nox!

she/her | 18+ Ao3: noxiousstrawberriex

[noxiiousstrawberriies]

⊹₊ ˚‧ Hello! ⊹₊ ˚‧

Welcome to my blog!! I'm Nox (or noxiiousstrawberries/noxiousstrawberriex)! I like coffee, seals, strawberries, and fanfiction.

Below is the link to my ASOIAF masterlist.

Underneath that is some information about me! If you have any questions not covered below, or just random commentary you want to share, feel free to send them to my inbox.

₊˚⊹♡ ASOIAF masterlist (AKotSK, HoTD)

Who are you? I'm 18+, American, and use she/her pronouns!

Are you doing requests? Requests are currently *closed!

Where do you post? Ao3 and Tumblr! I post character x character on Ao3 and character x reader on Tumblr; feel free to check my other works out.

What fandoms do you write for? Currently, I'm incredibly focused on HotD and AKotSK. I've previously written for ITSV, CoD, DSMP (unfortunately /hj), etc.

What tropes do you write? Whatever interests me: omegaverse, arranged marriage, domestic bliss, yandere/stalker plots, pregnancy, found family, etc. It's hard to pinpoint specifics.

What are your boundaries?

Do NOT ever steal my works or feed them into AI.

If you use one of my fics as direct inspiration, please credit and tag me.

Do not assume I condone any dark themes I write about. Everything I create is fictional and should not be taken otherwise.

Unless blatantly stated, I'm not looking for any constructive criticism.

Other than that, I'm pretty lowkey and am always open to having a good time!

*Necessary request disclaimers: 1. Most requests submitted before the close date (3/23/2026 at 2 PM EST) WILL be completed over time. Same rules apply: if I can get inspired by it, I'll write for it. 2. Any new suggestions submitted will be deleted from my inbox. No hard feelings, I'm happy you want me to write for you, but requests are currently closed for a reason. Ty!

[noxiiousstrawberriies]

⋆.˚𓇼 𝔉𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔡

𓆟 Summary: When checking the longlines for your fisherman father, you uncover a young man washed ashore. 𓆟 CWs: Vague descriptions of injuries and HotD 3x1 spoilers!! 𓆟 Content: Canon divergence*, fix it, class differences, wound tending, savior x saved trope, some hurt/comfort, mistaken identity, fempov, reader's appearance is undefined, reader is a fisherman's daughter and a smallfolk 𓆟 Pairings: Commonborn!Reader x Jacaerys Velaryon 𓆟 Word Count: ~2.4k

𓆟 AN: *Baela isn't betrothed to Jace (because infidelity isn’t welcome in this house), and obviously, Jace lives! Huzzah!! I've been a fan of HotD for a while now, and I decided that after all the trauma 3x1 caused, I HAD to post something. I hope you enjoy!

The morning was quiet.

Most mornings were at this time. It was right after the sun began to peek over the horizon, just as sleepy-eyed as all those unwilling to slip out from beneath their covers at such an early hour. Rays lay in faint streaks across your village’s greenery and houses.

It was minuscule in comparison to the grandiose builds and importance of cities such as Lannisport or King’s Landing. Humble and small, it resided under the care of House Velyaron, just a days ride or two from Driftmark. Most commonborns who lived there were fishermen; your father was one.

While your mother tended to keep herself fulfilled with cooking and cleaning, your father was quite ambitious for someone of such low birth. He believed, with a certainty that could rattle steel, that hard enough work could be the answer to any problem. His hands were calloused by this philosophy, posture stooped from hours of casting nets in a rickety little boat.

You were his only child. An unfortunate fate solely for the fact that you were tasked with the many chores of a fisherman. There were many afternoons spent checking nets, baskets, and hauling fish of all sorts to and from destinations.

Most evenings you smelt like the sea. No amount of scrubbing could remove the stench of salt, of vegetal funk and brine. You could very well bleed water instead of red.

However, that was not to say you disliked helping. There was a joy in routine. A beauty in contribution, of gutting something that would later fall apart between your teeth for supper. You could enjoy it, smell and labor aside.

The path worn by years of footsteps was hard beneath your feet as you descended to the shore. It was one of those dawns when your father had decided you’d be the one to check the longlines, and miserably, you’d complied.

You had not expected much. Perhaps a few cod, some haddock, or even some halibut. The lines weren't anything impressive. A few feet long, tethered to land with knots and rocks.

Yet when you came down the slope that smoothed out from dirt to sand, something else caught your eye.

At first, you couldn't tell what it was. Minor anxiety bubbled in your chest. swelling uncomfortably, as you stared over at the mysterious thing that had washed up just mere inches away from one of the lines. It wasn't uncommon for things to drift out of the sea, but this wasn't any common debris.

You thought it could be a sizeable dead animal. However, when you hesitantly moved closer, you realized that it was a person.

"Oh," you breathed.

You hurried closer to the figure. The closer you got, the more of their features you could decipher.

It was a young man around your age.

He was curled onto his side, nearly lying on his stomach, with a large strip of weathered wood tucked beneath him. Sand clung to his fine clothes. His dark hair was mussed, half-dry and half-damp, clinging to the curve of his cheekbone and near the corner of his lips.

He was handsome. That much was clear, with an aristocratic mien that you could envision in some fancy portrait strung up in a noble household. You studied the prominent curve of his nose and the elegant shape of his mouth for a moment before your attention snagged down to his shoulder.

There's an arrow there. It's been torn in half, possibly by the force of the waves or the stranger's own efforts, and presently jutted out of his back like a major splinter. The tips of your fingers brushed near the entrance point. He didn't flinch, let alone awaken.

There were dozens of questions swarming your mind. Who is this? Where did he come from? How is he still alive? Is he still alive?

Carefully, you grabbed his arm and hauled him further onto his side. There was a whole arrow on the front of his chest, nearly adjacent to the other, and a similar splinter near his neck. He wasn't bleeding. Rather, he was still like death.

As you crowded around him to lay your ear upon his breast, you didn't know what to expect. He was so pale, and his skin was cold, nearly ice-like. Nevertheless, his chest was moving shallowly, so slight that you could barely feel it.

Beneath the struggle for air, there was the weak pulse of a heart.

"Gods," you whispered, "What happened to you?"

He did not tell you. He would never tell you if you didn't get him help.

With great effort, you pulled him into your arms. The stranger was undoubtedly heavier than any catch you had to haul back home. He weighed more than a whole barrel of fish, limp and unresponsive to your attempts.

"Fuck!" You grit out.

Your fingers sank into his clothes, silken and velvety even with the turmoil and tears that had ravished them. His back was hard against your front as you embraced him from behind. His legs were sprawled out awkwardly before him, but they began to drag in even lines as you dragged him backwards towards the path.

Your legs burn, arms straining as you struggle to carry him. He's well-built and strong. He could very well be a highborn's bastard. Maybe a servant who got caught in the chaos of the dance happening between the Greens and Blacks. His clothes were genteel enough for it, even when ruined.

You huff and puff assurances directed to both of you as you manhandle his body up and up. You have to stop a few times to set him down, shaking out the pins and needles in your muscles before trying to find a better grip to tug him along.

His hair reeks of seaweed. It almost feels like it too against your chin from where you duck your head down, face pinched with determination.

By the time you round the corner, just mere steps from home, the sun is higher in the sky to welcome morning in full. An exasperated part of you hopes that the young man is someone important. You wouldn't mind some coin for his return after making your spine suffer so.

There's a trickle of anguish between your shoulders as you breathe against his scalp. The urge to comment something to the effect of you better be worth it is lost at the sound of your father's worried voice calling your name.

The next thing that leaves his mouth as he approaches is, "Who the fuck is that?"

You might've laughed at his tone if it weren't for the panic clouding your mind, "I don't know. I found him by the lines when I went to check on them. He's breathing, Gods know how. A sailor, perhaps?"

"No. See those clothes? This is no sailor true," your sire frowns down at the scene before him, pointing to the stranger's doublet and the arrows sticking out of him at odd angles, "He's house-bred. Has to be."

"Does it matter? He needed saving, so I saved him. Could you carry him the rest of the way, Father?" You plea.

Your father goes to refuse. You see it in his face, familiar and known to you. It is not the wish to deny someone help; it is worry. He is acutely aware of what taking someone in means. It means another mouth to feed, another body to clothe, and herbs and medicine used on someone unfamiliar to him.

There is no extra room to give to the stranger. There is no maester they can call upon to lend aid. It is a sacrifice after sacrifice of limited supplies. There is no abundance to replenish what is lost. Not now, with the war the royal house is waging.

"Please," You beg. You grip his side in fear of jostling the shards and arrow lodged into his torso, sand stuck to the length of his body.

Your appeal spurs your father into action. You are his only child, his daughter. It is very rare that he can deny you anything.

"We'll put him in the spare cot in your room," He says, and you know by that tone that he is already in the midst of formulating a plan. He takes the stranger from you with a greater ease than you dragged him with, pulling him to the shabby structure of your home.

"Hurry to your mother and tell her to put wine on the flames to boil. We'll have to stitch 'em shut," Your father grunts, and you run off without another word.

In the days following the stranger's rescue, he falls into a severe fever. His skin blossoms with a sickly flush that causes sweat to cling to his hairline, gathering beneath garb loaned by your father and the wrappings that cover his rough stitches. He's reminiscent of an eel in this state. Often, you worry that he'll slip off the cot somehow.

You are his sole caretaker. Your mother and father assist when needed (your ma more willingly in comparison to your leery sire), but most hours, he is yours.

Late at night, when the pain torments him most, he speaks. They're incoherent things; he is wholly nonsensical as you adjust a cool rag on his forehead or attempt to feed him broth. It is evidence enough that he is not aware, as you were certain if he were, he would be demanding to know your name and where you had taken him.

Sometimes, he calls out for his mother. When you brush the curls away from his face—regal tresses that have clearly been well-maintained—the stranger can confuse you for her.

"It's alright," you'd whisper back. Other times, you just comb his hair with your fingers in an effort to keep it untangled lest it become matted. The latter tends to soothe him more quickly.

Once or twice, he uttered the name Luke whilst in the throes of his feverish haze. You didn't like it when he said that name. It always sounded so sad, leaving his feeble maw with a heavy hope that discomforted your heart. He must've loved this Luke dearly.

Each time, after much fretting, he eventually falls quiet.

You can only pray at his bedside to the Seven above that he lives. That, with your desperate efforts, you manage to heal him. That this stranger will be able to tell you his name.

You don't know what you'll do with yourself if the true Stranger himself decides to collect.

When the stranger awakens one warm evenfall, he doesn't do so quietly. It's a loud affair from where he groans weakly. It is the first alert you have to his consciousness, and you turn away from where you had been folding linen for your own bed, hastily rushing to his side.

There's a sheen to his skin from the fading fever's hold. It highlights his cheeks as he grimaces, a lithe hand coming to gingerly press at his head.

"Don't worry," you begin, "All is well. You're safe here."

You move to assist him in sitting up, but the moment your fingers brush his elbow, the stranger flinches away from you. His eyes are dark, almost as dark as his hair. They're the color of fertile soil, of mud at the bottom of a pond. They're unfocused yet fierce.

You hover, startled at his jumpiness. You lower your voice to something purposefully soft, "I apologize."

The hell of his palm pushes on his brow as his current predicament seems to finally reach him. His head cranes slowly from side to side as he takes in his environment: the small frame of your bed, the old table beside it, and the chest crammed on the wall.

His pretty face was contorted into something both agonized and skeptical.

"Where am I?" He asks. His voice is refined, the very definition of courtly, with a polished cadence that melts in your ears like music. Even in upset, it's the vocalization of Myrish Lace.

"Gullnest," You supply. The stranger stares at you narrowly in response, blatantly unfamiliar.

You elaborate further, feeling a bit timid under such a commanding look, "It's a few days' ride away from Driftmark."

The explanation seems to satiate him for the moment. The hand on his head moves down to prod at his wrapped injuries, brushing aside the collar of his tunic. He has unblemished, if not vaguely calloused, fingers. There are no scars or burns, with just an expanse of fair skin that does not give the impression that he has undergone much physical hardship.

"You found me?" He asks, but it is delivered steadily like a fact.

"You washed ashore near my father's longlines. You need not share what happened to you. I can likely guess," You reveal. The sympathy you felt was immeasurable. A lord's man, left stranded after battle due to the vicious infighting between the Targaryens. You knew that sort of strife well.

The stranger didn't have a response for that. With the interlude of tense silence, you decided to inquire about something of your own.

"What's your name?"

The stranger was quick to formulate a response, but he clearly stopped himself, face caught in a suspicious expression as though he were thinking better of it. Coming to a decision, he slowly said, "... Jace. You may call me Jace."

There was clearly something more behind the nickname that he—Jace—was keeping from you. You supposed you couldn't be too surprised. He didn't seem particularly trusting at the moment, and the bitterness that underscored his beauty held nothing good.

His smart eyes gazed into yours as you offered your gentlest smile, "It suits you."

Brushing the front of your skirts off, you returned upright. Jace kept a keen eye on you, wary of whatever tricks you would initiate, but you possessed none. At least he stayed perched on the cot he had taken up for the past week.

You hoped it was the beginning seeds of trust.

"Well, Jace, let me go grab you some actual food. I'm sure you're starved," you stated. Just as you almost slipped out the door, his voice stopped you. It stuttered for a brief pause before smoothing out.

"Thank you," he offered, although he appeared a bit sheepish and reluctant in expressing his gratitude. You couldn't decipher plainly if he was expressing gratitude over his recovery or supper. It could very well be regarding both.

Your smile grew, "Of course."

As you closed the rickety door behind you, you couldn't help but bashfully feel that he, in his entirety, was rather princely.

𓆟 AN: Jace just lost his first battle and has now enrolled in the Westerosi Witness Protection Program. Might write a part 2 or something where the reader discovers who Jace is when he trusts her more, with a bunch of catching feelings and pretending to be a commoner/royal servant in between, if anyone is interested in that. IDK i'm just here for the vibes, and I kinda hate this, but fuck it! We ball!!

[noxiiousstrawberriies]

I LOVE UR AKOTSK WRITING SMMM

I was wondering if you could write another one of those ‘HC lists’, but where the AKOTSK men fall in love with a common girl??

HOPE THIS FINDS U WELL GORG

𓇗 𝔄𝔟𝔬𝔳𝔢 𝔒𝔫𝔢'𝔰 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫

𓇑 Summary: Even though you're commonborn, you've garnered the sincere interest of a man both wealthy and titled. 𓇑 CWs: Slight power imbalances and classism. 𓇑 Content: Class differences, technically forbidden romance, yearning, alcohol consumption, love at first sight, widowed Baelor and Maekar, Aerion being Aerion, fempov, use of she/her pronouns, reader's general background is unspecified, reader's appearance is unspecified, reader is a part of the working class, possible age gap with the DILFs (reader is meant to be early-mid 20s) 𓇑 Pairings: Lowborn!Reader x Baelor, Maekar, Lyonel, Aerion, Daeron (all separate scenarios) 𓇑 Word Count: ~2.5k (~500 per part)

𓇑 AN: Hot girl summer has kept me busy all May and the first half of June, but here you go, anon!! Rags to riches coming your way! No Dunk, as it would just be commoner x commoner, and honestly, just couldn't come up with an idea for Valarr SMH.

Baelor Breakspear

He'd glimpsed you atop his steed during a tour across Westeros, as per his sire's request.

Baelor scarcely questioned his father's decisions. If the King saw it fit to send him off to charm mistrusting lords and ladies, rid the people of any doubt in the Targaryens' rule, then he would go. It was expected of him.

It was not expected of him to lay eyes upon you and think you were the comeliest lady he had ever seen, even if you were not a noblewoman by any means. You had ducked out of a tavern at the commotion of the royal caravan passing through, hands wringing at a flour-dusted apron.

Your hair had not glistened under the sunlight like the well-oiled tresses of his first wife, Jena; blemishes dotted your cheeks from lack of powder. Your eyes, vivid as they met his own, were underlined with weariness created by labor.

He had offered the slightest of smiles in your direction as he passed, and your cheeks had pinkened. It shouldn't have enthralled him as much as it did.

Baelor wasn't a princeling green with power and women. He had his own private affairs as a young man, and he had eventually been arranged to wed the daughter of a Marcher lord in an effort to strengthen allyship.

Nevertheless, the boyish urge to preen and impress unfurled in the cavity of his chest.

It wasn't often that someone managed to fluster him. That is the reasoning, the excuse, he wields as his weapon the first night he goes to find you. And the next. And the next few after that.

Your surprise hadn't faded, no matter how many times the man came to your place of business, dressed in plain yet well-crafted garb in a half-hearted effort ot preserve his identity. Regardless, your warmth embraced him each time he sat at the table closest to the kitchen.

Ser Roland accompanied him without complaint, but not without plenty of narrowed, curious stares from where he stood post nearby. The only time he showed distaste was when he was forced to don shabby armor and worn boots, but even then, he managed to hold his tongue with a furrowed brow.

You would bring the prince fresh-baked bread and honey-glazed cakes as fellow patrons lost themselves in their cups. However, none of the offerings looked as supple or sweet as your lips.

He enjoyed your company, the way you smiled bashfully under his stare, and the scent of sugar that clung to your skin. It made him feel light. Unburdened. More akin to a man than an heir, a prince, or the future king.

The night before he had to return to Dragonstone, he came to the tavern with a proposition. He knew his father, the small council, and all those of noble blood would disagree with his want for you. For his want to act on his want for you.

He had done his duty to the realm. He had married, had sired an heir and a spare, and had fought for his blood to remain upon the throne. Could he not be allowed this one thing? Could he not vouch and defend you as he has done every other matter in his life?

"Come with me," Baelor had requested. His calloused hands had embraced yours, thumb rubbing gently at weathered skin, "Grant me the honor of being yours."

Red-faced, you acquiesced with a stutter in your speech, and Baelor had felt as though he were flying.

Maekar Targaryen

Maekar was not paranoid.

It was not paranoia to keep a close eye on those who were supervising his children, especially given how tiresome they all happened to be. Whatever was in his and Dyanna's blood had created incredibly chaotic offspring.

Admittedly, his two girls were more behaved than his sons, but that didn't mean they were entirely innocent. Daella could be annoyingly cunning and silver-tongued; Rhae fell victim to her impulses more often than not, and was capable of astounding tantrums when wronged.

The two of them required a strong, stern hand to keep them under control. You were one of the handmaids who were assigned to them, and you had proved to be exemplary so far, even with your commonborn blood.

You were highly intelligent for someone who lacked proper education. While you belonged to Daella more so than Rhae, both seemed receptive to your company. You shared fantastical stories when they craved entertainment, made sure they attended their lessons, and assisted them in getting dressed for the day.

You were not the only attendant they had, but you were the only one who made Maekar's head ache.

It was not paranoia, no, to examine your history more than he did the other ladies. It was an effort to eliminate a problem. He raked over your past with a keen eye, attempting to discover anything unsavory to justify how he felt about you.

Alas, he could find nothing. If anything, it was you being wholly decent that agitated him more.

Obviously, he had no reason to be as attracted to you as he was. It was a highly inappropriate situation for a man of his standing, but the longer you resided within his keep, the more you clouded his judgement. Worse yet, you gave him no actual cause to dismiss your service.

You were not a whore with perfumed oils smeared under the curve of her jaw and within her inner wrists, breasts spilling over the collar of a skimpy dress. You were not a thief with a sly stare or someone of the sort.

You were just… you. That was an issue of itself.

In an effort to rid these foolish feelings, Maekar grew increasingly crass. He was never charismatic, but he made sure, with absolute certainty, to keep his words short and his interactions blunt with you.

He tried, Gods, he truly did try. Despite his best attempts to harden his soul towards you, your ceaseless kindness to both his children and himself made it hard to believe in the insincere lie Maekar had tried telling himself.

With time, his coldness began to thaw and give way to begrudging fondness. His clipped words grew lighter, less blunt in delivery. He sought you outside of your duties to his daughters. Most damning, he began to know you.

His fate was inevitable.

"You could be mine," Maekar confessed one night in the privacy of his solar that he had begun to share with you weeks past. The words, so vulnerable, made his throat constrict.

"Me?" You choked, as if you had never considered it a possibility.

"Daella likes you. Rhae adores you. I could love you," he admits quietly, and it feels as though all the fire is being put to rest inside of him, "If you'd let me."

You let him.

Lyonel Baratheon

When Lyonel had first encountered you, he had been drowning in his cups.

Well, he had already lost himself in wine and ale thoroughly, and was merely suffering the consequences of his overindulgence. He'd somehow managed to fall into a slumber outside of his tent for the tourney he had decided to attend.

The sky was lightly drizzling. The cold, small droplets fell into his hair and soaked through his clothes. The grass smelt of dew, while he himself smelt of sweat and spices. Lyonel very likely could've stayed slumbering there if it were not for your interference.

"M'lord?" You had prompted. Your foot came out to nudge at the side of his ribs, hesitant to lay a hand upon such an important ser.

"Hm?" Lyonel's heavy eyes struggled to open. The toe of your shoe poked into his torso again, and he managed to squint up at the dreary sky, "The fuck do you want?"

You had leant over him, further into his hazy vision, and what a shock you had been. Your plain hair fell over your shoulders as your face contorted into such sweet concern over his well-being, unfazed by his brutish speech.

Lyonel very well thought you were the Maiden come to mortal life.

Your lips pulled down, "Are you alright?"

"Aye. Aye, I am now," Lyonel breathed, and his heart lurched at the sight of relief softening your face.

As he came to find out—following much harassment of all that crossed the Laughing Storm's path—you were the sole child of a local blacksmith. Your father had come to the tourney in hopes of making good coin for the knights aiming to join the lists, and he had brought you along for assistance.

After finding this out, Lyonel was like a bee drawn to honey with you. No matter where you went, the Stormlander was following, showering you in endless inquiries about yourself.

He wanted to know what you liked, what you disliked, what you loved, and what you loathed. Lyonel's affections were blatant. His attention was insistent, to the point that your own father grew suspicious when the knight came around, grumbling under his breath as he polished the metal of his craft.

Therefore, you weren't terribly taken aback when Lyonel (bruises scattered from tilts) came to you as the tourney was slowing to an end.

"Won't you be my lady wife, dearest? You'll never have to hold another sword," Lyonel smiled in a way that made his eyes sparkle, "Unless you wish to duel with me. I'd love for you to try and pin me down."

A blush blossomed in the apples of your cheeks at his flirations, but you fought to stay rational, "What will the people say?"

"My dear mother and father will only be happy that I finally took a wife, I assure you. As for anyone who opposes our match, they will meet my blade swiftly," He swore.

The earnestness in his voice was enough to make you swoon, and his cheeky expression told you he knew.

Aerion Brightflame

Aerion had encountered you whilst training—more accurately, beating—a squire who belonged to a knight sworn to Prince Maekar.

He'd knocked the blunt sword out of the sniveling mutt's hands, who responded to the action with an unseemly yelp. He'd scowled, glaring across the yard to call upon a more worthy sparring partner, when he'd seen you.

You were a serving girl, dressed modestly in the colors of his house. Your hair was braided away from your cheeks. The sun above highlighted the planes of your visage, glowing as though the Mother herself was caressing your bones. The skirts of your dress had whipped around your ankles as you hurried away, ducking back into a servant's entrance with a basket atop your hip.

Aerion had been obsessed since.

He thinks, most times, he hates you. You're nothing in comparison to his own worth. You're equal to the mud under his boots when it rains, the scraps on his plate that are discarded, and gnats that swarm his chambers' windows when humidity is at its height.

Still, his blood sings when you grow shy and uncomfortable under his sneer.

He takes great delight in tormenting you. Aerion grows the custom of cornering you in quiet halls, purposefully asking you impossible questions to watch you squirm under his cruelty. There's a terrible beauty in the way your breath falters because of his proximity, the flutter of your lashes.

When you move past him, he can catch a waft of your smell. It makes him want to eat you. The taste of your blood would be quite the prize, Aerion believes. It makes his teeth itch.

Your polite detachment irks him further. It makes the offense coil low and taut in his belly, and how easily you brush his advances and presence aside as though he were nothing more than a stranger sharing empty pleasantries.

You were a measly smallfolk, a commonborn vixen wrapped in the facade of a maid. You wore no silks, possessed no skills of quality, and had a crooked smile that had not been conditioned like any highborn lady's. Yet, you denied a prince's attentions as though he were beneath you.

That did not deter Aerion. If anything, it incentivized him to claim you further.

After moons of fantasizing with a deplorable sort of feeling comparable to longing, he had decided to summon you to his apartments late at night. Clearly, you would not willingly choose him, so he had to choose for you.

"Be mine," Aerion commanded.

You made quite a funny expression. Your skin grew to resemble a lobster, eyes widened from where you gazed down upon his lounging figure, "Pardon, m'lord?" He almost scoffed at your stupidity, but he enjoyed the fracture in your respectful performance, "Do I need to repeat myself twice? Be my lady, and serve only me. Or are you somehow too good to grace a dragon's bed?"

You ducked your head, decisively speechless. Aerion only smiled, poisonous. Submission, in its entirety, was the only outcome he would allow.

Daeron the Drunken

Daeron had met you after sneaking away from Summerhall and its harrowing, oppressive nature.

Walls were not walls there, and shadows were not just shadows. Figments of cursed imagination festered, akin to a plague. Tragedy lurked around every corner. The terror, the threat of guilt, was something he could not rid himself of.

The only exception to this torture was a drink and lecherous company, cutting through the fog of his misery. So, he'd tugged on his most inconspicuous cloak and slipped by the drowsing guard, admirably slumped against the wall outside his chambers' doors.

You'd been the barmaid to replenish his wine time, and time, and time again.

He had not seen you before. If he had, it had been when he was so lost in his cups that he could barely remember how to breathe, or he'd caught at the oddest of angles. Still, Daeron is steadfast in his sotted belief that his eyes had never lain upon you.

You were beautiful. Beautiful in the way rain-kissing earthy stones were, the crawl of clouds along the cyan flesh of the sky during the day. Mundane, simple, and so pretty it made his intestines knot.

He kept crawling back to your family's tavern to see the plain, gentle smile you always offered him. Daeron made a lovesick fool of himself by brushing a careful hand along your skirts each time you grew near, showering you in slurred compliments with yellowed teeth and crimson-tinted lips.

He did not concern himself with the necessary duties of his position. He cared little for the divide between your classes, the gap of your shared existence. He had been a failure all his life. He couldn't fight, he couldn't negotiate, and he could hardly get through the day without guzzling wine down to smother the visions' whispers.

Daeron had never been diligent toward the crown, so why start now?

He grasped your hand one lazy night. Then, he brought your perfectly dull knuckles to his lips, the other holding tight to the roughspun fabric of your skirts, "Marry me, won't you?"

"Marry you?" You'd asked back. Your voice was tight—whether it was with elation, horror, or amusement to entertain a drunkard, he couldn't quite tell.

"Let's go to a sept tonight. I want you to serve me wine every evenfall and pet my hair," Daeron's voice slurred clunkily. He knew that as far as proposals went, this could hardly be considered romantic.

Nonetheless, he pleaded, "You'll never have to serve anyone but me, and even then, it won't be for money. You'll do it in silks, with ribbons in your hair and fragrance on your wrists. You'll chase the dreams away, see? You'll chase them away. Away, away, away…"

Eventually, you agree. It could be out of pity or being weary of his begging. He doesn't ask why. He doesn't need to, let alone want to. He can only think about having you as his, and his alone.

Thus, Daeron stumbles his way to the nearest sept with you in hand, his jubilation outweighing the headiness of the wine.

𓇑 AN: I return with hair re-highlighted, nails manicured, girls' trip completed, still employed, and Dunkaerion canon on my Tomodachi Life island LMAO. No promises about posting consistency, but I do still live! Also trying to limit the tags to just 'x reader' on this fic list as I saw a post where someone was complaining about self-insert fics flooding the character tags, and a lot of people were agreeing, so maybe this will help? IDK LOL.

[ripdrhomo]

oops... you shouldn't have hit him

[noxiiousstrawberriies]

this fanart of my fav is too good NOT to reblog 💗 like omg…

[writingdose]

[noxiiousstrawberriies]

Hey sorry to tell you that but beside the link for Woes of change none of the link in your masterlist work ( I’m on mobile if that helps) and Tumblr just says that it doesn’t exist :/

I was losing my mind over this before realizing the reason the links weren't working is that I was messing around with my username. I went through and fixed all of them, so they should work now (for the sake of my sanity)! I apologize for how messy it was for a bit there. Here's to hoping it runs smoothly!

[noxiiousstrawberriies]

𓄃 𝔉𝔯𝔬𝔪 𝔉𝔞𝔴𝔫 𝔱𝔬 𝔖𝔱𝔞𝔤

𓄋 Summary: Unbeknownst to you, your husband has allowed your freshly six-and-ten son to enter the lists at The Tourney of Stonehelm. 𓄋 CWs: Some violence and injuries from lances. 𓄋 Content: Questionable parenting methods, teenagers thinking they're indestructible, tourneys, tourney-appropriate violence, baby's first joust, fempov, mother!reader and father!Lyonel, use of she/her terms and pronouns, reader's house is unspecified, reader's appearance is unspecified except for long hair, Lyonel's A+ fathering, father and son relationship, unnamed younger children, paternal affection, Ormund learning how to fly no glue no borax 𓄋 Pairings: Wife!Reader x Husband!Lyonel (with platonic!teenage!Ormund) 𓄋 Word Count: ~2.9k

𓄋 AN: Here's my weekly little break in the requests cycle, vaguely inspired by this post by @bronze-vermithor and my own brain's cravings. Enjoy the chaos!

The morning had been eerily peaceful for the first round of tilts.

You had not expected it to be, in truth. Life as the Laughing Storm's lady offered little tranquility. That notion was proved tenfold during travel; the chaos of packing and settling into temporary pavilions on foreign lands proved exemplary in its disarray.

Luckily, you had not brought along your entire brood to look after and herd along. Shepherding all of your little children, sticky-fingered with dark hair, around would be quite the exhausting affair.

You'd done it once when Lord and Lady Estermont were hosting festivities due to their grandchild's birth. It'd taken less than a day of attempting to do so before you'd promptly declared to Lyonel that you would never be doing it again. It seemed as though the fresh air and unfamiliar environment inspirited them beyond belief, little beasts bucking about.

Though, all of your sons and daughters had a boisterous streak to them. Petty arguments, tussles in the halls, and raucous laughter occupied every nook and cranny of Storm's End. Presiding over such a group could be equally tiring and rewarding.

Thankfully, only you, your husband, and your eldest son loaded up into a gold-and-black colored parade to travel to Lord Swann's keep for the Stonehelm Tourney.

Lyonel was never one to shy away from a break in routine. The reputation tethered to his name was garnered for obvious reasons, and it was hardly odd for him to grow restless with anticipation at the prospect of a brutal fight. The rush of a battle inspired a fire in his heart, sparks from swords clashing and armor dancing providing plenty kindling.

However, Ormund's behavior was peculiar.

He beheld the closest mien to your husband. His dark hair fell in loose waves, twisted strips of dyed wool, and his brows were thickly arched. His flesh was toasted from consistent exposure to the sun via hunting, hawking, and sailing.

Yet, Ormund had gentler curvatures to his face. A layer of chubbiness left over from childhood clung to the apples of his cheeks, eyes rounder with wonder, and skin free from any blemishes or facial hair.

Mild was the most applicable term to your boy.

He possessed eager and talkative qualities, per his lineage, but there was an earnest quality to him. Sincerity coursed through his blood with a boyish enthusiasm. He could be self-conscious, reflective, doubting himself from time to time, rambles mixed with who knows and I could be wrong.

Lyonel had tried time and time again to rid his son of this humility. He'd clap him on the back with a booming cackle, "Enough of those nerves, boy! You're a Baratheon, not a squealy, pampered pup. Act like it."

It never worked to the extent your husband wished.

It seemed worse now. From your view in the wheelhouse as it crawled along the lush Stormlands, your son seemed stiff and blank as he rode, quiet as a dormant sea. The earthy hazel of his eyes was distant in thought whenever you spoke to him during breaks beside rivers and when making camp at night for rest.

A day's ride away from Stonehelm, you'd put the meat of your palm against his sun-warmed forehead. His hair was dry against the back of your hand. "Are you well, dear?"

"Well?" Ormund repeated loosely. Despite his apparent deflection, his head curved forward to faintly press into the familiar touch.

"Yes," your brows furrowed as suspicion took root, festering in the fertile soil of your mind, "You've been unnaturally silent these past few days. I cannot help but believe something is amiss. Are you ill?"

Ormund refuted, "No, Mother. It's mere travel fatigue and nothing more."

Yet his declaration had lacked any true conviction. In fact, his enunciation had been rather feathery, his voice laced with something inexplicable. It was the tone he took when he'd done something minutely wrong, a trivial misstep. The vocalization of a child who'd gotten sick on stolen ginger candies from the kitchens, who'd tugged at a younger sister's braid, or who'd broken a vase whilst whizzing down the halls with wild abandon.

Your trust in his words was dubious. Alas, there was nothing to nurture that claim of wrongdoing. You'd dropped it with the care of a cynical judge in a rigged trial as your party arrived at Lord Swann's land.

The incertitude hadn't even crossed your mind as you'd prepared to see Lyonel compete in the beginning tilts.

Peacefully, you'd dressed into a tailored gown of black and gold with onyx jewelry, a pearl headpiece sewn into your hair with one of your accompanying handmaidens. The calmness continued as you broke your fast. You couldn't recall the last time you'd begun your day in such stillness, the air blissfully warm and sky the color of polished chalcedony.

Passing by your son's tent, you expected to see him finishing up his morning meal to join you in the stands. Except that he hadn't been there. In fact, the furnishings looked completely undisturbed, the bed crisply made.

You'd asked his valet about your son's whereabouts. The man had simply inclined his head, "Lord Ormund has already gone to the tourney fields, my lady."

Once more, you thought nothing of it. It struck you as odd, admittedly, but you figured you were just dissecting the situation from a fretfully maternal standpoint. It very well could be that your son had just woken early and left without your supervision to secure your seats.

Nonetheless, your section of the box was empty. There were noble Stormlanders in an array of house colors seated there, but none had your boy's mop of hair or golden doublet with black accents. Other ladies greeted you with smiles. You'd merely returned them, taking a seat as anxiety grew.

Ormund made no appearance as a crowd formed around the grounds.

It was as if he were an apparition, suddenly disappearing overnight with the whistle of night's wind. You'd told yourself he's just exploring, he's with a friend, and he'll be here soon in an continous cycle. Rinse and repeat. Sitting there with perfected posture, you wrung your hands together as you overlooked all commonborn and highborns gathered at the field. He was not amongst them, lacking the vision of a buck amongst sheep.

Your eyes fell to Lyonel from where he sat outside his tent, antlers and animal skulls decorating the frame at which charcoal and muted bronze fabrics draped.

His armor was perfectly kept, engraved portions of his house's sigil lining the metallic shell. His helmet—sprawling, faux antlers spread wide—propped on his hip from where he stood at the ready. You could practically taste your husband's anticipation of being challenged as he shifted from foot to foot, a predatory sway that invited any and all to summon him.

The two of you made eye contact. With the distance, you couldn't be for certain, but you swore he winked and, mayhaps, blew you a kiss.

A towering Connington crouched down to enter his red-and-white canopy, a rugged Selmy adjusting his braces, with other knights originating from the Reach and Vale in attendance.

Yet, at the far end of the line, so far that you almost missed it, was another Baratheon awning. It was smaller, daintier in comparison to the glamour of its contenders. You analyzed it with narrowed eyes, torso sloping closer as if to afford a better glimpse.

Lyonel had not mentioned that one of his kin was also going to participate. It could've been a lesser-known counterpart, a distant cousin with little more than a measly title to his name. You didn't know. Truthfully, you didn't really care. You just wanted to know where in the seven hells your son was.

Your restless query was answered sooner or later.

An older Waynwood trotted his charger alongside the wooden posts, pumping his arm and lance to thrill the smallfolk that had come to witness the display. The steel of his plating contrasted with the black of his chainmail, emerald meshing with obsidian in the cloak that hung from his shoulders and jumped with every prance of the horse beneath.

Rounding back to where the competition was awaiting, the ser slowly took note and surveyed each opponent. He passed a young Lynderly, a lankily handsome Pommingham, a stout Tarth, and many other lords. His horse nearly came to a stop in front of your husband.

Lyonel, in response, flashed a toothy smile.

He spoke to the Lord Paramount clearly enough to ring across the crowd, "Before I knock you from your steed, my lord, allow me to sample your house's prowess."

It wasn't an insult. Rather, it sounded a tad humored, friendly in the way only two men aiming for the title of victor could be.

Ser Waynwood drove his horse down the line to roll to a pause in front of the smaller, more discreet Baratheon marquee. You didn't know what to expect when the tent's flap opened, a figure donning armor that paralleled your husband's coming out with an antlerless helmet gripped in leather-clad fingers.

All you knew was that you had not foreseen Ormund.

Your son's armor was more silvery than his father's, with fewer intricate carvings decorating the front but no less similar. A fractured mirror. It made your throat tighten up, a bodily chill causing gooseflesh to rise against the knobs of your spine and your forearm.

You did not hesitate to stand, bunching your skirts with murmurs of pardon me as you shuffled past other noble onlookers to hurry down the stairs. You slithered around a group of servants chattering, an elderly lady keeping watch as her granddaughter ran amok, and a few commonfolk wandering, before coming to the fence directly behind your husband's pavilion.

Your face felt rotted as you hissed, "Lyonel. Lyonel!"

The aforementioned man slunk your way with such a leisurely gait that it infuriated you. Why wasn't he panicking? Your son had randomly entered the lists without even an ounce of warning, and Lyonel did not offer a scrap of outrage at the realization. The implications made nerves fizzle, a dull knife hewing at your stomach.

"Did you know our son was participating?" You interrogated. At the expression that took hold of your husband's face, you already had your answer before he uttered a word.

Lyonel spoke lightly, "Ormund asked for my permission."

You swatted at his arm. The sturdiness of his armor was unyielding under your slaps, and he merely stood under your onslaught as if puzzled but simultaneously bemused by your reaction. He argued with a small chortle, "Lady, he'll be fine!"

"He is six-and-ten! He has no experience, and you allow him to enter the lists without my knowledge?" You glowered up at him.

"Pray tell, how will our Ormund ever gain experience if we never let him try? He basically begged me to join before we even left home," Lyonel argued back. His voice was growing serious now, defending his heir's decision to joust. It wasn't harsh, but almost exasperated at your worry, a hand coming to grasp at yours from over the wooden post.

Over the curve of your husband's shoulder, you could see the back of your eldest's cuirass bending the sunlight off its surface. His helmet was on now. The brown destrier with a shapely white diamond on its long snout—a gift Lyonel had secured for him for his twelfth birthday—was heavily armored, rocking back as a squire handed him a lance.

Ormund rode off to the other side of the grounds, raising the spear as he did so. Many a cheer rose at the sight of the Baratheon colors, screams of delight and rowdy applause filling your ears like pestered wasps knocked out of their nest.

You knew your son was a man in the eyes of Westerosi culture. That all young lords his age had to tumble, be beaten, and fall to eventually grow strong enough to conquer.

That didn't mean you liked it.

That especially didn't mean you liked the two of them undermining you, but right now, your focus was fixated on the joust about to commence right before you. Your husband angled to the side to watch as well; energy smoldered in the air as all witnesses collectively grew still and silent.

The opportunity to intervene was right there. It pulsed and sparkled, tempting in its entirety. You just had to raise your voice to make a scene, but what good would that do except encourage unruly rumors to spread? Lord Lyonel Baratheon's wife dragging their son off the tourney field—a notion that would draw gossip-mongers like flies to overripe fruit.

You just stood there, hands coming to tug at your husband's elbow, "Ser Waynwood will maim him."

"House Waynwood is known for its honor. He'll be fair," Lyonel reassured. He sounded queerly knowing. So much so that when you leveled him with a serrated sneer, he cheekily grinned as if this was all in good fun.

"I may or may not have had a talk with him this dawn to make sure nothing untoward happened."

"You scheming—"

"Shh! Just watch, wife," your husband pressed a firm kiss to the corner of your lips, mouth tepid, in an act to soothe you before craning away.

The blare of heralds' trumpets shot through the air like thunder, rumbling over the horizon with the promise of a no-good storm. Both lords urged their horses to charge, and charge they did, hooves pitter-pattering rapidly against the dirt like a smith hammering out a bright-hot rod.

Shields up, lances lowered, they aimed for one another as the distance closed between them. Closing, closing, until wood met wood and exploded violently into shards and splinters.

To your amazement, Ormund stayed seated. His hand yanked at the reins of his steed, a squire tossing him the next lance. They took off again in a sprint. Man and horse, hurtling over dusty ground with enough force that puffs awakened from beneath trotters.

"Get him! Fucking get the wheely cunt!" Lyonel hollered. Out of all the spectators, your husband seemed the most invested in the older knight being knocked from his saddle.

Lance kissed lance once more to result in an eruption. Bits of wood blasted in multiple differing directions, the crack of a bone in a lifeless body.

It was on the third exchange when your fears came true. Ormund had been aiming a bit too askew, and Ser Waynwood had enough experience to avoid such an amateur mishap.

The head of the Valeman's spear punched into your son's sternum. The brute force of it caused Ormund to fly off his horse, lance and shield falling.

It was a near-perfect arch, suspended in the air for a brief flash before he tumbled down. The length of his form slammed backwards into one of the dividers, which caved under the projected weight. He rolled once, twice, before lying still in the mud near the contester's awnings.

Pandemonium was set free at the man's victory, but all you saw was Ormund attempting to push himself up.

"Lyonel!" You bit out, strained, "Get him!"

Without complaint, your husband darted off to retrieve your son with urgent hands. The younger stumbled over his feet, a sputtering sound leaving his lips as he approached, armor scuffed from the unimagined flight. You thought he was choking. Crying, even.

But as Lyonel tugged his helmet off, you could see Ormund was breathlessly laughing.

"Did you see that, Father?" He wheezed in a somewhat pained manner, "I broke two lances! Two, all by myself!"

"Who else would have done it for you? The fucking Warrior?" Lyonel gruffed out, but he was wearing a twin smile. His covered hand petted his boy's tresses as they chuckled together, tugging him close to press a fleeting kiss to his brow.

"Are you hurt?" was the first query to leave your flustered lips, hands coming to grasp at his face to scour for any injury, "Is anything numb?"

Ormund gracefully hacked roughly in response. Spittle escaped his lips, and he wiped it away with unhurried fingers. It descended into a strangled gagging noise that a cat would make when hawking out a hairball. Lyonel made a revolted face, a small ooh escaping your husband.

You were sure that the only reason your son was so chipper was due to the adrenaline coursing through his veins. You pinched at the fat clinging beneath his cheekbones in irritation, scowling.

"You are in a great deal of trouble, I hope you know that. You're lucky you aren't dead after being thrown from your damn horse like that."

"I'm sorry. I was weightless for a moment," Ormund supplied as if that would impress you or ease your ire. Astonishment threaded through his teeth, enamored.

Lyonel teased back as he patted his son's shoulders like he was an overgrown dog, "Soared like a bird. Ormund the Canary is what they'll call you."

"That's ridiculous." Ormund coughed again through a crow. It seemed his lungs were rattled, fluttering fast as a moth's wings as it chased a moving torch.

"Mm. Made a man out of you today, didn't we? No reason to second-guess ourselves now."

"You said it, Father, not me."

You were shedding. Your hair was falling out of your head from stress; it had to be. Who had you forsaken for the Seven to grant you such a mindless husband and child? Where did this recklessness come from? You had thought, at least, that Ormund had inherited some of your common sense.

As the two tittered together, you realized how wrong you were.

They could laugh all they wanted now. There would be hell to pay after the day was over. Perhaps, hiding their armor and horses would be suitable.

𓄋 AN: Thinking about Modern AU and the AKotSK men's coffee orders. Just my woes as a part-time barista because I KNOW Lyonel fucks up a quadruple-shot large iced latte with the bowel-devastating oat milk and Irish cream flavoring combo. Don't even play.

[noxiiousstrawberriies]

Hi! I’m trying to read Matters of Merit but the link isn’t working. Like Tumblr thinks it doesn’t exist.

omg, this masterlist HATES me!!

ty for letting me know. it should be fixed, so enjoy Baelor being a damsel in distress!

[noxiiousstrawberriies]

So I can see that your requests are open so what about an hc where their ( Baelor, Maekar, Lyonel specifically but if you wanna add more I’m not against the idea of course…) wife is being talked over/ disrespected by their father ? And how they react to their darling just … taking the verbal abuse and loosing their sparkle in an instant

Like imagine they’ve been happily married for a few months now and she’s finally getting comfortable in her new home . Then her father visit for the first time after all this time and he ruins that by being like wth are you doing ? I did not raise you like that when he sees how easy going she’s acting around them and she turns back to the rigid yet perfect lady wife persona.

Special mention if this happen when she’s participating in a conversation about a subject they know she’s passionate about.

Anywaayyyyy thx if you accept the request and ofc I wanted to tell you how I find your writing amazing I’m always checking if you posted something

♧ 𝔖𝔞𝔣𝔢𝔤𝔲𝔞𝔯𝔡𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔓𝔢𝔞𝔠𝔢

♣︎ Summary: You finally begin to feel safe and happy after a politically advantageous marriage to your husband. Of course, your father has to dampen it during a visit. ♣︎ CWs: Uncomfortable confrontations, verbal abuse, shitty parents. ♣︎ Content: Verbally abusive father, enabler/silent partner mother, protective behavior, good husbands, verbal defense in your honor, reader really likes bugs and plants, second marriages (reader is not the Baelorings or Maekarlings bio mom), fempov, use of she/her pronouns, reader's house is unspecified except that she's from the Reach, reader's appearance is unspecified, implied age gap (reader is in her 20s), happy marriage, a little bit of healing ♣︎ Pairings: Younger!Mistreated!Wife!Reader x Older!Husband!Baelor, Maekar, and Lyonel ♣︎ Word Count: ~3.5k total (~700 per part)

♣︎ AN: Some protective hubbies coming your way, anon!! I hope this meets your standards. Also IDEK if Storm's End has a garden, but it does now.

'Daughters are a father's rupture while sons are his suture.'

It was a rhyme you'd heard once as a child, though the origin to you was now unknown, forgotten with the mundanity of day-to-day life. It could've been from a fool with his jingling cap and silver tongue. Perhaps, it was from a story a septa had read to you once when sleep evaded you.

Wherever it came from mattered not. What mattered was that it acutely summarized the entirety of you and your father's relationship.

He was a stern man, with hoariness flecking combed locks and a short beard. Age had added plumpness to his gut and his face, but it failed to make him look youthful or jovial in any sort of way. He had strong, sturdy hands with crooked knuckles that set his fingers aslant. In his youth, he'd had a prim look that made him look foreboding in an intellectual sense if one were to challenge him to a duel of wits.

You'd never seen him look anything but dutiful. As a child, you'd wondered if he ever cried, and if the prickliness underlying his voice would give way to pulpy softness through the waves of weepiness.

You also wondered if he was ever happy. You don't think you'd ever seen him beam; stiff crescents, curled slices of a stem were his definitions of smiles. You couldn't recall a time he'd laughed—fully cackled so that his breath bobbed and pooled in every corner of a room.

If your father had been given a son, he probably would.

Alas, your mother had only ever borne him daughters. One after the other came out lacking any inch of boyhood. Your mother tried, desperately like one preventing sickness from spreading, to provide a rightful heir. Yet she'd only given you—the eldest—sisters and your father disappointments.

Consequently, your sire carried a perpetually scorned disposition.

He provided the means for you to blossom and unfurl into a respectable young lady, but anything that went beyond the line of obligation was obsolete. You rarely saw him outside of the required presence side-by-side at feasts and celebrations. Sometimes, he passed you in the hallway, and the scent of paper and sage lingered.

When you still had hopes for paternal affection, you wondered if it'd smell stronger if he hugged you. Reveal an undertone of rosemary, dust, or something medicinal, tickling the inside of your sinuses. Possibly, there would be a sweetness in the crook of his neck like there was in your mother's when she wasn't dull-eyed and distant.

All you had was the garden. You'd go there whenever you had the opportunity to. The bulbous heads of roses, peonies, and daffodils did not shun you away. They had no choice but to accept your presence, and the insects that inhabited the foliage and soil were the closest thing you had to friends. You read about them, learned about their families and lifestyles, but bugs could not speak to you, nor could plants offer you a hand to hold.

It was odd to wonder, to miss, something about someone in the same keep as you. To have concepts of their preferred snacks and favorite haunts, but no certainties. Did all the ladies feel like this? Was this longing, this loneliness, yours and yours alone? You didn't dare to ask your sisters.

They all seemed so close together, while you had the task of paving the way for them. As the oldest child, you had to secure the best of... everything. You had to have the best husband, the best rise in ranking, the best connections, so that your sisters could easily follow suit. There would be no hardship in their futures if you played your part excellently.

Excellently, you played it. You'd managed to be chosen by a man of high standing and great repute only a few years after you'd come of age, and the two of you had married with the appropriate amount of fanfare. It hadn't been an affair of ardor. It had been a negotiation, a trade of sorts.

Your hopes for your husband had not been high. You'd only told yourself keep your head down, stay out of his way, and give him sons.

Yet, after a moon turned into two and then three, you found yourself growing unnervingly comfortable in your new home. People were still people, imperfect and sometimes cruel, but there seemed to be more individuals willing to exchange a pleasant conversation with you in your lord's abode. Your ladies-in-waiting were exceptional, and you suddenly found that you had recipients to write letters to.

Letters! From you, that someone would genuinely read!

It was so different from what you were used to. The chill of isolation was melting away, dew dissolving under streams of sunshine that warmed your corded sinew and bloodied heart.

Your husband himself was different than what you had imagined he would be. He cared for you, taking time out of his day to speak with you, asking if everything was to your liking and if you needed anything. He even shared some of his hobbies with you, detailing stories in the privacy of your apartments that just made him seem so real.

He wasn't a notion, an idea to exist with. Your husband was a person, who had likes and dislikes that you began to learn. There were foods he pushed around on his plate at dinner, colors he avoided because he felt couldn't wear them well, weather he basked in, and a certain positions he thought were the most comfortable to be slept in.

He'd join you in the garden sometimes, and what a garden he had! Plump lilies, slim snapdragons, and wistful forget-me-nots were a vision to you, an intricate window of stained glass. You reveled in it.

It was this enthrallment, peacefulness, that you irresponsibly carried with you as you broke fast with your new husband and visiting parents.

"Honeybees were visiting the asters today when I was taking my stroll," You fiddled mindlessly with your spoon, "They're fond of asters. I read that it's because of the sheer amount of nectar and pollen they have. That's what makes them such a high-quality resource, yes?"

Your husband made a noise of agreement. Your father stared at you with something nearly disapproving, your mother eying a fig on her plate. It was cut masterfully, a delicate display that matched her mien, feeble at the seat beside your sire's.

"We had many more bumblebees at my childhood home in comparison to honeybees," you elaborated to one person who seemed to be paying you some mind. Your lord husband raised his eyes away from his crisped fish to hold your gaze with attentiveness.

"They prefer tubular flowers, did you know that? Foxglove, honeysuckle, and such. They have long tongues to steal the pollen, which reduces their competition. Butterflies as well—"

"Enough." Your father laid a heavy hand down atop the polished wood of the dining table, like a back-handed pop to your mouth.

"Enough with talk of insects. You shouldn't be filling your time with something as impotent as digging in the dirt to watch bugs crawl about. It's unbecoming," he grouses, voice grating like a rusted axe dragged across whetstone, "You'll grow sun-speckled and wrinkled with all that time in the sun, just like a beggar. Is that what you wish? To appear as a simple-minded maid and shame your husband?"

You stared at him.

There was a particular humiliation in being chastised with an audience. You could feel your husband's eyes on your face. They were like talons pressing in to draw pinpricks of blood, and you held your father's stare, rosiness staining your ears and the center of your cheeks.

The septas had taught you to be good. To sit quietly, which script to repeat depending on the lord and lady speaking, eat demurely, and posture straight. Little motions, light voice, don't shame yourself in being boisterous or melancholic. Perfect, in your womanly pursuits indoors and interests only pinpointed on future babes and household chores to preside over.

Yet, here you were, being so disgracefully bad.

Voice growing meek and serious, you whispered, "No. I apologize, Father."

Appetite fleeing from you, sucked into the curdle of shame, you bumped your spoon against the boiled egg held in its porcelain egg cup. The sun shining through the weight veil down to the yellow yolk, creamy and buttery. It looked like poison to you, the shape within a vial wrapped in pale cotton.

There was ash, chalky, against the back of your throat. They became embers when your husband's voice broke through the tension.

Baelor Breakspear

"I have no qualms about my wife's topic of conversation," Baelor supplied. His tone was placating, gentle in its mediation as he leveled your father a wanly polite look.

"You do not?" Your father countered. His intonation was iron-like in its disbelief.

Baelor doubled down tactfully, "The morning is still young. It can be refreshing to hear about small, mundane things before I must tend to my tasks. Even I require respite from work."

"That's ridiculous." Your father raised his wine glass to his lips with a small sneer.

It was so dreadfully in his character to believe himself to always be right. He could never back down, accept defeat, or agree emptily with no actual agreement, even when face-to-face with the future king. It had always been your father's way.

It could be seen in the wilting frame of your mother.

Her downcast eyes remained on her plate as your father proceeded to debate with a tolerant Baelor. Though any kindness that seemed to well beneath the flesh of your husband's face when faced with a seeker of favor was void. In fact, his eyes weren't even on your father.

They stared down at the table where the feast was laid. His gaze was detached, gone somewhere you could not map out. They swept over the table in subtle side-to-sides as he listened. It was a mismatched pendulum, deep in thought with heavy swings.

His hands had come together at some point. His left fingers played with the rings on his right, twisting them around slowly with methodical motions.

"All I mean to say, Your Grace, is that my daughter should conduct herself in a way that befits her station," your sire concluded after a long-winded spiral, his tone almost humored at your daftness.

Baelor merely raised his head again, pausing in turning one of his well-crafted accessories, "As should you."

Your father blinked, and you followed suit. Your mother's face grew a bit squeamish as though something slimy had squished beneath her bare foot.

"I beg your pardon, my prince?"

"You may be her father, but I am her husband. She is now a princess of the realm. She will be the mother of my children, the Queen Consort to Westeros, and a guiding hand to any who seek her input. I see no reason to talk down to her," Baelor spoke.

His voice was not cruel, never cruel, but it was firm. It was the muscles of a farmer's horse carrying behind the picks of the crop alone, the material of a blunt lance, making your head ring like a bell.

The look he held with your father allowed him to fight back if he so wished. Yet, it promised he would lose if he chose to do so. Baelor was not a dim hound eager to roll over and show his belly; your husband was the firstborn son to the king, the Hammer, heir to the Iron Throne, and he rarely knew defeat.

Your sire gaped, red-faced. Finally, he'd shown himself capable of emotion after all these years of righteousness. You almost giggled in delirium.

"I apologize," he murmured. It was a twisted echo of your own apology, masculinity wounded and taut like a rope stretched thin, a frenzied hummingbird darting back and forth between flora.

"Not to me," Baelor's head titled to the side, toward you, as in direction.

Your father's face grew a near concerning shade of purplish-red as, with great effort, he muttered to you like a child spanked and forced to write sentences one after another in punishment.

"I apologize, daughter."

You didn't accept. You didn't need to, soaking in the look that Baelor gave you. It was vaguely smug, you thought airily, like the self-satisfaction of a man whose plan had gone above and beyond with its performance. The elusive personification of the cat who got the cream.

"Thank you," you said to your husband. Baelor inclined his head to you once before resuming in picking apart his breakfast as if he had not done you the greatest of deeds.

You poked at your boiled egg. You ought to kiss him later, you thought.

Maekar Targaryen

"Who do you think you are?" Maekar questioned. His hard voice grew indignant in his disbelief.

It was the stricken inflection that manifested at his sons' havoc, at a servant overstepping, or when his horse occasionally attempted to nibble stealthily at his silver-gold hair. It meant discontentment, a fabric worn through to the seams.

The harsh line of his jaw grew tense with umbrage, a terse curve that looked stretched and painful. Teeth pushing together in a grind. Muscles flexed in his lower cheeks, upper lip rearing up from under the wisps of his beard, a treacherous curve.

Your father's face slackened into what one could only generously describe as startled. His voice was thinning, "What?"

Maekar's response was harsher, "You heard me."

The air was so thick that one could cut it with a dagger. It was the rolling of stormy clouds, smothering in its discomfort, smoke carrying away from burning carcasses.

A vein in your husband's neck was pulsing, bulging out from beneath skin akin to an incensed parasite trying to crawl its way out to an undignified birth.

You'd seen that vein twice in the moons of your marriage. Firstly, when he'd received word that his exiled son Aerion had been seen visiting Lys' pleasure houses quite consistently. Secondly, when his heir Daeron had gotten so sotted that two guards had to carry him back in an ungraceful manner, spit and mucus from overindulgence covering his front.

His neck was craning to the side in a controlled roll; a stretch of ligaments that highlighted the quizzical lay of his brows. Another tell, with that inflamed heartbeat pumping rhythmically.

In the back of your mind, you thought he looked like a disgruntled dragon. You had never seen any beast of the sort. Even so, the nip in his face made him look beastly ancient, silvery lashes narrowing in a suspecting glare.

It caused your father to flounder in a foreign fashion, a meek sheep under the scrutiny of Old Valyria's deadliest of creatures.

"I meant no offense to you, Your Grace, but certainly you understand where I'm coming from. You have two daughters of your own, do you not?" Your father's query was an olive branch. He was searching for a connection, some sort of relatability to use as a crutch to navigate such an unexpected confrontation.

Unfortunately, it did the opposite. Maekar's voice was blatantly miffed, "Do not use my children as an excuse."

Yes, he was morphing into a dragon with scales like fresh snow along a riverbank and eyes of blooming wisteria, guarding his hatchlings amongst his hoard. It was hardly surprising. Your husband was sensitive to all matters involving his blood, and the scorn that had been stewing was now bubbling, foam spilling down the edges.

"You sit here in my fucking home, at my fucking table, and dismally address my wife over something so painless as minibeasts." Maekar twisted his body to loom closer to your father, venous hands splayed flat on the table, "Then, you attempt to utilize my own daughters as tools for reason. So yes, I do ask a mere lord and guest to Summerhall who he thinks he is."

Your mother was a statue. She barely looked alive, the rise and fall of her chest so shallow that you wondered if she was holding in air to try camouflaging into her surroundings. On the other hand, your father's face had contorted tartly.

Birdsong was the only interruption to the atmosphere, thick as the Wall away in the North.

Your father writhed discreetly in his seat. His face was so pinkened it looked sunburnt, making the shade of his eyes and hair stand out, striking against the flush of color. Voice dipping meekly like a mouse, he spoke, "You are right. I should have remained silent."

"Silence suits you best," Maekar stated decisively with a sardonically gleeful twinge to his voice. It was a petty remark, but it sang in your ears like music as your husband raised his glass of pomegranate juice to his lips, wholly done with the morning affair.

You tried to hide your smile, the toe of your foot nudging his as a nonverbal appreciation.

Lyonel Baratheon

"Nonsense!" Lyonel barked out.

It's the shattering of glass, the twang of a crossbow's string releasing in vocal form. It serves to startle you out of your smog of shame.

Your husband's body was animated in his disregard for what your father had instructed you to do. His spine was loose, askew as he crept closer so that the center of his stomach nearly pushed into the table's corner. In your imagination, you could very well see him throwing one leg over the arm of his chair to set his whole form askew in leisure.

One of his ringed hands—calloused, keen to wielding swords and tugging ropes, instead of delicately aristocratic—jerked toward you, "My lady can do as she pleases. This is her home, after all."

Your father's face contorted into a scrunch that was patronizingly skeptical.

It was a favorite mask of his. It came across his face whenever your sisters or you, especially you, did something he found foolish. Silliness in your father's terms meant something far worse, both deplorable and condescendingly pitiful, warped into one.

"Exactly. As your wife, my daughter should act appropriately." He brought a spoonful of supple honeycake to his lips, "Not diminish herself by fawning simplemindedly over pests."

Your sire continued in his elaboration even as your husband's face grew quietly mocking. The odd humor that was seemingly etched into every line of his face was steadily draining, a canvas turning yellowish with age. His smile had vanished into an inchoate suggestion.

It reminded you less of a stag, as so many poets liked to fancy your husband to be, but more of a mutt cornered. His stiffness and whale-eyed stare put you on edge. You were certain that if he were a dog, a resounding growl would be scraping out from his ribs.

Your father's eyes squinted in that smug way as he came to a close, "So, I'm quite sure a man of your birth would rather have a proper woman carrying his legacy instead of a halfwit squawking about anything that flutters in her general direction."

Lyonel did not shift.

Your mother inhaled deeply through her nose as if to gather her bearings. It was a tiny wheeze that echoed in the awkward quietude aside from the clicking-clacking of your father's cutlery against his plate, sunlight refracting off of shaped steel.

"Cunt," Lyonel grunts eloquently.

Your father paused in bringing another bite to his lips, head turning with raised brows, "Excuse me?"

Your husband's hand reached out to poke at the center of your father's broad chest, softened with age. It pressed in, fabric sinking beneath the digit, purposeful and direct. Lyonel reiterated, voice exaggerating each word to promise that no mistakes could be made, "You... are... a... fucking... cunt. Hear me clear enough now?"

Before your sire could react, your husband's fingers crawled up to clutch at the collar of his doublet.

"You sit here, suckling at delicacies, insulting my wife. My wife. I should be the only one concerned with any faults she presents, and her deciding to talk about fucking flowers is no reason for concern," Lyonel rambled.

"You invited us here—" your father spluttered.

"And now I humbly disinvite you," Lyonel laughed, but it was a jarring sound as he ripped the utensils out of your spooked father's grip. His hands were waving in a grand shooing motion as your parents, hesitant, stood up to leave.

"Begone! Fucking cunts, you have no place at my table! Go! My lady wife will fetch for you when she wants to see your miserly mugs again."

Your husband continued on this tirade until the heavy doors shut behind their retreating figures. It was an outlandish scene; a fantasy from your childhood come to life when you were still untamed enough to be bitter, to wish for such things.

Gray-streaked waves lay over Lyonel's brow from where he had strained to banish them out the door. "The Others fucking geld me... how did you live with that dolt for all those years?"

You had no answer. You could only choke out a short, disbelieving laugh, queerly moved at the absurdity.

♣︎ AN: Lowkey thinking about Omega!Dunk with Alpha!Aerion or Lyonel a lot, guys. I may have to write about it on my Ao3. Like... lowkeeey...

[noxiiousstrawberriies]

heyyy!! sorry if you’ve got this already but i wanted to let you know just in case you didn’t, but none of your masterlist links work 💔

oooough, I had no idea...

Tysm for letting me know, anon!! All links should work now, but please let me know if there are any more issues!

[noxiiousstrawberriies]

Could you do the a light of the seven kingdoms reacting to marrying reader, because if a arranged marriage, and then falling in love, but going back to readers’s home for a celebration and then finding out that she was in love with a man previously and even betrothed to him, but her family cut it off when the castle offered their hand instead since they were higher ranking, and they meet the guy. Thank you very much for your time and you totally don’t have to do if you don’t want to

♕ 𝔏𝔬𝔰𝔱 𝔏𝔬𝔳𝔢

♔ Summary: You return to your childhood castle with your Targaryen husband in tow for the celebration of your sister's wedding. However, a familiar face is unexpectedly in attendance. ♔ CWs: Forced arranged marriage, but otherwise, nothing too bad. ♔ Content: First love, arranged marriage, first marriages for Baelor and Maekar (no Jena or Dyanna), broken betrothals, jealousy, some insecurities on husband's behalf, awkward situations, moving on, Aerion being Aerion, jealousy and possessiveness in different fonts, fempov, use of she/her pronouns, reader's house is undefined except that she's from the Reach, reader's appearance is undefined except for long hair, and a little bit of drama! ♔ Pairings: Wife!Reader x Husband!Baelor, Maekar, Aerion, Daeron, and Valarr (all separate scenarios) ♔ Word Count: ~5k (~700 per part)

♔ AN: I really felt that in this situation Baelor and Valarr would be a bit offput but not too bothered as they're well aware it's in the past and reader is theirs now. Meanwhile, Maekar and his two eldest Maekarlings are actively in their territorial somewhat pathetic men eras because how DARE your ex even breathe the same air as you. The apples did not fall far from either tree. Anyways, I hope this covers what you were hoping for anon!!

Romance amongst the world of nobles was a double-edged sword that you knew far too well.

You'd been lucky enough to fall in love with a lord who lived only a short ride away, and doubly so for the fact that he returned your affections. Yet, you'd been unlucky enough to have thought your fondness for one another could triumph over all. Especially a marriage proposal from the royal house itself.

The boy who had captured your heart was from a lesser house in comparison to the Tyrells, and even lesser than the Targaryens.

You'd met at a hunting party your father was hosting, and his had happened to be in attendance. He'd gone for the same oatcake you had been reaching for, his fingers brushing against yours, and you'd thought he had the prettiest eyes you'd ever seen.

That infatuation spiraled out of control since then. It shed the skin of a childish crush to grow, ripen, into a devotion that embedded itself so firmly within you that it melded into your bone marrow.

His face had only matured from boyish charms into youthful handsomeness. Orange hair curled over his brows and around his ears, with high cheekbones and a defined jawline. Freckles, blemishes, and natural marks dotted his skin, but it reminded you of a starry sky rather than simple imperfections. Even his pointy, prominent ears only endeared you to him.

Cecil Florent was his name, and you had been enamored. The twinkling chime of his laughter flooded you with tenderness; his extensive knowledge of flowers and birds captivated you wholly. The good, the neutral, and the scarce bad were the air you greedily breathed.

Your fathers had agreed to betroth the two of you, but your happiness didn't last long; it was squashed under the heel of a dragon. Two weeks into your arrangement, the King himself had written to your father to ask that your current union be disbanded so that you may wed one of the princes instead.

Thus, without your consent, your father had sent two ravens—one to Cecil's father, one to King Daeron—accepting the new proposal.

It'd filled you with despair. You tried to convince your father to take it back, to falsify some moment of illness or half-baked concept, but he had steadfastly refused at every plea that reached his ears. You'd raged, and he had called you an "unruly child". You'd sobbed, and he'd only narrowed his eyes exasperatedly at your hysteria.

There was no way out. Marital duties were crumbling into dungeons before you, chains befitting the name of this man you'd never met but had you nonetheless. Your new betrothed was a thief, callously stealing you away from Cecil, with the facilitation of the ruling sovereign of Westeros.

You'd sobbed into your lover's arms that night.

His lean arms were warm, sunbaked strips of wood supporting your fragile form. A familiar fragrance was smeared under the curves along his jaw, the scent of home, of morning dew, of grass, settling in your nose like clean linen and rain. There was now an unprecedented limit to how many times you could capture smell. It crept closer, swollen clouds promising havoc ahead, and there was nowhere to go.

You'd snuffled into the curve of his throat like a pig sent for slaughter.

Cecil had kissed you. He'd kissed your temple, your cheek, and stolen the small virtue of your untouched mouth. You couldn't risk lying with him, no matter how much you'd once yearned for him to warm your bed morning to night, but you could chance that one little thing.

His mouth was plush against yours. The slender form of his lips was like candy melting into your mouth, akin to stealing sweetmeats from the kitchen like a naughty child. Forbidden, innocuous, and wholly not Cecil's to claim.

You soaked in the saccharinity of your beloved's mouth to the point of suffocation, heartbreak saturating.

You'd vowed to yourself that you would never betray your sweetheart. You would do your wifely duties: keep a household, tend to children, and act as a companion to your spouse. Still, you would not allow any genuine fondness.

It would remain in the Reach in the hands of the Florent who had become your purpose.

Even so, time was a powerful force that could never be reckoned with. One week became a moon, a year, and more. Eventually, everything your youth had perceived as the sun and moon, became a distant memory akin to mothballs and dusted mold.

Your husband replaced that angry welt in your heart, smoothing over the bitterness that had resided there before with every slight grin and affectionate touch. Every imperfection only served to entice you more.

You no longer sought botanical intelligence in the face of songs and poetry crafted in High Valyrian. Young infatuation gave way to prolonged commitment guided by the hands of duty and the Seven. That is not to imply that your relationship with Cecil had not been real.

It had been. Oh, it had been! It'd shaped you into the woman you knew yourself to be. The invigoration of your chaste tryst, the loss of who'd taken possession of you, and the longevity of your fruitful marriage molded you with hot hands like clay for a pot.

You didn't speak of Cecil often.

You'd mentioned it once or twice when it was relevant to add in the company of your husband. Even so, the prince never inquired for more, and you never felt the urge to tell him. It was a blurry figment of imagination, now, rotting leaves of fall. You had more pressing matters to occupy your mind.

One such affair being your younger sister's, Linnet's, wedding.

A raven had arrived a moon past from your father, requesting you and your husband's attendance for the ceremony and the following festivities afterwards. Dear Linnet had been betrothed to House Lannister's heir; it was certain to be quite the event given her future husband's abundance of wealth. Besides, how could you ever miss something so monumental for one of your loveliest kin?

The Reach had been lukewarm when the parade of horses and carriages with the colors of your house arrived at your childhood castle. It looked just as you remembered it, if not slightly more dull with the years of your absence weighing down upon it.

The land was alive with arrivals. Houses from all across the Reach—many you recognized—were beginning to make camp and unload their belongings into their pavilions. Vaguely, you were grateful that you had the privilege to sleep in an actual room with a hearth to keep your feet comfortably toasty.

Your skirts swished around your feet as you breathed in the fresh air, straightening your spine, stretching from the amount of sitting you had done over the past few days. You'd moved to look for your husband atop his steed when a startingly familiar voice called out to you.

It evoked such a harrowing nostalgia that you were almost knocked off your feet. Your heart beat hard, swelling, as you turned to see the person you knew that voice belonged to so well.

Cecil, more rugged and aged than the last time you had tearily laid your eyes upon him. His hair had grown out to curl around his jaw and ears, stubble decorating his jawline, enhancing the crookedness of his grin as he approached you with flitting eyes. You'd almost forgotten how green those eyes were, like moss lining a riverbank.

"Your Grace," he greeted once more, formal this time, albeit his tone was lightly playful like he fond your title humorous. He bowed before you as the wind tickled tresses.

"Lord Florent," you repeated in kind. There was a queer warmth swallowing your lungs, coating them in melting syrup. You curtesied shallowly.

Your voice was tinged with breathlessness as you gazed upon him, "I was not aware my father and mother extended an invitation to my sister's wedding."

"It was quite a surprise, to be sure. Although it was hardly an unwelcome one," his face was genteel in it's boyish excitement hidden under the mask of nonchalance. He stepped a pace closer. Cecil's arms were folded behind his back, deceitfully casual.

"I was hoping to see you."

Perhaps, if you were younger and unwed, you may have found his words charming. They would have flushed your nape and bosom, and you would have fought back a large, toothy grin to maintain some sense of dignity. It did not. There was no magical moment as there once could have been, and the pleasant shock at seeing him merely simmered.

Your smile flickered upwards in thin crescent, distant and polite, "That's very kind of you to say."

Cecil opened his mouth to speak further when his eyes moved to look over your shoulder. You turned to follow his gaze, and there, your husband was steadily approaching. Your hand reached out to grasp at his elbow when he was close enough, offering a squeeze in two quick pumps.

The Reachman tilted his head back to you, but his eyes drifted back to your husband's face, almost spitefully ignorant, "And who is this? A little friend of yours?"

It was a sly thing to say, a clever query that forced an introduction. Maybe he wanted to see what the man who had stolen you away would do when you said his name. Maybe it was something entirely different. Possibly, even, a genuine question.

"Lord Florent, this is my husband. Husband," you inclined your head in the ginger's direction, "This is Lord Cecil of House Florent."

Baelor Breakspear

Baelor's countenance did not change. In fact, he remained looking polite if not a bit indifferent.

To anyone else to witness the exchange, it would seem perfectly decent: the heir to the iron throne, the heir's wife, and a lord from the Reach exchanging pleasantries. However, you knew your husband's tells. The rapid blinking that came in quick succession before returning to his usual stare conveyed his imbalance at such a blatant display of informality.

"A pleasure," he said with the ghost of a close-lipped smile crossing his face.

"Agreed. The weather is most welcoming for your arrival, is it not?" Cecil asked back. His tone had rotted into something almost patronizing, and you pursed your lips together.

"It is."

"How nice. It seems princes always get whatever they want."

That had been the exchange in its entirety. There had been no further questioning, no more slick comments wrapped in easy delivery. Just a brief silt in the flow that led the Florent to bow and dismiss himself with such naturalness you thought yourself to be in the past.

The rest of the day was overflowing with activity: reuniting with a bashful and flustered Linnet, directing servants on where to put what whilst unpacking, and having a family dinner after so many years of dining in a different hall with a different family. Soaking in the hot water of a washing basin was a blissful relief against your tight muscles and spent mind.

Your head tilted back to rest on the lip, eyes half-lidded. The bath oils wafted in curling wisps of steam, lilies and peonies mingling, glistening over the stretch and pudge of skin.

"It's good to be home," you sighed. Baelor hummed from nearby, scribbling across parchment with the twist of an ink-drenched quill. It was painful in your husband's nature to still be working even when away from the Red Keep.

You eyed his side profile, tracing the prominent line of his nose and the slight furrow of his brows. Your fingers tapped at the water's surface. "You should join me."

"Tempting," he acknowledged, and the corner of his lip subtly curled up, "Alas, I must refuse."

You glanced between your bare legs and your husband's face once more. He seemed to have been faraway all evening. However, whether it was an overanalyzed perception or the truth, you could not tell. Carefully, you interjected a new topic into the conversation.

"It is not because of Lord Florent, is it?"

That fully captured your husband's attention. His head turned, mismatched eyes with their perpetual intensity staring you down like you were an unforeseen dilemma in carefully constructed plans. There was no judgment, nor was there anything appalled. It was calm, steady, and calculating.

"No. No, it is not because of Lord Florent," Baelor stated. Beneath the diplomatic cadence was something that nearly sounded disgruntled around Cecil's title, and you squinted your eyes at the sound of it.

"Yes?" You questioned.

"Yes," he said, but it lacked the conviction you thought it would have. Still, Baelor did not sound angry. He did not sound sad. If anything, he sounded like washed-out cotton, shoes worn through the soles.

His fingers slowly twisted the quill between them as he did with the metal of his rings. The hearth crackled like rain splattering on windows. He tilted his head down, away, before sniffing dryly. The quill was set down neatly as he appraised you.

"On second thought, I'm feeling a bit weary. Might I take you back up on your offer?" Baelor prompted.

You offered a smile, eyes appearing like glistening stones with their affection. If closeness meant it would tether your husband back to his rightful certainty once more, who were you to deny him? How could you ever say no when he looked at you like that?

"As you are the man I love, the gallant father of my children, I will allow it," you teased. The soft huff from his nose made you almost melt into the water below, pliant, disintegrating with tranquility.

You nearly collapsed into liquid when he grew close enough to kiss you.

Maekar Targaryen

Maekar's harsh features flattened out into something you personally interpreted as annoyed. Potentially, it was delicately offended, a lemon dripping sourly against the back of his throat. The wrinkles deepened along his eyes, between his brows, as he sneered down at the Reachman.

You were worried he'd cuss. Knowing your husband, it didn't seem that outlandish to believe.

"Lord Cecil Florent?" Maekar questioned back. It sounded like a great bear's rumbling, the beginning note of a growl, the slip of a blade along a whetstone.

"You're a second son, yes?"

Cecil tilted his head to the side in the same fashion a squirrel did when sudden movement spun in the corner of its vision. His smile remained in place, some bemusement with unknown origins arising between his teeth, "Yes, Your Grace. Admittedly, I did not think a fourth son would be so keen on the family trees of his father's subjects."

"I don't know every branch," your husband countered, "But I can say it's best the title is not in your inheritance if this is how you speak to a prince of the realm."

You sent Maekar a sharpened look that silently commanded that he fall silent. Nevertheless, the awkwardness unfurling between the three of you could not be rectified, Cecil's face becoming more taken aback instead of playfully agreeable. One of his hands came out, palm visible as if to placate an agitated cow.

"I apologize, I meant no offense. I was merely addressing an old friend. You do allow your lady companions, do you not? I have heard Summerhall can be dreary."

You interrupted at the sight of Maekar narrowing his eyes. Your fingers wrapped around his lower bicep and elbow, holding taut like an anchor attached to drenched rope. You spoke, "Dearest, I'm feeling quite peckish. Perhaps we may go inside to seek respite?"

Your husband's focus returned to you, but the stern fixation of his face did not soften. He just offered Cecil one last steely look before escorting you into your family home.

He did not speak more open the topic. Still, he remained tense even as night fell, the lay of it's navy-black spread pinpricked with stars making the amber glow of the torches warmer, flickering. It highlighted the tip of his nose and the bones of his cheeks, shadowing the crevices of his eyes and seam of his mouth.

You took him in from where beside the divider of where you had changed into your shift for the night. Maekar looked positively grumpy. More so than usual, with a nearly revolted curve of his upper lip and heavy swig of the wine he'd poured himself before bed. The blankets folded, curved, around the width of his waist.

You approached with languid steps, each measured and feathery atop the stone floor.

"You should stop scowling so much. It's causing wrinkles, don't you know?" You suggested. The expression—the sulk, Gods be good—begrudgingly unpinched as you crawled into his lap. However, it did not disappear entirely.

Maekar's weathered hand settled onto your hip, "Who cares? I don't."

"Perhaps not," you submitted, the suppleness of your own fingers settling onto his wound-tight shoulder. Your voice dipped into knowingness, "But Lord Florent seemed to irk you."

The pinch came back at full force as your husband raised his glass to his lips once more, "He's belligerent."

"He did not go to that extreme," you argued. Cecil was many things, or, he had been when you knew him. Belligerent was not one of them. It seemed your husband was just fishing for something to pick apart beyond the cumbersome conversation.

Your knuckles pet at his beard, "Do not be petty with him. I'm here with you, aren't I? My loyalty has been proven time and time again. Unless, you believe the six children I've borne you were nothing but a fluke."

"... fine," Maekar groused, fingers trailing a knob in your lower spine, the shell of your buried pelvis. You pecked at his cheek as he continued, "I'll tolerate him in passing. That's it."

You nodded as the scent of soap in his hair intruded into your nose, "That's it."

Aerion Brightflame

"Pardon," Aerion stated, as it was dressed like a question, but did not hiss between his lips like one.

Your husband stood apart from his family for the fact of his temper. Where his grandsire was fair and even capable of generous sweetness, Aerion spoke and acted without honor when crossed... which was more often than not. Not even his Dornish mother lent him any feeble sympathy or compassionate open-mindedness.

No, your husband acted every inch of the dragon he believed himself to be. His lithe digits came to grasp at your hip and arm in what almost felt like a defensive position, as if he himself was your shield.

"I apologize. I've heard of you, of course, my prince. I was just not aware you'd be so..." Cecil's eyes raked up and down Aerion's form in a way that had his hands clenching down at your flesh, sparse rings biting into muscle and fabric. The Florent waved his hand in a wishy-washy way to complete his sentence.

Obviously, that did not sit well with your husband.

Aerion goaded, the hideous claws of rage sparking at his ribs, "So?"

"Well. You're much daintier than I imagined, though I suppose it makes sense. Your lady wife here would not do well with a brute, would she?" Cecil's smile showed off his teeth, like tarnished pearls on display, "I should know."

Your husband's face fell into stillness, like the surface of a tiny pond that had never been disturbed. It was terrible lie. You knew that expression, and feared it more so than anything. It was the face he made when consumed with ire, wide-eyed like a dog before a rabid bite.

"That's enough," you murmured. To who, you did not know, but you dug your nails into Aerion's arm in an effort to drag him away before he did something dreadful.

This was to be your sister's wedding. You could not think of the shame and hurt that would arise if your lord decided to reach for the dagger adhered to his hip, or if he deigned to use his hands alone, jumping the taller for all those with eyes to see.

"Come now. I wish to see Linnet," you urged, and practically dragged your eerily blank Aerion with you. His skin was hot under your touch. It was the anger, you reckoned, boiling him from the inside out like uncontrolled wildfire that threatened to engulf him whole.

The anger remained all day. It lurked and loomed over him and between the two of you like a snake coiling tight, the end of it's tale flicking side-to-side.

"I should have him beat," is what Aerion proclaims to you after a near whole day of unsettling silence. You paused from where you'd been bringing your nighttime tea to your lips, hair loose around your shoulders.

His head twists to look across at you from where he sits on the velvet chair beside you, terrifyingly serious.

"Or, perhaps, beheaded. I'm partial to the prior suggestion."

"You will do no such thing. This is my sister's wedding, Aerion, not a battlefield for you to do as you please," you refuted firmly, "I will not have a scandal occur by your hand."

Aerion's hand whipped out to grasp at your free wrist. His voice is overflowing with venom, "He covets for you still, wife. I cannot allow it."

"Covet he may, but I am yours, am I not? I am not going anywhere that you cannot follow," you promised, wrangling your wrist back to be able to hold his hand. It seemed to soothe Aerion minutely, but his pout did not loosen.

"A pathetic settlement," he grumbled. You knead his hand in one squish to hush him, and as if needing bodily proof, he brought your arm to him so he may suckle at your wrist and the heartbeat below.

A marking, no doubt, for all to see.

It was so juvenile that you let out a short groan in exasperation, but ultimately resolving to let him do as he pleased. You preferred this to violence.

Daeron the Drunken

Daeron's face contorted into something half-formed. It looked like a painting caught in time, ripped between a sensation taken off-guard whilst equally dismayed, slow moving with the gait of a turtle after a long afternoon of basking in the sun. It made him appear a bit like a fish out of water.

His lips leisurely took their time to form a response, voice weedy from the cups he'd had that morning before departing and unsteadily crawling atop his horse. You almost spoke for him if just to fill the gap.

"Yes. I am her husband," he spoke. His tone was that of someone who had gotten whacked upside the head, seemingly confused at Cecil's presented puzzled at who Daeron was to you.

"Apparently, a wineskin's as well," the ginger japed, yet it did not sound as friendly as his jests had always been with you. It sounded accusatory, intertwined with the lightness of pleasantries.

A scoff escaped Daeron's lips, mouth slanting upwards.

"I enjoy a drink or two, it's true. Many gossip of it," your husband's head ducked down as if to hide his satisfaction at a concept that was lost to you, "Although none had ever gossiped to my face. You must be quite courageous."

"So some may say," Cecil nodded. It was more of a small dip of his head, up and down again.

"Or foolish. Perhaps they are the same thing. You seem to believe so," Daeron's face grew rather lopsided, before collapsing like soggy paper, the locks of his sandy hair wisping around his jaw and hanging down near his shoulders.

They exchanged a remarkably salubrious expression that you reckoned was similar to one sent between poisonous arachnids on the same branch, hoping to weave a worthy web. You grasped at Daeron's hand to snap him out of his trance, and he trudged into your family home at your side with little complaint.

He remained close for the rest of the day that followed. He was a leech, or an adherent slug, that slunk behind or against you every which way. He acted as though he were sewn into your very gown. His attitude was a sickly mist that clung to your skin, muddled, as if he were lost in some sort of haze.

Linnet had inquired if he was quite well, and he had responded with the question of what exactly 'quite' and 'well' were to her. It had not been mean. It had been claggy, pungent jelly sliced.

Daeron had not only fallen into his cups after retiring from a dinner with your family, he'd drowned in them. The amount of fermented grapes, honey, and spice he'd chugged could fill a lake.

"You must be so miserable with someone like me," he murmured sardonically. His foot reached out to nudge at your thigh, poking into the shape as if to gauge your boundaries.

You looked over and away from your book to where your husband was slouched like a puppet without any strings on the settle of your chambers. The apples of his cheeks were reddened, a sheen of perspiration collecting at his hairline and the shape of his upper lip.

"Don't start," you hushed. Daeron had the tendency to self-degrade, even more so when sleepy and sotted. Your hand closest to his leg came to enclose around his ankle.

"Do you regret it? Agreeing to marry me, I mean," He went on, lamenting with a slurred intonation that fell out of his maw like crystallized honey, "He seemed so different. He wasn't drunk. You could've ran away with that fox all those years ago."

"Husband, enough of it. I choose to be with you, at your side, drunk or not. Do not dwell on it. I do not intend to," you declared lowly, strong enough for him and him alone to hear. His eyes gleamed like chips of tanzanite reflecting the moon.

He murmured faintly like a secret, "Darling."

"Yes?"

"May I have a kiss?"

You sighed, dramatically vexed, as you leaned over to meet him where he caught you halfway. Wine caressed your mouth like candle smoke.

Valarr Targaryen

Valarr's serious face remained exactly that: serious.

It grew mellow, subdued at the sight of you from where he snatched a brisk glance, just as it always had. It tightened again when he respectfully peered over at Cecil. His mismatched eyes surveyed him with the quiet intensity passed on from his father. It was attentive, but guarded, awaiting another slight to come his way.

"Good day," he uttered.

"It is a good day, isn't it? The sun always agreed with your wife," Cecil's smile morphed into something less sincere, lacking the genuine kindness he had afforded to you. You offered another brief blink of a smile at his words, and he marched on.

"Though humidity was never one of her favorites, and I have heard from friends and peers that King's Landing can be quite unforgiving. Moreso than my own family's Brightwater Keep. It seems she has the misfortune to be saddled with fates that aren't to her liking."

The muscle in Valarr's jaw jumped recognizably. It happened when he clenched his jaw, ground his molars together in the form of a meddlesome habit he seemed to have no control over, despite having complained once or twice of an ache along his gumline and bones.

It materialized when paperwork had nagged him for far too long, when he sat in on small council meetings and was overlooked, when training had resulted in bruises and scrapes that blossomed in petunias and dahlias beneath his clothes. It was not a good sign. It was a stressed one, an involuntary result of thinking.

His mouth and nose twitched to the side before your husband spoke again, voice level, "Yes. It is surprising how things can change. I've known my wife to be rather adaptable."

"Adaptable?" Cecil raised his brows to you directly as if to convey the thought of how silly. You did have enough energy to debate, so you simply agreed that the heat surrounding your husband's home was not as detestable as one would think.

A Kingsguard requesting Valarr's presence had tugged you away from the odd sphere that had been cultivated.

Your husband bowed in leave to the Florent before leaving your side with a prolonged glance. You fled after him after a few seconds of being on your own, wringing your hands together until the nerves passed like bees chasing another flower to enjoy pollen from.

Throughout the responsibilities of the day, Valarr seemed more intent on touching you. It was nothing nefarious. Just a hand on the small of your back when speaking to your father—streaks of gray beginning to decorate his hair—or adjusting your hair and clothes in small ways when you sat down and stood up.

It wasn't that your husband wasn't affectionate, but he was not the sort to constantly seek out the brush of your hand against his or the feel of your hair between his fingers. It was a strange, but not unwanted, shift in behavior.

It continued into your bed. As soon as you'd laid down in your nightgown, getting comfortable, Valarr suddenly descended upon you. There was nothing sexual about it. Your husband merely laid across your front like a fur pelt in winter, arms caging your sides as he rested his cheek against your bosom.

Usually, you were the one to initiate such intimacy. You looked up to the ceiling before down to the crown of his head, silver streak on display. Your index finger came to trail over the silver-gold lock with ultimate care.

"I hope he did not unnerve you this morning," you muttered. Who "he" was carried no surprise.

"He did not," Valarr responded. The puffs of air coming and going from his nose and mouth stroking the curve of your chest. His denial was unfeigned, but there was a heaviness to his voice, like a weight curled up on his shoulder blades that you could not see.

You hummed, "As you say."

The patting along his hair came to a stop as he moved to press the suggestion of a kiss in the valley between your breasts. You'd think if he did this every night, sleep would never evade you.

♔ AN: I'm pretty sure that an enemy of mine also likes AKotSK, and it's like OOOOH MY GOD!! I can't have shit in this house! Scram! Begone to the Wall!! Something!

[sedonasummer]

Your entire blog is literally doing NOTHING to help with my AKOTSK obsession… like??? It’s actually making it worse??? But if you’re taking requests, I HAVE to ask: just how easily do our AKOTSK men get turned on… and what exactly sends them into an absolute SPIRAL? Like what makes them go feral??

ʟᴏꜱᴇ ᴍʏ ᴍɪɴᴅ | ᴀᴋᴏᴛꜱᴋ

─ summary: The things you do to cause these men to lose their absolute minds.

─ pairing: Maekar Targaryen, Baelor Targaryen, Daeron Targaryen, Aerion Targaryen, Valarr Targaryen, Ser Duncan, Lyonel Baratheon x reader

─ content: 18+ MDNI | implied smut | possessiveness | kinks | fluff

─ a/n: No notes on this one. I am working through everything in my inbox — thank you for your patience.

Aerion is incredibly possessive, but nothing turns him on more than seeing that possessiveness in you.

A noblewoman has kept him too long in conversation and he feels your fingers curl around his arm, your elbow nudging. A maid looks at him a beat too long and he catches the look you give her, a soft warning. Your possession of him is so controlled, so certain, and it sends a thrill through him stronger than anything else he has ever felt.

He catches every single one of these moments, and every one of them makes him harder than Valyrian steel. He will drag you to your chambers and spend the rest of the night marking you thoroughly and completely as his.

And in the middle of it, when you are both beyond thought, he will press his forehead to yours

"I'm yours," he tells you, low and breathless. "You know that I'm yours."

You nod

"Say it," he demands

"You're mine," you tell him.

He groans like it is the best thing he has ever heard.

Baelor loses it at the way you absentmindedly touch him. Your fingers find his at a gathering and stay there, turning his rings absently while you talk to someone else, sliding them around his fingers without looking down. You touch him all day without thinking. Every time you pass him your hand finds some part of him; his arm, his wrist, his chest, the back of his hand, and then you are already moving on, your attention elsewhere, completely unbothered.

He is not unbothered...

By the end of a full day of this he has reached the absolute limit of what he is capable of enduring in public. He finds a moment, a quiet corridor, a closed door, and he pulls you in and presses you against the wall before you have finished your sentence.

"You do this on purpose," he says against your neck.

"Do what?" you ask. You genuinely have no idea, which is somehow the worst part.

He loves everything about you. But there is a version of you that only he gets to see and it undoes him every time.

You are so well-behaved everywhere else. And then you find him. You get that glint in your eye that tells him immediately that you have a plan. You lean in close and whisper something, you want to sneak out and do something that is going to result in both of you getting into trouble, which means him getting into trouble, because no one ever believes trouble was your idea. You look far too innocent.

You explain the plan in detail, your eyes bright, your voice low and conspiratorial, and he is nodding before you have even finished because the answer is always yes. He loves the side of you that lives only here, only with him. But first, he is going to have you right here because it drives him wild with desire whenever you get like this.

Duncan is always careful about his size and strength, especially when it comes to you. And then you flip the switch, and you grab him. You take his face in your hands or pull him toward you by his shirt, or you simply push him down and look at him with that expression, and he loses his mind. You handle him like he’s half your size, and he loves it.

His ears go pink immediately, and a flush spreads across his cheeks. 

"Oh," he says, very quietly, which is all he is capable of in this moment.

"Is that alright?" you ask.

"Yes, that's — yes."

He is entirely at your disposal. He will let you do absolutely anything you want and he will be the happiest man alive while you do it.

Everything about you makes this man feral. 

The way you walk into a room, the way you tilt your head when you are listening to something that interests you, the way you lean into him, the sound of your laugh, the way you bite your lip... 

"You are going to be the death of me," he tells you one evening, watching you from across the room with an expression he is not trying to hide.

"I'm just sitting here," you say.

"I know," he says. "That's the problem."

He manages himself in public because he loves you and you deserve that from him. But in private, well…he lets you feel just what you do to him.

You are sweet by nature, and he loves that about you. You’re warm and easy and patient with everyone. But every so often, the sweetness drops and something sharper comes through, and he is completely undone the moment it happens. Someone says something foolish, and you correct them with precision that leaves no room for argument. Someone oversteps, and you handle it yourself before he even has the chance to step in, and he gets to stand there and watch you dismantle them.

It is always attractive. But if that fire comes out for the children, if someone slights one of his, and you step forward, he loses all reason, even more so. He will find you afterward, wherever you are, and you will spend the rest of the evening on your back, legs spread, as he vows to not stop until he has put a child in you.

"Again?" you ask afterward, breathless. "As many as it takes," he says, entirely serious

He is telling you about his day, and you are listening intently. When he finishes, you look at him for a moment, genuinely impressed with all that he does.

"I'm proud of you," you say.

Something flickers in his eyes. You know that flicker. Valarr knows he works hard, he knows he’s more than competent, and he doesn’t need praise from others. But when that praise comes from you, he cannot help himself. He needs it like he needs air. 

"Say it again," he says.

You look at him. You know exactly what you are doing. "I'm proud of you," your voice dropping to a tease, Good boy," you tell him.

The composure he wears for every room he walks into dissolves entirely. He will spend the entire night making sure he earns praise from you over and over, and every time you give it he will go a little more undone.

[noxiiousstrawberriies]

well, yes!

[hammersanvil]

This is actually destroying me

[noxiiousstrawberriies]

oh, that’s his baby 💔

[noxiiousstrawberriies]

What if the AKOTSK men’s wife got murdered?

Likeeee how do they remember her? How’d she die? How’d they tell their children??

࣪ ִֶָ☾. 𝔚𝔥𝔞𝔱 ℜ𝔢𝔪𝔞𝔦𝔫𝔰

❍ Summary: After your death, your husband and the pieces of your marriage remain. ❍ CWs: Death, descriptions of reader's murder/assassination (18+), descriptions of violence, and grief. ❍ Content: Wife!reader, dead!reader, grief, different forms of grieving, yearning, widower!husband, mentioned Targaryen funerals, referenced funeral customs and traditions, assassinations, drinking, time being a thief, acts of revenge, threats, panic attacks, hurt/no comfort, angst, reader's og house is unspecified, reader's appearance is unspecified except for longer hair, fempov, use of she/her pronouns ❍ Pairings: Deceased!Wife!Reader x Grieving!Husband!Baelor, Maekar, Dunk, Lyonel, Aerion, Daeron, Valarr (all separate scenarios) ❍ Word Count: ~7.7k total (~1k per part)

❍ AN: This is definitely a heavier one, so PLEASE be mindful of the CWs; they're there for a reason. Other than that, I hope you find this angst devastating enough, anon!! No Raymun because his would've been very similar to Dunk's.

Baelor Breakspear

He'd been the one to find you that night.

His duties as his father's Hand often preoccupied his time, but it seemed as though it had imprisoned him amongst parchments and quills for the past couple of weeks. It kept him away from your shared apartments, from the bedchamber, from you.

Baelor had sworn that the all-consuming work would pass. That, eventually, he would have time to spend with you again. He'd sworn it, and he was a man of his word if nothing else. Your husband had laid his hand over his heart in a gesture, head bowed at the promises he fed you with a tired gaze.

Still, despite the poetic vows he offered, he knew he was neglecting you. Treaties and letters had become his mistresses, warming over his sleep in place of where you could have been—should have been. He could not recall the last time he'd been able to do something as mundane as a stroll in the gardens with you on his arm, or shared honey cakes passed between sticky spoons and fingers.

Baelor missed it. He missed you, and he had been wholly pleased when he was able to retire early from his study to finally join you in bed. It had been late at night. Stars streaked the sky, the Red Keep settling down for sweet slumber with utmost tranquility.

He thought of your drowsy face when you'd realized he'd been able to come to bed at a somewhat reasonable time. He thought of your undone hair puddling beneath your head, at the quiet tone your voice would take when you'd greet him. Baelor had hoped you'd smile. Maybe, even, kiss him.

Yet, when he'd entered the room, you'd been lying at an awkward angle. The sheets were thrown about, the collar of your nightgown wrinkled and loose as though it'd been tugged at. Your limbs were limp, heavy like wet sand.

When he'd approached, you had not looked at him like he wanted. Instead, your skin was washed out like dull linen, and blueness dusted your lips and cheeks. Your fingers were red with rawness, blood under your nails, and he'd known.

Baelor had known.

You had died long before he arrived. The maesters could not pinpoint a time, but guessed it was perhaps an hour or so before your husband had been able to come to bed. None of the guards interrogated could explain, nor could any of the handmaidens who had helped you change into your silken shift. It was as if the perpetrator were a ghost creeping in the shadows.

Yet, a ghost could not do this. It was a person, alive and warm, who had smothered you. Someone had known you'd be alone, and had come to your room, and held a pillow down until you were gone.

Baelor did not weep. He did not rage, demand the head of the person who had done such a thing to his wife. If anything, he wilted like a flower at the first sight of autumn. Eating was a chore. Bathing was a chore. Everything was a chore, and suddenly, living was so very hard to do.

He felt like an orange peeled apart and carved out until only the flesh remained. His mind felt stuffy with cotton, migraines lingering perpetually from lack of sustenance and sleep. Fat slipped from his face, from his frame. He looked pale. He, somehow, felt pale.

Matarys had said he'd looked like a scraggly tree in winter before Valarr could shush him.

The boys—your sons, the ones you had carried and grown in your wonderful, known body—were naturally distraught at the news. At least, your husband thought so.

Baelor did not know if they had cried, if they had sought comfort in one another, or if they were so angry they thought they were trapped in their skin and hated the littlest of things around them.

It was like everything was slipping away from him, from his foggy mind, but he was not afforded the luxury of wasting away. His father, sad-eyed and soft-spoken, had irresponsibly tried to get him to rest. He'd even gone as far as to attempt dismissing him from one of the small council meetings, only to find Baelor waiting outside like an eavesdropping child.

He was the heir. He was a prince of the realm. He was the Hand to the king. He had things to do, papers to sign off on, and inputs to give. Baelor could not step away from everything he had ever known.

He could not be alone in places he'd once found you. He could not lay in a bed where you had been killed by a servant, bribed with coin by forces still unknown, still hunted. Reportedly, your life had been worth three Gold Dragons.

Three. Just three, such a small quantity that it soured his tongue.

So, Baelor worked. He forced himself to eat, to speak, to dress properly, and to spend time with his children because it was the correct thing to do. Because it was a distraction from your favorite seat on the terrace, from your half-finished embroidery, from the memory of how broken your hands had been from fighting.

He worked to forget.

He did not yet know if he could. Less so, in his heart, if he truly wanted to.

However, he knew one thing: he was unnerved by your once-shared bed, with clean sheets and fluffed pillows. So he slept on your side moons later, drowsed in the fading embrace of your scent for one more night, before discreetly commanding that it be taken away and burned just as you had been in the ways of his house.

Maekar Targaryen

Over the years, many questioned how a woman like you could tolerate a man like him.

None, of course, said it to Maekar's face. Yet, every house—great and lesser—filled the pit of starvation with meager gossip and political schemes. No one could escape its ravenous appetite.

Not even you and him.

Your marriage had not been one brought forth by romance. There was no grand tale of courtship, no instantaneous longing from across the way, or a plea for your hand. It was a simple negotiation between his father and yours, with discussions of trades and wealth rather than affection and fondness.

As a young man, he had resigned himself to dutiful companionship. There was no waning pocket seeking love, genuine and horrid. Whatever childish notion that had ever existed was squished beneath the weight of titles.

However, Maekar had grown to love you. It was unforeseeable, taking time to develop and conquer, like greenery crawling over an abandoned cabin.

You were everything he was not, and Maekar silently adored you for it. You were gentle, lighthearted, and welcoming. In the cold storm of his character, you were the sun glimpsing out from dreary clouds.

Your face was kind, where his was cruel. The corners of your lips flitted into smiles, and the fan of your lashes would squint together when you laughed too hard. Your children were nurtured against your bosom and then, in the warmth of your nature. You were the kind of wife that he did not deserve, but wholly needed, or perhaps even required to operate as the man he was.

All the same, someone had killed you.

They'd poisoned your tea. The tea that you savored, took out in the garden to enjoy the sun and wind, and (without fail) scooped a generous amount of sugar into the amber brew each time. You indulged in this ritual so often that it became a rite of passage. There was nothing notable about it until you had been slain on the grounds of Summerhall, inevitable the moment the liquid slipped between parted lips.

When he'd reached you—notified by a frenzied servant who had been racing around the castle in search of anyone to assist—you were slumped atop the table. Your plaited hair hung off your shoulder, dangling near your knee. You'd knocked over your cup. The cotton tablecloth had been soaked in the concoction sickened by venom, dripping like sluggish drizzle down to the stone below.

Maekar's rough hands had tried to be gentle when they cupped the back of your neck. They went beneath your temple, wedging to hold your forehead to pull you back. To sit you upright as though you had just fallen asleep.

You used to do that when you were carrying his children. Once, you fell asleep on your husband's shoulder during a feast hosted by the King. He made the appropriate show of being disgruntled, but he did not truly care, making no moves to awaken you or nudging you off his shoulder.

Rhaegel had joked that Maekar spoiled you.

It was true that, in his own way, he doted on you. Caved to your whims like a dagger melting under pressure and heat. Though he did not do so enough. Maekar had not cared for you enough if you were able to be assassinated in your own home, with something as fucking simple as tea.

Blood and foam clung to the seam of your mouth, saliva mixed with mucous moistening the line of your throat and down the curve of your chest. Your skin had taken an unwell green sheen, bordering on icky yellow near the edges. You were still half-warm against his palms, shaking at your face as if to rouse you from sleep.

Your name was all he said. It began sharply, curtly, like you were a misbehaving horse refusing to move. It descended into something flat and empty, expanding to press against the back of his mouth and choke him.

The news of your killing was a rancid stench in the air. It clogged your husband's nose, emphasized the lump in his throat the had the same shape as your name. It clung to Summerhall's walls like filth, dirt smeared across every inch, the dug-out grave of what had existed before.

Only three of your children were still residing in your home, and your son and daughters had varying reactions to the revelation.

Daeron, wine-nosed with greasy hair, had just stared at his father with a distant look. Daella and Rhae had cried so much that their little faces were ruddy, the lids of their eyes puffy like sheep's wool; Maekar heard them weep at night when he should've been asleep. He knew you would comfort them if it was he who had suffocated on his own spit. Even so, he could not find the words to do so.

He sent ravens to the three that were away, whilst ignoring the ravens sent to him. He did not care to read whatever pity was smeared across those sheets.

In his imagination, Aerion in Lys raged and spat. He'd be indignant, yelling about how you had been blood of the dragon by marriage, and that this was an attack on every Targaryen living. Meanwhile, Aemon at the Citadel would hold it close to his chest, quiet in his mourning. Aegon would maybe sob, or throw things about, or hit the chest of the lowborn hedge knight that his safety was entrusted with.

You would have known what to do in the face of all those realities. You always had a way of understanding life's hardships in a way he couldn't, guiding him past the urge to scowl and bite.

But now, you weren't here, and there was no one to lead him to tranquility.

Maekar did not take the time to write to his father, brothers, or even his mother when the empoisoner was uncovered. He just marched down into the dungeons where the man was kept, a meek servant trailing behind with a cup in their shaky hands.

Your husband didn't give him the space for a conversation. No excuse or reason could justify you—generous, knowing, beautiful you—being slain.

He just forced the tea the servant carried down his throat, brewed with enough toxins to wipe out Flea Bottom.

Dunk

Dunk always felt like he was the luckiest man in all of Westeros to be your husband.

He was born with nothing but his body and mind to his name in the maze of Flea Bottom. He'd suffered, stolen, and fought just to be able to eat scraps and have a ragged place to sleep. There were hundreds of things he'd done that were shameful, and much less was he able to say he was grateful for.

He'd lost so many friends, so much of his youth in trying to survive in a place like that. His salvation had come in the form of a drunken, old fool who had the immense kindness to bring him along. Or, rather, save him from the Stranger's clutches instead of leaving him lying for dead on that dirt road.

Even with a newfound purpose and companionship, life was full of trials and tribulations. Little came easily to a hedge knight and his squire, and that continued to be true with roles reversed. Egg was, though, much wiser and capable than he had been at that age.

Nevertheless, everything seemed intent on being as difficult as possible for him. Hunting for food, setting up camp, and even making sure the horses were properly taken care of could be more like walking over hot coals barefoot instead of an easy stroll.

That applied to you, too.

You were the sole daughter of a minor lord, a young lady as well-bred and educated as they came. Your father had welcomed Dunk and Egg into his home; the weather had been rainy, soaking the pair to the bone as they took refuge under your father's supervision. You had come to greet your sire's guests, descending down the stairs when the two of you made eye contact.

Dunk, steadily forming a puddle beneath his feet, and you in all your elegance.

Instantly, he was smitten.

He tried to keep his distance in the hope that those rowdy butterflies would give way to something more subdued and comprehensible of your class difference. Alas, he was a moth drawn to a flame, and you were certainly the brightest he had ever had the honor to witness.

You'd run away from home to be with him, leaving your gilded cage to live as the peasant wife of a lowborn knight, all while betraying your father's expectations of a suitable match. You'd risked it all for him. It was you who stood by him when Egg returned home, when he'd eventually gone to Summerhall for work, and everything in between.

You were too good for him.

Perhaps that's why you were killed. As the Laughing Storm had told him years ago, the Gods didn't favor a fraud. That's what he had been, hadn't he? Just like with Aerion, he hadn't known his place against his superiors, and this was his divine punishment for forsaking the natural order of society.

He'd returned home after a tour with Egg. The boy was hardly a boy anymore, but a man who was forging his own alliances and taking part in the dangerous dance known more formally as politics. He'd requested his ser's presence for trustworthy protection—or more likely, jovial companionship—and he'd left you to cross the breadth of the Reach and Stormlands.

Dunk had expected you to be in your usual haunts: the windowsill overlooking the humble garden below, stoking the hearth's fire, or taking care of some laundry. Even after your husband gained enough status to afford the privilege to you once more via servants, you insisted you had grown accustomed to doing things yourself and had allowed only a landscaper and cook to enter your threshold.

You hadn't been there. By the time he'd searched the entirety of your home's upper levels, anxiety was starting to stir.

Dunk had descended into the cellar with cautious steps. Why you would be down here, he had no clue, but it was the only place he hadn't searched yet. He'd taken a cursory look at the room from the bottom stair before his attention was snatched to a shadowed corner, barrels stacked around it.

The heel of a shoe stuck out from there. It was a lady's show, and you were the only lady who could be here.

Someone had strangled you. They must have done it a day or two before his return, for you still looked like you instead of a bloated corpse. You, with your woven hair and the wrists and clavicles you rubbed fragrance upon every morning, were tucked away in the dark like a skittish mouse.

Molten purple in the shape of fingers wrapped around the length of your neck, a ring of expiry that had squeezed the life out of you. It was unseemly against your skin. Unseemly, akin to a maggot squirming out of an overripe apricot, to a dove with its neck snapped.

Your husband had crawled into that corner with you, hauling you into his lap. Dunk cradled you so softly, tracing the marks on your neck as his vision blurred. Dizziness overtook him. Faintly, he worried he'd be sick all over your skirts, but it was clogged in the twisting of his intestines.

He sniffled into your hair, large arms wrapping you up in the way he knew you liked. Fat, bulbous tears dripped down his cheekbones and over the jut of his chin, languid in its heavy morning. It'd taken him hours before he was ready to move, carrying up to your bed before feeling sane enough to seek help.

Egg had caught word of the tragedy a day or two after.

He'd stormed into your home, lethally regal in his fury as he swore to help Dunk find out who the "bastard of bastards" was. The knight had sorely thought the young man looked uncannily like his father when enraged, but he didn't think he'd have the strength to speak without sobbing into the floor near his boy's feet, so he kept quiet.

He alternated between crying and feeling numb. Not even with Ser Arlan had he wept so much. Not even with Rafe. No, this was you, and you had been everything he could not reasonably have, but he took it anyway.

This was the consequence for it, he was sure.

Egg had managed to wrangle information from the seized offender. It had been your own father, bitter and humiliated at your choice to marry a dimwitted commoner. Dunk's guilt had magnified at the knowledge, even as his once-squire went on to promise a trial in your name if that was what your husband wished.

Her father had liked me once, Dunk thought to say, but like many things, he could not find the power to, and I'd run off with his daughter in response.

He just sat there looking at the dragon before him and wondered for the millionth time if misery followed all those in Flea Bottom, or if he was just that worthy of it. He'd prostrate himself at his feet if that meant you'd be here instead of him.

But the Seven were unhearing, and you weren't here at all.

Lyonel Baratheon

Lyonel was nervous.

It was an outlandish idea.

He was deemed the Laughing Storm for a damn reason, and he had long left behind the green of boyhood to be clam-palmed and thick-tongued at his grand age. He was a father, the Lord Paramount of the Stormlands, an overseer, and a husband. There was no room for trepidation to spook him.

Though his standing as husband was the cause for his worry. For, reasons unknown, you were missing from Storm's End with nary a word of warning.

No one had seen you leave. Your ladies-in-waiting had nothing to offer, your handmaidens presented suggestions fruitlessly, and not even the fucking guards could explain where your random disappearance had come from.

Everything in life had been proceeding as normal. Your husband played with you, you played back or frowned in disapproval, and came together to host feasts and hunts in abundance. Not to mention that all of your children were in good health and standing.

He could not think of a good reason as to why you'd be gone, so he'd ordered a search party with other lords and good knights to aid him in trying to decode the mystery laid out for him. They'd searched nearly the entire shore when Lyonel had caught sight of something from beneath the water.

He didn't exclaim or ask for confirmation. The stag was already sprinting away from the group, staggering down the stony hill as he rushed to his discovery.

The cold seeped into the leather of his boots. It seeped through the fabric of his pants as he lowered himself further and further into the chilling water, embracing his waist with talons that hooked into his muscles. The iciness penetrated the cords of his sinew as he trudged further into the depths to reach you.

His men yelled behind him. Some were calling for the fetching of a maester, whilst others were demanding that the lord return back to shore.

He paid them no mind. The only person Lyonel had ever truly bothered to listen to was you, after all, and here you were. Your limp form bobbed on the surface like a fishing line. The wonderful tresses he toyed with after sex in the glow of your bed, or when tired near the end of feasts, floated upwards in the water like kelp.

His fingers curled into the heavy, soggy layers of your gown as he tugged you closer to him. It caused the liquid to rock, crawling further up his chest with a vengeance. He did not acknowledge the lack of heat except for the missing warmth he should've found in you.

Your skin was cold. It had turned pale, a grayish film lying over your flesh like gauze. It was wrinkled, scrunched near your joints and the meat of your palm.

He turned you up to the sky with some effort. He'd manhandled you before. He'd carried you to bed, spun you around with your feet off the floor whilst dancing, and dragged you with him into his drunken adventures. Never had you been so heavy, so limp and weighted down, lifeless from where he'd pulled you further out of the water.

Your skin was pale, scrapes from the waves knocking you around in the sand and against rocks stark against the washed-out shade. White, foamy froth dripped out from your nostrils and the open seam of your maw at the change in position.

Lyonel panted, chest expanding and compressing in dense repetitions.

You were dead, and he had been looking for you. You'd been right outside, right away at home, and he'd been looking for you. You'd been breathless under the water, and he'd been looking for you.

His sublime wife was dead, and he'd been looking for her.

He'd drag you out of the water. His peers disbanded into pandemonium around him at the sight, but he couldn't focus on anything but you. Your jewelry was still polished, earrings dangling from your ears, but you were missing your shoes. You hated going outside without something to cover your feet; you'd told him that you hated the filth that covered the soles of your feet afterwards.

If you were breathing and warm, you'd complain. He was so sure of it, and a part of Lyonel was waiting for you to begin grumbling. He wouldn't even mock you if you did. Your husband would just kiss you and your muddied feet, until you were chortling at his folly.

You did not move, or speak, or begin to let air into your lungs again. Lyonel still kissed your face. It tasted like salt and algae, and he'd never thought the day would come when he would disdain the taste.

In the weeks following, rumors arose like flies crowding around a decaying doe.

Many came to the conclusion that, given the ominous circumstances, you had taken your own life, jumping into the sea and letting it take you away. Others, the scum beneath Lyonel's boot, passed the tale of him killing you himself under their breath. The gossip was worms feasting on the fruits of his calamity.

Your husband ignored it all. He refused to believe, sotted and agitated, that you would leave him so. There was only one explanation he would entertain: someone had drowned you themselves.

The hunt for the offenders was on the morning after his stern conclusion, and the funeral proceedings were long behind him.

Lyonel's eldest boy, Ormund, had shown up that dawn despite having reddened eyes and a voice that warbled at the end of his sentences. He'd always thought his heir looked like him, but now, with the way his teary eyes stayed downwards and the shape of his features grim, he thought the boy looked like you.

Lyonel had brought him close by the nape of his neck to press a fleeting kiss to his cheek, "Steady, now."

In truth, he'd been surprised to see Ormund join the party. Your children had dissolved into mourning as soon as the words of your fate had left his lips. His daughters held their faces in their hands, some of his sons following their lead, whilst others demanded answers for the injustice.

They took to hiding away, but Lyonel couldn't blame them. He'd taken to hiding as well, alcohol replacing every other substance available. For a man known for being so loud, so boisterous, he'd grown gravely serious in his grief.

There was only one thing that would bring him relief now: the head of whoever had taken his beautiful wife and mother to his brood away from him.

The party had found who it was shortly after commencing their search. It'd been a fisherman who'd been coerced into such an atrocity by the threat that his family would die by the hand of the lord commissioning such a travesty. His beady eyes flitted every which way, hands clasped together as if in prayer.

Lyonel would have spared him if he hadn't begun to recount how you'd struggled and pleaded in his grasp. He really would have.

Instead, he grabbed the bastard by the collar with a humorless chuckle and gutted him like a pig.

Aerion Brightflame

Everyone knew there was something violent about your husband.

However, no one knew how it came to be. Many argued that it was the family blood that coursed through his veins, sickening his mind the older he grew. Others claimed that it had always been in his nature, burrowed in the wrinkles of his brain, waiting to rear its ugly head when the moment came.

While the cause remained unknown, this evidence was clear: dead animals, maimed servants sent away with as little fanfare as feasible, and the way his father's eye twitched whenever his son opened his foul mouth. Aerion was well aware of his reputation. He'd even go as far as to say he took pride in it, for this was the standard of fear every Targaryen should hold over Westeros.

He was no sniveling beggar panhandling his way into the wealthy's good graces. He was the wealthy, and he carried the blood of the conquerors and Old Valyria with every pump of his heart. He came from survival and dreams, and matters of lowering himself from his station or (Gods forbid) mingling with the lesser as if he were like them were revolting.

Aerion was a dragon. That did, inherently, make him better than others.

An entitlement that extended to you.

It was a concept he had tried to engrain within you after moons of going on and on about how he was blood of the dragon, a grandson of the King, and son of a prince. He had not wanted to marry a common wench, that much was true.

Painfully, unfortunately, you grew on him. Your witless ways and stupid ideas about how you should behave and speak to others were entertaining; he'd often suggest he'd married a fool instead of a maiden.

You were just so irritatingly good. There was a persistent worry and consciousness you maintained about how others felt about you, how they spoke of you, and what they thought about you when you walked into a room. Inane concepts, indeed.

Aerion had tried many times to convince you that you were now a Targaryen by marriage. Why would a dragon's mate deign to listen to the squawking of chickens and cattle? Alas, you would only offer a huff of bemusement at his ramblings, which further solidified his opinion that you were completely vacuous.

Even so, your husband had made an oath to himself that his (in his opinion, albeit justifiable) brutality would never reach you.

You were a fragile, delicate, and comely thing in both body and mind. More than that, you were his woman by law, and he would rather cultivate you into an iron-willed princess who could stand by his side than toss you away like a toy he no longer used. You were to be the mother of his many children, after all, and he wanted you willing and ready instead of anything else.

Aerion would never raise a hand to you. He would try to temper his voice, although he fell victim to calling you names on the occassion (the latter was so very tempting). He'd determined that he'd guard you, as the dragons in the past guarded their riders and clutches of eggs.

Hence, when a battered coachman came stumbling up to the doors of Summerhall with the declaration that bandits had ambushed your carriage as you were returning home from a visit to a lady friend of yours, Aerion wasted no time.

His horse came to a halt near your carriage. The structure was pulled off to the side, eerily still, with the palfrey still attached to the front. They mindlessly kicked at the dirt and leaned down to press their velvety noses to the grass, large teeth picking at the green.

He slid off with a thump of his boots. Aerion did not wait for any of the sers trailing him, or take the care to tie his steed somewhere so it would not wander away. He couldn't care less about any of it. In fact, to the Seven Hells they could all go as far as he was concerned!

You were his wife, his by right, and the bearer of his future children. How could he take the time for such frivolous matters if some harm had befell you? What sort of husband, of prince, would he be if the one he had promised to protect had been defiled by meritless forces that did not deserve to breathe the same air as you?

He rounded the side to grasp the door. Only, it was already slightly ajar. In fact, upon further inspection, it seemed as though it had been pried and nearly ripped off its hinges. He'd slammed what prevailed into the carriage's side to reveal the sight of you.

His wife. His lady. His woman, who was so easy to tease and push, pummeled into a pile of what crudely resembled you.

A dagger he had gifted you—one weapon of many—lay on your seat. You'd stabbed whoever had come to collect you, likely in fear for your life at the potential of being taken for ransom or sold, and they had beaten you black and blue.

Your petal-like mouth was busted, lacerations and tears across your skin, staining everything bloody. Your fingers looked twisted, as did your spine, and your hair that had been tied up and away that morning ripped loose to settle stiffly on your shoulders.

It'd taken Aerion three days to track down who had slaughtered you. In those three days, your shared apartments were destroyed beyond repair. He'd taken his longsword to the curtains, the tables, the chairs as he shouted in hysteria to whoever was warily there to witness his savagery.

"They're villains, can't you see? Traitors to the crown! Measly, ill beasts who threaten the dynasty! They beat my wife like a dog, and they killed her with their bare hands," Aerion only got louder, angrier, "Why are you not weeping? Why do you stand there staring at me, as if a princess has not been taken from the realm?"

One servant had tried to reason with him, and it'd earned him a wound to his gut that required stitches from the maesters.

Not even Maekar, exhausted and frayed at the turn of events, could get a hold on his creation. Aerion only slammed decor and objects around when confronted with logic. He hadn't eaten, nor bathed, and sleeping was entirely out of the question.

You were dead. You, who was meant to last decades with him as his lady wife, prim and pretty. You, who were destined to carry his babes, where each whelp would be the picture of health. Who would grant him perfect children now? Who could create offspring worthy of the dragon's blood if not for you? Who would not cower at his closeness, his touch?

Where were you? Where were your children, if not dead with you?

When the perpetrators were dragged to the castle, Aerion wasted no time. He simply summoned them to the ruins of his chambers with weapons laid out for his free choosing and viewing pleasure.

They had crushed you, and to balance the scales, your husband would tear them apart.

Daeron the Drunken

Daeron knew it was going to happen.

His dreams were often undecipherable, whirlwinds of colors bleeding together as out-of-tune voices and noises swam together like discomforting music. Rarely did he plainly understand what he was forced to see. Though one had kept returning to him like a kicked dog searching for lingering love, head bowed at the feet of its master.

You'd be lying on the stairs. They appeared to be from outside, made of stone, with pebbles and twigs clinging to their structure. You were upside down, the length of your braided hair dangling down the edge and trailing below. Your hair. Your lovely hair, which smelled like your favorite soap, was mixed with crimson.

It leaked out of your cracked head. Your pretty head open like a dropped egg, crushed from the force of your fall. It dripped blood all down the staircase, wine splashed across cream satin.

Your feet were pointed up at the sky, and so was your face. Your skin was gray at the loss, eyes blank, and irises lacking any flicker of life. You just stared up at the blue sky as red escaped your skull.

Daeron could not move in these dreams. It felt as though he were looking in from a window, or was a statue stuck paralyzed near the corpse, lacking any agency to assist you. To scoop the maroon-bordering-on-black into his hands and put it back where it rightfully belonged, cradle the fractured thing that had once been his wife.

Sometimes, in these visions, he wanted to curl up on the stairs next to you and cry. Other times, he wanted to kiss your beautiful, exposed wrists and ankles in one last act of worship that your drifting mind might have been able to recognize.

It happened one too many times to just be a nightmare. A figment of his imagination he could suppress, move on, and away from.

He'd tried, desperately, to convince you of it. You'd listened to his rambling, stayed calm in the clammy palms of his trembling hands as he fought to make you understand. You, in all your perfection, had only refuted and reassured him at every turn.

You would not die, you'd said. You'd repeated yourself until your voice went hoarse and Daeron stopped shaking.

He could not dismiss such concerns, even with your stubbornness in the belief that no harm would come to you. He told his father. He told his brothers, sisters, and even his cousins. He told any Kingsguard forced to listen and ladies-in-waiting on their way to visit you in your apartments.

He avoided sleep when he could help it. He'd still lie next to you in bed, inches away, so he could watch the leisurely rise of your chest with every unconscious breath that came and went. He'd stare at your face. Occasionally, he'd try to map it out, write down every hill and valley of your features along his cranium.

Enough time passed for your husband to fall under the impression that, perhaps, his dreams were just dreams this time. That there was no warning or message to dig out, to examine with a squint.

Thus, Daeron let his guard down.

That had been the catalyst.

The screech of the maid you had crashed down in front of had echoed across Summerhall; a wail so horrified it rang through the air like a bell, crisp and daunting. The Kingsguard had fled to the scene, and Daeron had sprinted after them to the best of his abilities. Wine boiled in his stomach at the fear, the once numbing sensation alleviating to allow focus.

You'd fallen right where he'd dreamt you would. Your dress was pristine, your bones were broken, and the blood was dripping over the edge of the stairs. A bird chirped nearby in loose birdsong. A guard was holding the witnessing maid up from where she squirmed, disturbed at what she had seen.

Daeron had seen it too, but no one held him.

They let him stumble down next to you, hands clasping your head in an effort to hold you together. You'd held him together so many times. He could do this for you, and your skull fell apart as he tried to haul you up into a seated position, crumbling between his fingers.

"Come now," he urged, and there was a bubble rising in his throat, delirious and giddy, "I told you. I told you, didn't I? Come now, darling, let me help you."

Daeron's father was firm where he was not in the following days. It was just like his father to clean up his messes, to do the things that his heir could not. This was no different. It was Maekar who led the hunt after the individual who had pushed you off your balcony, and he uncovered the culprit before the week was up.

It had been a guard who typically kept watch over your rooms when you were taking time for yourself inside. He had not been granted the honor of a knight, but a nobleman had thought himself snubbed by the crown, and had offered knighthood if the man had managed to get the job done.

It was a hard enough blow to rock the boat, but not enough to sink it. You had been the wife of a fourth son's eldest child—close but distant. Enough to graze the King, but not enough to impel him.

Daeron had smiled crookedly when his father informed him of such, lips red from the sheer amount of wine he'd consumed. His voice was wobbly and weak, like a string about to snap as he fiddled with the chain of one of your favorite necklaces.

Your favorite garments lay around him from where he took refuge in his apartments, like a mad dragon with his hoard.

"I know. I know, I know, I know."

Valarr Targaryen

Valarr first met you when you were children.

Well, "met" is an exaggerated phrasing for what had actually occurred. Prince Baelor had decided to host a tourney for Matarys' birth, as well as his lady wife Jena's admirable efforts in labor, and house representatives from far and wide were crawling up to the Red Keep amongst carriages and trusty steeds to dabble in favor.

He'd been a boy then, features softened with youth and body slender like a twig. All of his royal garb hung off his frame like ribbons tied around withered branches.

The black and red contrasted harshly against the brightness of his eyes, the softness of his hair. The colors felt too serious for his age, but his father had insisted they made him look "punctilious".... whatever that meant. He didn't know at the time.

All he knew was that perspiration was beginning to build under the dark fabric of his clothes, the hall was much too noisy, and Matarys looked like a well-fed caterpillar. His brother was notably pudgy from where he was swaddled against their mother's breast, with cheeks that melded under Valarr's pinches and pokes. It was the only entertaining thing at the head of the table, but his mother put an end to it when the babe began to squirm.

Overcome by boredom once more, he'd slunk away with his mother's permission to steal a sweetmeat or two for himself. Although that'd also lost its appeal after consuming so many that his teeth began to ache and his tongue felt like crystallized honey.

Thus, he'd slipped out of the main hall, seeking refuge in the sprawling halls of his home. From his vantage point, he could see everyone milling about the courtyard.

There was a portly man who guffawed so forcefully his belly shook with his humor. A flock of young maidens stuck together in a corner with a suspiciously good view of the Kingsguard, giggling behind raised hands, while two boys in matching house colors chased one another around with determined yelps.

He'd been so engrossed in his spying that he did not notice right away when you'd joined him. It was only when you pointed out a widowed woman with a blatant tear in the back of her dress that she seemed unaware of that he looked over at you.

You'd been around his age, with lace sewn through your hair and gown's hem trimmed to allow the tips of your slippers to be seen. At his gaze, you'd smiled, and you had a gap between your teeth.

Before Valarr had been able to utter a response, your mother called your name, and you hurried off once more.

That was how he remembered meeting you, even when you'd both blossomed into adulthood and were coincidentally betrothed, then wed. He didn't think you'd remember it, but he'd tried anyway during the feast following the wedding ceremony. You'd slightly grinned, and agreed that what he recalled did seem vaguely familiar.

Yet for him, it wasn't vague at all, but vivid and bright.

Valarr remembered everything about you: the specific way you slept, how you liked to style your hair, and the expression you subconsciously made when deep in thought. He tucked it away, jotting it down in a nonexistent journal that lived in the bands of his ligaments.

Moreover, your husband remembered exactly how you'd died as well. It was a parasite that corrupted all the good you had given him. It held onto the corners of his memories, sinking its claws into the tissue, and peeling it back.

You'd retired early in the evening. You claimed to not have slept well the night before and, in hopes of remedying it, were off to take a warm bath in your apartments before tucking into bed. You'd kissed his cheek before leaving; your perfume tickled his nose most tenderly.

It was one of your handmaidens who had done it. She's sobbed grossly, proclaiming she had been blackmailed into such treason, but Valarr couldn't care less.

There, at your most vulnerable, she'd taken a dagger to your throat. She didn't even have to sneak. You trusted her, completely, and she'd repaid you by taking your life. The blood had fallen into the water, swirling in the scented and steaming depths. Your hair and skin were moisture-laden, the weeping wound leaving a grotesque gloss down your front and the sides of the washing basin.

Valarr had scooped you out of the water himself, shoved aside the Kingsguard and servants swarming to do so.

There had been tears, brimming against his lashline, and then there had been nothing at all.

No sadness, no anger, just a queer sense of normalcy he knew was wrong but could not contort into something more befitting of the situation. It was shameful—no, it was damning! How could he not be overwhelmed with upset at your fate? How could he exist so freely without your ghost haunting him?

In the following days, his father took to petting his hair like he used to when he was young whenever the two spoke (which had rapidly increased in occurrence). Ringed fingers fiddled carefully with the silver-gold streak in his hair, as if afraid Valarr would drift away into dust if too heavy-handed, Baelor's voice so quiet it could barely be heard.

"How are you?" He liked to ask his son. It seemed to be his favorite query as of late, and Valarr could not bring himself to admit the sin that he felt quite well.

So, he'd avert his eyes and murmur things he thought were right.

A near year had passed after your death when it happened. Valarr had finally gotten around to sorting through your things, requesting privacy in doing so, and so he picked through your dust-gathered belongings himself. He'd started at your vanity, then with your hobbies (instruments out of tune and needlework almost finished), and finally, your dresses.

There was one he'd noticed right away: pale in color with faint floral stitching around the hem and collar.

He remembered the first time he'd seen you in it. It had been one of your favorites, and it was worn with love, stained and faded at the edges from consistent use. Carefully, he brought it to his nose, and yes, the scent of you remained.

When had he last smelt it? Suddenly, he couldn't recall, and Valarr remembered everything. What else had he forgotten? What else would he forget? Would your laughter become muddled, your face meshed with opaque fabric, forever wrapping you away to a place he could not follow?

It couldn't be true. Valarr didn't think he'd forget, not ever, but he was. He was already forgetting you.

And he, who had not shed a tear, became an overflowing well. It made breathing difficult, as if his lungs were tied with a string, cutting off air, and he choked on his own panicked revelation. Spit collected in the corners of his lips and fell, body shaking, falling apart.

Your husband keeled over around your dress and wept until boneless, a sack turned inside out with nothing to show for it.

❍ AN: In the distance, you can hear Jeff Buckley's "Lover, You Should've Come Over" echoing.

[eddie-redcliffe]

[noxiiousstrawberriies]

oh he WANTED wanted that cookie…

[noxiiousstrawberriies]

Watching akotsk and ngl i dont see the appeal of Lyonel until I read your fics sjbdjdbdjdndjdndjnd

I need the stag NOWW

Thank God. I've done my duty.

[noxiiousstrawberriies]

❖ 𝔐𝔞𝔯𝔦𝔱𝔞𝔩 𝔄𝔣𝔣𝔞𝔦𝔯𝔰

⬥ Summary: Your husband has a favorite position during the marital act. ⬥ CWs: Explicit sexual content (18+). Just pure smut hcs. ⬥ Content: Freaky Targaryens, smut, fempov, use of she/her pronouns, reader's house is undefined, reader's appearance is undefined except for longer hair, breeding kink, overstimulation, gentle sex, rough sex, size difference, physical affection, basically just short snippets about sex LMAO ⬥ Pairings: Wife!Reader x Husband!Baelor, Maekar, Dunk, Lyonel, Aerion, Daeron, Valarr, Raymun (all separate scenarios) ⬥ Word Count: ~1.6k total (~200 per part)

⬥ AN: I just wanted to assign the AKotSK guys sex positions. That's literally it LOL. Save a dragon, ride a prince... or whatever the Seven says. It's good to be devout!

Baelor Breakspear

Baelor is exact in his performance.

Like in all matters as King Daeron's heir, he proceeds with tact and precision. Every movement has thought behind it, the firm roll of his hips against yours as purposeful as words spoken during negotiations between houses.

He props himself over your bare body in a missionary position. The hairs of his beard itch at the flesh around your mouth as he sips kisses from your swollen lips, rough hands trailing down the expanse of your ribs. The hills of your breasts are flattened by the warm plane of his chest, still hardened by years of training by somewhat softened with the leisure brought by peace.

"Dearest," he murmurs into your maw. The bridge of his crooked nose pushed into yours as he kept you right on the edge, right where he wanted you, with every slow drag of his cock.

It was as if he was trying to coax you into something. What, you had never figured out. Yet he caressed you, moved against you, spoke to you as if trying to untangle necklaces stuck together.

Every knot undone brought satisfaction. For a man praised for his service to the realm, it was no surprise that he service you just as well.

Maekar Targaryen

Maekar is as harsh in your wedding bed as he is in the face of his sons' foolery or a bumbling lord's attempts to earn his favor. Unforgiving, akin to how he delivers blows with his mace.

His front lies over his back like a weighted blanket, nose buried into your loose hair as he plows into you, deep and steady. At one point, he might have handled you brutally, contorting you into whatever position suited his pleasure best.

However, he is older now.

He is tired, continuously stressed, and he has no desire to play as a predator harassing its prey. He just wants to be close to you, in you.

Your husband takes you with a pronebone stance. His strong arms cage you from where you sigh and groan beneath him, holding you down onto the bed. It's as if he's hiding you from view, keeping you close, his and his alone.

"Fuck," he grunts. It's rough, dragged over splintery wood. The strands of his facial hair tickle the tip of your ear from where he rocks into you. He's like an agitated marmot yearning to burrow under your bloody flesh, make a home in the gaps of your ribs.

He'd probably do it, if he could.

Dunk

Dunk has always treated you gently.

It was likely due to his gargantuan size in comparison to other men. You were not a wilting flower or a glass bauble, but anyone could be fooled by the way your husband touched you. That softness extended in your lovemaking.

He spooned you from behind, large hand lightly holding onto the curve of your hip as if you'd crumble apart if he gripped you too tight. It was the reason he was reluctant to lie over you, from the front or from the back. For some reason, Dunk imagined himself as a boulder preparing to tumble down a mountainside to crush you below.

Your shins were braided like vines. The thick length nudged further into your womanhood, thighs rubbing up into the back of yours'.

"You're pretty," He murmured tersely, and you could feel the flush staining his cheekbones and chest like a physical force, "You're so pretty."

He curved further into your form, lips caressing the curve of your jawline. The curve of his cock slid deliciously between your thighs, limply closed together, and it inspired a plea of encouragement towards your husband from you.

He shuddered violently, needily, at the noise.

Lyonel Baratheon

Lyonel was a man who explored his vices, rather than shunning them.

He drank enough wine, ale, and other beverages to fill dozens of lakes. He never shied away from slamming down a goblet of substance, nor did he shy away from sharing his festivities with peers from all rankings and lands.

Your husband ran headfirst into confrontations—both verbal and physical—with manic cackles exploding from the depths of his chest. He was an animal like his house's sigil, and he indulged in you just as he did with his fights and drinking: a dedication that bordered on primal.

He preferred to fuck you standing. Sometimes he held you against the walls or along the edge of a table. Currently, he had you near one of your bedchambers' windows, rain slamming against the half-curtained panes.

"You can take it, my lady," Lyonel teased, voice encroaching into a feral inflection.

He liked watching you struggle to keep up. He took pleasure in your knees buckling, collapsing in on yourself as he thrusted into you with wild abandon. Lyonel was often the only thing keeping you from falling to the floor, holding you up as you fell apart.

Your legs were shaking, and he bit at your neck like a mutt.

Aerion Brightflame

Aerion's obsessions with legacy did not escape your intimacy.

He believed himself to be a dragon, to be above every other being in the realm. He beheld his status with a feeling beyond pride. It was engraved into the bloody valves of his heart.

It extended into the continuation of his name; the preservation of the Targaryen line.

His pale, well-groomed hands pushed your thighs up into your naked chest. There was a burn in the sinew of your hips from being contorted to his carnal enjoyment, pressure building against your sternum like a bundle of thorns.

His length drove into your cunt from where he had you trapped in a mating press. The white hair near the base of his cock met the damp curls covering your mound as he filled you over, over, and over again.

Aerion's blunt nails dug into the fat of your skin, "Wife— Seven hells!"

Your husband's voice crept out of the depths of his chest, strained and brutish. His pretty face was scrunched inwards, lashes fanned along the upper curve of his cheek as he chased his goal with relentless ambition.

He was a dull knife cutting into your wetness, "Be grateful. Tell me you're grateful."

You nearly wept in response.

Daeron the Drunken

Daeron's self-perception was fragile at best.

He seemed to be under the impression that he was the worst man in all of Westeros that you had to be saddled with, even with your refusals that he made a fine companion (when he wasn't too lost in his cups). Whatever impact his dreams had was detrimental. It did not take a maester or a sept to declare this, yet it was manageable for the most part.

That is all to say, his self-consciousness could be the cause of his insistence on taking you from behind on all fours, doggy-style. He likely thought he could save you the disappointment of seeing it was him bedding you, granting you the opportunity to imagine another man.

You never did. You made it clear in the gesture of calling his name as he plowed into you from behind, meek little cries fitting the shape of your husband's title.

He loomed over you, keeping his hands on the flare of your hips. Daeron grinded against your cushioned pelvis, his voice faint, as if from a faraway dream.

"Darling..."

It made your head feel like it was flooded with fog, crowding against the crevices of your skull. It was a hazy sensation that made your skin crawl pleasantly.

You muttered his name again, and he tugged you back against him, as if trying to absorb you.

Valarr Targaryen

Valarr was proper in every sense of the term.

It could be that he got it from his father, Prince Baelor, who was honorable and soft-spoken. Perhaps it was due to his upbringing that one day—Gods be good—he'd sit upon the Iron throne. It could be a combination of the two, or a factor completely unrelated.

Still, your husband was the pinnacle of chivalry. Although, you thought he could be a little less so amongst the sheets.

He managed to have you ride him more often than not. He'd lean himself back against the pillows of your bed, fingers tracing the jut of your knees as you sat atop him bare, bouncing in small bobs atop his cock.

The way Valarr stared up at you always made you feel rather bashful. His mismatched eyes were half-lidded, pupils blown like dye pooling atop blue and brown. Pink dusted the tip of his nose, palms crawling up your thighs to lightly grope at your waist.

"Quite the view you make, sweetling," he whispered. Nevertheless, it sounded like a lance slamming into steel in the thick silence that surrounded your shared sphere of lechery.

He rocked his hips up once, head falling back to watch you squirm.

Raymun Fossoway

Raymun was quite the passionate lover.

You realized this shortly after marrying him, tied together forevermore in the perception of both the Seven and the realm. He was shockingly earnest (especially considering how other noblemen could grow to be), caring for you with utmost interest that shone with his illustrious sincerity.

It just seemed like your husband wanted to be close to you: holding hands during walks, stealing kisses over a feast's spread, and cuddling like an ambitious leech. It made sense that he would find great glee in sexual situations that adhered himself to you.

You sat in his lap in a lotus fashion. His arms were wrapped around you, head nestled into your throat as you tilted your head back to give him the room he was so clearly desperate for. He suckled gently at the swift pulse tucked away there, the dark of his hair cushioning your chin.

You writhed on the welcome intrusion, the tip grinding against your walls with a sweet burn. It served to wetten the spot where you were conjoined further, arousal sparking near the base of your spine.

"My love," Raymun groaned into your shoulder, shifting his hips to knock into yours.

He nipped your shoulder at the shaky breath you released, enthralled.

⬥ AN: I'm going to resume working on requests, but I just wanted to take a short little break to write something filthy for myself LMAO.