotting something tedious involving wine tariffs.” He paused. “Would you like to watch me unravel it?”
“Yes,” you said. “I would like that very much.”
He offered you his hand, you took it.
Pebble, watching from his perch, let out a satisfied croak and followed you and your husband up the winding stair to the solar.
Part 2: see here
a/n: Please don't let this flop guys, I have an entire series planned out.
a/n: Voluntary donations are accepted on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: https://ko-fi.com/catbayunthestoryteller <3
a/n: Comment if you'd like to be added to the series taglist. Rn I'm tagging those who went along with my freaky birdman propaganda.
Cregan Stark was known around Winterfell for never resting. He never sat down, never relaxed, never quit his work, and seemingly never took a deep breath.
When you and your family showed, that's when the staff of the castle knew you were important.
A two week trip your father brought you along for. He'd spoke about the importance of good impressions and keeping up good relations with the northerners. You had been day dreaming but conscious enough to nod along with his words like a good daughter.
Today— eight days into your stay in Winterfell— the two of you are sitting inside, playing a game of cyvasse. Cregan had taught you on the second day. By the sixth, you were a natural.
If only your opponent wasn't seasoned from the war he'd just won at age 23.
"'S a good move," his head tilts. "If I hadn't already planned for it." He moves a piece, easily blocking everything you had set up for.
You scoff slightly, slumping in your seat in thought.
While you glare at the board in hopes it will give you answers, Cregan's eyes are on you. He looks over your shoulders, your neckline, your lips, that crease between your brows. He thinks you're beautiful.
"Gold and silver are uncommon up here, but what do you think of beads carved of weir wood branches?"
The line between your brows only deepen as you move your attention to the Northman. "What?"
He shrugged. "Was only a thought. Would that suffice?"
"I… yes. I saw a woman with stitching on her cloak and white beads. Would that be those?" At his eager nod, you continue. "It was beautiful. I thought of it the rest of the journey. Any woman would be lucky to have such a thing."
You accepted defeat this time and the two of you moved to separate for the rest of the day.
He took your hand in his own large one. He bent down and pressed the back of your hand to his forehead. You told yourself it was more polite than a kiss would be.
You would be wrong.
But you gave him a nod. "Good day, Lord Stark. I shall see you at supper."
His eyes twinkled. "I eagerly await it, my lady."
When you left, you missed the way his eyes followed you until you were blocked from his sight.
Gods, he was utterly smitten.
…
After supper, your father had insisted you go to your chambers early. It was a bit unlike him, but the two men were going to Cregan's solar to discuss business. Perhaps he just wanted to know you were safe in bed.
You sit in the guest room Cregan had prepared for you. It's very nice— much better than yours at home. The hearth burns brightly. And for such a cold place, you were warm. It was pleasant.
You'd brought all of your thread and cloth for stitching, much to the chagrin of your father. He didn't approve of your habit of daydreaming and this was your next best option.
Cregan had noticed by the second day. On the fifth day, you had new colors of threads you could only find in the North.
He was so kind to notice such little things.
You'd been working on a Stark direwolf sigil. You'd started it the day you got here— half stitched on a handkerchief. The sigil was everywhere so it was easy to imagine.
You're working with this deep gray. A Stark gray thread you hadn't seen until it was left in your chambers by Lord Stark. The direwolf was coming along nicely.
Your handmaiden entered in a rush with a broad smile. "My lady, I have just heard the most wonderful news."
You set your stitching aside and stand as she chatters and rushes around the room to ready you for bed. Your mind is still on finishing that direwolf stitching.
"I did not mean to eavesdrop, but I will not say that I regret it," she quipped as she spread out a nightgown. "Oh, I rushed here immediately when I heard of it. It will be so wonderful, truly—"
You tried to listen. You wanted to. Your handmaiden was a kind girl, albeit one that loved to gossip. But your mind was too far gone.
She helped you dress to your night clothes, continuing her chatter. "I would not have considered you as a woman that could like the cold, but there are ways to keep warm here," she flushes. "Especially with someone like that." She pauses and grabs your arm. "What color shall your dress be?"
You blink, finally hearing the words. "My dress? For what?"
She scoffs like you're messing with her. "For the wedding, of course."
A wedding? Father has not mentioned a wedding. Your younger brother was growing in age— perhaps there was a worthy match for him and there would soon be a wedding. But that felt so odd for your handmaiden to mention now. So surely not that.
Your mother had passed years ago, but your father was not adamant on marrying again. So not that either.
"What do you believe Lord Stark shall wear?" She asks. "Do you think he owns different fur cloaks for special occasions?"
Ah. Lord Stark's wedding. That would make more sense.
You did not know he was courting anyone. But then again, you often did not pay attention to little details. And he wasn't one to talk in great detail. Maybe it was rude that you never asked.
"And his bride shall be beautiful!" The handmaiden almost squeals, tugging you this way and that in excitement. "You do not seem joyful at this. What is the matter?"
"No, I… I do love weddings," you defend. And that was true. You loved to daydream during the ceremonies.
"That's the spirit!" She claps. "We'll discuss all of it in the morning. But try to get some sleep tonight— if you can. I know how excited you must be."
She finishes up, wrapping you in your robe before retreating to the door. "To marry the Lord Stark? What a dream."
It shuts behind her, leaving you standing in the middle of your room in confusion.
…
You sleep as well as ever, for you still did not understand her words. She wakes you in the morning just as excited. "He wants to break fast with you," she smiles.
You rub your eyes and brush your hair from your face. "Father?"
"No! The Lord Stark! Hurry, though. I've heard from the Winterfell servants that he's been up for hours. He's most likely starving."
You reluctantly get out of your warm bed. You usually took lunch or supper with Cregan. Breaking fast was unusual.
You leave your room with one of your nicer dresses on (you didn't question why that one was chosen), and your hair nicely done. Your eyes were still puffy from sleep, but that would fade as you walked.
A servant escorted you through the vast halls of the castle until he stopped before a large door. "Lord Stark's solar, my lady. Shall I announce your presence?"
You were friends enough with Cregan that you surely did not need that. So you dismissed him and opened the door yourself.
Broad shoulders blocked the light coming from the only window. He looked out in clear thought. His head barely turned as he heard the door open. "Has she accepted?" He asks softly.
"Lord Stark?"
He turns now, eyes wide. His light lips part in surprise. "My lady, I did not know it was you. Forgive me."
You shrug. "'Tis alright. I understand how full your mind must be with things as of now."
He nods along. "Yes, yes, of course. But, please." He gestures down to the small table set up just beyond his desk. Two chairs and light foods to start their day.
Cregan was nervous today. In the last nine days, you had not seem him like this. The wedding business must really be affecting him. His hands shook lightly. His eyes glanced at you then away. He would open his mouth to speak, then retreat.
You were good friends with him, surely. Perhaps he would speak to you of his problems if you asked.
You pop a grape into your mouth. "You do not seem excited."
His brows pull up. "I assure you, my lady, I… I am."
You don't believe him. "Then why do your hands shake?"
He looks defensive. But when he glances down and sees that you were right, he doesn't fight it. "I am… I speak poorly," he settles on. "For important matters."
"You are a northman. They are mostly men of action, are they not?"
"They are." His tension eases slightly when he sees you understand. "We are not the best at poetic words, but we make up for it. I hope."
You nod, continuing to lazily eat your breakfast.
He's a bit better now, though his own food sits untouched. But he can at least look at you now without growing nervous.
"Is she pretty?" You ask.
"Whom?"
"Your bride," you smile teasingly. "She must be beautiful if you are this nervous."
He blinks. You're teasing him? Over this? Something greatly eases over him. You look so natural, so easy going. Why would he be so nervous then? He meets your eye strongly now. "She is the most beautiful woman in the Realm," he assures.
You hum, continuing to eat. Cregan's a handsome man. His bride is supposedly pretty. That would make for a good daydream to imagine later. You store it in the back of your mind.
The rest of breakfast goes quietly. Cregan does not have much to say after that, and you don't want to make him any more nervous.
But this bride must be lucky to get a man so worried to please her.
He invites you for a walk outside which you accept. You weren't all knowing in affairs of the heart, but perhaps he wanted to ask your opinion on things. You were a woman after all. And though you adored Cregan, he knew nothing of the gentler sex.
The winter was over in the North, but every season was a various kind of cold. At least in this one, you did not need to hide from snow.
"Is this spring?" You ask him as your feet crunch on dead grass.
"Almost. This should be the last week of winter before there is life in the plants again. Do you have a favorite flower, my lady?"
You shake your head.
"A favorite color then?"
You shake your head again.
He sighs softly, getting nowhere. "Is there…" He pauses. "Is there anything you want at the wedding? I know girls dream of this since they were young."
Asking your advice? That you could supply. "Well, if your bride isn't of the North, you could pick specifically northern things to help her see how well living here could be. Northern plants or such?"
He stashes that for later. "And there is truly nothing you've always wanted at your wedding?"
"At mine?" You ask. "Well, I have imagined it many times."
"Yes?" He hangs on.
"It's outside. My family is there. My husband is handsome and his cloak weighs heavy on me. He's tall… and kind." You look over at him. "Maybe as tall as you. That could be nice."
He flushes. "Right. But… the wedding details."
"Mm." You close your eyes. "Blue. I've always imagined something blue."
"Blue," he breathes. "I can do that. And… your gown. What does it look like? Is it a northern fabric, or…?"
"In my dreams, it is usually just a dress I already own," you smile. "But if I close my eyes now… perhaps a silver gray. With lots of colorful embroidery details that I do myself."
"That sounds beautiful. I'll have the fabric found soon so you may start."
You frown, opening your eyes. "Am I making your bride a dress?"
His head tilts as he tries to understand your teasing behavior. "You are. It is in your dreams, is it not?"
It seems a bit rude that he didn't even ask if you would do that for him. But no matter.
"I understand your beliefs in the new gods, but a northern wedding is to be before the old. We could have a second ceremony for your faith. If it pleases you."
"Why would what I think matter?"
He squints as if you just disgusted him. "What kind of man would I be if I did not indulge my own bride in her thoughts?"
You pause. "Your bride?"
"Yes. Yes, my bride." He sets his large hands upon your shoulders respectfully, yet firm. "I care for you greatly. Anything you want, I would give to you. We could have seven outlandish ceremonies for each of your gods if it made you smile. Why do you think I do not care?"
My bride, it rings in your head. Cregan Stark's bride. You are marrying Cregan Stark?
"Are… are we courting?" You stutter.
His hands fall as if you burned him. "My lady. Please stop jesting. Forgive me, but I do not understand your quips."
"I am not. I… You are courting me?"
His lips pull in a tight line. "I have been. For a while now. Why did you believe your family came to Winterfell? And that I spent time with you?"
You wring your hands together. "Father said we had to keep good relations with the North."
"What did he say exactly? The words he used?"
"He said to pack nice dresses to make a good first impression. That the North needed to like me. There was this odd thing…"
Cregan's eyes stayed firmly on you, watching the way the cloudy sky still made your features light up beautifully.
"Well, after I met you, the day you taught me cyvasse, he was very happy. After dinner, he couldn't stop smiling."
"I told him I liked you," he explained. "That I… I wanted to court you."
"You've been courting me since then?"
He smiles lightly. "I would have courted you years ago if I'd known you."
"I still don't understand. Yesterday, my handmaiden came in and said she overheard you speaking of your wedding to another woman."
"Last night?" At your nod, he rushes to explain. "I told your father my intentions to marry you. That today, I would…" he stops himself short. "We were discussing matters of your dowry and how I could ensure your happiness here."
"My dowry?" You frown. "Lord Stark, forgive me, but my family is quite poor. We do not have money for a dowry, not really."
"I know," he eases. "Do not worry about the details. It has been taken care of. I suppose I did all of it but the most important part."
"And what would that part be?"
Cregan Stark, the Warden of the North, lowers himself before you. He kneels down on one knee, tall and proud, stiff as a true northerner. He takes your hand in both of his.
"I am poor with my words. But I know what I think and what I feel. And I… I believe you would make a well off Lady Stark. The North would prosper with your soft hand to compliment my harsh one." He stops himself, forcing him to think— for once— of what he wants, and not the North. "I have fallen in love with you, my lady. Very much. Winterfell warmed when you stepped into it, and I refuse to let it grow cold again. Say you will stay. That you want me. I am trying to speak clearly now, for I've done it so poorly thus far. Our wedding will not have to be for some time, so I may properly court you with your knowledge. But say you will let me. Please."
His hands are callused, rough against yours. But warm. Safe. The same man that noticed your love for embroidery. The same man that taught you cyvasse. The same man that loves you. The same man who is currently looking at you like you are the sunshine the North lacks.
"I always wanted a handsome husband," you admit sheepishly.
His face falls a bit. "Is that… would…"
"You are very handsome, Lord Stark."
For a moment, he looks as if he doesn't believe you. But then he smiles. "You accept then?"
"I do."
He kisses your hand once, twice, then stands in excitement. Northern excitement looks different. He doesn't spin you around, or yell his love from the rooftops. Instead, his shoulders broaden proudly and he offers you his arm.
That gray fabric you imagined lays on your bed by the end of the day. Next to it, weir wood beads and multicolored threads to decorate it.
Your family suddenly became wealthier. You believed that it was because there was one less daughter to care for. But the servants' whispers told you that Cregan had denied a dowry and instead paid your father to ensure your family stayed comfortable. He didn't want you to worry for them.
A month passes, and spring was in full bloom— at least, what spring was in the north.
You had just beat Cregan had cyvasse finally. His eyes twinkled with amusement, a smile trying to be held back as well.
That's what you knew.
"When is our wedding?"
"When you are ready," he answers without missing a beat.
"I am." You stretched and stand. "I am ready to marry you." You kiss his cheek and walk off.
He sits in that chair for the next two hours, silent and blushing a profuse pink.
✿ despite your warnings, aerion drinks a powerful stimulant, and then seeks your help when nothing else seems to fix him (or, a sex pollen fic with the dragon himself)
✿ 18+
✿ wc: 7.7k
✿ cw: fem!reader/healer!reader, no y/n, reader is undefined and smart asf, sex pollen, SMUT, oral (m!receiving), face-fucking, unprotected piv, multiple orgasms, hyperspermia!!, reader gets bent over her shop counter, rough sex, dirty talk, cw for aerion being himself (he's lowkey mean, mentions of frequenting brothels, slight degradation, etc), strong language, ser donnel mentions <3
a/n: inspired by this ask
part two here
Your shop is rather small, but you love it.
Behind the sturdy wooden counter—which itself is laden with misshapen plants sprouting from old teacups and half-filled bottles of sparkling powder—sits rows upon rows of shelves. The shelves are stocked full of your natural remedies and creations, vials big and small, pouches of linen and pouches of ribboned silk. You have everything, perfectly organised, by remedy and in alphabetical order.
For years, you’ve operated out of your little shop in a narrow side-street in the heart of King’s Landing, just a stone’s throw from the main thoroughfare. You’ve helped countless travellers and residents with a range of issues: from sedatives for unruly hounds and salves to treat festering hoof-rot, to fast-acting contraceptives and bitter-tasting hallucinogens.
You can make anything.
And because you can make anything, you’ve become familiar with many a noble and knight in your time.
The door to your shop opens as you’re serving a little old lady, handing her a parcel of dried mushrooms. A cool breeze smelling faintly of winter rain and freshly baked bread sweeps into your shop, jostling the bundles of herbs you have hanging from your ceiling. You wave goodbye to the elderly women as you look up, smiling politely as you catch the unmistakable glint of midday sun against white armour.
“Ser Donnel,” you greet with a small bow of your head as the older kingsguard enters your shop, his gleaming armour making him appear like a pearl in the sand amongst your dim wooden shelves. “How is your finger? I trust the salve I made you helped the wound heal?”
Ser Donnel approaches the counter, offering you a small smile as he lifts his hand. He flexes his fingers, eyes lingering on the index, which he had sliced open a week prior.
“It did, thank you,” Ser Donnel says, his eyes lingering now on the shelves behind you.
“What can I do for you?” You ask, drumming your fingers on the solid wood of your counter, watching as the older knight spins slowly on his heel, taking in the other shelves and tables packed into your small shop.
“Don’t suppose you have something for horses?” He asks, back to you. When he turns, however, he gives you a rueful smile, then laughs. “Of course you do.”
“Of course I do,” you mimic, rounding your counter and leading the older knight across the room. You find a shelf near the shop’s far side, gesturing to an array of small vials, many labelled “Dog – Rash” or “Cat – Sneezing” and even “Chicken – Eggbound.” Ser Donnel looks at the array of small vials with complete amazement as you turn back to him. “What’s wrong with your palfrey, ser?”
Ser Donnel points to his own eye for emphasis. “Got something in her eye. All red and weepy and that. Not pleasant.”
“I see,” you say, then turn to your shelf. It takes you less than a second before you’re plucking a vial with dark brown glass off of the shelf. You hold it out to Ser Donnel. “Sounds like conjunctivitis. Very common, and, lucky for you, easy to treat. Just a few drops of this, morning and night, and she should be all better in a couple of days.”
Ser Donnel looks at you, visibly pleased, as you gently press the small vial into his palm. “You’re an absolute darling, you know that?”
“I try,” you reply, smiling as you return to your counter. Ser Donnel follows you, dropping the vial into a pouch and pulling out his coin purse at the same time. He drops several stags onto the counter, and you gape at him as they clatter loudly against the wood. “Ser Donnel, this is too much—”
“For the eye-drops,” Ser Donnel insists, pushing the stags towards you. “And for your services, okay? Now, I don’t want to hear another word of it.”
You bite your lip, hiding your smile as you reluctantly scoop up the stags and slip them into the coin pouch on your belt.
“Well, can I at least give you something for your generosity?” You ask, ducking beneath the counter before he could even open his mouth to reply. You snatch up a small pouch and get to your feet, offering it to the knight, who peers at you as if you had grown another head. You sigh through your nose, amused. “Sourleaf. Fresh in this morning.”
Ser Donnel offers you another kind smile, taking the pouch of painkillers and slipping it alongside the pouch with the vial.
“Thank you,” he says, bowing his head, just as the door to your shop opens and another gust of wind blows in.
The cold breeze sweeps through the store, and the door bangs harshly against the side wall, creaking on its hinges from the force. You startle, and Ser Donnel whips around. Composing yourself, you’re quick to sink back, making yourself appear smaller, as Aerion Targaryen bursts into the room with eyes spitting embers.
“How long could it possibly take to buy an ointment for a fucking horse?” The prince seethes as he steps into the shop, looking around with genuine distaste. His eyes linger on a murky liquid in a large bottle on the wall beside him, before they drag through the dim to Ser Donnel. He makes a face, eyebrows raising like he’s expecting something. “Well? Did you get it?”
You hear Ser Donnel release a short, quiet breath.
“Yes, your grace,” he says, glancing back over his shoulder sympathetically before stepping towards the prince. “We may be off now.”
Aerion scoffs, allowing Ser Donnel to brush past him, but his eyes lift and land on you. He peers at you, as if just noticing your presence, his gaze burning holes right through the centre of your face. He looks at you half with distaste—probably due to the leaves in your hair and the powder dusted across your arms and apron—and half with interest, like a merchant admiring a newly minted coin.
“So you are the woods witch Ser Donnel speaks so highly of…” Aerion comments, eyes unwavering in their stare. You shift your eyes to the floor. Aerion huffs, partially amused. “I expected an ugly old thing, but this—”
“Your grace,” Ser Donnel warns with a sternness akin to a strict father.
“—is unexpected,” Aerion continues, unphased. He traipses into the shop, cloak swishing behind him like a pair of raven’s wings. His eyes scan the walls of bottles and vials and jars, and he plucks a small one from the closest shelf. Spinning it between his fingers, he speaks with considerable disinterest, “How exactly do you know how to make all of this?”
You lift your head slowly, hands clasped in front of you. “My… my mother taught me, your grace.”
The vial he holds holds a sticky green liquid, the colour of forest moss. He peers at it strangely. The liquid inside sticks to the glass, viscous and slow-moving as he turns it.
“What’s this for?” He asks, and you know he doesn’t actually care. You lock eyes, and you realise he’s testing you.
“Eases infant colic,” you reply straight away.
Aerion drops the vial on the floor and it shatters against the wood. You flinch, startled by the sudden noise. You hear Ser Donnel protest with a gruff call of the prince’s title, but Aerion is undeterred, slipping behind the counter and appraising the towering shelves behind you. He takes another vial, the liquid inside a deep, mustard yellow.
“And this?”
“Inflamation caused by pox,” you answer. “Soothes the skin.”
He huffs, and drops that vial too. It shatters, but this time, you don’t flinch. You watch the syrupy yellow liquid leech between the floorboards, glass shimmering in the ghostly light streaming in through the only window near the door.
Aerion walks further behind the counter, and you shift until the small of your back is pressed to the solid wooden lip. The prince closes in on several vials on the very top shelf, and he has to stand on his toes to reach one of them. Your heart leaps into your throat, and you open your mouth to say something, but no words fall.
Aerion’s pale fingers snatch a small bottle from the top shelf. The glass is clear, and it’s labelless, but you know exactly what it is. The substance inside resembles wine: a deep, blood-red that bubbles a little on the surface as the prince sloshes the liquid around. There’s a small, oil-like sheen to it as he holds it up, violet eyes finding yours.
“What’s this?” He presses, and you wonder if he catches the fear in your eyes.
You clear your throat. “I, uh, it’s—”
He uncorks it, and you raise an arm.
“It’s a stimulant,” you blurt out, stopping yourself from pulling the vial from his hands. Aerion continues, unphased, as he lifts the bottle to his nose and sniffs. You can almost smell it yourself: overripe grapes, crushed honeysuckle, and what smells uncannily like the perfumed skin of an expensive courtesan. Aerion pauses, something flashing in his eyes as you continue shyly, “To… increase desire and maintain… maintain a man’s excitement.”
Aerion stares at you, slowly lowering the little bottle from his nose.
He holds it carelessly, and as Ser Donnel sends another warning from across the room, you attempt to prise the bottle from his fingers, your touch slow and gentle.
“Please be careful, your grace,” you utter, fingers skimming the cool glass of the vial. “It’s incredibly potent in large doses—”
Aerion jerks away, and you snap your hand back as though you’d been burned.
The prince hisses at you, serpent-like as the pointed ivory of his teeth glint in the grey light. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
You withdraw. “Your grace, please—”
“You’re trying to scare me,” he seethes, shaking the bottle enough for a few droplets to flick out and onto the pale skin of his fingers. It stains like mulled wine. He continues, staring you down. “How dare you even—”
“Your grace,” Ser Donnel’s voice booms through the small room, and you find yourself cowering back against the counter, stuck between two brewing storms. Ser Donnel sighs loudly. “Listen to her. She knows a lot more than you do, believe me.”
Aerion lets out a bitter laugh. “Don’t mock me.”
You chime in hesitantly. “Please, your grace. It’s a concentrated mixture. I wouldn't want you to—”
“I can do what I want,” Aerion spits out, and before you can even react, he downs the entire vial in two quick mouthfuls.
You gasp out. “Your grace—!”
Aerion drops the vial and it shatters right at your feet. You jump back, avoiding the splash of broken glass, as the prince turns on his heel and makes for the door. You scramble after him, but you’re stopped by Ser Donnel, who places a gentle hand on your shoulder.
At the door, Aerion turns and gives you one last look, eyes trailing up and down your figure, before he rolls his eyes and vanishes back onto the street.
You’re breathing deeply, overcome with guilt. Ser Donnel strokes your shoulder gently, calming you.
“It’s alright, it’s his own doing,” Ser Donnel assures you, hand shifting up to pat you comfortingly on the cheek.
“But—he just—the entire thing.”
“Will it harm him?” Ser Donnel asks. His voice is firm and it almost makes you want to cry. “Will it kill him?”
You quickly shake your head. “No, ser! It—it will be very intense, and very, uh, difficult to remediate without—without help, but it will not harm him, no.”
“Can a cure be made?”
You feel yourself warming beneath your clothes, and you clear your throat, soothing your hands over your apron and your skirts.
“I suppose I can give you something to ease the racing heart,” you say quietly, ducking off to the side to pluck another small vial from a nearby shelf. You hand it to Ser Donnel. “Mix with hot water and it will ease the fast-moving heart, but I’m afraid… I’m afraid the other symptoms will have to be cured… in other avenues.”
Ser Donnel chuckles, taking the vial. “I suppose I’ll be taking him to the Street of Silk later tonight then?”
You offer Ser Donnel a sympathetic smile, nodding and trying to ignore the warmth in your belly. You put it down to the shock of the whole thing, and you give Ser Donnel a polite wave as he leaves your shop without another word.
You sigh, turning and examining the broken glass and spilled liquid across your floors. You grab your broom from near the door and set to work.
—✿—
Later that night, you’re setting a new set of vials on a shelf across the store, extinguishing the wall-mounted candles as you move. You hum to yourself, skirts brushing the dusty floor, the street beyond the small window empty and pitch-black as night falls across King’s Landing. A crescent moon hangs, thin and pale, above the horizon.
You take your apron off and place it neatly on a hook near the door behind the counter—the door which leads up a narrow flight of stairs to your home above. As you do this however, there’s a thud at the locked door. It rattles the old wood where it settles on its hinges, and your heart flutters a little in fright as you look over, spying a shadow through the stained glass. Taking a knife from a block behind you, you approach the door with your hand obscured behind your back.
There’s another thud. More like a knock this time.
“Are you alright?” You ask through the stained glass, the outer pane caked in grime kicked up from the street. You gently unbolt the door and open it a crack, peering out at the shadowed figure that hunches in your alcove. “I’m closed for the night, but if you are ill—”
“Let me in,” comes a familiar voice, and you squeak in fright when you recognise it.
Quickly, you pull open the door, still holding your knife, and the shadowed figure slips into your shop. You close and bolt the door behind you, turning with your back to the surface as the figure drops his hood, and subsequently, his cloak, and you watch as Aerion Targaryen turns slowly as the thick black fabric pools at his feet.
“Your grace,” you mutter, dropping into a polite bow. Worry clenches tightly in your chest as the prince looks at you with narrowed eyes, features appearing gaunt in what remains of the shop’s fading candlelight. You spare a glance through the stained glass of the door, then through the pane of the window adjacent. “Your grace, I’m not sure if—”
“What have you done to me?” Aerion interrupts you, his question slicing through the nervous quiet like the blade you clutch. He takes a step forward and you suck in a startled gasp, slipping around him and hurrying towards your counter. You just want to put as much distance between him and you as possible. He groans when you breeze by him, slowly turning as he speaks, “You’ve poisoned me.”
You’re behind your counter now. “I’ve done no such thing.”
“You have,” Aerion hisses, and he takes another step forward. You notice he’s slightly wobbly on his feet, pitching forward chest-first as though his legs are too heavy. He catches himself on a nearby shelf, bottles clinking together as the wood trembles. “This is your fault. You’ve poisoned me. You’ve—you’ve cursed me.”
Your eyes grow wide. You shake your head. “Your grace, please, I would never.”
In the low candlelight, sweat sparkles like broken glass on Aerion’s forehead. His white-blond hair clings to his skin, damp near his temples, and there’s a dip in his brow that casts a dark shadow over his eyes. But when he cocks his head, staring you down, you see them flash violet in the ochre light, his pupils slowly expanding.
“Ser Donnel informed me of what I had taken, and what it would do to me,” Aerion mutters, his voice hoarse as he pushes himself off the shelf. His palms slam down on the counter directly across from you, and you take a step back, fingers tight on the bone handle of your knife. Aerion huffs, “So I drank your little tea for my heart, and I fucked a couple of whores, but nothing is working.”
You swallow, heart in your throat.
“I tried to sleep,” Aerion says, dragging himself around the counter. You mimic his actions on the other end, slipping to the other side to avoid him. He continues, one of his hands shifting to the thin buttoned tunic he’s wearing. He pops open the top button. “I tried to bathe, I tried to pleasure myself, and I went back to that fucking whorehouse twice more and nothing—” He groans, and undoes another button. “—is working. What have you done to me?”
Slowly, he exposes the pale, unblemished skin of his chest. He’s damp with sweat as you round the counter, skirts flowing around your ankles. Your heart hammers wildly in your chest as he advances on you lazily, eyes drawn to the movement of your body like a falcon.
“You drank the stimulant,” you tell him as gently as possible.
You’re at opposite ends of the counter now. He pauses, undoing another button.
“So it’s my fault?” Aerion hisses out.
You watch as he pushes his hips against the lip of the counter and he groans, hoarse and animal-like from the back of his throat. It strings across a whimper, and heat floods your belly. You curse yourself, watching as the prince—the Targaryen prince Aerion Brightflame—ruts himself slowly against your counter. You can see the stimulant’s effects on him: the tent pitched in the front of his trousers, the beads of sweat that trek down beneath his now open-tunic, rolling between the grooves of his abdomen.
“Yes,” you say boldly, holding the knife. “You shouldn’t have drank it.”
Aerion huffs out, then groans again as he looks up at you, hips pressed firmly to the edge of the counter. “You’re a witch. Fix me.”
You release a shaky breath, then approach him. You move behind your counter, and he watches you with serpent-like concentration as you slowly place your knife onto the surface. He smirks at that, moving behind the counter too.
“You…” Your heart is wild beneath your ribs, and you can smell him as he nears. He smells expensive: smoked oud, honey-washed skin, patchouli incense from the Street of Silk. You smell sweat and wine too when he gets within a foot of you. You continue, “I cannot fix you, your grace. The easiest fix is to find… find a woman, or a man, I suppose, and engage in sexual intercourse until the effects wear off.”
You hope you sound confident enough. You fear you may faint as he looks you up and down, bare chest rising and falling, smoke trapped beneath shifting scales.
“This is your doing,” he says, seemingly ignoring your previous statement. One of his hands finds your hip and you seize up. “You will fix me. You will fix this.”
You find yourself shifting then as he pushes you up against the counter, the print of his hard cock pressing between your thighs as he pins you. You frown as he groans, the hand on your hip tightening while the other slowly rises to take your chin between his thumb and forefinger.
“I can’t fix it,” you whisper as he forces your eye contact. You’re trapped beneath him, but there’s a heat in your belly you can’t deny, and the pounding of your heart travels south, settling between your thighs despite your racing mind. “I, well, I can try and make a cure—”
“I don’t want an elixir or a salve or a bunch of dried fucking herbs,” Aerion utters as his fingers tighten on your jaw. He ruts his pelvis against your thigh, and you watch as something flits through his eyes, the black of his pupils having engulfed the violet of his irises. “I want you to fix me.”
You swallow. “Your grace—?”
“I want your mouth on my cock, and I want you bent over this fucking counter,” Aerion interrupts with a voice strewn through gravel, dark and hoarse. Something twists deep in your belly as he bends his head, dipping his nose against the curve of your jaw. He grunts when he inhales, lips vibrating against your skin when he speaks again. “Will that fix me?”
Your hands are tight around the edge of the counter. “Yes, your grace, but—”
Aerion hums, teeth just skimming the skin of your jaw before he pulls back. “Good. Then get on your knees.”
The heat of his body leaves yours then, and you blink up at the ceiling. Aerion Targaryen was telling you to get on your knees? Aerion Targaryen was currently pulling apart the knots of his trousers, panting like a wounded dog as he dips his hand into his breeches to fist himself? Your mind was a mess.
But you did what you were told. You could have easily overpowered him in this state. Simply leapt from his reach and locked yourself in your room. But you didn’t want to. There’s a heavy fire kindling in your belly, fanning out over your womb as blood pumps hot between your thighs.
You sigh gently, slowly pushing yourself off the counter and sinking to your knees, your powder-dusted skirts flowing out around you. The wooden ground is hard but well-worn from years of footfall, and you settle on your knees as the prince takes a step forward, his trousers gathered just beneath the curve of his arse. The print of his cock strains against the white linen of his breeches, the front wet with pre-cum, and the way his fingers tremble when he attempts to unknot them makes you whine.
“My prince…” you whisper, reaching your hands to take hold of the strings of his breeches.
He stills above you, muscles in his abdomen clenching as you pull the knots apart. While you do this, one of his hands comes to rest on the back of your head, and he pulls you to him. Adrenaline is thick and viscous in your veins, but you let yourself be guided despite the hammering of your pulse up the side of your neck. You’re dizzy with both need and fear as you open your mouth and press it, hot and wet, to the front of his breeches.
He bites down a hiss. “That’s right.”
You kiss over the line of his cock, open-mouthed and messy against the soft linen. You smell perfume and imagine the skilled hands of trained sex workers pulling the prince’s breeches down for him. You squeeze your thighs together at the thought, and you finally manage to pull apart the knots beneath his navel.
“Kiss me, that’s it,” Aerion groans out, holding your head firmly as your lips move across his covered cock. He’s burning hot and rigid beneath the fabric, and your hands find his thighs as you lave your tongue. That earns you a groan, and your eyes flit upwards to find him already looking at you. His tongue darts out to wet his lips. “That’s it, fix me… fix this.”
Your head rocks beneath his hand as you mouth at his covered length. You feel him twitch beneath your lips, tip drooling out onto the fabric as you run the point of your tongue across it. Aerion hisses, hips bucking so harshly he knocks against your nose. Tears well along your waterline as he pulls you away then, just long enough to shove his breeches down.
He pulls his cock out, pale fingers wrapped tightly around the shaft. He groans at the raw contact, and you can’t help but gape as he clutches himself, tip a bruising red and wet with pre-cum. Pearlescent beads roll down the dip of his frenulum, and down his length as he slaps it against your cheek, then the other. He groans again when he pushes the tip across your lips, your eyes glassy as you watch him.
“Didn’t think witches could be as pretty as you,” he says suddenly as he ruts his cock along the warm lines of your face: over the curve of your cheekbones, rolling beneath the angle of your jaw. You kneel there, breathing hard, as he rubs himself over your skin. His words have heat flooding from your belly to your chest. The prince continues, “Might take you back to the Keep with me, huh? Keep you locked away…”
He tapers off when he groans, his balls drawing up tight. He grips the back of your head as he slides the head of his cock across your wet lips. He manages to bite out a quick “open” and you listen, opening your mouth and letting him slide just the tip in before he’s spilling in thick, hot spurts. Aerion groans, a shaking timbre from his chest as he rubs the head of his cock against the front of your tongue and spills into the warmth of your mouth. Some hits the back of your throat, and you squeeze your eyes shut, willing yourself not to choke as he releases, fingers firm on the back of your head.
After a moment, his cock jerks, but doesn’t soften. A loud, frustrated groan rips from Aerion’s throat as he pulls out and smears the remnants back over your cheek again.
“You did this to me,” he growls out as he shoves himself back into your mouth, barely giving you enough time to swallow. You open your eyes when he feeds himself into you, cock a velvet warmth against your tongue. He releases a stuttered breath, his other hand finding the back of your head as well. “So you’re going to take it.”
You gag when his hips rock forward and the leaking tip nudges down the back of your throat. You swallow, huffing out of your nose, and he groans loudly enough for it to echo. His hands tighten on your head and he physically starts moving you, pulling your head back and forth and fucking his cock down your throat. You try your best to lax your jaw, minding your teeth as you slide your tongue along the underside—you find a prominent vein easy enough, and you squeeze your thighs together as he whines, the muscles in his abdomen shifting.
The velvet of his trousers is plush beneath your fingers as you grip his thighs. They sit low on his hips, ties swaying as he pitches his hips, pulling your head back and forth. Every other thrust, he’s pushing you deep against him with a guttural groan, forcing your lips to the very root as the tip knocks against the back of your mouth. Your nose finds the neat white hair at the base, and the smell of perfumed oil should be a turn off, but it isn’t.
You whimper around him, cheeks hollowing. Your eyes are glassy and there’s a thin rivulet of saliva running from the corner of your mouth as he fucks your throat. Heat settles deep in the marrow of your bones, fluttering heart between your thighs. The feeling of spit rolling down your chin makes you whimper again, and suddenly, his eyes are on you. They’d been closed in, what you can only assume, is ecstasy as he chases another high. But now, he stares down at you with a subtle pinch in his brows. Like he can’t quite believe you’re there.
“If I knew you’d take my cock like this,” Aerion utters, petting the back of your head as he stretches your lips apart. “I’d’ve skipped the fucking whores and come straight here.”
You moan, something like a protest, but it’s shoved right back down your throat by the leaking head of his cock. You choke and splutter when he rolls his hips and he, somehow, goes even deeper. Aerion pulls back with a groan draped across a chuckle, letting you suckle the head as you catch your breath. His balls twitch as he slowly ruts back in, and once you blink the tears from your eyes, you reach a hand up to cup them.
He hisses out, “Fuck, fuck, oh gods—”
You let him press you to his pelvis, nose between the prominent lines of his hips. Your fingers and thumb work gently, rubbing over smooth skin as the grip on either side of your head tightens as he thrusts once, twice more before he begins to lose his rhythm.
“That’s it, that’s it, take it,” the prince moans, still looking at you, eyes black with lust as his hips slow and he forces you right down onto his cock again. He moans again when he spills—another thick, hot release that splatters down the back of your throat. You squeeze your eyes shut, practically holding your breath as his cock jerks, balls drawing up beneath your fingers. When your eyes close, Aerion lets out a quiet, “Look at me.”
It’s surprisingly soft. You blink up at him. His hand finds your warm cheek then, petting you two times like he’s trying to be gentle, and the effort puts a pit in your stomach. But it doesn’t last: his cock, still hard, dribbles as he pulls it from your mouth, taking a step back but still holding your head in one hand. His other hand finds the base of his slick cock and he moans as it pumps hot against his palm.
His bare chest is flushed, as are his cheeks. He pants like a dog too, and as he grips his cock, you watch with lowered lids as cum beads against the slit, then strings out like a spider’s web. It drips onto the floor as he groans, his lip curling up in a frustrated snarl.
“Why isn’t it working?” He asks you, fingers on the crown of your head.
You flick the point of your tongue across your teeth before you speak, tasting his release in the grooves. Overripe grapes linger in the back of your throat.
“You drank six doses worth,” you whisper, hands caressing his thighs.
“Fuck,” Aerion curses, and he watches with dark eyes as you lean forward, testing the waters, and press a wet kiss to the tip of his flushed cock.
You continue speaking as you slowly kiss down his shaft. “A single dose will usually allow a normal man three or four releases, if he’s lucky.”
Aerion grunts as you lick over the vein on the underside. It’s throbbing and hot against the flat of your tongue.
“But you, my prince…” Your tongue lowers and you lick a stripe from root to tip, and the sound that leaves him is more animal than human. You hide your smile. “Are not a normal man, are you?”
“Fucking witch,” Aerion seethes, but he’s preening. Like a cat being praised, a small groan lifts from his chest like a purr, and something flashes across his eyes. Pride. His hand pets your hair softly despite the venom in his tone, and he watches you in awe when the tip of your tongue darts out to collect a welling bead of pre-cum. He grunts then, pulling his cock away from your mouth with great effort. “Stand up.”
You do as you’re told. You clamber to your feet, and you feel slightly silly as you wait for him to kiss you. Of course he doesn’t—he spins you around with a grunt and pushes you roughly against the table. It hits your tummy as you bend, and you exhale a little “oof” as his hands make quick work of flipping up your skirts. He gathers them at your hips before he’s ripping your smallclothes away from your core.
“Cunt this wet from sucking my cock?” Aerion plasters himself to your back, leaning over to whisper in your ear as he runs the length of his cock from your arsehole to your pussy. You whine as he spreads you apart, slick webbing between your folds before they snap where he runs his cock through you. He groans at your heat, head dropping to rest between your shoulder blades as he rocks back and forth. “Gods, you’re dripping, sweet girl.”
The pet name has you reeling.
You hadn’t been expecting it, and it seems like he hadn’t been either. The length of his body stiffens behind you, as if his words were involuntary beneath the haze of his pleasure. With a grunt, he pulls back, taking the flat of his palm and muscling you down from between your shoulder blades until your tits are pressed tightly to the surface of the counter.
“Fucking witch,” Aerion seethes, still holding his cock as he drags the flushed tip through your folds. You suck in a breath, mewling when he slaps it against your clit. He makes a pleased sound, squeezes it out between clenched teeth, before he circles the tip at your entrance. “You did this to me. You did this to yourself.”
He pushes in with a low moan. There’s no slow stretch. There’s no slow.
The prince shoves himself in like it’s all he can do, the thick of his cock pulling you apart from the inside out. There’s a sting low in your pelvis and a dull kind of ache that festers like a bruise in the base of your womb as he bullies himself into you. A deep, keening sound is pushed involuntarily from your chest as you clutch the counter, followed by a gasp of “my prince” as he bottoms out, hips flush with your arse.
Your pussy is slick and warm around him and you squeeze tight when he pauses.
He’s panting. You can feel him straining behind you, his hands gripping your hips so hard it’s like he’s anchoring himself to you. The walls of your cunt hug around the thick of him in such a way that he’s completely lost himself.
You press your cheek to your counter, attempting to look back at him, but the angle is awkward and you can only just make out the look of pure awe on his face. His dark eyes focus on the tight pull of your cunt as he slides out, shaft slick with you. A small whimper—he covers it quickly with a grunt—falls from his parted lips when his head notches at your hole.
“Maybe you belong in a whorehouse,” he whispers after a moment of tense silence. He rolls his hips and shoves himself back in, ears picking up the wet schlick as he slides home, balls coming to rest against the curve of your arse. He hums, pulling out again, then pushing back in. “Men’d pay good coin for a cunt like this.”
The prince sets a rhythm that rocks you against the counter. It’s sharp, desperate. You clutch onto the edge as if he might push you over, his cock rutting in and out of you at such a pace you’re becoming dizzy. He’s panting, frantic, the speed of his hips filling your small, dark shop with the echoing sounds of skin-on-skin.
His previous words settle and then he hisses like he’s offended himself. A disgruntled jeer as he grips your hips and fucks you back onto him.
“Too bad you’re here,” he utters. His thighs are a firm bracket behind yours as he fucks you. The way he speaks is dark and smooth. Dangerous flashes through your mind as you moan, a solid heat collecting in the very depth of your belly. He continues, “Too bad you’re here. With me. Too bad no one’ll stuff this cunt like your prince.”
You gasp around a small moan at his words. They hit you right in the stomach, churning something erotic inside you. You grip the counter, bottles nearby clinking at the movement, and you try to turn your head to look at him again.
“My prince—”
“Shut up and take it,” Aerion interrupts with a bite. A gnashing of ivory as he fills you over and over, the head of his cock finding that spot inside you that has you arching for more.
Your body trembles, shaking against the counter as he folds you over it. The fat of your arse shifts with each of his thrusts, his fingers a bruising hold on your hips. Sweat builds beneath your dress, damp along the dip of your spine as you grow hotter and hotter. It’s an unbearable sort of heat that sparks in your womb, then spreads. It spreads up and out, flaring like a pair of glowing wings.
“Fuck, I can feel you, sweet girl,” Aerion says, his pace slowly losing it’s pattern. He’s scrambling now, sweat tracing down the back of his neck as his heart clatters against his ribs. Your pussy flutters around him like she doesn’t want to let him go. He groans, eyes slipping up your body, before resuming on where you take him. “Let me have it. Give it to me.”
You gasp out. “My prince, I—”
“Don’t fuss,” he snaps, hips stuttering. “Don’t fucking fuss and do what you’re told.”
There’s a heaviness in his tone that pins you down, but you expect nothing less. You instead focus on those gold-guilded wings spreading out inside you—filling your tummy, fanning heat through your chest as your tits squeeze almost uncomfortably against the wooden counter. The flames of pleasure are crawling down your spine now too, and with four more heavy thrusts of his cock against that perfect spot inside you, it reaches your core.
You can’t help what happens next: you call for him, his name, a sickeningly sweet “Aerion!” as you come around him, pussy pulling tight as the warmth overwhelms you. Your release is bulky as it takes hold, dragging you into ecstasy as his cock drives you through it. Your eyes squeeze shut, body shaking, as it takes over.
He mutters something under his breath then, hips rolling as he slowly begins to lose focus. You feel his cock jerk inside you as he slams inwards, tip nudging up towards the plug of your cervix. The feel of him is muddled in your brain and you feel sick with need as your orgasm begins to fizzle out, embers flickering.
“Yes, yes, yes,” Aerion groans.
He spills then, with his cock flattened deep inside you and his fingers vice-like on your hips. He curls forward, dewy forehead finding your shoulder blades as his cock twitches, filling you in hot strings. It’s thick and viscous and makes you moan, and Aerion matches the sound with his own, feeling the clutch of your pussy tighten around him.
Some long seconds pass and he’s still spilling. Your eyes fly open as his cock, still pulsing and hard and hot inside you, jerks with his release. Spurts of it, again and again. You whine at the feeling. Too full, too full, you want to mutter, but you can’t. Your tongue is heavy in your mouth, throat dry as the prince rolls his hips, rutting himself against you with his face in the laces of your dress. You writhe, and he groans, open-mouthed and pained as he holds your hips, unwilling to let you go.
“No, stop, fuck,” he hisses out, muffled in the material of your dress. “Don’t fucking move—don’t—ah, ha, fuck, fuck.”
You still immediately, freezing like a scolded puppy. The prince breathes heavily against you as his cock jerks and jerks inside you. He whines into your dress. The sound has your heart fluttering.
“Gods above…” Aerion whispers after another long moment.
His cock stills now, but he’s still hard. And he doesn’t pull out. He does, however, lift himself from you gingerly. His hands tremble on your hips, but you pretend not to notice.
“I can’t…” He tapers off, breathing heavily.
There’s a searing pleasure in his abdomen that’s almost painful now, and his cock aches something fierce—like he needs to release again, like he’s edged himself for an hour. But he hasn’t. He’s spilled more times than he can count, but the pent-up need is making him nauseous with desire. His heart is beating too fast in his chest, and his skin feels too hot against his flesh.
He swallows thickly as he plugs your pussy full of his seed. His cock twitches and, much to his horror, he feels the hot press of tears behind his eyes. “I can’t… I need…”
“I know,” you whimper.
The change in his tone, in his demeanour, is a slap across the face. It’s abrupt and unexpected. You almost feel sorry for him—sorry for the man he’s become as he slowly rolls his hips, his cock barely moving inside of you—but you don’t. He’s done this to himself.
“One more,” he whispers, pulling out until only his flared head rests inside you.
“One more,” you repeat after him.
He groans, pushing back in once he’s caught his breath. You moan quietly, body pliant and spent beneath him now. There’s a prickle of overstimulation in your belly, but you don’t complain. His cock knocks right back up against that perfect spongy spot inside you and you shut your mind up with a string of whimpers.
The prince builds his pace again. His cheeks are pink with the effort, and strands of his white hair cling to his forehead as he ruts into you. A thin white ring builds at the base of his cock as he thrusts, his seed drooling through your folds as he bends and fucks you. It’s wet and loud, and paired with the little whimpers you’re trying to hide, it’s better than any sex he’s ever bought. And he didn’t spend a single coin on you.
“No one else took me like this,” he utters as thoughts of you, you, you clatter around his skull. You’re a witch. You’ve poisoned him. He grunts, almost mad at himself. “You take me like you were made for it.”
“Aerion,” you whisper, eyes drooping, another orgasm encroaching on you. This one is even heavier than before. You can feel it in your bones, seeping into your marrow as he fucks you and rambles all the while.
“Made for me,” he continues. “Made for the dragon.”
His thrusts are loosening, and he chases his release with his cock barely leaving you. He rolls his hips, sliding against you as he huffs and bends. To your surprise, he places a kiss between your shoulder blades, teeth tugging briefly at the laces of your dress before he pulls back. He rocks and rocks, a thick moan fighting its way out of his throat as the counter trembles. A glass vial topples with the force, rolling off and onto the floor. It shatters, but neither you or Aerion flinch, too consumed in your pleasure to pay it any mind.
“Ah, fuck, fuck, oh fuck, sweet girl—” Aerion rambles, and then he’s spilling again.
He moans loudly as he ruts himself through it, cock shuddering inside you as he comes in more thick spurts. Back dipping, you feel him fill you even more than before, and you feel the heat of it seep like honey into your womb. It makes you dizzy, and it makes your own orgasm reveal itself from the ashes of the first.
You come with his name on your tongue again, holding onto the counter as you stiffen up. He groans when your pussy tightens around him, fluttering as the tension releases like blood pouring from an open wound. He falls over you as you tremble, sweat-slick chest finding your back as his cock gives one last jerk while your orgasm tapers off, slipping back into the shadows. He pants behind you, hands still on your hips, cock still inside you—but it’s softening.
The prince moans in relief as his cock slowly softens, his seed leaking from your spread pussy as he slowly, slowly pulls himself from you. A quiet moment passes before he exhales, presses one last almost imperceptible kiss to the covered space between your shoulder blades, then rights himself.
“I trust you have something to deal with… this,” Aerion mutters, and you feel two thick fingers drag through your folds before pressing inside you. Despite his words, obviously slightly concerned with the fact you’re filled with him, he plugs you, knuckles against your core.
You release a shaky breath. “Yes, my prince.”
“Good,” he huffs, still catching his breath.
You’re still bent over the counter. And his fingers are still inside you. He sighs, more to himself than to you.
“Thank you,” he whispers, sounding the most unlike himself of the entire night.
That’s all he says, and you know he doesn’t want a reply.
—✿—
Three days—and several cups of moon tea and other fast-acting contraceptives—later, you’re restocking the shelf behind your counter when the door opens. You cast a glance over your shoulder, finding Ser Donnel entering, white armour gleaming as his mass fills the doorway. You turn and greet him properly.
“Ser Donnel,” you say, bowing your head respectfully. “How is your horse?”
Ser Donnel smiles. “Fine. You fixed her right up.”
You smile back, busying your idle fingers by stuffing a small pouch with crushed willow bark. “That’s great to hear. What can I do for you?”
The knight clears his throat, looking around the empty shop for a moment before speaking. “He requires your presence. At the Keep.”
“I beg your pardon?” You cock your head. “Who?”
“The prince,” he says pointedly.
You frown, tying a knot around the little pouch and placing it to the side. Nerves spike in your chest as you wait for Ser Donnel to continue. He does.
“He’s earned himself a nasty gash—” Ser Donnel gestures to his own bicep for specification. “—during training. And he’s, uh, refusing the help of his maesters. He wants you.”
You gape. “But I’m not a maester—”
“But you can help him, can you not?” Ser Donnel interrupts you before you spiral. “You’re a smart wee thing. You can fix anything.”
You bite your lip, nervous. “Ser Donnel, I don’t think—”
“Unfortunately, it wasn’t a request,” he says as gently as possible. “He won’t be taking no for an answer. I’m here to escort you.”
“Right…” You sigh, turning back to the shelf and gathering some supplies.
You shouldn’t have expected anything less from Aerion Targaryen.
Do you guys think that Graves heard Price shot Shepherd and tracks that motherfucker down specifically to ask this asshole “oh so nooooow it’s okay to shoot at your allies?” Like I think Graves would be insufferable.
Like the second word gets out that Price put a round in Shepherd, Graves doesn't even react like a normal person. No shock, no "damn." Just that slow, pleased little exhale like the universe finally started making sense again.
And then he tracks him down using the resources he’s surmised with Shado Company. Not because he cares about justice. Not because he's gonna confront Price. But because this is the most delicious hypocrisy buffet he's ever been served and he's about to take a full plate and eat it in front of everyone.
He finally tracks him down and shows up with that easy swagger, boots too loud, grin too sharp, like he's walking into a barbecue, not the aftermath of a betrayal and treason.
"Hell of a thing," he says, casual as you like. “Shootin' at your allies."
And he waits. Lets it hang. Lets Price's stare do what it does. Lets the silence stretch until it's uncomfortable for everybody else in the room.
Then he tilts his head, all mock thoughtful.
"Just so I'm clear- now it's okay, right? We got a policy update? Or is it only fine when the traitor's got a star on his chest and not a dog tag?"
He'd circle it like a shark, too. Not angry. Not even smug, exactly- more like delighted. Like he's been saving this receipt for months and he finally gets to slam it on the counter.
Price meanwhile is trying to weigh th pros and cons of shooting Graves too, but as much as he’s loath to admit it, Graves is a good ally to have what with all his resources and all.
"Oh, don't look at me like that," he adds, hands up in fake innocence. “I'm just tryin' to understand where the line is. 'Cause last time I checked, you boys had some real strong feelings about friendly fire."
And if Price tries to shut him down; growls something about "not now," grief and rage still fresh, Graves just leans in a fraction, voice dropping like he's sharing a secret. "Mm. No, now's exactly when it counts. 'Cause you did it anyway.”
A/N: in which Reader is a curse and nanami does not have the strength to end it. I LIEDDDDD, this'll be angst with a happy ending, i'm not cruel, it's xmas after all, a bit in a dif style than my usual stuff, hope y’all like it
warnings: pain, nanami suffers, ansgt with a happy ending, chairman even suffers, ooc. mentions of violence, this isn't how curses work in jjk but idc man, canon is dead to me
You die ugly.
Not the poetic kind of ugly, either. Not the tragic-on-a-cliffside-with-a-swelling-soundtrack nonsense. It’s messy and small and unfair and it hurts in the boring, bureaucratic way pain does when the universe doesn’t even bother to make it cinematic. The kind of hurt that files paperwork on your bones.
And then you don’t stop.
Congratulations. You’re a curse now. It sucks tremendously.
You become weight and ache with a mouth. A curse knotted from your last thoughts, all unfinished. You become the thing people swear isn’t under their bed. You become the rumor the ocean tells the ships it eats.
You learn very quickly that being a curse is mostly administrative inconvenience with a side of screaming.
Chubby even in death, you think (if you could call it thinking), hysterically. Soft where the world had been sharpest. The universe said: “body positivity but make it eldritch.” You would laugh but your laugh doesn’t fit your mouth anymore. Your mouth doesn’t know where it is.
The abandoned shipyard is your kingdom now, if you can call a kingdom a grave that forgot to stop growing. Rusted ribs of hulls. Salt air with the taste of old pennies. The water yawns, black as a pupil blown wide. Your presence stains it—all warped metal and muttering shadows—your domain in that loose, accidental way pain builds architecture.
He still comes anyway.
Nanami Kento—creased suit, tired eyes, heartbreak dressed as a man—stands at the edge of it like he’s waiting to be let in.
“Good evening,” he says, like you are still a person with a doorbell, like this isn’t terrible. His voice is calm, precise, a straight line in a place made of spirals.
He talks anyway.
“You’d say this is pathetic,” he murmurs, leaning back against the hull, shoulders sagging. “And you’d be right.”
Silence answers him, your kind of silence—the thick, throbbing one, full of unsent texts and unscreamed words.
You remember how he used to laugh. It hits you like a brick.
He has not laughed in so long.
“I was going to quit,” he says casually, like someone mentioning milk on the grocery list. “The week before—” He stops. Adjusts his glasses like he can focus grief into something manageable. “I was going to quit. We would have moved somewhere ordinary. You would have hated it. We would have argued about curtains.”
Your not-mouth aches with the shape of his name. Your not-hands twitch around nothing. You lean—instinct, gravity, habit—and the shadows of you curl closer. You do not mean to be frightening. You are just… loud, now. Pain echoing itself.
He doesn’t flinch.
Of course he doesn’t. Idiot. Beautiful idiot.
“You’re still you,” he says, and he says it like an incantation. Like if he threads the sentence enough times through the needle of his throat, reality will obey. “You understand me. I know you do.”
Do you? Yes. God, yes.
You understand the set of his shoulders, the way he won’t meet your (nonexistent) eyes when he’s lying to himself. You understand the ritual of it: he brings food, he talks about the news, about coworkers, about the sky being rude again—too bright, too grey, too anything. He narrates life like he’s smuggling it in for you, piece by piece.
You ripple, because that’s what your body does now—ribbons of you ballooning and collapsing around the cracked hulls, the suggestion of shoulders, the echo of your face in the wrong place.
There is a barrier around this place—his work, precise and ruthless. You can feel it like glass teeth around you. He made the world smaller for you, wrapped you in a boundary you cannot cross. Not a cage, he told himself. A kindness. Containment with love on the label.
You hover against the edge sometimes, feel reality spark and snap, taste the ozone bite of It’s safer this way. You could rage. You don’t. Even your anger is tired.
He sits down on a chunk of concrete like he’s clocking into overtime grief.
He unpacks dinner.
He does this every day. Every single fucking day.
“I brought the curry from the place you liked,” he says, and then corrects himself in a voice too soft for the world, “—the place. You liked the naan more than the curry.”
You, plural and wrong and still you, press closer. You do not have a stomach, but you feel hunger, but not like before. Something else lives in you now—hunger, wrong and prickly, a feral wanting for warm things that isn’t love but wears its face badly. You keep it on a leash made of your name, the one he still says so carefully. You do not touch him. You can't. You do not feed the part of you that is curse and not girl. You are stubborn, even now.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he sighs, glancing up at your mass, at the storm of you. “Yes, I ordered extra naan.”
There is silence, and there is the ocean chewing things it doesn’t return, and there is Nanami talking because not talking would kill him in a way no curse could.
“Do you remember the ring?” he asks suddenly, and his voice cracks—just once, like a bone you thought would hold. “I was going to do something elaborate, but then you laughed at that proposal video with the flash mob and I… recalibrated.”
You try to say his name.
What comes out is a sound. A pressure. A groan of ship metal remembering storms. The world leans with it, gulls scatter.
But he smiles at it like you said something funny.
“Yes,” he says quietly. “That does sound like me.”
He talks like you’re still sitting cross-legged on his couch, knee to his thigh, complaining about the world and snacking like it owes you. He tells you about missions (carefully), about Gojo’s ridiculousness (unavoidably), about how he almost quit—how he almost did just pick you, mundane and alive and choosing bread over destiny. His hands shake when he unwraps the food but he pretends not to notice, so you pretend too.
You miss everything about him, well you don't actually remember anything, just vague... feelings. But you know you miss his hands. The warm pressure, you miss his touch... his... everything.
You remember the moment it happened in shards. Pain, yes. Fear, yes. The heavy, humiliating reality of it—“not fun circumstances” doesn’t cover it, darling. It was the kind of ending that should come with a refund. And then all that pain gathered its things, punched the clock, and said: guess we’re building god now.
Nanami had found what you’d become and instead of doing the kind thing—the right sorcerer-thing—he built you a cage the size of grief and called it “safe.”
He trapped you here.
He saved you here.
He did not exorcise you. He couldn’t.
You think: If he asked, I would go.
You think: If he tried, I would let him end this.
You think: He won’t.
He still doesn’t.
“This is selfish,” he tells the air like he wants someone to disagree. “I know it is.”
He’s not crying. He doesn’t cry. But his voice has a wetness to it, like he’s talking underwater.
“If your pain is here,” he mutters, almost angrily, “then maybe—maybe—you’re not carrying it somewhere else.”
Well that's a nice way of rationalising all this, huh?
He looks at you then, really looks, at the hulking, glitching shadow of you suspended between broken ships, and you feel like a constellation someone shook too hard.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says.
He means: I don’t want to lose you again.
You want to tell him: I’m already lost. You want to say: this hurts. You want to say: you look stupid eating curry in a haunted dockyard, I love you, I love you, I love you.
Instead you shudder the tide backwards by accident.
“Sorry,” he says on reflex, like he bumped into you in a hallway. Then he huffs a laugh—ugly, helpless. “Listen to me. Apologizing to—”
He doesn’t say a curse. He swallows the word like broken glass.
He talks anyway.
“Today I thought about what color we’d have painted the kitchen,” he confesses, staring at the dark water. “Terrible, isn’t it? The brain’s capacity for… admin during catastrophe.”
He presses his palm to the cold air as if there’s glass between you—which, honestly, there might as well be. You flood toward that hand like a tide pulled by the moon of his wanting. The closest you get to touch is the temperature changing.
“Come back,” he whispers, suddenly vicious with hope. “Just—wake up. Yell at me about how the world is stupid and unfair and eat my leftovers and leave wet towels on the bed. I’ll take it. All of it.”
Your answer is a low, organ-deep moan through the ship bones that rattles bolts loose. A groan of world, not of girl.
He nods, like you made a compelling counterargument.
“Right,” he murmurs. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
He pulls out a book, because of course he does, because Nanami Kento is the kind of man who reads to his own haunting. His voice turns story into structure and it hangs in the air with you, a scaffolding of syllables holding the night together.
You hover. You listen. You are a bruise that learned how to speak in weather.
Sometimes you reach for his shadow and it reaches back wrong. Sometimes he laughs at something you do not understand anymore. Sometimes he talks about your body—your softness with a reverence that makes the ocean jealous.
“You always said you took up space,” he says. “You do. You always did. You still do.”
It’s almost funny. It’s almost everything.
Wind slams through the empty ship frames like breath through teeth. Rust sings. The whole place is a lung and you are the air that won’t leave.
He packs up the empty containers in silence, neat, practical, like tidying the edges of grief will keep it from spilling.
“Goodnight,” he says, standing, suit rumpled, hope feral. “I’ll be back.”
As if there’s a universe in which he wouldn’t be.
He takes a few steps, stops, and looks over his shoulder. There are too many of your eyes, not in the right places, and none of them are where tears would go.
“I still—” His jaw works. He changes the sentence like he’s afraid of breaking the world with the real one. “You’re still you.”
He leaves before the lie can echo.
*-*
The tide creeps in like a nosy neighbor. The wrecks settle. You fold and unfold yourself like a bad dream trying to be a body.
Somewhere above the waterline, the world keeps happening, rudely. Here, in the cathedral of rust and salt and you, time develops a limp.
You wait. You ache.
Tomorrow, he will bring more food you cannot eat and hope you cannot hold and stories you cling to anyway, like barnacles to a dead ship.
*-*
Nanami feeds the cat like it’s a ritual and a confession.
Chairman Meow blinks up at him with that judgy, IRS-auditor stare cats are born with, tail flicking like a metronome set to emotional devastation. The apartment smells like you — it STILL smells like you — shampoo in the bathroom, your lotion on the dresser, your favorite sweater folded with reverence on the back of the chair nobody sits in anymore.
Five months.
Five months.
Everyone thinks he exorcised you.
He told them so, on purpose, in that clipped Nanami tone that makes people nod and not ask questions. Sorcerers grieved, said ah, what a tragedy, and then, like everyone trained to survive in this job, they moved on.
He did not.
He is, legally speaking, committing a career-ending crime for love.
No one knows he’s still got a curse sealed in a shipwreck like it’s a secret shrine. No one knows he visits it every day like a pilgrim. No one knows he talks to the silence and pretends it answers.
Your hairbrush still has strands of you threaded through its bristles like gold filigree. Your shampoo squats in the shower, half-empty, stubbornly yours. Chairman Meow still sleeps on your blanket, kneading croissant-shaped dreams into the fabric.
Nanami presses his thumb into the dent of the aluminum lid like he needs to feel something give.
He puts the bowl down.
And — because he hates himself — he presses play on the voicemail.
Your voice bursts through the tiny speaker all warm and obnoxious and alive:
“Babe. BABE. Listen. I found a pastry-themed pet bed. I repeat. A CROISSANT. FOR THE CAT. Chairman deserves luxury. We are a high class household. A little croissant man. Monsieur Meow. Call me back or I’m buying three.”
There’s laughter in your voice. You sniff. You ramble about cat beds and sales tax like the world is going to keep spinning forever.
Nanami’s jaw locks.
The message ends.
The apartment is too quiet. The cat chews. The clock taps at the wall like a polite ghost.
He closes his eyes.
He imagines the ocean and the shipwreck and the way you hover there — a wound that learned how to breathe — and he tells himself he’ll go see you tomorrow.
He tells himself he’ll keep you safe.
He tells himself he has control.
He does not.
*-*
Three days.
Three days of exorcisms and red tape and blood and paperwork. Three days where the world asked him to be a sorcerer instead of a grieving man.
Three days where he didn’t go to the shipwreck.
The guilt tastes like metal by the time he arrives.
The seals hum faintly — worn, tired, fraying like the hem of an old shirt — but intact. The air inside is cold and wet and familiar. The ship’s ribs creak overhead.
“Good afternoon,” he calls, voice small in the cavernous dark. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
You don’t answer.
You never really answer, but usually you appear — dragged from the shadows by habit or curiosity or the gravity of his voice.
Nothing moves.
His blood goes thin.
“Hello,” he tries again, stepping closer to the barrier he swore he’d never cross. “I brought… tea.”
It sounds like a plea.
He waits.
Nothing.
He has always sworn — always — that he would never step inside the true interior of your domain. Just in case. Just in case you snapped. Just in case the thing in you wanted to unmake him.
“Great,” he mutters to himself. “Brilliant. Outstanding judgment.”
The seals shudder against his skin — a warning, a plea, a boundary he walks through anyway — and for the first time in five months, Nanami Kento is standing where your pain lives.
The space is wrong without you.
Empty corners. Echoes. The smell of salt and rot and the ache of absence.
His brain begins listing horrors like a grocery receipt:
You escaped.
You’re gone.
Someone found you.
Someone killed you.
Someone found out about him.
His breath hitch-stutters.
“Please,” he whispers, and he doesn’t know who he’s talking to.
He rounds a crate.
And there — curled on the cold metal floor, naked and trembling and terrifyingly, impossibly human — is a woman.
For one godawful heartbeat he thinks, she fed. Oh god, oh god, she killed someone — he drops to his knees, coat shedding dust, hands already moving, training roaring to life.
For exactly one infinitely long, horrifying instant, he thinks his cursed fiancée dragged a random human in here to eat.
Then he sees your mouth.
Your mouth.
Your stupid cupid’s bow. The scar on your chin. The exact constellation of freckles you always said looked like a lopsided Orion.
You.
You with skin mapped in faint, branching marks like lightning trapped under the surface. You with hair a few shades lighter, washed out by whatever storm spit you back into a body.
He laughs. Or sobs. Or some unholy hybrid. He makes a noise like he’s being stabbed by hope.
You twitch.
You make a sound — wet, animal, raw — and his heart tries to exit his body via his throat.
He shrugs off his coat. Wraps you in it like you’re a thing he’s saving from the sea. His hands are shaking so badly he can barely knot the fabric.
“Don’t—Ken” you mumble, slurring, voice full of gravel and sleep and rain.
“It’s me,” he says, and the sentence falls apart halfway through. “It’s me, my love, I’ve got you, I’ve got you—”
The world blurs. His hands are shaking. He keeps touching your face like he is terrified you will disappear if he looks away.
He sobs. Actually sobs. He cups your face like it’s a miracle and a bomb.
“It’s me,” he chokes, forehead pressing to yours. “It’s me. You’re here. You’re—”
Alive.
He doesn’t say it out loud because he doesn’t trust the word not to vanish when he looks at it.
*-*
He calls Shoko because she’s the only person he can imagine telling the truth to before the world crushes him for it. His voice is calm in that vicious, brittle way that means he is two seconds from collapse.
Shoko is going to kill him.
Actually, she is going to murder him, resurrect him, and murder him again with better posture.
He calls her anyway:
“I need med evac,” he says. “And… I need you not to ask questions yet.”
He calls her because who else do you call when your dead fiancée wakes up on the floor of a haunted boat like a bad bible story.
He doesn’t stop talking the entire ambulance ride.
Nanami is sitting beside your stretcher, shoulders squared like a man in front of a firing squad.
“I… contained her,” he says calmly.
“You harbored a curse.” Shoko pinches the bridge of her nose. “For five months.”
“Yes.”
“You lied to the higher-ups.”
“Yes.”
“You could have died.”
“Yes.”
“You could have killed someone.”
Nanami looks at your face.
“...no.”
Shoko stares at him for three solid seconds and then sighs like a collapsing cathedral.
“You’re lucky she didn’t rip out your kidneys and wear them like earmuffs,” she mutters.
“She— She was gone,” he says. “And then she wasn’t. The seals were intact. I don’t know what happened. She— She’s breathing. Her pulse is… slow, but present.”
Shoko, voice flat and deadly: “Nanami. What did you do.”
“I did nothing.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
*-*
He walks with you like contraband through the halls of the med base.
Shoko runs tests. Scans. Things with cursed energy that sound like Latin and regret.
The higher-ups are… not thrilled (oh gee, who is surprised?).
Not thrilled in the way of men who would happily drop you into a hole labeled “mysterious anomaly do not touch,” but can’t because Nanami is standing there like a polite guillotine.
The higher-ups are already circling like bureaucratic vultures, their voices sharp as scalpels:
“You lied.”
“You concealed a curse.”
“You compromised containment.”
“You should have exorcised her.”
Shoko steps between them like a brick wall in a lab coat.
“Shut up,” she says pleasantly. “Unless one of you can spontaneously explain this, get out of my way.”
They get out of her way.
*-*
Nanami sits outside your room with his head in his hands while wires kiss your skin and machines hum lullabies. Your chest rises and falls. Your fingers twitch in sleep like you’re dreaming about reaching.
Shoko emerges an hour later with a face like a thesis on disappointment.
“You’re an idiot,” she says.
“Yes.”
“You could have died.”
“Yes.”
“You could have unleashed something catastrophic.”
“Yes.”
“You’re lucky she didn’t tear you apart.”
He looks up at her, eyes bright, full of hope, yet so hollow. “She came back.”
Shoko sighs, rubbing the bridge of her nose.
“You don’t know how she came back. You don’t know what this means. She’s in a jujutsu coma — her brain reads like it’s been through a war and then tried to knit itself back together with fishing wire.”
“But she’s here.”
Shoko stares at him for a long, long moment.
“…yeah,” she says quietly. “She’s here.”
*-*
Three days.
Three days where time refuses to move unless Nanami shoves it. He has not blinked in several geological eras.
Shoko wants to shake him.
“You understand,” she says, voice low, “that this is… unprecedented, right? People don’t just come back from being curses.”
Nanami hums.
“Nanami.”
“Yes.”
“Are you even listening to me.”
“No.”
He is holding your hand.
He keeps his thumb against your knuckles like he’s checking that you’re real every three seconds.
“She’s here,” he says, and he smiles — a small, cracked, terrifyingly gentle thing — “she’s here.”
Shoko looks at him and then at you and then at the ceiling like she would like to speak to management about this timeline.
“Coma,” she explains, low. “Her brain… think of it like a computer that was halfway melted and then shoved back into a casing. There’s activity. It’s messy. But it’s there.”
“Will she wake?” Nanami asks.
“I don’t know,” Shoko admits. “I would like, personally, to scream into a jar about it.”
He sleeps in a chair. He wakes to the beep of monitors and the antiseptic smell of maybe. He holds your hand like he’s terrified gravity might forget you again.
Chairman Meow is staying with Ieiri for “observation.”
(He is not under observation. He is simply a cat. Shoko observers that the cat is in fact, a fat cat. But Shoko refuses to let Nanami go home alone and stare at your toothbrush like it’s a meteorite.)
*-*
On the morning of the third day, you inhale differently.
It’s a wet, stubborn, determined breath — the kind of breath people take when they’ve decided not to die out of spite.
Your fingers flex.
Your eyelids flutter.
Nanami stands so fast the chair skitters backward.
“Hey,” Shoko says, already there, already checking your pupils, your pulse, your everything. “Hey, don’t rush. You’ve been asleep.”
You blink up at the ceiling.
You blink at Shoko.
You blink at Nanami.
“…I… not a fish,” you croak.
Shoko makes a noise like a dying cough and a laugh having an identity crisis.
“Good news,” she says dryly. “Cognitive function: chaotic, but present.”
You swallow. Your throat trembles. You frown very hard at Nanami like he’s an unsolved puzzle on a bad day.
“You—” you say. “You look… taller.”
“I’m the same height.”
“You... r' lying. Stop growing.”
Your words wobble in strange places. They come out like they were assembled by a committee of bees. Shoko calls it “mild post-cognitive disorganization.” You call it “my brain fell down the stairs.”
Nanami laughs.
He laughs and cries and presses your knuckles to his lips.
“You’re here,” he whispers.
“Am I?” you murmur, blinking at your own hands like they’re on loan. “I.. am..like… like soda can someone shook... and..forgot to open.”
“That tracks,” Shoko mutters, scribbling notes. “Try not to stand. Try not to curse-burst. Try not to do… whatever it is you did to come back.”
You squint. “Did what?”
Everyone in the room goes very quiet.
There it is — the question weighing down the air like wet wool:
How.
How did you un-curse yourself.
How did your pain unwind.
How did you crawl back into a body when bodies are notorious for moving on without permission.
Nanami doesn’t care.
Not really.
He cares that your hand fits in his again. He cares that your voice hits the air like a stone in a pond. He cares that the future he buried now sits in a hospital bed complaining about soda metaphors.
Shoko cares.
The higher-ups care.
The world cares.
You close your eyes, brow furrowed like you’re listening to a far-off radio station.
“Remember… water,” you murmur slowly. “Salt. And… talking. Someone kept talking to me. Every day. Like an idiot. Wouldn’t shut up.”
Nanami freezes.
You smile — small, crooked, deliriously alive.
“And I thought… if I stay, he’ll never leave,” you say. “If I stay, he’ll drown with me. So I… let go.”
No one breathes for a second.
Shoko swears under her breath.
Nanami presses his forehead to your hand and laughs — broken, holy, ridiculous — like a man who has finally run out of misery to hold.
“I’m going home,” you mumble.
“Yes,” Nanami says, voice shaking. “Yes. You will.”
A/N: hope you liked it! merry celebrations to all those who celebrate, to all who don't, merry evening!!
You're running. All you can think about right now is running.
Theres nothing left of your previous life now, all that's left now is gore, entrails of your loved ones, and the sickening squelch of blood beneath your feet. You have no idea who even did this, all you know is that the house party you came to attend a couple hours ago was infiltrated by someone, something, and now your life is probably over as soon as it finds you, next.
The forest floor is unkind to you, you have no idea how many bruises and cuts you probably have on you now, your white dress decorated in lace and glitter is probably shredded. You threw off your heels a couple yards ago now, and you're starting to regret it, even if you might've broken your foot trying to run in 3 inch heels. The thick brush and leaves scrape your face as you continue running through the forest you're trapped in, caged in the jaws of an unknown force that you're sure will crush you as soon as it sinks its teeth into your tender flesh. You feel hopeless, but maybe by at least trying to fight, you can have the assurance that you tried, even if it was all pointless.
It's sickening really, how wrong you really are. Choso never had any intention of harming you - well, not in a permanent sense, at least. Choso wasn't invited to this party of course, they just happened to all be at the wrong location, at the wrong time. Choso has lived in these woods for about 5 years now, and has always lived off of the thrill of bloodshed and carnage. The screams, the draining of life as they look at him for their final moments, and the sickening crunch of his axe into their limbs, it all felt so real and exhilaratingly poetic to Choso. Life was cruel to him, so in turn, he believed that gave him the special right to take it as he felt necessary or even just desired. As Choso stalked through the thick pine leaves and brush of the forest, covered in thick red blood, he couldn't have felt more alive than in that very moment setting his eyes on you first at that little house party that was crudely disrupting his privacy and peace in his forest. You, the soft little thing that reminded him of a dove, your hair and makeup done up in a beautifully seductive manner, your delicate little laugh and silly mannerisms, the way that you shined so beautifully with tears and mascara streaming down your horrified face...oh, Choso liked you.
He really, really liked you.
Perhaps that was a worse fate than getting mauled by his axe like the others.
He wanted to keep you, and by God, nothing would prevent that anymore.
After all, you're in his forest.
Theres no way you'll get out, not at least without him finding you first. He's never been so horny, so desperate in his entire life. Sure, he's had urges, but he never felt the need to act on them. Instead of acting on them, he always just killed instead. That always felt the same, at least he thought that, until he met you. Chasing you down in his forest has made him feel so, so hard and needy, sweating profusely, and so desperate to get his hands on your soft beautiful body and claim you as his treat after another successful culling of people within his forest.
You've been hiding for the past hour behind a large group of shrubbery. You're so exhausted, the running and tripping has worn your body and soul completely out. It hurts, everything on your body hurts. You're pretty sure your ankle is swollen, possibly sprained, but who even cares at this point. You know you're dead, it's only a matter of time before he finds you. You just hope he does it quickly-
You hear it before you see it.
Eager, heavy footsteps. Twigs beneath his feet snapping. The soft trilling of the birds above you have come to a sudden, frightening stop.
His big, heavy boots are seen not even 10 feet in front of you. Fuck, he's here. He's here to torture you, chop you into pieces, it's going to hurt so bad-
His voice. It's so deep and makes you feel your head rattle, but it's so...gentle. So soft sounding.
"Come out, please my dove. "
You must be so cold and scared, aren't you?"
"I know where you are. Please don't make me drag you out."
"I don't want to hurt you."
There's no way this guy had no intention of hurting you. You literally witnessed him brutally axe murder your friends at this house party, and he's trying to tell you he has no intention of harming you? Bullshit.
You sweat. He says he knows where you are. Maybe that's a bluff? He hasn't looked directly at your hiding spot, so maybe there's a chance..?
"You know, before I found you tonight, I had the thought in my head that love didn't really exist. That it was a fabrication, a lie."
He's started talking again. That voice....
"But once I laid my eyes on you, the world just stopped. It felt like those cliche romance movies I used to watch with my brothers, years ago."
His back is turned to you, so you take a moment to peek out at him from a hole in your shrubbery. He's so tall, probably around 6"4...his hair is dark, around shoulder length, and he's wearing a thick and soft looking black and purple flannel with dark black jeans with a belt loop holding his axe. His build is very impressive, he's stocky and lean at the same time, such big muscles and those broad shoulders...if he wasn't a mass murderer, you might consider being flustered by him, but that doesn't matter now. His head turns to you, suddenly.
You two lock eyes for probably 2 seconds.
Fuck, you need to run. It's over. He sees you. Like a frightened rabbit, you freeze for a moment, your breath stuck in your throat as you feel like you can't even swallow. He smiles, suddenly, then begins speaking once more.
"I knew as soon as I saw you, you were mine, my dove. I can take care of you. You have nothing to fear anymore."
You stand up to run, you have to escape. You have to run. There's no way you can physically counter him, he's twice your size. Bracing yourself, you begin trying to sprint away. God, your ankle feels like it's on fire. It hurts so bad, everything hurts really.
Suddenly, all of the air is completely knocked out of your lungs as you embrace the coarse dirt below you, and you for a moment sputter and struggle to breathe.
You feel a massive pair of pale arms encased around you, squeezing like a python with a rat within its grip. It's over. He's caught you. Maybe he'll have a little mercy and just strangle you instead of chopping you into pieces-
He breathes deep into the crook of your neck, sighing. You can feel his teeth, smiling broad, pressing into your neck. His breath tickles your neck, and you feel like you can't breathe at all. You've never felt so afraid in your entire life. Is this what death feels like? You haven't even died yet, and you already feel so lifeless.
Suddenly, his hands encase your face gently, like a man holding a porcelain cup within his hands. His arms are still tightly wrapped around your entire body like a snake. You feel his entire body on top of you, and it's so warm. For such a cold blooded killer, his presence and body feels so...comforting. Suddenly, he speaks again, and his voice feels even more like a rattle to your skull now that he's so close.
"You're...you're so soft...haah..."
He sounds out of breath, which is ironic considering your situation. His long, pale fingers stroke your face in such a gentle manor, as his fingers slowly trace around to touch your face, detail by detail. His hands trail down to touch your neck, tracing gentle shapes into your skin as he speaks again.
"I love you. I love you so much, my dove. Please let me love you. Let me take you as my own. You need me like I need you. I just need to show you that."
He then presses gentle, soft kisses against the skin exposed to him from behind you, his breath tickling your neck as he sighs again, and borderline huffs your skin and scent between the juncture of your neck and shoulder.
You suddenly feel the bravery to speak back, for the first time.
"You..y-you don't even know who I am, h-how can you say you love me?" God, your voice sounds like you haven't spoken in weeks. It's so gravely and strained, you begin to wonder if he even heard you, until he replies once more.
"I do love you. I have full confidence in that. I knew as soon as I saw you that you were going to be my bride, mine to love and protect."
He stops for a moment to trace your face again, before continuing.
"I know what you probably think of me, and I don't blame you for that. But please, please give me a chance to show you that I would never harm you. I know how cruel this world is, I want to keep you protected from that, my dove. Those people that I've killed...I know I'm a killer. A murderer, actually. But," he stops for a moment to kiss your skin oncemore. "I know that you're different from all of the rest. My instinct never lies."
He then turns your body gently to face him for the first time, and you begin to take in his features. His pupils are so dialated, you can't tell if his eyes are actually brown or just completely black. He has a strange, thick black line across his nose bridge, and eyebags so heavy you wonder if he's ever slept longer than two hours. Suddenly, he grabs your face and leads you into a hasty, yet passionate kiss. He immediately groans and you don't even have time to react before he pulls away, face red and flushed as he looks deep into your eyes.
"That..that was my first kiss.." He reaches up to trace your lips again, his thumb pulling your lower lip down as he trails his hand further down your neck. He looks erotic in this moment, honestly. You don't really know if you should be scared anymore, the adrenaline making you feel like you probably should, after his love speech along with that kiss, maybe he's not so dangerous..well to you, at least. His hand encases yours, dwarfing it entirely as he leads it to touch his chest right where his heart lies.
His heart is beating so rapidly you wonder if he's having some kind of reaction to something serious. You'd think he was the one in danger by how hard it's beating, but you both know who the true danger is at this moment.
"Do you...do you feel that? I've never felt this before. I questioned whether or not I had one for a while, up until this moment." He bites his lip, sharp canines peeking over his lip as he locks eyes with you and leads his hand lower, and lower...
Oh..oh...
..You can feel his bulge pulsing against your hand immediately at the contact through his black jeans. He gasps, manipulating your hand to press a little harder.
"That's...that's my..um.." He's suddenly shy, almost, face heating up even more as if he's not the one who initiated you touching his dick print through his pants. Wow, he's actually kind of...cute like this? Your hand is still resting on his dick before he groans again and leads up to kiss you again, pinning your soft gentle body against the ground as he furthers his kissing, quickly getting more and more desperate. You can tell he's never kissed anyone before, as he gets sloppier and sloppier the more he gets worked up.
Fuck it, you decide, if you're going to possibly die by tomorrow morning, you might as well have a little fun with the killer in front of you that's never felt the touch of a woman before. You begin to hesitantly kiss back, and as soon as you do, Choso notices and gets even more passionate. You slowly open your mouth, probing him to open his up as well. He's confused at first, but as soon as he complies, you slip your tongue in and he moans at the contact. As you intertwine your tongue with his, he starts to get the idea and begins to take initiative as he palms your body, groaning and drooling into your mouth at a concerning degree. As he parts his lips from yours finally, face flushed and a trail of saliva between your lips and his own, the look in his eyes makes you begin to rethink your decision. The way his stare is currently boring into you makes you feel like a rabbit within the hungry jaws of a wolf, with no way out apart from complete destruction of what you once were.
It's too bad that you didn't realize giving Choso even the slightest way into the door would seal your fate indefinitely. Now that you've given the wolf a taste, he won't stop until there's nothing more to consume.
Oh, you poor dove.
Part 2 for this should be out by Tuesday!!👀 Please let me know if you'd like to be added to the tag list, I'm also currently trying to finish the Bully Satosugu part 2 (hopefully out by Monday night) so please bear with me my babies!!! I'm so happy to be back!! ˃͈◡˂͈
The dreaded day of your wedding to the Lord of Oldtown has arrived. When Ormund spares you from the crude tradition of the bedding ceremony, you believe you are safe. However, once the heavy oak doors of his chambers close you quickly learn what he expects of his bride.
pairings: Dark!Ormund Hightower x Lesser Noble!Reader
warnings: Dark!Ormund is in full effect; psychological manipulation and gaslighting; intense power and status imbalance; forced marriage and entrapment; explicit sexual content; dubious consent and physical coercion; virginity loss resulting in pain and bruising; praise kink utilized as a manipulation tactic
words: ~4.5k
Part 1
author’s note: Thank you guys so much for the love on the last chapter! I'm seriously so grateful to everyone who commented, reposted, and enjoyed the fic, it means the absolute world to me. I really hope you guys enjoy this chapter too, and fingers crossed I didn't miss anyone on the tag list!
The smoke grey velvet is heavier than it looks. As the maid fastens the intricate laces at your back, the weight of the fabric settles over your shoulders, the emerald green flames of House Hightower embroidered meticulously along the bodice and the sleeves.
"You look absolutely radiant, my lady," the maid gushes, smoothing the heavy skirts with a bright, oblivious smile. "The entire city rejoices for you."
You do not smile back. Beneath the heavy folds of velvet, your trembling fingers seek out the hidden pocket sewn into your skirt. You find the small, coarse fabric of your lavender sachet. You press your thumb against it, squeezing the dried flowers until the faint, grounding scent of your home bleeds through the heavy wool. Breathe, you tell yourself. Just breathe.
The doors to the Starry Sept are enormous. When they are pushed open, the roar of the chanting choir and a suffocating wall of thick, burning incense hit you instantly, entirely swallowing the gentle lavender you cling to. Hundreds of lords, ladies, and knights fill the ancient pews, their eyes burning into you as you begin the long, agonizing walk down the aisle.
Then, through the sea of unfamiliar faces, you see them.
Your father. Your family. You had not even been permitted to speak with them since their arrival in Oldtown, Lord Ormund’s stewards had kept you isolated in your chambers, claiming the strictest need for maidenly prayer and preparation. Now, seeing them standing in the front pews, a fresh wave of nausea hits you.
They are draped in fine, brand-new silks, undoubtedly bought with the staggering dowry Ormund must have poured into your family's empty coffers. Your father is beaming, practically weeping with joy. He looks at you like you are the greatest triumph of his life. They only see the gold, the prestige, and the magnificent man the Lord of Oldtown is.
A painful knot of doubt twists in your chest. You remember the desperate, sorrowful way Ormund had apologized to you the morning after he terrified you, his voice thick with emotion as he confessed his shame and called you his only solid ground. What if you were entirely wrong? What if the cowering servant girl in the corridor and the bruising grip on your waist were just the tragic missteps of an exhausted, grieving man, just as he claimed?
Lord Ormund Hightower stands before the Septon, the absolute picture of pious devotion. He wears a pristine doublet of green, his hands clasped in front of him. As you approach the altar, he turns to you, and a warm, perfect smile spreads across his handsome face. A soft murmur ripples through the gathered nobility, a collective swoon at the devoted, tragic lord finally stepping out of his mourning to find happiness again with his pretty, young bride.
You reach the altar. The Septon drones on and on, his words dissolving into a meaningless hum in your ears.
Ormund steps forward to remove the thin maiden’s cloak from your shoulders. He steps too close. Just a fraction of an inch past what is proper, invading your space before the hundreds witnesses who see nothing but a loving groom.
The heavy, overpowering scent of crushed clove and citrus oil envelops you, slicing right through the thick incense of the Sept. Your breath hitches. As he lifts the heavy Hightower cloak to drape it over your shoulders, his warm, calloused knuckles deliberately brush against the bare skin of your collarbone. It is but a ghost of the terrifying, possessive grip he had on you in his office, but it is done with such a delicate way that you feel entirely unmoored.
"My beautiful bride," Ormund murmurs, his rich voice pitched so low that only you can hear it beneath the choir's chanting.
Every instinct in your body screams at you to shrink away from the suffocating heat radiating from his large frame. But another, softer voice remembers the gentle father who sat in the sunlit nursery and asked you about your favourite old ballads of the Reach.
You force your chin up. You look directly into his eyes, searching for the man who terrified you in the dark. But looking back at you is nothing but a devoted lord. You don't know which version of him is real. The terrifying whiplash of it all leaves you paralyzed.
Unable to trust him, but unable to trust your own fears either, you swallow the knot of panic in your throat. You force on your face a small nervous smile.
"My Lord," you whisper back, your voice steady despite the violent, confused hammering of your heart against your ribs.
A flicker of surprise, followed instantly by something dangerously pleased, flashes in Ormund's pale eyes. He lingers for just a second longer than necessary, breathing in the lavender clinging to your skin, before he turns back to the Septon.
The transition from the Starry Sept to the Great Hall is a blur of cheering crowds and suffocating heat. At the high table, you sit rigidly beside your new husband. The feast is a deafening roar of laughter and clashing goblets.
The air is thick with the smell of roasting boar, spilled wine, and the heavy, sour sweat of hundreds of drunken lords and knights. Beside you, Lord Ormund sits perfectly upright. He is the picture of a generous host. But sitting this close, you can feel the rigid, dangerous tension coiled in his large frame. His jaw tightens every time a drunken lord laughs too loudly. He continuously brings his silk handkerchief to his nose, masking his absolute disdain for the stench of the crowd beneath a veneer of polite nobility.
You scan the lower tables, catching a glimpse of your father deep in his cups, laughing boisterously with men who wouldn't have looked twice at him a month ago.
"My lady."
You startle slightly. Lord Ormund has turned his head to converse with a wealthy merchant from the Arbor, and Ser Gwayne Hightower has seamlessly slipped into the empty space behind your chair. He offers a charming smile, but when he leans down to fill your goblet, his eyes are sharp and filled with concern.
"You look pale," Gwayne murmurs, his facade dropping the moment Ormund’s back is fully turned. "More like a hostage than a bride. Has my cousin… frightened you in some way?"
Your heart leaps into your throat. You look at Gwayne’s kind face, desperately wanting to whisper the truth, to tell him about the cowering servant girl in the corridor, the bruising grip in the solar, the terrifying changes in his cousin's moods. But out of the corner of your eye, you see Ormund shift. He is still nodding at the merchant, but his posture has stiffened. He is listening.
A cold realization washes over you, that if you tell Gwayne the truth, Ormund’s wrath might fall on him now.
"I am perfectly well, Ser Gwayne," you lie, forcing a timid, bashful giggle in your voice. "I am simply overwhelmed. The betrothal was sudden, and your family’s keep is so grand... I am just exhausted."
Gwayne studies your face. His eyes drop briefly to your hands, which are gripping the heavy smoke grey velvet of your skirts so tightly your knuckles are white. He clearly doesn't believe you. But before he can press further, Ormund turns back, his pale eyes pinning Gwayne in place.
"Cousin," Ormund says, his voice smooth, yet carrying an undeniable edge of ice-cold tension. "See to the Tyrells at the lower tables. Their cups seem empty."
Gwayne bows with his lips tight and takes his leave. You watch him go, feeling a crushing wave of loneliness. You look down the table and catch the eye of Prince Daeron. The silver-haired boy is not drinking, nor is he smiling. He looks at you with a deep, helpless sorrow, his violet eyes completely stripped of the bright humor you shared in the library. He knows. He must know.
As the hour grows late, the feast devolves into a rowdy, drunken frenzy.
Suddenly, a heavy fist slams against a wooden table. "To the bedding!" a lord shouts, his voice slurred with wine. The cry is instantly taken up by a dozen others. "The bedding!"
Men begin to stand, their faces flushed and leering as they look toward the high table. As the closest lords takes a step toward the high table, you shrink back.
The tradition seems unavoidable, dozens of drunken men tearing at your gown, carrying you through the halls. Pure panic flares in your chest. You cannot let them touch you. You cannot be dragged into the dark by these men.
Without thinking, you lean into the only solid, unmoving thing in the room. You press your trembling shoulder against Ormund’s arm, your fingers desperately twisting into his velvet sleeve.
"My lord... please," you whisper, your voice cracking with fear. You squeeze your eyes shut against the noise.
Ormund looks down at you. The tight disgust in his eye’s forms into something protective or possessive. He takes in your delicate, trembling frame, shrinking away from the foul-smelling crowd and instinctively seeking refuge in him. It feeds his arrogance.
He stands. He does not shout, but he raises a single hand. The absolute authority of the Lord of Oldtown silences the Great Hall in a matter of seconds.
"There will be no bedding ceremony tonight," Ormund declares, his voice cutting through the thick, sour air like a blade. "My wife is far too delicate for such crude handling. I will escort her to our chambers myself."
A few drunken lords look as though they might protest, but one cold look from Ormund sends them shrinking back into their seats.
He turns to you, offering his arm with the perfect grace of a chivalrous knight. You take it, your legs feeling weak with a dizzying rush of relief. He saved you from them.
The heavy oak doors of his private chambers close with a definitive, echoing thud, cutting off the distant roar of the feast. The sudden, silence is suffocating you.
Lord Ormund’s bedchamber is massive and pristine. Dark mahogany paneled walls are draped with heavy, meticulously woven tapestries depicting the Seven. A colossal four-poster bed dominates the center of the room, draped in dark furs and emerald silks. A roaring fire burns in the hearth, the logs soaked in the scent of citrus oil to banish any trace of the city's stench.
Ormund releases your arm and crosses the room toward a silver flagon on a side table. He seems perfectly at ease, shedding his heavy outer doublet with a quiet sigh of relief.
"You are safe now, my lady," he murmurs, his voice a smooth, comforting rumble as he pours two jeweled goblets of wine. He turns to you with a warm, indulgent smile, clearly expecting you to fall into his arms in gratitude. "No filthy, drunken hands will ever touch you. The night is ours alone."
He holds out a goblet. You take it with trembling fingers, desperate to put distance between you. Instead of drinking, you take a slow step backward, putting a heavy oak chair between his imposing frame and your own.
"Thank you, my lord," you whisper, your eyes darting frantically around the room, to fill the suffocating silence. "The... the tapestries are magnificent. Are they from the Starry Sept?" You take another small step away, tracing the carved wood of the chair.
Ormund pauses. A small tightening in his jaw is the only sign that your distance displeases him. He takes a slow sip of his wine, his pale eyes tracking your movements.
"They were commissioned by my grandfather," Ormund replies, his tone still perfectly polite, though the warmth has dimmed just a fraction. "But they pale in comparison to you tonight. Come, sit by the fire. You are trembling."
He gestures to a plush settee near the hearth. Every instinct in your body tells you to stay exactly where you are.
"I... I am only worried about little Bethany," you blurt out, your grip tightening around the stem of the goblet. "The noise from the feast was so loud. Perhaps I should go to the nursery, just to ensure she hasn't woken..."
The indulgent smile on Ormund's face grows noticeably stiffer. He sets his jeweled goblet down on the table with a soft clink. He takes a slow, measured step toward you.
"Bethany is fast asleep in the opposite wing," Ormund says, his voice losing its soft rumble and taking on an edge. "She cannot hear the feast, and she is well attended by her nurses. You need not concern yourself with the nursery tonight. Your place is here."
His large frame suddenly somehow taking up more space in the room. He holds out his hand. "Come here, my sweet. Let me help you out of this heavy gown."
Your breath hitches. You grip the heavy smoke grey velvet of your skirts, the very fabric you had clutched so tightly at the feast.
"A maid," you blurt out, your voice shaking as you take another step backward, your spine softly hitting the heavy wooden post of the bed. "I should call for a maid to undo the laces, my lord. It is a tedious task, with so many knots. It is not proper for a Lord of your standing to do a servant's work..."
Ormund’s hand slowly drops to his side. The gracious smile finally slips from his face, leaving behind a blank, utterly unreadable mask. The silence in the room grows thick and stifling.
"I am not a man who concerns himself with the tediousness of a task when the reward is my own wife," he says. His voice has lost its rich warmth and is now a low and flat.
He steps forward, closing the remaining distance between you in two long, deliberate strides. The overwhelming scent of crushed clove and citrus oil swallows you whole. You press your spine harder against the heavy wooden post of the bed, but there is nowhere left to retreat.
He doesn't reach for your gown. Instead, his large hand wraps over yours. With a gentle but unyielding grip, he pries the jeweled goblet from your fingers. He doesn't even look at it as he reaches to the side, setting it down on a nearby chest with a dull thud.
Before you can even take a breath, both of his hands come up to frame your face.
His palms are searing hot against your cold skin. His long fingers slide past your jaw, tangling slightly in your hair, while his thumbs begin to stroke the apples of your cheeks. The gesture is a chilling mimicry of tenderness, but the grip is firm. If you tried to turn your head, you wouldn't be able to move an inch.
"Do you not understand the weight of the favor I just granted you downstairs?" he asks softly, leaning in until the overwhelming scent of citrus oil completely envelops you. "When you pressed your trembling shoulder against my arm and begged for my protection, I silenced a hall of drunken, sweating fools for you. I spared you the indignity of their foul hands tearing at your clothes. I saved you from being pawed at and carried through the corridors like some common whore."
His thumbs drag heavily across your cheekbones, in slow rhythm meant to subdue you.
"I shielded you from tradition and their stench," Ormund continues, his tone perfectly level, though the utter lack of patience vibrates beneath every word. "And yet, you pull away," he chastises almost softly, his tone dripping with disappointment, like a holy man scolding a foolish, ignorant child. "The Seven command that a wife must find her highest purpose in her lord husband's comfort. Your duties do not lie in hiding away in the nursery, nor in cowering behind excuses…I only ask what every husband is owed."
He tilts your head up just a fraction more, his imposing frame trapping you completely against the bedpost.
The suffocating weight of his words, coupled with the overwhelming scent of crushed clove and citrus oil, presses down on you until you feel you might shatter. His thumbs, still dragging heavily across your cheekbones, offering no comfort, only a terrifying reminder of your helplessness.
If you pull away now, he will snap, just like at that servant girl or like when he cornered you a few nights ago. You can feel it in every fibre of your being with absolute certainty.
"I am not ungrateful, my lord," you whisper. Your voice trembling. "I swear it by the Seven. I know the great favor you did me... I know my duties."
Ormund's eyes narrow slightly, searching your face for any trace of defiance.
"I am only... nervous," you breathe out, forcing yourself to maintain eye contact even as your stomach twists. "It is my wedding night. I am far from my home, and... and it is all so new to me."
To prove your submission, you force your body to move. It takes every ounce of your willpower to slowly, you lift your shaking hands and place them flat against the broad, solid expanse of his chest. Your fingers clutching his shirt in a grip that you hope look like desperate desire to his arrogant eyes.
You push yourself up onto your toes. Squeezing your eyes shut as you press your lips against his. Your mouth is stiff and cold against the heat of his. A tiny, involuntary whimper vibrates in the back of your throat, born of fear, though you pray he misinterprets it. You kiss him clumsily, trying to offer the willingness he just demanded of you.
A dark, satisfied hum vibrates deep within his chest. The hands framing your face slide back, his fingers tangling forcefully into your hair to tilt your head further back. He takes over the kiss entirely, his mouth slanting hard over yours, swallowing your gasp as he presses his full, crushing weight against you.
Ormund’s mouth claims yours with a hunger that steals the air from your lungs, his tongue sweeping past your lips as his body presses you firmly against the carved bedpost. The heavy velvet of your gown bunches between you, his heat radiating through the layers. One of his hands stays tangled in your hair, the other mapping the curve of your waist with possession.
A low, guttural sound rumbles in his chest as he breaks the kiss only to trail his lips along your jaw, then lower, breathing deeply against the delicate skin of your throat, making you tremble.
He pulls back just enough to look at you with want. “Easy, my sweet,” he murmurs, voice low and coaxing. "I will take care of you. "
His fingers work the laces of your gown with practiced care, letting the smoke-grey velvet slide from your shoulders slowly. Cool air touches your skin, but his hands follow at once, warm and steady, soothing almost. You try to twist away, but he only chuckles softly and lifts you effortlessly onto the edge of the massive bed.
The furs and emerald silks swallow you as he follows, his larger frame covering yours.
He kisses you again, slower this time, while his free hand works the rest of your gown down your body. The fabric pools on the floor. Then comes the thin shift beneath, and soon you are bare beneath him, shivering despite the fire’s warmth. His own clothing follows in impatient motions until the hard, heated length of his body presses fully against yours, now skin to skin, the coarse hair on his chest rasping against your breasts, his arousal heavy and insistent against your thigh.
When he parts your legs and pushes inside you for the first time, the stretch is sudden and overwhelming. A sharp gasp escapes you, turning into a pained cry as your body resists the intrusion.
"Ormund …please, slow down, " you whimper, hands pushing weakly at his chest. "It hurts… you’re hurting me"
He stills, buried only partly within you, though the effort it takes is visible in the tight line of his jaw. His breath is hot against your neck as he lowers his head, burying his face there and drawing in a deep, shuddering inhale of your lavender scent. The clean, delicate smell seems to ground him for a moment.
"Shh, breathe, Sweetness, " he whispers against your skin, voice thick with restraint. His hips remain still, though you can feel the tension thrumming through his big frame. "I know it aches. You are so small, so pure… but you were made for this. For me. " One large hand strokes your side in slow, soothing passes, thumb brushing the underside of your breast. "Relax for me. Let your body accept what the Seven have ordained. "
He kisses your throat softly, then your collarbone, murmuring praises and half-prayers as he waits for you to soften beneath him. The manipulative warmth in his voice wraps around your fear, coaxing, guiding, promising safety even as his size and weight keep you pinned. Then when your breathing evens slightly he presses forward again, inch by careful inch, until he is fully sheathed. A low groan vibrates against your neck as he breathes you in once more, lavender filling his lungs.
For a time, he moves slowly, in long, measured strokes that still burn but no longer tear. He watches your face closely, adjusting when you wince, murmuring, "That’s it… good girl. You take me so well. " His hands hold you tenderly, thumbs stroking your cheeks, even as his own control begins to fray.
But the longer he stays buried in your heat, surrounded by your scent and the tight grip of your body, the more his restraint crumbles. His thrusts grow deeper, harder, driven by mounting selfishness. His face remains pressed to your neck, inhaling you greedily with every breath.
One of his hands slides between your bodies. His fingers find the sensitive bundle of nerves at the between of your thighs. He circles it gently at first, then with more purpose, not stopping the drag of his cock inside you. The dual sensation is overwhelming, and the burning fullness paired with sparks of pleasure make your breath hitch and your thighs tremble around his hips.
"Feel that sweet girl? " He murmurs against your throat, voice low with manipulative warmth. "Let it happen. Do not fight the gift I give you. Your lord husband will take care of you…"
His fingers move faster, perfectly in time with the deepening roll of his hips, while his mouth latches onto the sensitive spot beneath your ear, sucking. The combination is too much. Your body tightens around him, the coil in your belly winding impossibly tighter until it snaps.
Your climax crashes over you without mercy. A sharp, startled cry tears from your throat as waves of intense pleasure rip through you, quieting the pain for a few seconds, your inner walls clenching around his thick length. Your back arches hard off the furs, fingers digging into his shoulders as your vision blurs with tears from the overwhelming sensation.
Your orgasm seems to snap the final thread of his control. The moment your spasms begin to ease, something in him snaps. The coaxing lord vanishes beneath raw, selfish need. His hips draw back and slam forward harder, burying himself to the hilt with a guttural sound. He no longer holds back. Each thrust is powerful and demanding, the heavy four-poster bed creaking beneath the force as he chases his own release with single-minded intensity, ignoring your pleas to slow down.
His face remains buried in your neck, mouth open against your lavender-scented skin as he breathes you in. One arm slide beneath your hips, tilting you up so he can drive even deeper, while his other hand grips your thigh hard enough to bruise. The punishing strokes leave you gasping and trembling in the aftermath of your own peak.
You whimper, when the pain is too overwhelming. "My lord… it’s too much…"
He doesn’t stop. His rhythm grows erratic, desperate. With a final, crushing thrust and a low, broken moan muffled against your neck, Ormund finds his own release. His cock pulses deep inside you as he spills himself in thick, hot spurts, hips grinding against yours as if he could fuse the two of you together. He stays buried deep even as he softens, his large body suffocating on top of yours.
The heavy furs and emerald silks feel smothering when you finally wake. Crisp morning light filters through the tall, narrow windows of the chamber, painting the dark mahogany panels in soft gold. Your body aches in ways you have never known, deep, intimate soreness between your thighs, bruised fingerprints on your hips and thighs, the tender pull of muscles that had been stretched and claimed thoroughly. Every small shift sends an aching reminder of his weight and heat.
A soft rustle of heavy wool draws your terrified gaze. Lord Ormund is already awake. He stands near the tall arched window, fully dressed in a new pristine doublet. One hand rest casually behind his back, while the other lifts his silk handkerchief to his nose. The morning light spills across his handsome features, painting the absolute picture of a righteous, devoted lord.
He turns at the slight sound of your stirring. The dark, ravenous man who pinned you to the mattress is entirely gone.
"Good morning," he says, his voice a smooth rumble that still carries the authority of the night before.
He crosses the massive bedchamber and sits on the edge of the mattress. You go rigid, but one of his large, calloused hand cups the side of your face, his thumb stroking your cheek.
"You did good last night," Ormund murmurs, studing you with open, arrogant approval. "So warm and tight for your husband..."
His gaze drifts lazily over your body where the dark furs have slipped, taking in the bruises he left on your skin. There is not a single ounce of regret in his expression. Instead, there is only a deep, satisfied possessiveness, as though the soreness you feel is natural.
"It is only right that you feel me still," he continues calmly caressing your cheek, "You will find this easier in time."
He kisses your forehead, trailing his lips lightly down to your temple to breathe in the faint scent of lavender that still clings to your hair.
This Is Not Real @mlle-grimm - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
