Caleb has cooked for you as long as you remember.Â
Back in your school days, he was the boy slipping snacks into your backpack to get you through afternoon classes. When your grandma was too tired to cook, he would step in without a second thought. But most of the time, Caleb didn't even need a reason to cook for you, he did it simply for the joy of watching you munch and gobble down his food, letting out muffled, âmmh, Caleb... i'sh sho good!â while he ruffled your hair affectionately.Â
This habit didn't change when the two of you stepped into adulthood. He started showing up at your door with random home-cooked meals, always attentive to the moments you lost yourself a little too much into your work, gently reminding you to take a break by sliding a plate onto your desk. And on the days you were sick? Caleb stayed by your side, insisting on nursing you back to health with endless bowls of hot soup and comfort food.
Now that the man was your boyfriend, his gentle doting had become a daily occurrence. Before you even realized it, Caleb had become your sole source of nutrition. Maybe you had just relied a little too hard on your younger metabolism, but the endless stream of delicious food had made it easy to ignore the new, soft fullness your curves now carried.Â
Until today.
Guilt radiated through your body as you peered down at the numbers on the weighing scale beneath your feet. Seeing confirmation of what you had been noticing in the mirror for weeks felt like a little pang to your chest. Maybe I need to make some changes, you thought,Â
But Caleb, being the observant man he was, was highly attuned to all your shifts in emotion and habit. He wasn't unaware of the sudden guilt clouding your relationship with food. It started with you skipping meals, insisting you âjust weren't hungry,â or barely finishing half your plate. Then came the peculiar questions, asking him exactly what ingredients he used so you could type them into a mysterious calorie-tracking app on your phone.Â
All of it slowly caught up to him. Caleb couldn't help but feel a dull ache whenever you refused food he made for you. At first, he hoped it was just a passing phase, that you would go back to eating normally for him. But as he watched you push a fork around your plate yet again, his patience began to wear thin.Â
You were sprawled on your bed, laying flat on your stomach and resting on your forearms, deeply engrossed in your book with your legs absentmindedly kicking the air behind you. That was when you heard your bedroom door click open. Your attention immediately diverted from the pages, looking up to see Caleb entering the room, balancing a small plate with what looked like a pastry on it.
Your face broke out into a soft, bittersweet smile, melting at the sight of your devoted boyfriend. But your brain quickly went into alarm. Sugar. Sugar. Calories! You felt terribly, horribly bad, because you were going to have to deny his food all over again. You watched as Caleb sat down next to you on the bed, the mattress dipping heavily under his weight. He placed the plate right next to you, completely in clear view now. It was a miniature, perfectly golden apple pie, the warm crust smelling entirely divine. Your mouth watered instantly at the sight. Caleb was perfect at making almost any dish, but apple pie was one of his absolute specialties. God, why must you test me? you mentally cried.Â
Looking up at Calebâs hopeful eyes, your heart broke just a little bit more as you sat up and forced the words out. âI donât think I'm very hungry, Caleb,â you said quietly. A flash of hurt crossed his features before he let out a low sigh. He picked up the fork resting on the side of the plate and began cutting out a small piece. Panicking, you quickly continued insisting, âNo, believe me! Iâll have it later-â Your voice faded as Caleb brought the fork to his own lips, sliding the piece of pie into his own mouth instead. A confused expression riddled your face now.Â
You opened your mouth to say something else, when Calebâs hand grabbed your jaw, tilting your face up firmly as he smashed his lips against yours. Before you could even think to protest, he bit down sharply on your bottom lip. The sudden sting made you gasp, your mouth parting perfectly for him. Caleb took the opportunity; Using his tongue, he pushed the warm, sweet bite of apple pie straight into your mouth.
He broke off the kiss just as quickly as it started, leaving you breathless and stunned, but he didn't forget to lean back in for a fraction of a second, lazily licking the leaking syrup right from the corners of your lips, and closing your mouth with a finger pushing up on your chin.
âSo, are you still not hungry, or do you want gege to feed you like this?â A smug smile now rested on his face. Still starstruck, you couldn't come up with a response. âIâm gonna take that as a yes, then,â he said, pushing you back onto the bed. Keeping your mouth open with his large fingers, he fed you with messy kisses, licking up any syrup that dripped down your body until you had finished every last bite of the apple pie.Â
By the end of it, Caleb had a noticeable tent in his pants. âFuck- since youâre done eating. My turn now,â he muttered, giving you a deranged smile. He immediately pulled your shorts off, diving straight to your cunt where you were already leaking and ready for him. He shoved his tongue right inside your tight hole, letting all of your sweetness collect on his tongue before slurping it up like a starved man. You, meanwhile, could only buck into his mouth, gasping as you felt his nose press flat into your clit.
âCaleb...!â Your pleas fell on deaf ears as he only focused on one thing, losing himself in your smell, your taste, and you.Â
And just like that, every single hope you had of losing weight was dashed. Every time you tried to deny his food, he took it as an open invitation to claim your mouth, tasting you again and again until you took everything that was given to you. Sometimes, though, he would get a little selfish, completely forgetting about your meal and choosing to have his fill of you instead. Like the afternoon he pinned you flat against the kitchen counter, drizzling chocolate all over your collarbones, neck, and chest just so he could lick you clean.Â
He made it his personal mission to keep you soft, full, and utterly dependent on him, and the thought of your body plumping up solely because of him was enough to make him absolutely feral.Â
⥠Bunny's Note: You can't tell me Caleb isn't a slight bit of a feeder :3 But anyway, I again got out of my comfort zone for this one, so I hope you enjoyed it! And for those of you who struggle with nourishing your body with the food that you deserve, know that gege wouldn't be happy with you not eating. Take care of yourselves, sweets <3 â áą.ËŹ.áąâÂ
I came across an article - though I didn't read it, oops - about a woman who awoke from a three-year coma to discover she had "lived" a seven-year life during her sleep. This little blurb was inspired by that... Hope you like it!
Yan! SatoSugu x Reader wc: 1.2k
Warnings: Yandere, fem! reader, captivity, imprisonment (dog crate), unhealthy relationship, petplay-ish, drugging, references to suicidal thoughts, dub-con/non-con, oral (f! receiving), mdni.
On a dreary night, rain pattered against the basement window, streaks of water and filtered moonlight your only companions as you rested inside your dingy dog crate. As your eyes grew heavy, a faint high-pitched beeping sound drifted through the darkness. Love bites bloomed across your skin, still tender and throbbing, the marks making themselves known beneath the absence of a nightgown. Above you, the distant rhythm of footsteps echoed through the kitchen.
Satoru, perhaps.
He could never rest until he was certain the melatonin hidden amongst your more human kibble had taken its toll. Only then did he allow himself peace, content in the knowledge that his precious little bird wouldn't try to fly away before dawn.
Suguru was supposed to stop by tonight. However, he had to take care of his "nuisance," as he called his wife. A rather bitter claim, considering the way he'd held you against his chest earlier, his arms wound around you, gentle yet trapping all the same. Keeping you there as Satoru sat beneath your exposed slit. Panties had become a clothing option removed around year three or four, and he tentatively lapped at your juices while Suguru's fingers brushed through your hair. You could still hear his voice, soft and warm despite the cruelty hidden beneath. A thick finger had tilted your chin upward until your weary, blissed-out gaze met his half-lidded violet one.
"If I could stay here with you all day, I would, but duty calls, my dove."
You only wished you were the bird he claimed you to be. At least then you would have wings. The horizon would belong to you instead of them. A treat to imagine sometimes, usually on nights when sleep refused to come despite the drugs in your system fighting for your body to rest. Endless skies painted in baby blues and golden rays. Freedom so vast it hollowed your chest with longing. Anything would be better than a cage, even an endless sleep.
You supposed it was a mercy that Suguru wasn't here tonight. No risk of being dragged from your crate and into their bed in the dead hours of the morning. No Satoru burying his face against your throat, his voice dissolving into desperate little whimpers as he begged you not to leave him with his cock nestled deep inside you. Sometimes you wondered if he was searching for the woman he had once loved. Not you. Not the person you'd become after your wedding night, after discovering what kind of monster you had married.
You should have run. Should have thrown yourself from the hotel balcony and trusted the pavement more than the man waiting at the end of the aisle. Instead, you stayed. Or perhaps you were simply too pathetic to leap.
The beeping continued as your thoughts drifted through a haze of exhaustion. When you stirred again, your mouth felt stuffed with cotton. Satoru must have put too much in your kibble last night. Yet something felt off. After seven years of hell, one learned to recognize the smallest inconsistencies. You couldn't taste the lingering graininess. Nor the taste of the chalky bitterness of crushed multivitamins. All you could hear was that soft, rhythmic beep from a machine nearby.
For a moment, you wondered if you'd finally gone mad. Perhaps this was what happened when a bird spent too long in a cage.
Then other sounds emerged from the fog.
Voices. Footsteps. The distant murmur of nurses drifting through a hallway.
Your eyes fluttered open.
Fluorescent lights glared overhead, nothing like the perpetual twilight of the basement you'd come to know so intimately. Beneath you was not the cold metal flooring of the crate but the soft embrace of a mattress, swallowing you in warmth, like Suguru's waiting arms. The air smelled sterile and clean, yet beneath the antiseptic lingered the overwhelming fragrance of flowers. Bouquets crowded every available surface, vibrant bursts of life pressed into a room that felt strangely unreal.
A hospital.
Before you could fully process the realization, another sound reached you. Familiar footsteps.
"Visiting hours are over, Satoru!" a nurse called after him, irritation dripping off the tongue. You wished you could tell her not to waste the effort.
You could practically picture the careless shrug he'd offer in response. The charming smile. The complete disregard for rules that were never meant for men like him. Because knowing Satoru, he probably brushed right past her without a second glance. And knowing Satoru, he probably believed he owned the place.
Perhaps he did.
The Gojo family owned enough of the city to make the distinction meaningless. And Satoru Gojo sat comfortably at the center of it all.
You squeezed your eyes shut, counting sheep in an attempt to calm your racing heart. One. Two. Three. Anything to avoid confronting whatever strange dream this was. A hospital? Had you done something in your sleep?
The click of the door interrupted your counting. You stumbled somewhere between sheep twenty-three and twenty-seven. You'd have to start over. Ever the nuisance, Satoru somehow managed to invade even your sheep counting.
"Hey, baby."
Your ears perked at the softness in his voice. You'd grown so accustomed to his exaggerated baby-talk over the years that normal speech sounded almost foreign coming from him.
"I brought you more flowers. I don't want you to miss a year of us together. Happy year three."
You heard the quiet clack of a vase settling onto what little space remained. A moment later, the mattress dipped beside you. A careful gesture, as if the bed might break from his presence. Or you might too. An arm wrapped around your waist and pulled you close, mindful of IV lines and wires. You felt him shake. Once. Twice. Almost in time with your counting of sheep. Maybe he knew you were awake. Maybe he thought enough comfort might coax you back to him. A moment later, something warm dampened your hairline.
Tears.
You refused to process them. Satoru had cried before. Thrown tantrums. Pouted. Begged. Sulked when you forced yourself behind the couch, and he could no longer reach you, forcing him to call for Suguru to deal a punishment. This type of tear was different, far more raw than the version you've seen. As if you'd taken a beak to his ribs and pecked straight through his heart, splitting it open just for you.
"Suguru says it's time to move on. Says you and I were only arranged, that I shouldn't have gotten so attached."
Silence settled between you, and despite everything, your chest loosened.
You hated that it did.
Hated that hearing his voice still felt like coming home. How your body relaxed into him. As if some part of you recognized him as safety.
When he was the reason you needed saving.
You tried to remember the bites, the bruises, the cage, the crate, the years. You tried to remember every violation against your human rights disguised as affection, everything that should have filled you with disgust. Yet all you could feel was the way he clung to you now. Broken. Loving.
His face nuzzled against your temple. Wet kisses pressed against your skin, not heated and open-mouthed like usual, but damp from the tears spilling freely down his cheeks. You could almost picture those impossibly blue eyes glistening.
Maybe it had all been a nightmare.
A horrible, twisted nightmare.
"Suguru says we'll get rid of the crate," he whispered, his voice cracking as his lanky body trembled beside you. "If you come home with us."
The words shattered the fragile hope forming inside your chest.
If it had all been a nightmare, then why did he know about the crate?
A/N: There is slight tension and fruitiness between Caleb and Sylus in honor of Pride Month, so if you aren't comfy with that, its totally okay, but this work isn't for you! đ
Caleb and Sylus both agreed on one thing, they had spoiled you rotten.Â
You knew exactly how to get your way with a stomp of your foot and a bit of incessant whining. They both had a massive soft spot for you, and you absolutely abused it. On the rare occasion that one of them actually stood his ground and denied you something, you simply went running to the other. Without fail, you always ended up getting what you wanted.Â
So there you were, flopped unceremoniously across Sylusâs bed, dramatically huffing and taking your frustrations out on his pillows. You made sure your tantrum was obvious to the white-haired man sitting at his desk, casually flipping through documents. He looked up at your theatrics, a hint of amusement playing on his face.Â
Seeing that your efforts were going to waste, you decided to kick it up a notch. You paused all your dramatic thrashing and sat up on the bed, going dead silent. The sudden lack of noise instantly caught Sylusâs attention. That's when you brought out the big guns. With a perfectly timed sniffle, crocodile tears began streaming down your cheeks. Sylus, defeated by your dirty tactics, tossed his documents onto the desk. He sighed, making his way over to the bed before pulling your body against his chest, enveloping you in a warm hug.Â
"Alright, alright," he murmured, his deep voice vibrating against your ear as he stroked your hair. "Weâll get you your pet wolf. Don't cry now, kitten."Â
The next of your schemes involved sneaking to the kitchen at 3 am in the morning, staying as quiet as possible as you tiptoed across the cold floors. You opened the fridge and retrieved the goods, and right as you thought you had gotten away with it, you heard someone behind you. Goddammit.
You turned around guiltily to find Caleb standing there, leaning against the wall, shirtless and looking like he had just woken up. Ice cream in hand, you flashed him a nervous smile. "Pips, you know you can't have that so late at night," he scolded gently. Your instincts kicked in immediately. You pouted, hugging the tub close to your chest as you gave him your signature puppy eyes. "But Caleb, pleaseee... I've been craving it." Giving in, Caleb walked over and ruffled your hair with a sigh. "Fine, but not too much, okay?"
And just like that, victory was yours. Half the time, you made ridiculous requests just to test their limits, to see exactly how far they would bend to keep you happy. they were well aware of this fact too. But unbeknownst to you, Caleb and Sylus had recently made a plan. Deciding they officially had enough of your shit with the way your asks became more absurd by the day, they knew they needed to teach their bratty little girl a lesson.Â
It was a day like any other, you woke up with a slow, heavy stretch, yawning your way out of bed and heading downstairs. In the kitchen, your two boyfriends were already occupying their usual spots. Caleb was making breakfast, while Sylus leaned against the counter, mindlessly popping cherries into his mouth and scrolling through his phone. Scurrying over to Caleb, you leaned over his shoulder, trying to peer into the pan. "I'm almost done, pips. Go sit down," he murmured, not looking up. You blinked down at the eggs sizzling in the pan, and like second nature, felt defiance bubbling up. You looked up at him with a sparkle in your eyes. "But Caleb, I'm craving pancakes today." Right as you expected to watch him immediately pivot to indulge your craving, he did the exact opposite. Caleb glanced down at you, held your gaze for a flat second, and deadpanned, "Nope."Â
That caught you completely off guard. "Wha-?" It wasn't the kind of "no" that felt negotiable. It wasn't a "maybe" with extra steps. This "no" felt definitive. As you stood there, jaw slightly slack and confused, Caleb simply reached out, picked you up by the waist like a doll, and set you down next to the kitchen island. "Sit down," he ordered softly.
For once, you actually obeyed, slipping into the seat next to Sylus as if in a trance. Caleb caught your expression and let out a smug smirk.Â
A few moments later, Caleb began setting the plates down on the island. Still reeling from the pancake rejection, your eyes drifted over to the bowl of juicy cherries Sylus was snacking on.
"Can I have som-"
"No."Â
Before the sentence could even clear your throat, Sylus cut you off. He didn't even look your way as he answered, instead, he popped another cherry between his lips, holding it between his teeth as he leaned back, his gaze locking directly onto Caleb.Â
Wordlessly, Caleb moved across the space, leaning over the counter to meet him. He closed the distance and took the cherry right from Sylus's mouth, their teeth clashing in a quiet click. They both tried not to laugh at the sight of you looking like a kicked puppy.Â
The rest of the day went on just like that, a rebellion was what it was. By evening, you were left thoroughly frustrated by the mountain of rejections that had accumulated all day. You could tell something was up, but you knew they couldn't keep this up forever. So, you decided to stage your own overthrow.Â
When nighttime finally arrived, you got into bed a little earlier than usual. You could hear the steady rush of water from the shower Caleb was running in the bathroom, while Sylus was finishing up some work in his office. Smirking to yourself, you slowly stripped down to just your underwear, a lacy pair you knew that they were weak for. Settling back against the pillows, you slowly spread your thighs and gave a few exploratory flicks to your clit. Mmm. As you started to play with yourself, your fingers spread your folds, rubbing gently before plunging two fingers shallowly inside.Â
Despite always catering to your every wish and whim, Sylus and Caleb had one strict rule for you, hands off yourself. You knew not to cross thisâ you never had a reason to anyway, not with two utterly devoted men ready to give you more pleasure than you could ever give yourself. But after a day of them teasing and denying you, you didn't see why you couldn't play their game as well.
Soft moans spilled from your lips, juices leaking through as you could feel yourself getting hotter. Right then, you heard heavy footsteps moving through the hallway outside. Grinning, you worked yourself even harder now. Sylus, on the other hand, reached the outside of the room and knew immediately something was up; he felt your sweet scent filling the air, your faint gasps barely heard. Seems kitten is playing dirty.Â
Walking inside, he locked eyes with you, only for you to scrunch your eyebrows and put on even more of a show, cunt in full display. And right on cue, Caleb walked out of the bathroom, skin glistening and a towel hanging off his waist. The moment he caught on to the events occurring in the room, he flashed Sylus an unhinged smile.Â
Your mind had dissolved into absolute mush. Overstimulated as you were kept on your hands and knees, your back arched deeply as Sylus relentlessly drove into you from behind.Â
You had lost track of how many times you'd finished already, yet there were no signs of stopping. Caleb, meanwhile, was in front of you, admiring the glisten on your face and lips from the previous load he shot up that he was still recovering from, panting with his abs clenching.Â
You felt another intense orgasm coursing through you, cum and juice spilling out further as your pussy spasmed around Sylus, but this only prompted him to go faster. Tears streaming uncontrollably now, your knuckles turned white with how hard you were gripping the sheets, and you looked up at Caleb, almost pleading with him to reason with Sylus. Almost like Sylus figured out your ploy, he snapped your hips back against him harshly. âOh no no no, heâs not gonna help you, sweetheart.â Caleb could only grin, giving you a mock pity look. âAw, is pips tired? Shouldâve thought of that before you decided to break the rules, no?â He looked over to Sylus. âSy, my turn now.â Panting, Sylus plunged balls deep all the way into your cervix one last time before he pulled out completely, manhandling you to switch positions.Â
Now you were sitting upright, your back leaning against Sylus with your legs being held up and apart by his veiny arms. Caleb took his position immediately, feeding you his cock from the front, his forehead dropping to your shoulder, a tad overstimulated from his earlier release. Sylus, looking at the vulnerable puppy boy, couldn't help but reach out and caress the side of his face, his fingers running through his slightly damp hair. Caleb only subconsciously leaned into his touch all the while plunging completely inside of you, moving in shallow, ragged thrusts.Â
Then Sylus had an idea. Nipping at your shoulder, his fingers still tangled in Caleb's hair, he gripped a bit tighter, grabbing his attention. âYou think she's ready for it?âÂ
âHuh? fuckâ yeahyeaheyeah,â Caleb mumbled incoherently, looking absolutely pussydrunk by the way you clenched around him. You were confused. âSy? Wha- what do you mean ready? Ready for what?â you panted, and right then, you felt something poke at your virgin back entrance. Fuck me, you thought.
Gathering all the slick from your combined releases and giving you a spit of his own, Sylus made sure you were well-lubricated before he attempted the intrusion. It felt weird in the startâ an unfamiliar feelingâ but you knew better than to oppose it. You were completely at their mercy.Â
Soon enough, Caleb and Sylus found a shared rhythm, breaching your holes at the same time and building up an insane amount of pressure, slick sounds and moans filling the room. Even Sylus, who wasn't normally vocal in bed, was groaning and whimpering, and in no time, another orgasm ripped through you. âFuckâ yes baby, give it all to me. Come on, I know you can give me more,â you weren't even sure who was talking to you at that point. Â
Hours dissolved into an exhaustive blur as positions were shifted and forced upon you. You were floating in and out of consciousness. You all looked like a litter of bunnies going at it for so long. You were tired, and just let them move you around for their own pleasure; their combined stamina was ungodly. You could feel your womb bulging with all the semen pumped into you, and finally, with bruising thrusts, they came at the same time, collapsing back against the bed.Â
God, Smiling in your fucked out state, all you could think was, you still got what you wanted.
⥠Bunny's Note: I'm a tad bit late with this one, thank you for being patient with me! I had to get out of my comfort zone for this one because I explored tropes and dynamics I wouldn't normally, but I hope you enjoyed this! Any suggestions are always appreciated! â áą.ËŹ.áąâÂ
Sylus barely has a time to greet you, let alone process your words, before youâre climbing into his lap and kissing him passionately. Your fingers fist his shirt, tugging at the fabric.
âEager, are we?â
âWent to visit Zayne during his lunch. I was-fuck-two seconds away from cumming when he got called away.â The desperation in your voice is clear as your hips weakly grind against his.
âPoor thing. Have you been this needy all day?â Sylusâs voice is heavy, the desire coming off of you in waves that makes his right eye burn brighter.
âY-yeah. Please Sylus I-I need you now.â You whimper, undoing his belt with a shocking speed.
âZayne will be home soon. You canât wait?â He hums, helping you out of your clothes. Clearly, you do want to wait for him, your head falling to Sylusâs forehead as you sigh.
âI-I canât. Just m-make me cum once? And then we can wait, Iâll be good I promise!â Youâre practically trembling already, the thin fabric of your panties soaked.
It doesnât take much. He finds your clit with ease, coating his fingers with your slick and circling steadily. Itâs almost embarrassing how quickly you cum, crying out his name and biting his shoulder.
âDidnât I tell you to wait till I got home to cum?â Zayneâs unamused tone makes you go rigid, and Sylus raises a brow at this new information, clicking his tongue in disappointment.
âSweetie, we really need to teach you a lesson in patience.â
SUMMARY: Kidnapped as a child and presumed dead, you survive years of abuse before becoming the kept woman of Prince Aerion Targaryen. In a world where survival means loving a monster, your fragile sense of safety shatters when your past resurfaces in the worst possible way.
TW: rape, sexual abuse, sex trafficking, forced prostitution, domestic abuse, dubious consent, trauma bonding, graphic violence, torture, child endangerment, kidnapping, misogyny
WC:25K
209 A.C Flea Bottom
The first thing you ever remembered was your brotherâs hands.
Not your motherâs face, that was gone, worn away like a coin passed through too many fingers. You could summon the shape of her if you concentrated: the blurred watermark of a jawline, the suggestion of a mouth that laughed like a cracked bell, the smell of cheap wine and cheaper perfume that clung to her hair long after she stopped breathing. But her face? No. That belonged to the dark now, along with everything else from before.
But the hands, those you remembered. Dunkâs hands. Too large for a boy of eight, the knuckles already crosshatched with scars from street fights and kitchen fires, but impossibly gentle as they lifted you from the straw mattress where your mother lay cold and still. You had been five years old. You had not understood death, only that Mother would not wake. It was Dunk who wrapped you in a blanket thin enough to see through. Dunk who carried you out into the grey morning, your face pressed to his neck so you would not see the body being hauled away. Dunk who said, in a voice that splintered because he was barely more than a child himself, âIâve got you. Iâve always got you.â
And he had, you slept in doorways at first, curled together like kittens against the cold that seeped up through the cobblestones. Dunk learned quickly which bakers threw out day old bread and which watchmen could be bribed with a sad eyed look. He found work at an inn in Flea Bottom and the innkeeperâs wife let you sleep in the stables so long as Dunk scrubbed the floors and hauled the kegs and made himself useful in a dozen small ways. You would sit in the corner while he worked, your knees drawn up to your chin, watching him. Watching the boy melt away, season by season, into something that looked more like a man. He grew taller and broader and harder, his shoulders widening, his voice dropping. He was three years older than you, but sometimes he felt like thirty. He had never been a child. Neither of you had.
But you had each other. And that was enough. It had to be.
Every night, after his labors were done, Dunk would come to you in the stables. He would reek of sweat and sour ale, and he would lower himself onto the hay beside you with a groan that belonged to a man three times his age. And then he would tell you stories heâd gathered like dropped coins from travelers and old soldiers and the septon who sometimes came to beg a bowl of soup. Stories of knights who never faltered, dragons who spoke in riddles, castles of white stone that caught the sunrise like mirrors. Maidens so beautiful that kingdoms burned for a single glance.
You were twelve when the men began to notice you. It happened on an ordinary night, with an ordinary drunk whoâd had too much ale and too little sense. You were carrying a tray of empty cups back to the kitchen, your arms aching with the weight, when a hand came out of nowhere and closed on your backside. You froze, no understanding of what the sudden heat crawling up your neck meant or why your body had locked itself rigid as a board. The man laughed and then Dunk was there.
One moment the drunk was leering at you, his hand still on your body, and the next he was on the floor with blood fountaining from his nose and Dunk standing over him like a thunderhead. He threw the man out into the mud, and when he came back inside his hands were trembling with a rage so profound it seemed to warp the air around him. âStay close to me,â he said, and it was not a request. His voice was quiet, too quiet, the kind of quiet that lives on the far side of fury. âAlways. Do you understand? Always.â
You understood. From that day forward, you were never more than armâs reach from your brother. When he walked to the market, you walked beside him, your fingers sometimes hooked into the rope that acted like a belt, when the crowds pressed too close. The men still looked, by fourteen, you had grown into the kind of beauty that stilled conversations mid sentence, your motherâs eyes and your unknown fatherâs soft mouth arranged on a face that seemed to belong in a ballad rather than a Flea Bottom inn, but they looked from a distance. Dunk saw to that.
You were inseparable. Joined at the hip, the innkeeperâs wife liked to say, shaking her head with a fondness that bordered on bewilderment. âNever seen the like. That boy would tear the world apart for his little sister.â
You were sixteen when everything ended. The festival came in the spring, an eruption of color and noise that spilled from the gates of the Red Keep and flooded through the city like a tide. Mummers on stilts, jugglers with flaming torches, singers with harps slung across their backs, knights in armor that caught the sun and threw it back in a thousand glittering shards. Dunk had been given the night offâa rarityâand he had taken your hand with a grin you hadnât seen since you were children hiding from the rain under a stolen tarp. âCome on,â he said, and his eyes were bright in a way that made your chest ache.
You laughed and followed. The crowd was too thick. The torches made everything swim, light and shadow bleeding together until faces became masks and masks became faces. Dunk kept his hand clamped around your arm for the first hour, his grip unwavering, but then a knot of drunkards staggered between you and in the space of a single heartbeat, you lost him.
âDunk?â
You rose onto your toes, straining above the heads of the crowd. You saw him turn, saw his mouth open to call back to you, saw the sudden alarm flash across his features, and then the surge of bodies carried you sideways, a riptide of flesh and noise, and you stumbled into an alley to escape the crush.
That was when they took you. There were three of them. You never saw their faces clearly, only hands. Rough and quick and impossibly strong, one clamping over your mouth, another banding around your waist and lifting you clean off the ground. You tried to scream. You bit down on the palm pressed against your lips, tasted blood and salt and felt the man curse and shift his grip, but there was no time. A sack came down over your head, coarse and stinking of something you did not want to name, and the world went dark and muffled and small.
The last thing you heard was the festival. The music, the laughter, the endless churn of celebration. It went on without you, as if you had never been there at all.
Dunk searched for three days. He did not sleep. He did not eat. He tore through Flea Bottom like a storm given flesh, overturning carts and kicking down doors, bellowing your name until his voice shredded into something barely human. He went to the City Watch, and they laughed, a girl from the slums, what did he expect? He went to the sept, and the septon only clasped his hands and murmured prayers that tasted like ash. He went to every inn, every brothel, every lightless corner of the city where a girl might be hidden or sold or worse, and he found nothing. Nothing. Nothing and nothing again.
On the fourth day, a woman came to him, she found him in the alley where you had vanished, sitting against the wall with his head in his hands, and she knelt beside him.
âYouâre the one,â she said. Not a question. âLooking for the girl with the H/C hair. The pretty one.â
Dunkâs head came up so fast his neck cracked. âWhere is she?â
The woman shook her head. Slowly. Deliberately. A gesture that held everything he did not want to know. âThey found her in the water this morning, lad. Some menâŠâ She paused, and something that might have been pity flickered across her ruined face. âThey took her. And when they were doneââ Her hands made a twisting motion, a brutal pantomime that needed no translation. âThe women who found her said she was hardly recognizable. Theyâve already burned the body. Too much damage, they said. You donât want to see that. Trust me. Youâre better off remembering her the way she was.â
Dunk did not speak. He simply sat there, staring at the womanâs face, and something inside him cracked straight down the middle and bled dry.
âWho?â His voice did not sound like his voice. âWho did it?â
âNo one knows. Drunkards, maybe. Travelers passing through. Theyâre long gone now.â The woman rose, joints creaking, and looked down at him with something that was not quite pity and not quite indifference. âIâm sorry, lad. Truly.â
She left him there. And Dunk stayed. He stayed in that alley as the sun bled out and the moon rose pale and indifferent and the city settled into its night noises around him. His little sister was dead. He had promisedâpromisedâto protect her, and she was dead. And the world, which had never been kind to either of them, now seemed to hold no color.
â
213 A.C Ashford
The gardens of Ashford Castle were not as grand as the ones in Summerhall but they were still beautiful. You had been here for less than a fortnight, arrived as part of Prince Maekar's retinue for the tourney celebrating Lord Ashford's daughter's nameday, and already the place had worked its way under your skin. The roses were in full bloom, cascading over stone walls in waves of crimson and gold and softest pink. The hedges were trimmed into the shapes of birds and beasts.
The little girl was running through the grass ahead of you, her silver gold hair streaming behind her like a banner caught in a high wind, her bare feet slapping against the earth with the unselfconscious joy of someone who had never known hunger or fear or the back of a stranger's hand. She was two years old, small for her age but fierce, so fiercely alive that it stopped your breath sometimes, with violet eyes that missed nothing and a laugh that could fill an entire hall and still demand more room.
"Rhaenyra," you called, and you tried to sound stern, you really did, but the smile kept breaking through no matter how firmly you set your jaw. "Come back here before you trip and ruin that dress."
"Won't," the child announced, with the absolute conviction of someone who had never been wrong about anything in her life, and kept running.
You sighed, gathered your skirts in both hands, and gave chase. The dress you wore was finer than anything you had owned before Aerion had claimed you, a gift he had given you specifically for this journey. Pale blue silk that whispered when you moved, with silver embroidery at the sleeves and neckline. He had wanted you to look presentable at Ashford. You suspected, though you had not said it aloud, that he also wanted to show you off. To remind his family, and perhaps himself, what he possessed.
You were twenty years old now, no longer the trembling girl who had been thrown into a black carriage while a brothel burned behind her, no longer the hollow eyed creature who had learned to disappear inside her own body while men did what they pleased. The past months and years had reshaped you, smoothed some of the sharp edges and hardened others.
But there was something new in you now, something forged in the long nights of learning to survive Aerion Targaryen and the longer days of learning to love your daughter. You knew how to bend without breaking. And you knew, with a certainty that lived in your bones like marrow, that you would kill any living soul who tried to harm your child.
Rhaenyra had tripped over an exposed root and was sitting in the grass, more affronted than injured, examining a smudge of dirt on her palm with the grave concentration of a maester confronted with an ancient and inscrutable text. You scooped her up before the tears could organize themselves, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head, breathing in the smell of sunshine and crushed grass and something warm and sweet that was just her.
"Told you," you murmured into her hair. "You fell."
"Didn't cry," Rhaenyra pointed out. This was technically true, and there was a note of such fierce pride in her small voice that your heart performed an odd, painful little flip in your chest.
"No," you agreed, pulling back to look at her solemn face. "You didn't. You're a brave little dragon, aren't you?"
The child beamed. She adored being called a dragon. It was one of the few gifts Aerion had given her that did not make your stomach twist into complicated knots. This inheritance of fire and blood and the unshakeable conviction that she was meant for something magnificent.
You carried her back toward the castle, her small arms wrapped tightly around your neck, her voice a ceaseless ribbon of chatter about the butterfly she had almost caught and the bird that had flown directly over her head and the flower she had picked that was pink, Mama, pink and pretty and can I keep it forever please please please. You made the appropriate sounds of wonder and encouragement, your eyes scanning the courtyard as you crossed it, your body perpetually aware of who was watching.
The servants of Ashford avoided your gaze, much as the ones at Summerhall did. They had learned, over the course of the tourney's first days, to treat you with a careful neutrality. Not quite respect, not quite disdain, something suspended in the ambiguous space between. They knew what you were. Prince Aerion's paramour. The woman he had brought with him from Summerhall, installed in a guest chamber near his own, paraded through the grounds like a provocative piece of art he wanted everyone to see whether they wished to or not. They did not speak to you unless absolutely necessary, did not meet your eyes, did not acknowledge the child in your arms except to incline their heads stiffly and step aside.
Ashford Castle was a crowded place during the tourney. Lord Ashford's daughter Gwin had turned thirteen, and to honor her nameday, her father had declared a tourney that would last five days. Knights and lords from across the Reach and beyond had gathered to compete, their banners snapping in the spring breeze, their pavilions spreading across the fields like a crop of colorful mushrooms.
Prince Maekar's entire family had come with his children. You saw them sometimes, in the corridors or the courtyards or the great hall at supper, but you never spoke to them. You were not permitted. Prince Maekar had made that blisteringly clear from the very beginning, his voice cold with a disgust he did not bother to disguise.
"The woman stays in her chambers," he had told Aerion when he first met you. "I will not have her parading about in front of the children. She is a whore, Aerion. A whore and you will not embarrass this family."
Aerion had not argued. He rarely argued with his father directly. But he had kept you anyway, had dressed you in silk and silver, had installed you in a room that connected to his own. And now you were here, carrying your daughter back toward the keep while the roses nodded in the breeze and the distant sounds of the tourney grounds drifted over the walls like distant thunder. You had not been permitted to attend the jousts. Not since the yesterday.
You closed your eyes for a moment against the memory. It had been horrible. Aerion's tilt against Ser Humfrey. You had been watching from the stands, Rhaenyra on your lap, your heart in your throat the way it always was when he rode. He was a skilled jouster, your prince, but he rode with a recklessness that bordered on suicidal, and sometimes you thought he would not be satisfied until he left someone broken in the dirt.
This time, he had aimed too low. Deliberately, you were almost certain, though you would never say so aloud. His lance had struck Ser Humfrey's horse in the neck, a brutal, illegal blow that sent the animal crashing to the ground with a scream that would haunt your nightmares for weeks. Ser Humfrey had been thrown, his leg twisted at an angle that made your stomach lurch, and the horse had thrashed in the dirt with blood pumping from its throat.
The crowd had broken through the barriers. Prince Baelor Breakspear himself had risen from his seat, his face a mask of disgust, and you had seen the way he looked at Aerion. The way everyone looked at Aerion. Like he was something monstrous. Something broken beyond repair.
Aerion had found you afterward, still flushed with adrenaline, his eyes too bright. He had forbidden you from attending any more of the jousts.
"It's not safe," he had said, his grip on your arm just shy of bruising. "The crowds are unpredictable. The horses are dangerous. You and Rhaenyra will stay in the castle or the gardens. I don't want you anywhere near the lists."
You had not argued. You rarely argued with him about things that mattered. But you had seen the truth behind his words, the truth he would never admit. He did not want you to see him lose. He did not want you to see the way the other knights looked at him after what he had done.
So you had stayed away. You had walked in the gardens, and played with Rhaenyra, and smiled your careful smile whenever Aerion returned to your chambers in the evenings, bruised and bristling and desperate for the praise only you could give him.
"Up," Rhaenyra demanded as you approached the castle's side entrance. "Up high, Mama. I want to see."
You lifted her higher, settling her higher on your hip with the practiced ease of two years of motherhood, and she gazed around the corridor with the same wide eyed wonder she brought to everything. You loved her so much it scared you sometimes. Loved her with a ferocity that made the love you had felt for your own mother, dim and distant and blurred at the edges, seem like a candle held up against the sun.
"You spoil her."
The voice came from behind you, and you did not startle. Months with Aerion had taught you the particular cadence of his footsteps, the faint jingle of the sword he wore even at peace, the way the air in a room seemed to tighten and grow watchful when he entered. You turned, shifting Rhaenyra to your other hip with a fluidity that had become second nature, and offered him the smile you had perfected over your time together.
It was not a false smile. That was the strange thing, the thing that still surprised you when you stopped to examine it. It was not false at all. There was calculation in it, yes. There was calculation in everything you did, a habit you could not have broken if you tried. But there was warmth there too. The warmth of a woman looking at a man she had somehow, against all odds and reason, come to care for.
Love. The word still felt strange in your mouth, like a garment that did not quite fit. Aerion was not kind. He was not gentle. He was not good, in any sense that your brother Dunk would have recognized. But he was yours, in his possessive, consuming, infuriating way, and you were his, and somewhere in the crucible of the past years, that mutual belonging had transmuted into something that looked, from certain angles, remarkably like love.
He was not a tall man, standing at five and a half feet, and you knew it rankled at him. Knew that every inch he lacked compared to the warriors he trained with was a splinter under his skin. But what he lacked in height he more than compensated for in presence. The way his boots struck the stone floors, deliberate and commanding. The sharp, hawkish beauty of his face, all angles and shadows. The particular weight of his attention when it landed on you, heavy as a hand on your shoulder.
"My dragon," you said, and the word was warm, intimate, a private jest between you that no one else would recognize. "She wanted to explore the gardens. You know how she loves the roses."
He stepped closer, and Rhaenyra immediately lunged toward him, her small arms outstretched, her face alight with the uncomplicated adoration of a child who had never been given a reason to fear her father. "Papa! Papa, I found a flower!"
She had dropped the flower somewhere in the garden, of course. You had seen it fall, a little pink bruise against the green grass, left behind in her headlong rush toward the next thing and the next and the next. But Aerion did not know that, and you suspected he would not have cared if he did. He took the girl from your arms with an ease that still surprised you, settling her against his chest as naturally as if he had been doing it all his life.
Aerion, who was never gentle with anyone. Aerion, whose hands had left bruises on your body in the early days. Aerion, who had aimed his lance at a horse's throat and watched it die without flinching.
But Rhaenyra had never seen that side of him. Rhaenyra saw only the father who bounced her on his knee and called her his little dragon and looked at her as if she were the single good thing he had managed to produce in a life full of sharp edges and bad decisions. And you saw both versions of him, the monster and the man, and you had learned to hold them both in your mind at once, to love the whole complicated, contradictory mess of him.
"A flower," Aerion repeated, bouncing Rhaenyra gently against his chest. "What color?"
"Pink!"
"Pink," he said, with the solemnity of a man receiving a sacred revelation. "Pink is an excellent color. You have impeccable taste."
Rhaenyra giggled, burying her face in the curve of his neck, and Aerion's eyes met yours over the top of her head. There was something in his gaze. A flicker of warmth, a flicker of something that might have been gratitude. It made your heart clench in that way you had long since stopped trying to explain away.
I love him, you thought, and the thought did not feel like a lie. It felt like the truth, strange and inconvenient and slightly terrifying though it was. Gods help me, I truly do.
You knew what people would say if they could hear your thoughts. How can you love him? After what he did to that horse? After what he did to you? After what he is? And they would not be wrong to ask. The early days had been brutal; there was no use pretending otherwise. He had hurt you, in ways that still surfaced in your dreams on bad nights. He had fucked you without asking, had demanded without giving, had treated your body like territory to be conquered and your compliance like tribute to be extracted.
But then something had shifted. Slowly, incrementally, in the way of seasons changing. He had begun to see you. The woman who praised him when no one else would. The woman who listened to his fears and his rages and his strange, tangled dreams of dragonfire and destiny. The woman who had given him a daughter and held his hand through the disappointment and taught him, patient as a stone worn smooth by water, how to be something other than cruel.
And you had seen him, the man underneath, the one who craved praise because he had never received it, the one who lashed out because he had never learned another way to ask for what he needed. You had seen him, and against all wisdom, against all self preservation, you had loved him.
He still hurt you, sometimes. When his black moods descended and his hands grew rough and the words that came out of his mouth were designed to wound. But those moments were rarer now, spaced further and further apart, and after each one he would come to you with his arms full of gifts. Dresses of silk and velvet, jewels that glittered in their velvet nests, books with leather bindings and gold leaf on the pages that you devoured in the quiet hours when he was training and Rhaenyra was napping. He would hold you afterward, his face pressed into your hair, his arms wrapped around you like a cage he was afraid you might slip through.
"You understand me," he would whisper, and his voice would crack on the words in a way that made your heart splinter. "You're the only one who does. The only one who ever has. Don't leave me. Promise me you won't leave."
And you, holding him in the dark, would stroke his short silver hair and murmur the words he needed to hear. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm yours."
You meant them, too. That was the strangest part. After everything, you meant them.
Where would I even go? you thought, watching him bounce your daughter in his arms in this borrowed garden in a borrowed castle, surrounded by roses that belonged to someone else.
You looked at Rhaenyra, at the small, fierce face that was so clearly her father's, and you thought about the day she had been born.
It had been the longest day of your life.
The labor had lasted nearly eighteen hours. You had screamed until your voice gave out entirely, had bitten straight through the leather strap the midwife had given you, had prayed to gods you had not believed in since childhood to make it stop, please make it stop, I can't do this, I'm going to die, please let me die. Aerion had paced outside the door like a caged animal, his boots wearing a groove in the stone, demanding updates every few minutes and threatening bodily harm to the maester whenever the news was not to his liking.
"Is it a boy?" he had shouted through the door, over and over, his voice fraying at the edges. "Tell me it's a boy. It has to be a boy. I'm going to name him Maegor. A strong name. A dragon's name. Tell me!"
You had heard him, even through the wall of agony that had swallowed the world, and you had felt a cold dread settle into the pit of your stomach like a stone dropped into deep water. Maegor. He wanted to name his son after Maegor the Cruel. You had prayed then, harder than you had ever prayed in your life, with what remained of your shredded voice and your failing strength. Not a boy. Please, not a boy. Whatever else you give me, don't give me a boy who will carry that name.
The gods, for once in their capricious existence, had listened.
When the baby had finally emerged, slick and furious and impossibly, breathtakingly alive, the maester had looked between her tiny legs and pronounced, with the careful neutrality of a man who knew exactly how dangerous this moment was: "A girl, my prince. A healthy girl."
The silence that followed had been more terrifying than any scream.
Aerion had burst into the room, his face pale as milk, his short hair standing up in wild disarray from running his hands through it for eighteen hours. He had stared at the child in the maester's arms. At the tuft of silver gold hair plastered to her scalp, at the violet eyes that were already open and glaring at the world with an indignation that seemed profoundly personal. His expression had twisted into something ugly.
"A girl," he had said, and his voice was flat. Hollow. A room with all the furniture removed. "I waited nine moons. Nine moons. For a girl."
He had not touched you. He had not touched the baby. He had simply turned on his heel and walked out of the room, and you had heard his boots ring down the corridor, and then the distant slam of a door, and then nothing.
The next three days had been the darkest of your new life. Aerion did not come to your room. He did not send for you. He did not acknowledge the existence of the child at all. He ate his meals with his family, trained in the yard with a brutality that left his sparring partners bloodied and bewildered, and refused to speak to anyone who so much as mentioned the baby's existence. The girl, the servants called her in whispers, because she had no name yet, and a child without a name was a ghost.
You lay in your bed, your body slowly knitting itself back together, your breasts aching with milk, and you held your daughter against your chest and wondered if this was the end. If Aerion would cast you both out, send you back to the streets of King's Landing with nothing but the clothes on your back and a bastard child in your arms. You made plans in the dark hours. Foolish, desperate plans, the kind of plans that only seemed reasonable at three in the morning when you were alone and terrified and your stitches still pulled every time you moved. You would run. You would find Dunk if he was still alive, throw yourself at his feet, beg him to take you back even though you were ruined and used and nothing like the sister he had lost. You would find work, honest work, kitchen work, anything, and you would raise your daughter to be strong and fierce and free, and she would never, ever know what it felt like to be owned.
But on the fourth day, the door had opened.
Aerion stood in the frame, and you barely recognized him. His eyes were ringed with shadows so dark they looked like bruises, his short hair a disheveled mess, his fine clothes rumpled and stained as if he had been sleeping in them, or not sleeping at all. He had been wrestling with something, you realized. Himself, his pride, his expectations, his disappointment. And from the look of him, he had lost.
"Let me see her," he said. His voice was hoarse, scraped raw, as if he had been shouting or weeping or both. "Let me see my daughter."
You did not trust yourself to speak. You simply lifted the baby from your chest. She was awake, her violet eyes tracking the movement with that unnerving intensity newborns sometimes had. And you held her out toward him.
Aerion approached slowly, cautiously, like a man approaching a wounded animal that might bite. He looked down at the small, wrinkled face, at the silver gold fuzz on her head, at the tiny fists that clenched and unclenched in the air as if she were already fighting battles only she could see. And something in his expression shifted. Not softened. Aerion did not soften, not in any way you had ever witnessed. But cracked. A fissure in the ice, unexpected and profound.
"She looks like me," he said. It was not a question.
"Yes," you whispered, your voice still ruined from screaming. "She's a true dragon, my prince. Just like her father."
He reached out one finger, just one, his hand trembling almost imperceptibly, and touched the baby's cheek. Rhaenyra turned her head toward the contact, her tiny mouth opening and closing in that instinctive rooting reflex.
"Rhaenyra," he said. "I'll call her Rhaenyra."
You knew the name, of course. Everyone in Westeros knew the name. The princess who had been called Maegor with teats, who had fought a war that tore the realm in half and refused to surrender even when the odds were hopeless. It was a name soaked in controversy, in blood, in the stubborn refusal to be anything other than what she was. It was a cruel name to give an infant daughter, in some ways. A challenge. A provocation. A reminder that girls could be as dangerous as boys, if they were bold enough.
But it was not Maegor. It was not the name of the Cruel. And on that fourth day, with your daughter finally named and Aerion's hand resting awkwardly, almost shyly, on your shoulder, you had decided to be grateful for small mercies.
"Rhaenyra," you repeated, trying the name on your tongue. It tasted like strength. Like fire. Like survival. "My little dragon."
And now, two years later, watching that same daughter tug impatiently at Aerion's doublet while he laughed, that hope had only grown. Rhaenyra was fierce and stubborn and clever and alive, so vibrantly alive, and you would make certain she stayed that way. You would die before you let that happen. You would kill before you let that happen. And the truth of that, the absolute crystalline certainty of it, was the most liberating thing you had ever felt.
"Y/N."
Aerion's voice pulled you back from the precipice of memory. He was watching you over Rhaenyra's silver gold head, his expression hovering somewhere between amusement and irritation.
"You're brooding again," he said. "You get that look on your face when you're thinking too hard. I've told you. I don't like it."
You let your expression shift, the distant look replaced by something warmer, more present. But you did not apologize; you had learned, over your time together, that apologizing for your thoughts only made him more suspicious. Instead, you reached out and straightened the collar of his doublet, letting your fingers brush the skin of his throat, a gesture of casual intimacy that you knew he craved even if he would never admit it.
"I was thinking about how happy she looks," you said, and it was the truth, or a version of it. "You make her happy, Aerion. You know that, don't you?"
He grunted, but you caught the flicker of satisfaction that crossed his features before he could suppress it. Praise. He could never get enough of it, had been starved for it his entire life, and you had learned to feed him with the same regularity you fed your daughter. All this time, and he still turned toward your words like a flower toward the sun, drinking in every affirmation, every acknowledgment, every whispered you are magnificent, you are powerful, you are loved.
"She's a dragon," Aerion said, adjusting Rhaenyra on his hip with practiced ease. "Dragons don't get sad. They incinerate the things that upset them."
"Papa," Rhaenyra said, with the sudden, intense solemnity that only a two-year-old can muster, "I want to incinerate something."
Aerion threw back his head and laughed. A real laugh, full throated and genuine, the kind of laugh that transformed his sharp features into something almost boyish, almost approachable. "That's my girl," he said, and pressed a kiss to her forehead with an uncharacteristic tenderness. "That's my little dragon. We'll find you something to burn later."
You watched them, this strange, fierce man and this strange, fierce child, and your heart performed that complicated maneuver it had been practicing for years, folding affection and exasperation and hope and fear all into one impossible shape.
This is real, you told yourself. Whatever else is happening, whatever else they say about us, this is real. He is my Aerion, and she is my daughter, and this is my life, and it is real.
Aerion shifted Rhaenyra to his other arm and extended his free hand toward you. His earlier tension seemed to have eased, replaced by something almost eager, a restless energy that crackled just beneath his skin.
"There's a play tonight," he said. "Some puppeteers have set up in the village. I've heard it's about a dragon." His mouth curved into that sharp, knowing smile you had come to recognize. "I thought we might go after supper. You and me and the little dragon here. She should see something worthy of her name."
Rhaenyra's head came up at the word dragon, her violet eyes bright. "A dragon play, Papa?"
"A dragon play," Aerion confirmed, tweaking her nose. "With fire and scales and everything a proper dragon ought to have. Would you like that?"
Rhaenyra's shriek of delight was answer enough. She bounced in his arms, clapping her small hands together, already launching into a stream of questions about whether the dragon would be big or small, whether it would breathe real fire, whether she could meet it afterward and be its friend.
You smiled, and this time there was no calculation in it at all. Aerion was trying. In his own strange, possessive way, he was trying. He had brought you to Ashford to wound his cousin, yes. He had paraded you in front of his family like a trophy, yes. But he was also here, in this sunlit corridor, planning an evening at a play with his paramour and his bastard daughter, and there was something in his face that you had learned to recognize as hope.
"That sounds wonderful," you said, and meant it. "Rhaenyra will be talking about it for weeks."
"She'll be talking about it regardless," Aerion said dryly. "The child never stops talking. She gets that from you."
"From me?" You pressed a hand to your chest in mock offense. "I am the very soul of silence, my prince."
Aerion snorted. It was an undignified sound, entirely at odds with the sharp, cruel prince the rest of the world knew. "You are a terrible liar, Y/N. You always have been."
But he was smiling when he said it, and when he offered you his arm, you took it without hesitation. Rhaenyra was still chattering about dragons, her small voice filling the corridor with improbable questions and even more improbable declarations. Aerion answered her with patience, with warmth, with the particular tenderness he reserved for her alone.
And you walked beside them through the halls of Ashford Castle, your hand on Aerion's arm, your daughter's laughter echoing off the stones, and for this moment, this single bright moment, you let yourself believe that everything would be all right.
â
The screaming started before you understood what was happening.
One moment there had been music, the thin reedy piping of a flute and the thump of a hand drum, and Rhaenyra had been bouncing on your hip with her small hands clapping together in delight. The painted dragon had been swaying above the stage on its strings, its wings catching the torchlight, its jaws opening and closing in roar while the puppeteer below made a rumbling growl deep in her throat to give it voice. Rhaenyra had laughed. You could still hear the echo of that laugh, bright and silver and utterly without fear.
Then Aerion and the white cloaks moved, and the world splintered. The first tent pole went down with a sound like a thunderclap. Silk billowed inward, red and gold and orange, catching the torchlight and becoming flame even as it fell. People were screaming. People were running. A woman stumbled into you from behind and you curled around Rhaenyra on pure instinct, your spine curving, your arms locking, your body becoming a shell with your daughter at its center. Someone's elbow drove into your ribs and you felt something grind and shift and send a bright white bolt of pain up your side.
"Mama," Rhaenyra whimpered, and her voice was small, so terribly small, the voice of a child who did not understand why the world had turned cruel between one heartbeat and the next. "Mama, I want to go. I want to go home."
"Shh," you breathed into her hair, though your own voice was shaking so badly the word hardly had a shape. "Shh, my love, my dragon, Mama's here. Mama's got you. Close your eyes, sweetling. Close your eyes and it will be over soon."
She buried her face in the curve of your throat. You could feel her tears, hot and wet, soaking through the silk of your gown. You could feel her heart beating against your chest, a frantic bird trapped in a cage of bone. You could feel every tremor that ran through her small body, and each one was a knife slipped between your ribs.
The guard Aerion had assigned to you stood at your back like a statue carved from ice. Ser Harrold, his name was, you had begged him to escort you from the pavilion the moment the violence began. You had turned to him with Rhaenyra clutched against your chest and pleaded with him to let you leave, to let you take your daughter somewhere safe, somewhere the screaming did not reach.
He had looked at you with eyes that held no more warmth than a winter pond. "Prince's orders," he had said, and the words fell from his mouth like stones dropped into still water. "You stay until he says otherwise."
"But she's frightened," you had said, and you had hated the tremor in your voice, hated the way it made you sound weak when you needed to be strong. "She's two years old, Ser Harrold. She doesn't understand what's happening. Please."
"Prince's orders," he had repeated, and he had not looked at you again.
On the stage, Aerion had the puppeteer by the wrist. She was young. That was the detail that lodged itself in your memory like a splinter, the detail that would come back to you in the dark hours of the night for years afterward. She was young, perhaps your age. Her mouth was open in a scream that you could not hear over the roaring of the crowd, and her free hand was beating uselessly against Aerion's chest, against his arm, against the unyielding iron of his grip.
She had made a dragon out of paint and wood and string. She had painted scales on its wings with her own hands, had worked its jaws with her own fingers, had given it a voice that made children laugh and grown men cheer. She had made the terrible, fatal mistake of letting her dragon be killed in the story she told. The knight had slain it with his sword and the audience had gasped and clapped and cheered the hero's victory.
Aerion had not cheered. Aerion had stared with a face like a thunderhead, and then the Kingsguard had begun to move, and now he was on the stage with the puppeteer's wrist in his hand and her dragon lying forgotten at his feet.
He started with her fingers. The first one broke with a sound like a dry branch snapping underfoot in the depths of winter. It was surprisingly quiet, that sound, almost delicate, almost polite. The puppeteer's index finger bent backward at an angle that made your stomach contract violently, and she screamed, a high thin shriek that cut through the chaos of the pavilion like a blade through silk.
Rhaenyra flinched in your arms. "Mama," she whimpered, "why is the lady screaming? Is she hurt? Mama, I want to go."
"Close your eyes, sweetling," you whispered again, and your voice was breaking now, splintering into pieces you could not put back together. "Close your eyes and think of something nice. Think of the roses in the garden. Think of the pink flower you picked. Think of anything but this."
The second finger broke wetter than the first. A muffled, grinding crack that seemed to echo in the hollow of your chest. The puppeteer's legs gave out beneath her, but Aerion held her up by her ruined hand,ĂŹand his face, his beautiful face that you had kissed and praised and learned to love, was alight with something that went beyond cruelty into a territory you had no name for.
Pleasure. A bright, burning pleasure that lit him from within like a lantern lights a room. His violet eyes were wide and shining, his lips parted slightly around his bloodied teeth, his breath coming in short sharp bursts that were almost sexual in their rhythm. He was enjoying this. He was enjoying this in a way he had never enjoyed a single moment of the years you had spent together, and the realization crashed into you like a wave into rocks, cold and brutal and undeniable.
You love him, you had thought earlier in the gardens. No, you hate him. That was the horror of it, the horror that would never leave you no matter how many years passed. You loved him, you loved the father of your child, you loved the man who had burned down a brothel for you. You loved him, and he was standing on a stage in a village called Ashford, breaking a girl's fingers one by one because her puppet show had insulted his pride.
The third finger made a sound like a walnut being crushed in a vise.
"Please," you heard yourself saying, and you did not know if you were speaking to Aerion or to Ser Harrold or to the gods who had never listened to a single prayer you had ever sent their way. "Please, someone stop him. Someone make him stop."
Ser Harrold's hand closed around your upper arm, immobilizing you. He was wearing gauntlets, the leather stiff and unyielding against your skin. "Hold still," he said, and his voice was the voice of a man who had learned long ago that obedience was safer than conscience.
The puppeteer's fourth finger snapped.
Then the giant came out of the crowd. His hair was dirty blonde, cut short against his skull in a way that suggested practicality rather than fashion, and it was matted with sweat and dust and something that might have been blood. His face was a shadowed blur in the torchlight, his features obscured by the angle and the distance and the chaos, but his size. Gods above and below, his size.
He was enormous. Seven feet of bone and muscle and righteous fury, with shoulders broad enough to block out the firelight behind him and hands the size of dinner plates curled into fists at his sides. He did not slow. He did not hesitate. He cleared the edge of the stage in a single stride, and then he was on Aerion, and his fist was connecting with the prince's face with a sound like a hammer striking an anvil.
Aerion staggered backward. His grip on the puppeteer's wrist broke, and she crumpled to the stage in a heap of brown wool and ruined hands, sobbing. Blood flew from Aerion's mouth in a dark arc that caught the torchlight and glittered like rubies scattered across the stage. He hit the wooden planking hard, his head snapping back against the boards, and for one impossible, crystalline moment, the entire pavilion went silent.
Then the Kingsguard moved. They came from every direction at once, white cloaks streaming behind them like wings, white enameled armor flashing in the firelight. Six of them. Seven. More, perhaps. They swarmed the big man the way wolves swarm a bear, throwing themselves onto his back and his arms and his legs, trying to drag him down by sheer weight of numbers. He fought them. Gods, he fought them. You saw one Kingsguard reel backward with blood pouring from the visor of his helm. You saw another take an elbow to the throat and go down choking, clawing at his gorget. You saw the big man's fists rise and fall and rise again with the relentless rhythm of a blacksmith's hammer, each blow carrying the weight of a righteous anger that no amount of white armor could withstand.
But there were too many. There were always too many. They dragged at his legs and his arms and his neck, six white cloaked knights and then seven and then eight, and still he nearly threw them off, still he nearly got free, still he nearly made it back to his feet with his massive hands reaching for Aerion again. Then one of the Kingsguard drove the pommel of his sword into the back of the big man's skull, and his knees buckled. Another kicked his legs out from under him. Another twisted his arm behind his back at an angle that made the joint scream in protest even from where you stood watching.
They forced him to his knees on the stage. One of them, a tall man with a captain's bars on his white cloak, grabbed a fistful of that dirty blonde hair and yanked his head back, forcing his face up into the torchlight.
Aerion rose to his feet. He moved slowly, carefully, the way a man moves when he is holding onto his composure by the thinnest of threads. His lip was split open, a gash that ran from the corner of his mouth nearly to his chin. Blood sheeted down his jaw and dripped onto the white silk of his collar, staining it crimson. He probed at his teeth with his tongue, grimaced, and spat a wad of blood and saliva onto the stage. Something small and white and hard skittered across the wooden boards.
âWhy did you throw your life away for this whoreâ Aerion said.
"You've loosened one of my teeth,"
The pavilion had gone very quiet. The screaming had stopped, or perhaps it had simply receded to a distance where it could no longer reach you. The only sounds were the crackle of the torches, the soft sobbing of the puppeteer still huddled on the stage, and the ragged, labored breathing of the big man as he knelt in the grip of the Kingsguard. Aerion's voice was soft, almost conversational, the voice of a man discussing the weather over a cup of wine. It was more terrifying than any scream could have been.
"So," Aerion continued, prodding at his mouth again with his thumb and forefinger, examining the blood that came away, "we'll start by breaking out all of yours."
"No." The word came out of your mouth before you could stop it, a reflex as automatic as breathing, as instinctive as flinching from an open flame. "Aerion, no."
He did not look at you. He was not capable of hearing you, not in this state, not with the blood of a puppet show on his hands and the taste of his own tooth in his mouth. He was looking at the big man the way a child looks at an insect he has caught in a jar. Curious. Utterly without pity.
One of the Kingsguard, the captain with his hand still fisted in the big man's hair, forced his head down toward the stage. Another moved to stand on either side of him, gripping his shoulders, pinning him in place. A third stepped forward, removing his gauntlets one finger at a time, flexing his bare hands with the deliberate precision of a man preparing to perform a task that required both strength and care.
"Hold him still," Aerion said. "I want to watch."
Rhaenyra was sobbing in earnest now, her small body shaking with the force of her terror. She did not understand what was happening. She understood only that her father was on the stage and there was blood on his face and the safe bright world of the puppet show had collapsed into screaming and white cloaks and a big man on his knees who was about to be hurt in a way she had no language for.
"Mama," she wept, "Mama, I want Papa to stop, make Papa stop, please make him stop."
"I can't," you whispered into her hair, and the admission was a wound that would never fully heal. "I can't, sweetling. Mama can't make him stop. Close your eyes. Close your eyes and don't look."
The Kingsguard with the bare hands stepped forward. He was flexing his fingers, working the joints loose, his movements unhurried and methodical. The captain still had the big man's head forced down at the angle required for what was about to happen. The other guards braced themselves, digging their heels into the wooden stage, preparing for the struggle they knew would come.
The big man lifted his head against the pressure of the captain's grip. It was a monumental effort; you could see the muscles of his neck straining, the veins standing out like cords, the sweat cutting tracks through the blood and dirt on his face. He lifted his head, and the torchlight fell full upon his features for the first time.
You saw his face.
Time did not slow. It did not fade. It stopped. It stopped completely, absolutely, as if some vast and terrible hand had reached down from the heavens and seized the mechanism of the world itself and held it motionless. The torches froze mid-flicker. The screaming faded to a hum that existed somewhere beyond the boundaries of hearing. The blood in your veins turned to ice and then to fire and then to something that had no name at all.
You knew that face. You knew the hands. The enormous hands that had lifted you from your mother's deathbed, that had carried you through the cold morning while the other whores watched with pity and disgust, that had wrapped you in a threadbare blanket and held you against his chest while he promised you in a cracking boy's voice that he would always, always have you.
Dunk. He was alive. He was on his knees on a stage in a village called Ashford with a Kingsguard's hand in his hair and another Kingsguard's bare knuckles preparing to break his teeth out of his skull one by one, and he was alive.
"Dunk."
You did not recognize your own voice. It did not sound like a voice at all. It sounded like something that had been torn out of you by the roots, something that had been buried so deep and so long that pulling it free left a bleeding hollow in the center of your chest.
"Dunk."
Louder this time. Louder, and it cracked on the second syllable, cracked like your mother's laugh had cracked, like a bell that had been rung too hard and too long and had nothing left inside it but splinters.
"DUNK."
Time restarted itself with a violence that made your vision swim. The torches flared back to life. The screaming returned, a wave of sound that crashed over you and through you and left you gasping. The Kingsguard hesitated, their hands pausing on their prisoner, their white helms turning toward you with the synchronized precision of hunting dogs catching a scent.
Dunk turned his head. The captain still had his fist twisted in his hair, still had his neck bent at that brutal angle, but Dunk turned his head against that grip with the slow, inexorable force of a continent shifting, and he looked at you.
His eyes found yours across the chaos of the ruined tent. You saw the recognition hit him. Saw it travel through his body like a physical blow, a shock wave that started in his eyes and rippled outward through his shoulders, his chest, his hands. His face went slack with it, the tension draining out of his jaw and his brow, replaced by something that was too raw and too vast to be called surprise. It was disbelief. It was hope, the kind of hope that had been dead for so long its resurrection was indistinguishable from agony. It was joy and grief and guilt and love, all of them crashing together in the space of a single heartbeat.
His mouth moved. Formed the shape of your name. You could not hear it over the screaming, over the roaring of your own blood in your ears, but you saw it, saw the way his lips shaped the syllables he had not spoken in years, the name he had called across a hundred alleys and a hundred dark streets while he searched for you, the name he had whispered to himself in the long nights when he believed you were dead and gone and never coming back.
He surged against the guards holding him. Not fighting to escape now. Fighting to get to you. His massive shoulders bunched and heaved, nearly throwing off the two Kingsguard who were gripping his arms. A third lunged in to reinforce them, his white cloak tangling around his legs in his haste. Dunk did not seem to notice. He did not seem to feel the hands dragging at him or the knees pressing into his back or the captain's fist still grinding into his scalp. He was looking at you and only at you, and he was trying to reach you, trying to cross the impossible distance between the stage and the place where you stood with Rhaenyra in your arms.
You surged forward to meet him. You did not think about it. You did not calculate the odds or weigh the consequences. Your body moved before your mind could catch up, driven by an instinct older than thought, older than fear, older than anything you had learned in the years since they took you from the festival. Your brother was here. Your brother was alive.
Ser Harrold's arm locked around your waist like an iron bar. "Hold still," he snarled, and he was no longer calm now, no longer indifferent. He was struggling to hold you, struggling to keep his grip on a woman who had spent years learning to be still and silent and obedient and had finally, in this single shattering moment, forgotten how.
"Let me go!" The words tore out of your throat with a force that made your vision white out at the edges. Rhaenyra was screaming in your arms, her small fists beating against your shoulders, her voice a thin high wail that you could barely hear over the roaring in your ears. "Let me go, that's my brother, that's my brother, let me GO!"
"Aerion!" You were screaming his name now, the name of the man you loved, the name of the monster on the stage, the name of the only person in this pavilion who had the power to make the nightmare stop. "Aerion, please, please, you have to stop, he's my brother,please, Aerion, PLEASE!"
Aerion turned to look at you.
His face was still smeared with blood, his lip still split and swollen, his violet eyes still bright with the pleasure of the violence he had been orchestrating. But something flickered in their depths when he saw your face, when he registered the raw, unvarnished desperation in your voice. Confusion first. Then irritation, a flicker of the familiar petulance that crossed his features whenever something did not go the way he had planned. And then something else, something that chilled you more than any cruelty could have done.
Something calculating.
"What," he said, and his voice was a blade drawn slowly across a whetstone, "the fuck are you doing? What is she screaming about?"
You could barely form the words. Your throat was raw, your chest heaving, your arms trembling with the effort of holding Rhaenyra while Ser Harrold's grip threatened to crack your ribs. But you forced them out, forced them past the sobs that were building in your chest, forced them into the space between you and the man who held your brother's life in his bloodstained hands.
"He's my brother. He's my brother, Aerion." Your voice cracked on his name, splintered into something that was half a plea and half a prayer. "The brother I told you about. Dunk. The one I thought was dead. The one who raised me. Please. Please don't hurt him. I'll do anything. I'll give you anything. Just please, Aerion, please don't hurt my brother."
Something moved in Aerion's face. A muscle in his jaw jumped. His eyes narrowed, the bright pleasure of the violence draining out of them, replaced by something harder and colder and infinitely more dangerous. He looked at you, and he looked at Dunk, and he looked back at you, and you could see him putting the pieces together. The brother you had wept for in the dark hours of the night, the brother whose name you had whispered in your sleep, the brother Aerion had forbidden you from ever mentioning again.
The brother who was now on his knees in front of him, bloodied and defiant, the man who had dared to strike a prince of the blood, and his expression closed like a door slamming shut in a winter gale.
"Take her back to her chamber," Aerion said. He was not looking at you anymore. He was looking at Dunk, and his voice was utterly without warmth, utterly without the history that stretched between you, utterly without anything that might have been mistaken for mercy. "Lock the door. No one goes in or out until I give the order."
"No." The word was barely a whisper. Ser Harrold was already dragging you backward, his arm still locked around your waist, his heels digging into the trampled grass of the pavilion floor. "Aerion, no, please, you can't do this."
"Take the child to the nursery," Aerion continued, as if you had not spoken, as if your voice did not exist, as if you were already gone. "She does not need to see any more of this. Make sure she stays there."
"No!" The scream that tore out of you was not a sound. It was a living thing, a creature with claws and teeth and a heart full of desperation, and it ripped its way out of your throat and into the torchlit air of the pavilion with a force that made the nearest Kingsguard flinch. "You can't separate us! She's my daughter! She's MY daughter!"
Rhaenyra was shrieking now, a high thin sound that rose above the chaos like a needle sliding into flesh. Her arms were wrapped around your neck so tightly that you could feel her small fingernails digging crescents into your skin, and her legs were locked around your waist, and her face was buried in the curve of your shoulder, and she was screaming, screaming, screaming. "Mama, Mama, don't let them take me, Mama, please, I want to stay with you, Mama, MAMA!"
Ser Harrold was dragging you backward. Another guard, a man in the pale grey of Prince Maekar's household, was trying to untangle Rhaenyra from your arms. His hands were gentle, gentler than you had expected, but that gentleness made it worse somehow, made it more real, made it a kindness that was not a kindness at all. He was murmuring something to Rhaenyra, some meaningless reassurance that neither you nor she could hear over the screaming, and his fingers were prying at her small grip one digit at a time.
"Don't," you sobbed. "Don't take her. Please. Please don't take my daughter."
But your arms were being pulled backward, and your strength was failing, and Rhaenyra's grip was slipping. You felt her fingers lose their hold on your dress. Felt the warmth of her body pulled away from yours. Felt the cold air rush in to fill the space where she had been, and that cold was worse than any physical pain, worse than the bruises blooming on your arm where Ser Harrold held you, worse than the raw burning in your throat from screaming, worse than anything you had endured in the brothel or the alley or the long dark nights when you believed your brother was dead.
"RHAENYRA!"
She was being carried away, still reaching for you over the guard's shoulder, her silver-gold hair bright as a candle flame in the torchlight, her violet eyes wide and streaming with tears. "Mama! I want my mama! Give me back my mama!"
You fought. You fought the way Dunk had fought, with every ounce of strength in your body, with your teeth and your nails and your fury. You twisted in Ser Harrold's grip and raked your nails across his face, felt the skin of his cheek tear beneath your fingers, felt the hot wet rush of his blood against your palm. He cursed and tightened his hold, and something in your side gave way with a sharp bright spike of agony, but you did not stop. You could not stop. Your daughter was being taken from you, your brother was on his knees with a prince's boot on his neck, and the world was ending, and you could not stop.
And then, cutting through the chaos like a blade through silk, a young voice rang out across the pavilion.
"No! Don't touch him!"
Everyone froze. The Kingsguard with his bare hands paused mid-motion, his knuckles inches from Dunk's clenched jaw. The captain's grip on Dunk's hair loosened slightly in surprise. Even Aerion turned, his bloodied mouth twisting into an expression of annoyed bewilderment.
The boy who stepped forward from the chaos of the crowd was small, skinny, with a shaved head that gleamed in the torchlight like a polished stone. He could not have been more than nine or ten years old, and he moved with the absolute, unshakeable confidence of someone who had never been told that the world did not bend to his will. He was bald and his clothes were the roughspun of a stable boy, dirty and sweat-stained, but he wore them like a prince wearing borrowed silks.
Dunk's voice was a ragged gasp, desperate and afraid in a way it had not been when the Kingsguard were beating him. "You stupid boy! Hold your tongue or they'll hurt you."
The boy did not slow. He did not even glance at Dunk. His eyes were fixed on Aerion, and there was something in them that made the prince's expression flicker with the first hint of uncertainty you had seen all night.
"No, they won't," the boy said, and his voice was calm, steady, the voice of someone stating a fact as immutable as the rising of the sun. "If they do, they'll answer to my father."
He stepped past the Kingsguard as if they were not there, as if the white cloaks and the white armor and the drawn swords were no more substantial than morning mist. He stopped directly in front of Aerion, this small bald boy in dirty clothes, and he lifted his chin and looked the prince full in the face.
"Let go of him," the boy commanded. "Wate, Yorkel, do as I say."
And the Kingsguard obeyed.
The captain released Dunk's hair. The other guards stepped back, their hands falling away from his arms and shoulders, their white helms inclining slightly in gestures of deference that stopped your heart in your chest. They knew this boy. They knew him, and they obeyed him, and that could only mean one thing.
Aerion stared at the boy. His violet eyes narrowed, studying the shaved head, the dirty clothes, the small defiant face that was upturned to his own. And then, slowly, recognition dawned across his bloodied features like a sluggish sunrise. It was followed immediately by annoyance, a deep and profound irritation that seemed to cut through even the pleasure he had been taking in the violence moments before.
"You impudent little rat," Aerion said. His voice dripped with contempt, but beneath it lurked something else, something that sounded almost like wariness. "What's happened to your hair?"
The boy did not flinch. He did not blink. He looked at Aerion with the steady, unblinking gaze of someone who had spent his entire life watching and learning and understanding things that others missed, and when he spoke, his voice carried the unmistakable weight of royal blood.
"I cut it off, brother," he said. "I didn't want to look like you."
Brother. The word landed in the center of the pavilion like a stone dropped into still water. Brother. This boy, this small bald boy in stable clothes, was Aerion's brother. Which meant he was Prince Aegon Targaryen, the youngest of Prince Maekar's sons, the one you had glimpsed occasionally in the corridors of Summerhall, the one who had looked at you like you were a puzzle he was trying to solve.
And he had just intervened to save your brother's life. The revelation halted the attack instantly. The Kingsguard could not carry out Aerion's orders now. Not against a man who was connected, through his squire, to the royal family. Not against a man who was protected by a prince of the blood, however young and however bald and however inexplicably dressed in the roughspun of a stable hand. The captain stepped back further, his white cloak settling around him like folded wings, and the other guards followed suit, leaving Dunk kneeling alone on the stage.
Aerion's face was a study in frustration. The pleasure had drained out of him entirely now, replaced by a seething, impotent fury that he could not express without defying his own brother, his own blood, in front of half a dozen witnesses. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. The blood from his split lip still dripped down his chin, and his violet eyes were dark with a rage that had no outlet.
But he was a prince, and he knew the rules, and striking a man who was connected to the royal family was a crime that even he could not simply burn his way out of.
"Take him to the cells," Aerion said finally, and his voice was flat and cold and utterly drained of the pleasure that had animated it before. "He struck a prince of the blood. That crime remains regardless of whose squire the little rat has chosen to become. He will await trial and judgment, and lock her in her chamber."
Ser Harrold hauled you backward through the ruins of the pavilion. Your legs gave out beneath you, and he dragged you the rest of the way, your heels scraping furrows in the trampled grass, your head lolling against his shoulder, your voice reduced to a raw and wordless keening that did not stop. You passed overturned benches. You passed torn silk and scattered cushions and a child's abandoned shoe.
The last thing you saw before the tent flap closed behind you was Aerion. He was still standing on the stage, his red tunic splattered with blood, his face a mask of cold, distant contemplation. He was not looking at you. He was looking at the place where Dunk had disappeared, and there was something in his expression that you had never seen before. Something that went beyond jealousy, beyond possessiveness, beyond the casual cruelty of a man who had never been denied anything.
He looked like a dragon counting its hoard, and finding a single coin out of place.
â
The door slammed shut behind you with a finality that echoed through your bones.
You had screamed until your voice gave out. You had beaten your fists against the iron banded oak until your knuckles split and bled, leaving dark smears on the wood that looked like accusations. You had thrown yourself at the door again and again, your shoulder bruising, your strength ebbing, until finally your legs had given way beneath you and you had slid to the cold stone floor with your back against the unforgiving wood and your face buried in your bleeding hands.
Rhaenyra was gone. Dunk was gone. Everyone you had ever loved had been ripped away from you in the space of a single night, and you were locked in a borrowed chamber in a borrowed castle with nothing but the silence and the dark and the terrible, circling thoughts that would not let you rest.
You pressed your forehead against your knees and tried to breathe.The hours crawled past like wounded animals dragging themselves toward death. You did not move from your place against the door. You did not lie down on the bed, though it was soft and wide and covered in Ashford's finest linens. You did not drink the water that had been left on the side table, though your throat was raw and burning from screaming. You simply sat, curled into yourself, and waited.
For Aerion. For news. For something, anything, that would tell you what was going to happen next. You thought about the look on Dunk's face when he recognized you. The shock. The joy. The desperate, agonized love. What must he have thought? What must he have assumed about you, about your life, about the choices that had led you to this place?
The shame of it burned in your chest like swallowed fire.
You did not know how long you sat there. It might have been hours. It might have been minutes. Time had lost all meaning in the darkness of the chamber, with the candles unlit and the fire unbuilt and the only light coming from the pale sliver of moon that crept through the narrow window high in the wall. But eventually, eventually, you heard the sound you had been dreading and hoping for in equal measure.
Footsteps in the corridor. Boots on stone, deliberate and unhurried, the particular cadence of a man who knew that the world would wait for him. The jingle of a sword at the hip. The faint, almost imperceptible sound of a key turning in a lock.
The door swung inward, and Aerion Targaryen stepped into the room.
He had cleaned the blood from his face since you last saw him. His lip was still swollen. His silver gold hair had been combed back from his face, still damp from washing. He had changed his clothes; replaced by a simple black doublet that made his pale skin look almost luminous in the moonlight. He looked almost calm. Almost controlled. But his violet eyes were too bright, too sharp, the eyes of a man who was holding onto his composure by the thinnest of threads.
He closed the door behind him. You heard the lock click into place.
"My dragon," you said, and your voice came out as a croak, raw and broken from screaming. You tried to rise to your feet, but your legs would not hold you, so you remained on the floor, your back against the wall, your hands still stained with your own blood. "Aerion, please. Please tell me what's happening. My brother. Where is my brother? Is he all right? What are they going to do to him?"
The change that came over Aerion's face was instantaneous and terrifying. The careful mask of composure cracked like ice hit by a hammer. His jaw tightened. His eyes narrowed. His hands, which had been relaxed at his sides, curled slowly into fists.
"I come to you," he said, and his voice was a blade being drawn from its sheath, slow and deliberate and full of promise, "after being attacked in front of half the nobility of the Reach. My lip is split open. My tooth is loose in my skull. My dignity has been trampled by some hedge knight with dirt under his fingernails and hay in his hair. And the first words out of your mouth are not 'Are you all right, my prince?' Not 'Let me tend your wounds, my love.' Not a single word of comfort or concern for me, the man who saved you from a brothel, the father of your child, the prince who has kept you fed and clothed and protected for years."
He took a step toward you. Then another. His shadow fell across you like a shroud, blocking out the pale moonlight, plunging you into darkness.
"Your first words," he said, and his voice was rising now, climbing toward a register you had learned to fear, "are about him. A stranger. A man who struck me. A man who loosened my tooth and spilled my blood in front of the Kingsguard. That is who you ask about. That is who you care about. Not me. Not your prince. Not the father of your child. Him."
"He's not a stranger," you said, and your voice was barely a whisper. You knew you should stop. You knew you should placate him, soothe him, tell him everything he wanted to hear. That was what you had done for years, what you had become so skilled at doing. But you could not. Not tonight. Not with Dunk's face still burned into your memory like a brand. "He's my brother, Aerion. He's my brother. He raised me. He protected me, and you have him locked in a cell like a criminal. Please. Please, just tell me he's all right. Just tell me you haven't hurt him."
Aerion stared at you for a long moment. The torch from the corridor outside cast his shadow long and dark across the floor, stretching toward you like a grasping hand. His breathing was audible in the silence, harsh and uneven, the breathing of a man who was losing a battle with his own rage.
"You love him," he said finally. The words were flat, toneless, utterly without inflection. "This brother of yours. This hedge knight with his dirty hands and his dirty hair. You love him more than you love me."
"That's not true," you said, and it was the truth and it was a lie and it was everything in between. "I love you, Aerion. You know I love you. But he's my brother. He's my blood. I thought he was dead. I mourned him for years. And now he's here, and he's alive, and I just want to know that he's safe. That's all. I just want to know that he's safe. Please."
"Safe." Aerion repeated the word as if it were a foreign language, a concept he had heard described but never experienced. "Safe. You want to know if the man who struck me is safe. You want to know if the man who humiliated me in front of my family and my father is safe."
He laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. It was the sound of something breaking.
"You're mine," he said, and his voice cracked on the word, splintering into something that was half rage and half desperation. "You have been mine since the night I bought you. I paid fifty gold dragons for you. I burned down a brothel for you. I gave you a home, a place in my household, a daughter who bears my name. I have given you everything. Everything. And you stand there, bleeding on my floor, asking about another man."
"I'm not standing," you whispered, and you did not know why that was the detail you chose to focus on. He crossed the distance between you in three swift strides. His hand closed around your arm, hauling you upright with a strength that would leave bruises, and you cried out as the blood rushed back to your legs and the pain in your side flared white hot.
"You are mine," he said again, and his face was inches from yours, his violet eyes blazing with a fire you had seen directed at others but never, never at you. Not like this. Not with this intensity. Not with this complete and absolute absence of restraint. "Say it. Say you're mine."
"I'm yours," you gasped. His grip on your arm was agony, his fingers digging into the bruises Ser Harrold had left, and tears were streaming down your face. "Aerion, please, you're hurting me."
"Good." He shook you, once, hard enough that your head snapped back and hit the stone wall behind you. Stars burst across your vision. "Good. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll remember who you belong to. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll stop asking about other men. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll finally understand that the only way you leave me is in a shroud."
"My brother," you sobbed. "He's my brother. Not another man. My brother. Please, Aerion, please try to understand."
"I understand perfectly." His free hand came up to grip your chin, forcing your face toward his, forcing you to look into his eyes. "I understand that you have spent years telling me you loved me while you dreamed of someone else. I understand that the moment he appeared, you forgot everything I have done for you. I understand that you are a whore I pulled from a brothel, and no matter how many silk dresses I put on you, no matter how much of myself I pour into you, you will never, ever stop being what you are."
The words hit you like physical blows. Each one was a fist to the gut, a slap to the face, a knife slipped between your ribs. You had known, intellectually, that this was how he saw you. You had always known. But hearing it spoken aloud, hearing it thrown at you like an accusation, like a crime you had committed against him simply by existing, was something else entirely.
"Aerion," you whispered, and your voice was so small, so broken, that you barely recognized it as your own. "I have never been unfaithful to you. I have never looked at another man. I have never wanted anyone but you. He is my brother. My brother. Why can't you understand that?"
"Because I don't care!" He screamed the words directly into your face, his spittle flecking your cheeks, his breath hot and sour with wine and blood. "I don't care who he is! I don't care if he's your brother or your father or your long lost lover! The moment you chose him over me, the moment you screamed his name instead of mine, the moment you fought my guards and clawed Ser Harrold's face to try to reach him, you made your choice! And now you will live with it!"
His hand released your chin and came across your face with a crack that seemed to echo off the stone walls.
The backhand caught you across the cheekbone, hard enough to snap your head to the side, hard enough to send a spray of blood from your already split lip, hard enough that your legs gave out beneath you entirely. You fell. You did not fall gracefully, did not fall the way women fell in the songs Dunk used to tell you, floating down like petals on a breeze. You fell like a sack of grain, heavy and graceless, your hip striking the stone floor with a jolt of pain that made you gasp, your palms scraping raw against the cold flagstones, your already injured side screaming in protest as you landed.
You lay there for a moment, stunned. The taste of blood filled your mouth, copper and salt and something that might have been despair. The world swam in and out of focus. The moonlight from the window seemed very far away, a distant silver promise of a world that existed somewhere beyond this room, beyond this night, beyond the man who was standing over you with his chest heaving and his eyes blazing.
Then he was on top of you. His weight pressed you into the cold stone floor, heavy and immovable, the weight of a man who had trained with sword and shield and lance, the weight of a prince who had never been denied anything in his life. His knees pinned your thighs. One hand caught both of your wrists and forced them above your head, pressing them into the stone with a grip that made your fingers go numb. His other hand was at your throat, not squeezing, not yet, just resting there, a reminder, a threat, a promise.
"You're my whore," he said, and his voice was a growl, low and guttural and utterly without the cultured refinement he wore like armor in the daylight. "Mine. You have been mine since the night I bought you, and you will be mine until the day you die. Do you understand? Do you understand what that means?"
"Get off me," you gasped. Your voice was barely audible, strangled by the hand at your throat and the weight on your chest. "Aerion, please, get off me, I can't breathe."
"It means," he continued, as if you had not spoken, as if your words were less than nothing, as if your voice did not exist in any way that mattered, "that I own you. Your body. Your heart. Your soul. Every breath you take, you take because I allow it. Every night you sleep in a warm bed, you sleep there because I permit it. Every moment you spend with our daughter, you spend because I have chosen to let you. And the only way you leave me, the only way you ever leave me, is if you are dead. Do you understand? Dead."
He was tearing at your dress as he spoke, the silk that he had given you, the dress he had chosen, the dress you had worn to the puppet show, the dress Rhaenyra's tears had soaked through. You heard the fabric rip, felt the cold air on your skin, and you found what remained of your strength and pushed against him. Your hands were still pinned above your head, but you bucked your hips, twisted your body, tried to throw him off the way Dunk had thrown off the Kingsguard.
It was useless. It was always useless. He was stronger than you, heavier than you, and he had the advantage of gravity and rage and years of training in violence that you had never received. He pressed you back down against the stone, and his hand left your throat to grip your jaw, forcing your face toward his, forcing you to look into his eyes.
"Say it," he demanded. "Say you're mine. Say you belong to me. Say that no one else matters. Not your brother. Not anyone. Say it."
You did not say it. You could not say it. The words were locked in your throat, trapped behind the tears and the blood and the terrible, crushing weight of what was happening to you.
You tried to squeeze your legs shut, but his knee drove between them, forcing them wide. He was hard and the sight of his cock made your stomach turn.
"Look at it," he hissed, grabbing a fistful of your hair and yanking your head forward. "Look at what you made me do. This is your fault. If you had just obeyedâ"
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. He pressed the head of his cock against your entrance, already sore and swollen from the first time, and you whimpered, a high, broken sound that seemed to please him. He held there, just barely breaching you, letting you feel the pressure, the promise of invasion.
"Please," you whispered, your voice cracked and raw. "Please, Aerion, please don'tâ"
He thrust.
The sound you made was not a scream. It was something worse, a choked, guttural sob that tore from your throat as he buried himself inside you in one brutal push. The angle was wrong, too deep, too dry despite the precum already coating your thighs. You felt every ridge and vein of his cock as it forced its way deeper, splitting you open, claiming space that did not want him.
He paused, buried to the hilt, and let out a low groan that was almost human. Almost tender. Then he began to move.
Not fast. Not yet. He fucked you slowly, deliberately, with a cruelty that made every inch of the motion deliberate. He pulled almost all the way out, then slid back in with excruciating leisure, watching your face contort with each stroke. His eyes were locked on yours, challenging you to look away.
You did. You turned your head, pressing your cheek against the cold stone, staring at a crack in the floor until your vision blurred. But he would not allow that. He grabbed your jaw, forced your face back to his.
"Watch," he commanded. "Watch me take what is mine."
His pace increased. The slow, torturous rhythm gave way to a sharp, punishing fucking that drove the air from your lungs with every slam of his hips. The wet slap of skin against skin echoed off the walls, mingling with your ragged breaths and his grunts. He leaned down, his chest pressing against yours, and bit your shoulder, not a kiss, a bite, hard enough to break skin. You cried out, and he licked the blood, humming in satisfaction.
"That's it," he whispered against your ear, his breath hot and uneven. "Make sound for me. Let the whole castle hear how much you hate it. Let them know who you belong to."
He drove deeper, harder, angling his hips to hit that spot inside you that made your back arch despite yourself. A spark of unwanted pleasure shot through your pelvis, and you bit your lip so hard you tasted copper. He noticed. Of course he noticed. He slowed down, grinding against that same spot, watching your body betray you as your hips began to rock in counterpoint to his thrusts.
"There she is," he breathed, almost reverent. "There's the whore underneath. You can't hide her from me. She wants this. She needs this."
"No," you gasped, but your body said yes, clenching around him, drawing him deeper. Hot shame flooded through you, hotter than the pain, as your cunt began to slick with something that was not blood. He felt it too, he groaned, his rhythm faltering, his grip on your hips tightening.
"I'm going to fill you," he snarled, his composure cracking. "I'm going to pour every drop of my seed into this worthless hole until you're pregnant with my heir, a son this time, and then I'll do it again. And again. Andâ"
He came without warning, a guttural roar tearing from his throat as he shoved himself as deep as he could go, his hips stuttering, his cock pulsing inside you. You felt the hot flood of his cum, felt it spill out around him, felt it mix with the blood and your own unwanted wetness. He collapsed on top of you, his full weight pressing you into the stone, his breath hot and ragged against your neck.
For a long moment, neither of you moved. Then he shifted, pulling out with a wet sound that made you flinch, and rolled onto his back beside you. The moonlight had moved, illuminating his face now haunted gleam in his violet eyes that looked almost like regret.
But you knew better. You knew he would do it again. And again. And again. Because in his world, you were already dead. You just hadn't stopped breathing yet.
He did not speak. Neither did you. You lay on the cold stone floor with your torn dress twisted around your body and your wrists still aching from his grip and your thighs slick with the evidence of what he had done, and you stared at the ceiling, and you thought of nothing at all.
After a long time Aerion rose to his feet. He straightened his clothes with mechanical precision, adjusting his doublet, smoothing his hair back from his face. He did not look at you. He did not offer you a hand to help you up. He did not speak a single word of apology or comfort or explanation.
"Your brother will stand trial," he said, and his voice was the voice of a stranger, flat and cold and utterly devoid of the passion that had consumed him moments before. "For striking a prince of the blood. The sentence will be severe. How severe depends entirely on you."
He paused at the door, his hand on the latch, his back to you.
"If you try to see him again," he said, "if you try to contact him, if you so much as speak his name in my presence, I will have him executed. Do you understand? His life is in your hands. Remember that."
The remainder of the night passed in darkness. You did not move from the floor. You could not move from the floor. The torn silk of your dress had dried stiff and crusted against your skin, and you had not bothered to cover yourself. There was no one to see. There was no one to care. The moonlight crawled across the stone floor inch by inch, and you watched it the way a corpse might watch the shifting of its own shroud, with a detachment that went beyond despair into something vast and empty and still.
Morning came grey and cold through the narrow window. The sky outside was the color of old iron, heavy with clouds that had not yet decided whether to rain. You heard the castle waking around you. Footsteps in the corridor. The distant clang of the blacksmith's hammer. Servants calling to one another in voices too muffled to understand. The tourney, you remembered dimly. The tourney was still happening. Lord Ashford's daughter still needed her champion. The world was still turning, indifferent to the ruin of your life.
Someone brought food. You heard the door unlock, heard the tray scrape against the stone as it was pushed inside, heard the door lock again. You did not get up to look at it. The smell of bread and broth turned your stomach. You had not eaten since the puppet show, since before the puppet show, since the garden when Rhaenyra had found the pink flower and you had believed, foolishly and desperately, that everything would be all right.
The morning wore on. The light shifted. The clouds outside the window thickened and darkened and began to spit a thin, miserable drizzle that streaked the glass like tears.
And then, sometime in the afternoon, you heard the commotion.
It started as a distant murmur, a disturbance somewhere in the lower levels of the castle that grew louder and more urgent as it climbed toward your door. Shouts. Running footsteps. The clash of something metallic hitting stone. You lifted your head from the floor for the first time in hours, your neck aching, your vision swimming. Something was happening. Something was wrong.
The door crashed open. It was not Aerion who entered first but a maester, an old man in grey robes with a heavy chain around his neck and blood on his sleeves up to the elbows. Behind him came two guards, household men in the pale grey of Prince Maekar's service, carrying between them a litter on which lay a figure you recognized only by the silver gold of his hair.
Aerion. He was unconscious. His face was nearly unrecognizable. His lip had been split anew, a fresh gash that ran up toward his cheekbone. One of his eyes was swollen shut, the skin around it purple and black and glistening with some kind of salve. His chest was bare beneath a makeshift bandage that wrapped around his ribs, and the bandage was soaked through with blood, bright red and seeping, the color of life escaping. His right arm lay at an angle that was not natural, and his breathing was shallow and labored and made a wet, rattling sound that turned your stomach even as it ignited something else in your chest. Something you did not want to name. Something you did not want to feel.
You scrambled backward on the floor until your shoulder blades hit the wall. Your torn dress bunched around your knees. Your hands came up in front of you, a defensive gesture that was pure instinct, the instinct of a woman who had spent the night being broken and had no more pieces left to give.
"What," you said, and your voice came out as a croak, barely recognizable. "What happened? What is this?"
The maester did not look at you. He was directing the guards to lay the litter on the bed, his hands already reaching for the blood soaked bandages, already issuing orders about hot water and clean linen and milk of the poppy. But one of the guards, a young man whose face was pale and shocked and streaked with someone else's blood, paused long enough to answer.
"Trial of the Seven," he said, and the words meant nothing to you. "The prince demanded it. Against the hedge knight."
"Trial of the Seven?" The phrase was foreign, nonsensical, a collection of syllables that refused to resolve into meaning. "What are you talking about? What trial? What hedge knight?"
The maester looked up from his work at last. "The hedge knight," he said, and his voice was clipped and efficient, the voice of a man who did not have time for explanations. "Ser Duncan the Tall. The hedge knight demanded a trial by combat. The prince escalated it to a Trial of the Seven. Fourteen knights in the lists. The hedge knight's side won, but the prince was wounded. Gravely wounded. We have done what we can for the immediate injuries, but when he regained consciousness briefly, he insisted, quite forcefully, that he be brought to you. He said he wanted you to be his primary caretaker."
The words washed over you in a tide of incomprehensible information. Trial of the Seven. Fourteen knights. The hedge knight's side won. Dunk's side. Dunk had won. Your brother had won. Your brother was alive and he had won his trial and he was free, he must be free, because if the hedge knight's side had won the trial then the gods had judged him innocent.
But Aerion was on your bed with his ribs crushed and his arm broken and his face beaten into something barely human, and he had asked for you. Even after what he had done to you on this very floor. Even after the things he had said, the things he had called you, the violence he had visited upon your body. He had regained consciousness long enough to demand that you, and no one else, be the one to care for him.
You stared at the maester. The maester stared back at you, and something in his expression softened, just slightly, at whatever he saw in your face. Perhaps it was the bruises on your wrists. Perhaps it was the torn dress. Perhaps it was the way you sat huddled against the wall like a wounded animal that had learned to expect only more pain.
"I have done what I can for the immediate wounds," the maester said again, more slowly this time. "The prince will live, though his recovery will be long and painful. But he needs constant care. Someone to change his bandages, to administer his medicine, to watch for fever. He asked for you. Given his condition and his royal status, we are not inclined to refuse him."
You looked at the figure on the bed. The man who had raped you on the stone floor less than a day ago. The father of your daughter. The monster you loved. The prince who had promised to execute your brother if you so much as spoke his name. He lay unconscious and broken, his breath rattling in his chest, and you were being told that you would be his caretaker. That you would sit by his bedside and change his bandages and mop his brow and listen to him breathe.
The absurd cruelty of it was almost beautiful, in its way. A kind of poetry written in blood and bruises and the particular viciousness of men who believed they owned the women they had purchased.
"Leave us," you said, and your voice did not sound like your own. It sounded like the voice of someone much older, someone who had survived worse things than this and would survive worse things still. "I will care for him."
The maester hesitated. "My lady, there are instructions I must give you regarding the dressing of his wounds. The risk of infection is significant, and the milk of the poppy must be administered precisely. Too much will stop his breathing. Too little and the pain will be excruciating. Do you understand?"
"I understand," you said, though you understood nothing. You understood only that your brother was alive and free, and the man who had destroyed you was lying broken on your bed, and you were supposed to heal him. You were supposed to sit beside him and tend his wounds and keep him alive so that he could continue to own you, continue to threaten you, continue to hold your brother's life in his hands like a coin he might spend on a whim.
The maester gave you his instructions. You listened with half an ear, nodding in the appropriate places, filing the information away in a part of your mind that was still functioning, still capable of processing data and making decisions. Change the bandages every four hours. Watch for red streaks radiating from the wounds. Administer the milk of the poppy in doses measured by the small copper cup on the bedside table. If he wakes, give him water. If he develops a fever, send for the maester immediately.
And then they were gone, the maester and the guards, and the door was closed, and you were alone with him.
You stood in the center of the room for a long time, staring at the bed. At the rise and fall of his chest beneath the bloodied bandages. At the hand that lay limp and pale against the silk sheets, the hand that had struck you across the face, the hand that had pinned your wrists above your head, the hand that had held your chin and forced you to look into his eyes while he destroyed you.
You could let him die.
The thought came to you fully formed, as if it had been waiting in the back of your mind all along, biding its time. You could let him die. The maester had left you with the milk of the poppy and precise instructions about dosage. You could administer too much, or too little. You could neglect to change his bandages and let the infection take hold. You could hold a pillow over his face while he slept and press down until the ragged breathing stopped forever. There was no one else in the room. There were no guards at your door, not anymore. You could end this. You could end him. You could free yourself and your daughter and your brother with a single act of will.
You looked at the copper cup on the bedside table. You looked at the pillow beneath his head. You looked at your own hands, still bruised, still crusted with your own blood, still capable of doing what needed to be done.
And then you crossed the room, and you sat down in the chair beside his bed, and you began to prepare the first dose of milk of the poppy with hands that did not tremble at all.
If you let him die now, his father would investigate. There would be questions. There had been a maester here, and guards, and they had seen you alone with him. If Aerion died under your care, the blame would fall on you. You would be executed, or worse. And Rhaenyra would have no mother at all.
Not yet. But the knowledge was there now, a small cold seed planted in the dark soil of your heart. Not yet. But someday, perhaps. Someday, if the opportunity presented itself, if the circumstances aligned, if you could be certain of escaping the consequences. Someday, you might be free of him.
â
The days that followed blurred together like watercolors left in the rain. You were not permitted to leave the room. Aerion made that clear the first time you asked, your voice carefully neutral, your eyes on the floor. He had been awake for perhaps an hour, propped up on pillows that you had arranged behind his back with your own hands, his broken arm splinted and bound, his ribs wrapped tight in fresh linen. His face was still a ruin of purple and black and sickly yellow green, his lip still split, his eye still swollen half-shut. But his voice had lost none of its edge.
"Leave?" He had laughed, a humorless sound that turned into a wince as his ribs protested. "Why would you need to leave? Everything you require is here. Food will be brought. Water for washing. Fresh bandages from the maester. You have no reason to go anywhere."
"Aerion, please. I only want to see Rhaenyra. Just for an hour. Just to hold her and know she's all right. She must be so frightened. She's only two years old. She doesn't understand why her mother disappeared."
His expression had darkened, a cloud passing over the sun. "The child is fine. She is being cared for by the nurses. She does not need you hovering over her like a hen with one chick. What she needs is a father who is not an invalid, and what I need is a caretaker who does not spend every waking moment asking to leave."
"Aerion..."
"Enough." The word was a door slamming shut. "You will stay here. You will tend to my wounds. You will keep me company. You will not leave this room unless I give you permission. Is that understood?"
So you stayed. You woke when he woke, which was often, his sleep broken by pain and fever and the strange, feverish dreams that made him thrash and cry out in the darkness. You changed his bandages with the careful precision the maester had taught you, peeling back the old linen, examining the wounds for signs of infection, applying the salves and poultices with gentle fingers. You fed him broth when he could eat, spooning it into his ruined mouth one careful measure at a time. You helped him with the bedpan when he needed it, a humiliation that made his jaw tighten and his eyes go cold, as if his body's weakness were a personal insult you had somehow engineered.
You did all of this in silence, for the most part. He did not want conversation. He did not want to be soothed or coddled or reassured. The man who had craved praise like a drug, who had turned toward your words like a flower toward the sun, was gone. In his place was a creature of pure, distilled bitterness, a man whose humiliation had curdled inside him until it became something toxic.
He had lost. That was the core of it, the wound beneath the wounds. He had been beaten by a hedge knight in front of half the nobility of the Reach, and then he had demanded a Trial of the Seven, the most sacred and dramatic form of combat the gods permitted, and he had lost that too. His side had lost. The gods themselves had declared against him, had declared in favor of the dirt-smeared giant who had loosened his tooth and spilled his blood and stolen his dignity. Aerion Targaryen, the prince who had burned a man alive for making a joke, the prince who had broken a puppeteer's fingers for telling the wrong story, the prince who believed with every fiber of his being that he was a dragon in human form, had been brought low by a nameless hedge knight with hay in his hair and dirt under his nails.
And you, who had witnessed the beginning of that humiliation, had become the vessel into which he poured all his bile.
"I should have you hanged for being related to that oaf." His hand shot out and closed around your wrist, hard enough to make you freeze. "Why would a brother fight like that? Why would a brother look at a sister like that? Tell me the truth. Was he your lover before he was your brother? Did you share a bed in the slums of Flea Bottom, before I found you?"
The accusation was so vile, so utterly, grotesquely wrong, that for a moment you could not speak at all. You could only stare at him, at his swollen face and his blazing eyes and the jealousy that was consuming him from the inside out like a fire that would not be quenched.
"He is my brother," you said, and your voice was quiet and steady and utterly without the rage that was boiling in your chest. "My brother. My blood.Nothing more. Nothing less. I have never lain with him. I have never wanted to. The very thought is disgusting to me, and it should be disgusting to you too."
Aerion held your gaze for a long moment. Then he released your wrist and turned his face away.
"Finish the bandage," he said, and said nothing more for the rest of the day.
Sometimes, rarely, they brought Rhaenyra to see you. It was never for long. Ten minutes, fifteen, never more than half an hour. A servant would bring her to the door, and she would run across the room on her unsteady two year old legs, bewildered relief of a child who did not understand why her mother had vanished from her life. You would scoop her up and hold her against your chest and breathe in the smell of her, that particular sweetness of soap and milk and sunshine that you had missed like a severed limb.
"Mama," she would say, her small hands patting your face, your hair, your shoulders, as if reassuring herself you were real. "Mama, where did you go? I looked for you. I cried and cried but you didn't come."
"Mama was taking care of your father," you would say, and your voice would be steady even though your heart was breaking. "Your father is very sick, sweetling. He needs Mama's help. But Mama loves you. Mama thinks about you every moment. Do you understand? Every single moment."
She would nod, her small face solemn, and then she would launch into a breathless account of everything she had done since she saw you last. The bird she had seen on the windowsill. The game the nurses had taught her. The dreams she had dreamed. You drank in every word like water in a desert, memorizing the cadence of her voice, the animation of her expressions, the way her tiny hands moved when she was telling a particularly exciting part.
And then Aerion would stir in the bed behind you, and the servant would step forward, and Rhaenyra would be lifted from your arms.
"No," you would say, every time, reaching for her even as the servant pulled her away. "Please, just a few more minutes. Just a little longer. She's only just arrived."
"Prince's orders," the servant would say, and the door would close, and you would be alone with him again.
The nights were the worst.
During the day, Aerion was mostly manageable. Irritable, demanding, prone to dark silences and darker accusations, but manageable. You could distract yourself with the work of caring for him, the constant rhythm of bandages and medicine and meals. You could count the hours until the next time Rhaenyra might be brought to you. You could lose yourself in the small, finite tasks that kept your hands busy and your mind from wandering to places it should not go.
But at night, when the candles burned low and the fire died to embers and the only sound was the soft, labored rhythm of his breathing, the monster in him stirred.
It started on the fourth night. You had been dozing in the chair beside his bed, your neck cricked at an awkward angle, your body aching for the comfort of a proper mattress. You were dreaming of the garden, of Rhaenyra's laughter, of pink flowers crushed beneath bare feet. And then a hand closed around your forearm, and you were jolted awake with a gasp.
Aerion was looking at you from the bed. His eyes were fever bright in the near darkness, and his hand was hot and dry against your skin. The blanket had slipped down to his waist, and you could see the bandages around his ribs, the splint on his arm, the bruises that spread across his torso like storm clouds. But you could also see, in the shadows beneath the blanket, the unmistakable evidence of his arousal.
"Come here," he said. His voice was hoarse, rough with pain and desire in equal measure. "I need you."
"Aerion," you said carefully, "you're injured. The maester said you need to rest. You could reopen your wounds. You could..."
"I don't care what the maester said." His grip on your arm tightened. "I've been lying in this bed for four days. I've lost everything. My pride. The hedge knight walks free, and I am trapped in this room like a cripple. The least you can do," and his voice hardened on the words, "is give me this."
"You're not well. Please, just wait until you're stronger. I promise, when you're healed..."
"When I am healed, I will take what I want anyway." He pulled you closer, and you could smell the sourness of his breath, the stale sweat of his unwashed body, the cloying sweetness of the milk of the poppy that still lingered on his tongue. "But I want it now. I have spent four days flat on my back like a turtle overturned, watching you flutter around me with your careful hands and your careful voice and your careful eyes that never quite meet mine. I know what you think of me. I know what you think when you look at me. You think I'm a monster. You think I got what I deserved."
"No," you whispered, but it was a lie and you both knew it.
"Yes," he said. "You do. And I don't care. You can hate me all you like, in the privacy of your own mind. But you are mine.Now. Come. Here."
He could not be rough with you, not in his condition. His broken arm lay useless at his side, and his bandaged ribs prevented any sudden movement. But he did not need to be rough to make you feel the weight of your captivity. He directed you with his voice, that voice you had once praised and soothed and loved, telling you where to touch him, how to move, what he wanted from you. He could not take you the way he had on the stone floor, could not pin you down and force himself inside you while you sobbed and pushed at his chest. But he could make you take him in your mouth while he lay back against the pillows with his eyes half closed and his hand tangled in your hair. He could make you straddle him carefully, carefully, moving with the slow precision his injuries demanded, while his one good hand gripped your hip hard enough to bruise.
"That's it," he murmured, his voice thick with pleasure and pain and the strange, twisted satisfaction of ownership. "That's my good girl. My sweet girl. You know what I need. You always know what I need."
"Now you should rest." He was already drifting, the exertion combined with the milk of the poppy pulling him back toward unconsciousness.
"You're the only one," he mumbled, his voice slurring with sleep. "The only one who stays. The only one who doesn't leave. Don't leave me. Promise you won't leave."
You did not promise. You dried your hands on a cloth and returned to the chair beside his bed, and you watched him sleep, and you thought about the copper cup of milk of the poppy on the bedside table, and you thought about what it would be like to be free.
â
The servant came for you on the seventh day. You were sitting in the chair beside Aerion's bed, your hands idle in your lap for the first time in what felt like years. He was sleeping deeply, the milk of the poppy dragging him down into a place where even his dreams could not reach him.
The door opened without a knock. You turned, expecting another servant with a tray of food, another maester with fresh bandages, another summons from the nurses saying Rhaenyra was crying for you and would not be soothed. But the woman who stood in the doorway was not a servant you recognized.
"Prince Maekar requests your presence," she said. Her voice was flat, neutral, the voice of a woman delivering a message she did not fully understand. "You are to come with me immediately."
You stared at her. Prince Maekar. The man who had called you a whore to your face, who had forbidden you from speaking to his children, who had looked at you for years with an expression of cold, unwavering contempt. He had never once spoken to you directly, had never acknowledged your existence except as a problem to be managed. And now he was summoning you?
"Prince Maekar," you repeated, and your voice came out uncertain, almost afraid. "Why would Prince Maekar want to see me?"
The servant's expression did not change. "I was not told, my lady. Only that you are to come at once. Prince Aerion is sleeping. He will not miss you. Please, follow me."
You looked back at the bed. Aerion's chest rose and fell in the slow, steady rhythm of deep sleep. His good hand was curled loosely on the pillow beside his face, his fingers twitching slightly as he dreamed. If you left and he woke to find you gone, there would be consequences. There were always consequences. But the servant was watching you with her sharp grey eyes, and something in her manner told you that this was not a request. This was an order, delivered with the full authority of the man who ruled Summerhall.
You rose from the chair. Your legs were unsteady beneath you, your body still aching from the nights of sleeping in chairs and on pallets, from the strain of lifting and turning and tending a man who outweighed you by half.
The castle was quiet at this hour. The afternoon light slanted through the narrow windows, casting long shadows across the stone floors. You had not been outside Aerion's room in seven days. The world seemed larger than you remembered. Brighter. More dangerous.
The servant led you through corridors you did not recognize, up a flight of stairs, down another corridor, until you stood before a heavy oak door banded with iron. She knocked twice, a sharp, deliberate rap that echoed in the silence.
"The woman is here, my prince," she said.
A voice from within, muffled by the door, said something you could not make out. The servant pushed the door open and gestured for you to enter.
You stepped inside. The room was small, sparsely furnished. A table. A few chairs. A narrow window that looked out over the castle's eastern wall. The fire in the hearth had burned down to embers, casting the room in shadow and flickering orange light. And standing near the window, one hand braced against the wall for support, a thick piece of wood tucked under his other arm to hold him upright, was your brother.
Dunk.
You stopped in the doorway as if you had walked into a wall. Your heart seized in your chest. Your breath caught in your throat. Your hands flew to your mouth, pressing against your lips as if to hold in the sound that was trying to escape, a sound that was half sob and half scream and half something that had no name at all.
He looked terrible. His face was a mess of bruises, purple and black and yellow-green, one eye swollen nearly shut, a gash across his cheekbone held closed with clumsy stitches. His lip was split in two places. His left arm was wrapped in a sling, and the piece of wood under his right arm was a crutch, crude and hastily made, the kind a maester might fashion for a patient who refused to stay in bed. He was leaning heavily on it, his massive frame listing to one side, his shoulders hunched with exhaustion and pain. He looked like a man who had been through a war and had only barely survived.
"Y/N," he said, and his voice was exactly the same as it had been when he was eight years old and lifting you from your mother's deathbed. Cracked. Hoarse. Full of a desperate, aching tenderness that made your chest splinter into a thousand pieces.
One moment you were standing in the doorway with your hands pressed to your mouth, and the next you were in his arms, your face buried in his chest, your shoulders shaking with sobs you had been holding back for years. His good arm wrapped around you, pulling you against him, and you felt the crutch fall away, felt him stagger and brace himself against the wall so he would not fall. He was so big. He had always been so big. Even broken and bruised and barely able to stand, he surrounded you, enveloped you, made you feel for the first time in longer than you could remember that you were safe.
"I've got you," he said into your hair, and his voice was breaking, splintering, cracking into pieces that sounded like your mother's laugh and your father's name and every promise he had ever made you. "I've got you. I've always got you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I looked for you. I looked everywhere. They told me you were dead. They told me they found your body in the river. They said you were burned beyond recognition. I believed them. Gods forgive me, I believed them."
"I didn't know," you sobbed into his chest. Your fingers were twisted in his tunic, gripping the rough wool as if he might disappear if you let go. "I didn't know they told you that. I thought you were still looking. I thought you would find me. I waited for you. Every night, I waited for you. I never stopped believing you would come."
"I'm sorry, i believed them. I believed you were dead, and something inside me died with you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, little sister. I should have kept looking. I should have known. I should have..."
"Stop." You pulled back just enough to look up at his face, at the tears that were cutting tracks through the blood and the bruises. "Stop apologizing. You searched for me. You believed what they told you. Any man would have believed it. I don't blame you. I have never blamed you. I only ever wanted you to know I was alive. I tried to send word. I tried so many times. But Aerion..."
You stopped. The name hung in the air between you like a curse. Dunk's expression darkened. His good arm tightened around your shoulders. "Aerion," he repeated, and the word came out like a growl. "What happened to you, Y/N? Where have you been all these years? How did you end up here, with him?"
You pulled away from him gently. Your legs were shaking. You found a chair and sank into it, and Dunk lowered himself awkwardly onto the edge of the table, his injured leg stretched out in front of him, his crutch clattering to the floor. He did not take his eyes off you. He watched you the way he had watched you when you were children, with that fierce, protective intensity that had once been the only thing standing between you and the darkness of the world.
"They sold me," you said, and your voice was quiet and hollow and did not sound like your own. "The men who took me. They sold me to a brothel on the Street of Silk. A high end place, for lords and merchants. The madam... she was cruel. She said I was special. She said I would make them very rich."
Dunk's hands tightened on your shoulders. His face had gone very pale beneath the bruises, and his jaw was clenched so hard you could see the muscle jumping beneath the skin.
"And then," you continued, "Aerion came, he bought me and never left me"
And then you told him about Rhaenyra.
"Her name is Rhaenyra," you said, and your voice softened on the name, the way it always did. "She's two years old. She looks like her father. But she's kind. She's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. She's the only good thing that has come out of any of this. And she's the reason I can't leave."
Dunk was silent for a long moment. His face was unreadable, a mask of bruises and exhaustion and something that might have been grief. When he spoke, his voice was low and rough.
"I'll take you away," he said. "Both of you. You and the little girl. I'll find a way. I have friends now. A prince and a lord. We can protect you. We can hide you somewhere Aerion will never find you."
You shook your head. The tears were streaming down your face again, hot and silent, dripping off your chin and onto your hands. "You don't understand. He would never let me go. He would hunt me down like a dog. He would burn cities to the ground to find me. He told me... the night after the puppet show, when he came to my room, he told me the only way I would ever leave him was in a shroud. He meant it, Dunk. I have seen what he does to people who defy him. I have seen him cut a servant's hand for spilling wine on him. I have seen him laugh while a man burned alive. If I tried to run, if I took Rhaenyra and disappeared, he would never stop looking. And when he found me, and he would find me, he would kill me. He would take my daughter and he would kill me, and Rhaenyra would grow up without a mother, raised by a monster who would teach her that cruelty is strength and kindness is weakness and love is just another word for ownership."
"He would have to go through me first," Dunk said, and his voice was hard, the voice of a man who had faced seven knights in single combat and emerged victorious. "I lost you once. I believed you were dead for years. I mourned you, Y/N. I sat in that alley and I let the darkness take me because there was no light left in the world. And then I found you again, alive, here, in this place, with that man. I am not going to lose you again. I don't care if he is a prince. I don't care if he has a hundred Kingsguard. I will find a way to get you out of here. I will find a way to keep you safe. I swear it. I swear it on our mother's grave. I swear it on everything I am."
"Dunk." You reached out and took his enormous hand in both of yours. His knuckles were swollen and bruised, the skin split and scabbed over. The hands that had lifted you from the mattress where your mother had stopped breathing. The hands that had carried you into the cold morning while the other whores watched with pity. The hands that had promised you silk and lemon cakes and a world where no one would hurt you. "I want to believe you. I want to believe there is a way out of this. But you have to understand what you're risking. He will kill you. He will kill you without hesitation, without a trial, without anything but the cold satisfaction of removing an obstacle. And if you die, if you die trying to save me, I will have nothing left. Nothing. Do you understand? You are my brother. You are the only family I have in this world besides my daughter. I cannot lose you again."
He squeezed your hands. His grip was gentle, impossibly gentle for a man who had killed knights and broken bones and fought his way through horrors you could only imagine. "You won't lose me," he said. "I promise you, little sister. You won't lose me."
â
You ran. Egg had barely finished speaking before you were out the door and flying down the corridor, your heart pounding so hard you could feel it in your teeth, your lungs burning with every breath. You did not care if anyone saw you. You did not care if there were questions. All you cared about was getting back to Aerion's room before he woke, before he realized you were gone, before the fragile illusion of your obedience shattered into a thousand irreparable pieces.
You reached the door to Aerion's chamber and paused, pressing your palm flat against the wood, forcing yourself to breathe. You could not go in looking like a woman who had just run across half the castle. You could not go in looking like a woman who had been crying in her brother's arms. You smoothed your hair with trembling hands. You wiped the tears from your cheeks. You arranged your face into the careful mask you had worn for years, and you pushed open the door.
Aerion was still asleep. He had not moved since you left. His breathing was slow and steady, his bruised face relaxed in the depths of his drugged slumber. The milk of the poppy still held him in its grip. The bandages on his ribs were unrumpled. His splinted arm lay exactly where you had arranged it. He had not woken. He had not called for you. He had not noticed your absence at all.
You closed the door behind you and leaned against it, your legs threatening to give way beneath you. You had made it. You had made it, and he did not know, and you were safe. For now. For this moment. For as long as you could keep the mask from slipping.
You returned to the chair beside his bed and sat down, and you waited.
Days passed. Aerion healed. Slowly at first, then with the stubborn, grinding determination of a man who refused to be seen as weak for a moment longer than absolutely necessary. The bruises faded from black to purple to yellow-green. The swelling around his eye went down until he could open it fully again. The split lip closed, leaving a thin white scar that tugged at the corner of his mouth when he spoke. The ribs were slower to mend, the maester said, and he would need to be careful for weeks yet, but the splint came off his arm and he began to flex his fingers, to test the range of motion, to push against the limits of his own body the way he pushed against everything else in his life.
By the end of the second week, he could walk with a stick. You were the one who helped him take his first steps. His arm draped over your shoulders, his weight pressing down on you until your knees buckled, his breath harsh and labored against your ear. You walked him across the room and back again, step by agonizing step, your body bearing the burden of his in a way that felt like a metaphor for everything your life had become.
"Good," he said through gritted teeth when he finally lowered himself back onto the bed. âThat's good. I'll be out of this room by the end of the week.â
"My father is sending me away," he had said, and his voice was flat, toneless, drained of its usual fire. "Lys. A city of whores and perfumed merchants. He calls it self reflection. A chance to contemplate my actions and return a better man. But we both know what it really is. Exile. He cannot bear to look at me. He blames me for Baelor's death, even though it was his own blow that killed him. He blames me for everything."
You had not known what to say, so you had said nothing. That was safest. That had always been safest.
"You and the girl will come with me, of course, Lys is said to be beautiful. Warm. The sea is the color of sapphires, and the women walk around in silks so fine you can see their skin through the fabric. You will like it there."
You would not like it anywhere he was. But you had smiled, because that was what you did, and you had told him that Lys sounded lovely, and you had turned away to prepare his next dose of medicine so he would not see the despair in your eyes.
After that, things shifted slightly. Perhaps Aerion felt guilty for uprooting you. Perhaps he was simply trying to secure your loyalty before the journey. Whatever the reason, he began to allow you to visit Rhaenyra in the nursery. Not for long, not unsupervised, but every day. Every single day, you were permitted to leave his chamber for an hour and go to your daughter.
It was the only thing that kept you sane. You would sit in the nursery with Rhaenyra on your lap, her small body warm and solid and alive against your chest, and you would listen to her chatter about the games she had played and the songs she had learned and the dreams she had dreamed. You would brush her hair and sing to her in the soft voice you used for no one else. You would tell her that you loved her, that you would always love her, that there was nothing in the world she could do that would make you stop loving her. And you would try very hard not to think about the fact that in a few weeks, a few months at most, you would be on a ship to Lys, and the only world Rhaenyra had ever known would disappear behind her forever.
It was on one of these days, when you returned from the nursery with Rhaenyra's laughter still echoing in your ears, that everything fell apart.
You pushed open the door to Aerion's chamber and stopped dead in the doorway. There were two guards in the room. Between them, kneeling on the stone floor, was the servant. The one who had come to you days ago. The one who had said Prince Maekar requests your presence. The one who had led you through the corridors to the room where Dunk was waiting.
She was barely recognizable. Her face was a swollen mass of bruises, her lips split in three places, her nose broken and crusted with dried blood. One of her eyes was swollen completely shut, and the other stared at the floor with the glassy, unfocused gaze of someone who had retreated so far inside herself that she might never find her way back out. Her dress was torn, stained dark with blood and sweat and things you did not want to name. Her hands, folded limply in her lap, were missing three fingernails.
You knew, in that moment, that you were going to die.
Aerion was standing by the window, leaning on his stick, his back to you. He did not turn when you entered. He simply stood there, silhouetted against the grey afternoon light, his shoulders rigid, his free hand clenched into a fist at his side.
"Close the door," he said. His voice was calm. Too calm. The calm of a sea that had gone flat and glassy in the moment before a tidal wave.
You closed the door. Your hands were shaking so badly you could barely grip the latch.
"Aerion," you said, and your voice came out as a whisper, thin and reedy and full of the terror you could not hide. "What is this? What happened to her?"
Now he turned. His face was the face you had seen on the stage of the puppet show, cold and cruel and utterly without mercy. His violet eyes were dark with a rage that had been simmering for days, waiting for this moment, and his mouth was a thin hard line that made the scar at the corner of his lip stand out white against his skin.
"Is it true?" he asked. His voice was still calm. Still quiet. Still terrible. "Did you betray me? Did you see that treasonous bastard of your brother?"
Your heart stopped. Your blood turned to ice. The world narrowed to the space between you and him, the fire in the hearth, the broken woman on the floor.
"Aerion, please, let me explain..."
"Did you see him?" He did not shout. He did not raise his voice at all. But each word was a hammer blow, driving the breath from your lungs, the strength from your legs. "This woman, this servant, has told me everything. How she came to you while I was sleeping. How she led you through the castle. How my father, my own father, arranged for you to meet your brother in secret behind my back. Is it true? Answer me. Is it true?"
Your mind raced, scrambling for a lie, a deflection, anything that might save you. But the servant was kneeling on the floor with her fingernails torn out and her face beaten to pulp, and you knew that whatever you said, whatever excuse you offered, he had already made up his mind.
"It was not my choice," you said, and your voice cracked on the words. "The servant came and said your father wanted to see me. I did not know it was a trick. I did not know Dunk would be there. I went because I was afraid to refuse. Please, Aerion, you have to believe me. I did not seek him out. I would never..."
"Liar." He spat the word like a curse. "You have been lying to me since the moment you saw his face in the pavilion. You have been lying to me while you changed my bandages and brought my medicine and performed your little duties like the devoted whore you pretend to be. All this time, you have been dreaming of him. Planning with him. Scheming behind my back. Did you think I would not find out? Did you think I would not have you watched? Did you think I was stupid?"
"No, I never..."
"Be silent." He took a step toward you, and the stick thumped against the stone floor like a death sentence. "I have listened to your lies for years. I have listened to you whisper that you loved me while your eyes were always looking somewhere else. I have listened to you promise that you were mine while your heart belonged to another. I am done listening. Now you will listen to me."
He gestured to one of the guards. The man stepped forward, his face still grim and impassive. You barely had time to register the movement before his gauntleted hand cracked across your face.
The blow sent you sprawling to the floor. Your head hit the stone with a crack that made stars burst across your vision. The taste of blood filled your mouth. Your ears rang with a high, thin whine that drowned out everything else. You tried to push yourself up, but your arms would not hold you, and you collapsed back onto the cold stone, gasping.
"Take her away," Aerion said, and for a moment you thought he meant you. But the guard was already hauling the servant to her feet, dragging her toward the door, her head lolling on her broken neck. The other guard followed, and then the door closed, and you were alone with the dragon.
Aerion stood over you. The stick thumped against the floor as he took another step closer. You could see his boots from where you lay, the fine black leather, the silver buckles shaped like dragon wings.
"Let me tell you what happens now," he said, and his voice was soft, almost gentle, the voice of a man explaining something to a child. "You are going to Lys with me. You are going to share my bed and warm my sheets and perform your duties as you have always done. You are going to smile and praise me and tell me that I am magnificent. You are going to be exactly what you have always been. My whore. My property. My thing."
He lowered himself slowly, painfully, until he was crouching beside you. His hand came down and gripped your chin, forcing your face up toward his. His fingers were cold and hard and utterly without tenderness.
"If you ever see your brother again," he said, "if you ever speak to him, if you ever so much as learn his whereabouts and fail to tell me, I will not kill you. No. Killing you would be a mercy, and I am not feeling merciful. What I will do is make you pray for death. Every single day, you will pray for it, and it will not come. Do you understand?"
You tried to speak. No words came out. Only a thin, animal whimper that you barely recognized as your own.
"And Rhaenyra," he continued, and your blood turned to ice water. "If you betray me again, if you give me even the slightest reason to doubt your loyalty, I will take her from you. Not just for a few days. Not just to the nursery. I will sell her. Do you understand? I will sell her to a brothel the moment she has her first bleeding. She will spend her life on her back with strange men between her legs, just like her mother before her. Just like the whore who whelped her. That is what happens to the daughters of traitors. That is what happens to the children of women who forget who they belong to."
"No." The word tore out of you, a desperate, animal sound. "Aerion, no, please, she's your daughter, she's your blood, you can't..."
"I can do whatever I want." His voice was flat. Final. The voice of a god passing judgment. "She is mine. You are mine. Everything you have, everything you are, exists because I allow it. Your life is a privilege. Your motherhood is a privilege. Your identity as a mother, as a daughter, as anything other than what I tell you to be, is a privilege. And privileges can be revoked."
He rose to his feet with a grimace of pain, leaning heavily on his stick. He looked down at you, crumpled on the floor at his feet, and his expression was utterly without pity.
"Your only duty is to me," he said. "You are not a mother. You are not a sister. You are not a person with a past or a family or a soul. You are my whore. That is all you have ever been. That is all you will ever be. Everything else, every moment you have spent with Rhaenyra, every breath you have taken as a free woman, has been a gift. A gift that I gave you. A gift that I can take away."
He turned to the guard who remained. The man had been standing motionless by the door, his face a mask of professional indifference. He had watched the whole thing without flinching. You wondered, distantly, how many women he had seen broken on the orders of the men who paid him.
"Incapacitate her," Aerion said. "I want her unable to walk. Not permanently. I still need her to be able to perform her duties. But I want her to remember, every time she takes a step, what happens when she forgets who she belongs to."
The guard stepped forward. You saw him coming, saw the purpose in his eyes, and you tried to scramble backward on the floor, your heels slipping against the stone, your hands clawing for purchase. It did not matter. He was on you in three strides, his hands closing around your ankle, and you heard yourself screaming, heard Aerion's voice saying something you could not understand, and then there was a sound like a branch breaking in deep winter, and your leg exploded into white-hot agony.
The world went away for a while. When it came back, you were still on the floor. The guard was gone. Aerion was still standing over you, leaning on his stick, watching you with an expression that was almost curious. As if your pain were an experiment he had conducted and he was evaluating the results.
"The maester will come to set the ankle," he said. "You will tell him you fell down the stairs. You will not mention the guard. You will not mention this conversation. You will not mention your brother or your disobedience. You will smile, and you will thank me for my concern, and you will continue to perform your duties. Is that understood?"
You could not speak. The pain was too much. Your leg was a column of fire, and every heartbeat sent a fresh wave of agony through your body. But you managed to nod, a tiny, jerky motion of your head, and that seemed to satisfy him.
"Good," he said. "I am glad we understand each other."
He limped to the door, his stick thumping against the stone with every step. He did not look back at you as he left. He did not offer you a hand to help you up. He simply opened the door and disappeared into the corridor, and you were alone.
Dunk had promised. Dunk had sworn on your mother's grave, on everything he was. And Dunk had never broken a promise to you. Not once. Not ever.
You held onto that ember as the darkness closed in. You held onto it as the pain in your ankle pulsed and throbbed and dragged you toward unconsciousness. You held onto it as the door opened and the maester's voice exclaimed in shock and you heard yourself saying, over and over, the lie Aerion had given you. Fell down the stairs. Fell down the stairs. Fell down the stairs.
And when the maester's hands began to work on your ankle, when the world went white with pain and then mercifully black with oblivion, you held onto it still.
He does love herđ Someone already asked, but he was never actually going to sell her. It was a threat where at best he would have sent her to be a ward to some noble family while lying to the reader to make her feel bad
SUMMARY: Kidnapped as a child and presumed dead, you survive years of abuse before becoming the kept woman of Prince Aerion Targaryen. In a world where survival means loving a monster, your fragile sense of safety shatters when your past resurfaces in the worst possible way.
TW: rape, sexual abuse, sex trafficking, forced prostitution, domestic abuse, dubious consent, trauma bonding, graphic violence, torture, child endangerment, kidnapping, misogyny
WC:25K
209 A.C Flea Bottom
The first thing you ever remembered was your brotherâs hands.
Not your motherâs face, that was gone, worn away like a coin passed through too many fingers. You could summon the shape of her if you concentrated: the blurred watermark of a jawline, the suggestion of a mouth that laughed like a cracked bell, the smell of cheap wine and cheaper perfume that clung to her hair long after she stopped breathing. But her face? No. That belonged to the dark now, along with everything else from before.
But the hands, those you remembered. Dunkâs hands. Too large for a boy of eight, the knuckles already crosshatched with scars from street fights and kitchen fires, but impossibly gentle as they lifted you from the straw mattress where your mother lay cold and still. You had been five years old. You had not understood death, only that Mother would not wake. It was Dunk who wrapped you in a blanket thin enough to see through. Dunk who carried you out into the grey morning, your face pressed to his neck so you would not see the body being hauled away. Dunk who said, in a voice that splintered because he was barely more than a child himself, âIâve got you. Iâve always got you.â
And he had, you slept in doorways at first, curled together like kittens against the cold that seeped up through the cobblestones. Dunk learned quickly which bakers threw out day old bread and which watchmen could be bribed with a sad eyed look. He found work at an inn in Flea Bottom and the innkeeperâs wife let you sleep in the stables so long as Dunk scrubbed the floors and hauled the kegs and made himself useful in a dozen small ways. You would sit in the corner while he worked, your knees drawn up to your chin, watching him. Watching the boy melt away, season by season, into something that looked more like a man. He grew taller and broader and harder, his shoulders widening, his voice dropping. He was three years older than you, but sometimes he felt like thirty. He had never been a child. Neither of you had.
But you had each other. And that was enough. It had to be.
Every night, after his labors were done, Dunk would come to you in the stables. He would reek of sweat and sour ale, and he would lower himself onto the hay beside you with a groan that belonged to a man three times his age. And then he would tell you stories heâd gathered like dropped coins from travelers and old soldiers and the septon who sometimes came to beg a bowl of soup. Stories of knights who never faltered, dragons who spoke in riddles, castles of white stone that caught the sunrise like mirrors. Maidens so beautiful that kingdoms burned for a single glance.
You were twelve when the men began to notice you. It happened on an ordinary night, with an ordinary drunk whoâd had too much ale and too little sense. You were carrying a tray of empty cups back to the kitchen, your arms aching with the weight, when a hand came out of nowhere and closed on your backside. You froze, no understanding of what the sudden heat crawling up your neck meant or why your body had locked itself rigid as a board. The man laughed and then Dunk was there.
One moment the drunk was leering at you, his hand still on your body, and the next he was on the floor with blood fountaining from his nose and Dunk standing over him like a thunderhead. He threw the man out into the mud, and when he came back inside his hands were trembling with a rage so profound it seemed to warp the air around him. âStay close to me,â he said, and it was not a request. His voice was quiet, too quiet, the kind of quiet that lives on the far side of fury. âAlways. Do you understand? Always.â
You understood. From that day forward, you were never more than armâs reach from your brother. When he walked to the market, you walked beside him, your fingers sometimes hooked into the rope that acted like a belt, when the crowds pressed too close. The men still looked, by fourteen, you had grown into the kind of beauty that stilled conversations mid sentence, your motherâs eyes and your unknown fatherâs soft mouth arranged on a face that seemed to belong in a ballad rather than a Flea Bottom inn, but they looked from a distance. Dunk saw to that.
You were inseparable. Joined at the hip, the innkeeperâs wife liked to say, shaking her head with a fondness that bordered on bewilderment. âNever seen the like. That boy would tear the world apart for his little sister.â
You were sixteen when everything ended. The festival came in the spring, an eruption of color and noise that spilled from the gates of the Red Keep and flooded through the city like a tide. Mummers on stilts, jugglers with flaming torches, singers with harps slung across their backs, knights in armor that caught the sun and threw it back in a thousand glittering shards. Dunk had been given the night offâa rarityâand he had taken your hand with a grin you hadnât seen since you were children hiding from the rain under a stolen tarp. âCome on,â he said, and his eyes were bright in a way that made your chest ache.
You laughed and followed. The crowd was too thick. The torches made everything swim, light and shadow bleeding together until faces became masks and masks became faces. Dunk kept his hand clamped around your arm for the first hour, his grip unwavering, but then a knot of drunkards staggered between you and in the space of a single heartbeat, you lost him.
âDunk?â
You rose onto your toes, straining above the heads of the crowd. You saw him turn, saw his mouth open to call back to you, saw the sudden alarm flash across his features, and then the surge of bodies carried you sideways, a riptide of flesh and noise, and you stumbled into an alley to escape the crush.
That was when they took you. There were three of them. You never saw their faces clearly, only hands. Rough and quick and impossibly strong, one clamping over your mouth, another banding around your waist and lifting you clean off the ground. You tried to scream. You bit down on the palm pressed against your lips, tasted blood and salt and felt the man curse and shift his grip, but there was no time. A sack came down over your head, coarse and stinking of something you did not want to name, and the world went dark and muffled and small.
The last thing you heard was the festival. The music, the laughter, the endless churn of celebration. It went on without you, as if you had never been there at all.
Dunk searched for three days. He did not sleep. He did not eat. He tore through Flea Bottom like a storm given flesh, overturning carts and kicking down doors, bellowing your name until his voice shredded into something barely human. He went to the City Watch, and they laughed, a girl from the slums, what did he expect? He went to the sept, and the septon only clasped his hands and murmured prayers that tasted like ash. He went to every inn, every brothel, every lightless corner of the city where a girl might be hidden or sold or worse, and he found nothing. Nothing. Nothing and nothing again.
On the fourth day, a woman came to him, she found him in the alley where you had vanished, sitting against the wall with his head in his hands, and she knelt beside him.
âYouâre the one,â she said. Not a question. âLooking for the girl with the H/C hair. The pretty one.â
Dunkâs head came up so fast his neck cracked. âWhere is she?â
The woman shook her head. Slowly. Deliberately. A gesture that held everything he did not want to know. âThey found her in the water this morning, lad. Some menâŠâ She paused, and something that might have been pity flickered across her ruined face. âThey took her. And when they were doneââ Her hands made a twisting motion, a brutal pantomime that needed no translation. âThe women who found her said she was hardly recognizable. Theyâve already burned the body. Too much damage, they said. You donât want to see that. Trust me. Youâre better off remembering her the way she was.â
Dunk did not speak. He simply sat there, staring at the womanâs face, and something inside him cracked straight down the middle and bled dry.
âWho?â His voice did not sound like his voice. âWho did it?â
âNo one knows. Drunkards, maybe. Travelers passing through. Theyâre long gone now.â The woman rose, joints creaking, and looked down at him with something that was not quite pity and not quite indifference. âIâm sorry, lad. Truly.â
She left him there. And Dunk stayed. He stayed in that alley as the sun bled out and the moon rose pale and indifferent and the city settled into its night noises around him. His little sister was dead. He had promisedâpromisedâto protect her, and she was dead. And the world, which had never been kind to either of them, now seemed to hold no color.
â
213 A.C Ashford
The gardens of Ashford Castle were not as grand as the ones in Summerhall but they were still beautiful. You had been here for less than a fortnight, arrived as part of Prince Maekar's retinue for the tourney celebrating Lord Ashford's daughter's nameday, and already the place had worked its way under your skin. The roses were in full bloom, cascading over stone walls in waves of crimson and gold and softest pink. The hedges were trimmed into the shapes of birds and beasts.
The little girl was running through the grass ahead of you, her silver gold hair streaming behind her like a banner caught in a high wind, her bare feet slapping against the earth with the unselfconscious joy of someone who had never known hunger or fear or the back of a stranger's hand. She was two years old, small for her age but fierce, so fiercely alive that it stopped your breath sometimes, with violet eyes that missed nothing and a laugh that could fill an entire hall and still demand more room.
"Rhaenyra," you called, and you tried to sound stern, you really did, but the smile kept breaking through no matter how firmly you set your jaw. "Come back here before you trip and ruin that dress."
"Won't," the child announced, with the absolute conviction of someone who had never been wrong about anything in her life, and kept running.
You sighed, gathered your skirts in both hands, and gave chase. The dress you wore was finer than anything you had owned before Aerion had claimed you, a gift he had given you specifically for this journey. Pale blue silk that whispered when you moved, with silver embroidery at the sleeves and neckline. He had wanted you to look presentable at Ashford. You suspected, though you had not said it aloud, that he also wanted to show you off. To remind his family, and perhaps himself, what he possessed.
You were twenty years old now, no longer the trembling girl who had been thrown into a black carriage while a brothel burned behind her, no longer the hollow eyed creature who had learned to disappear inside her own body while men did what they pleased. The past months and years had reshaped you, smoothed some of the sharp edges and hardened others.
But there was something new in you now, something forged in the long nights of learning to survive Aerion Targaryen and the longer days of learning to love your daughter. You knew how to bend without breaking. And you knew, with a certainty that lived in your bones like marrow, that you would kill any living soul who tried to harm your child.
Rhaenyra had tripped over an exposed root and was sitting in the grass, more affronted than injured, examining a smudge of dirt on her palm with the grave concentration of a maester confronted with an ancient and inscrutable text. You scooped her up before the tears could organize themselves, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head, breathing in the smell of sunshine and crushed grass and something warm and sweet that was just her.
"Told you," you murmured into her hair. "You fell."
"Didn't cry," Rhaenyra pointed out. This was technically true, and there was a note of such fierce pride in her small voice that your heart performed an odd, painful little flip in your chest.
"No," you agreed, pulling back to look at her solemn face. "You didn't. You're a brave little dragon, aren't you?"
The child beamed. She adored being called a dragon. It was one of the few gifts Aerion had given her that did not make your stomach twist into complicated knots. This inheritance of fire and blood and the unshakeable conviction that she was meant for something magnificent.
You carried her back toward the castle, her small arms wrapped tightly around your neck, her voice a ceaseless ribbon of chatter about the butterfly she had almost caught and the bird that had flown directly over her head and the flower she had picked that was pink, Mama, pink and pretty and can I keep it forever please please please. You made the appropriate sounds of wonder and encouragement, your eyes scanning the courtyard as you crossed it, your body perpetually aware of who was watching.
The servants of Ashford avoided your gaze, much as the ones at Summerhall did. They had learned, over the course of the tourney's first days, to treat you with a careful neutrality. Not quite respect, not quite disdain, something suspended in the ambiguous space between. They knew what you were. Prince Aerion's paramour. The woman he had brought with him from Summerhall, installed in a guest chamber near his own, paraded through the grounds like a provocative piece of art he wanted everyone to see whether they wished to or not. They did not speak to you unless absolutely necessary, did not meet your eyes, did not acknowledge the child in your arms except to incline their heads stiffly and step aside.
Ashford Castle was a crowded place during the tourney. Lord Ashford's daughter Gwin had turned thirteen, and to honor her nameday, her father had declared a tourney that would last five days. Knights and lords from across the Reach and beyond had gathered to compete, their banners snapping in the spring breeze, their pavilions spreading across the fields like a crop of colorful mushrooms.
Prince Maekar's entire family had come with his children. You saw them sometimes, in the corridors or the courtyards or the great hall at supper, but you never spoke to them. You were not permitted. Prince Maekar had made that blisteringly clear from the very beginning, his voice cold with a disgust he did not bother to disguise.
"The woman stays in her chambers," he had told Aerion when he first met you. "I will not have her parading about in front of the children. She is a whore, Aerion. A whore and you will not embarrass this family."
Aerion had not argued. He rarely argued with his father directly. But he had kept you anyway, had dressed you in silk and silver, had installed you in a room that connected to his own. And now you were here, carrying your daughter back toward the keep while the roses nodded in the breeze and the distant sounds of the tourney grounds drifted over the walls like distant thunder. You had not been permitted to attend the jousts. Not since the yesterday.
You closed your eyes for a moment against the memory. It had been horrible. Aerion's tilt against Ser Humfrey. You had been watching from the stands, Rhaenyra on your lap, your heart in your throat the way it always was when he rode. He was a skilled jouster, your prince, but he rode with a recklessness that bordered on suicidal, and sometimes you thought he would not be satisfied until he left someone broken in the dirt.
This time, he had aimed too low. Deliberately, you were almost certain, though you would never say so aloud. His lance had struck Ser Humfrey's horse in the neck, a brutal, illegal blow that sent the animal crashing to the ground with a scream that would haunt your nightmares for weeks. Ser Humfrey had been thrown, his leg twisted at an angle that made your stomach lurch, and the horse had thrashed in the dirt with blood pumping from its throat.
The crowd had broken through the barriers. Prince Baelor Breakspear himself had risen from his seat, his face a mask of disgust, and you had seen the way he looked at Aerion. The way everyone looked at Aerion. Like he was something monstrous. Something broken beyond repair.
Aerion had found you afterward, still flushed with adrenaline, his eyes too bright. He had forbidden you from attending any more of the jousts.
"It's not safe," he had said, his grip on your arm just shy of bruising. "The crowds are unpredictable. The horses are dangerous. You and Rhaenyra will stay in the castle or the gardens. I don't want you anywhere near the lists."
You had not argued. You rarely argued with him about things that mattered. But you had seen the truth behind his words, the truth he would never admit. He did not want you to see him lose. He did not want you to see the way the other knights looked at him after what he had done.
So you had stayed away. You had walked in the gardens, and played with Rhaenyra, and smiled your careful smile whenever Aerion returned to your chambers in the evenings, bruised and bristling and desperate for the praise only you could give him.
"Up," Rhaenyra demanded as you approached the castle's side entrance. "Up high, Mama. I want to see."
You lifted her higher, settling her higher on your hip with the practiced ease of two years of motherhood, and she gazed around the corridor with the same wide eyed wonder she brought to everything. You loved her so much it scared you sometimes. Loved her with a ferocity that made the love you had felt for your own mother, dim and distant and blurred at the edges, seem like a candle held up against the sun.
"You spoil her."
The voice came from behind you, and you did not startle. Months with Aerion had taught you the particular cadence of his footsteps, the faint jingle of the sword he wore even at peace, the way the air in a room seemed to tighten and grow watchful when he entered. You turned, shifting Rhaenyra to your other hip with a fluidity that had become second nature, and offered him the smile you had perfected over your time together.
It was not a false smile. That was the strange thing, the thing that still surprised you when you stopped to examine it. It was not false at all. There was calculation in it, yes. There was calculation in everything you did, a habit you could not have broken if you tried. But there was warmth there too. The warmth of a woman looking at a man she had somehow, against all odds and reason, come to care for.
Love. The word still felt strange in your mouth, like a garment that did not quite fit. Aerion was not kind. He was not gentle. He was not good, in any sense that your brother Dunk would have recognized. But he was yours, in his possessive, consuming, infuriating way, and you were his, and somewhere in the crucible of the past years, that mutual belonging had transmuted into something that looked, from certain angles, remarkably like love.
He was not a tall man, standing at five and a half feet, and you knew it rankled at him. Knew that every inch he lacked compared to the warriors he trained with was a splinter under his skin. But what he lacked in height he more than compensated for in presence. The way his boots struck the stone floors, deliberate and commanding. The sharp, hawkish beauty of his face, all angles and shadows. The particular weight of his attention when it landed on you, heavy as a hand on your shoulder.
"My dragon," you said, and the word was warm, intimate, a private jest between you that no one else would recognize. "She wanted to explore the gardens. You know how she loves the roses."
He stepped closer, and Rhaenyra immediately lunged toward him, her small arms outstretched, her face alight with the uncomplicated adoration of a child who had never been given a reason to fear her father. "Papa! Papa, I found a flower!"
She had dropped the flower somewhere in the garden, of course. You had seen it fall, a little pink bruise against the green grass, left behind in her headlong rush toward the next thing and the next and the next. But Aerion did not know that, and you suspected he would not have cared if he did. He took the girl from your arms with an ease that still surprised you, settling her against his chest as naturally as if he had been doing it all his life.
Aerion, who was never gentle with anyone. Aerion, whose hands had left bruises on your body in the early days. Aerion, who had aimed his lance at a horse's throat and watched it die without flinching.
But Rhaenyra had never seen that side of him. Rhaenyra saw only the father who bounced her on his knee and called her his little dragon and looked at her as if she were the single good thing he had managed to produce in a life full of sharp edges and bad decisions. And you saw both versions of him, the monster and the man, and you had learned to hold them both in your mind at once, to love the whole complicated, contradictory mess of him.
"A flower," Aerion repeated, bouncing Rhaenyra gently against his chest. "What color?"
"Pink!"
"Pink," he said, with the solemnity of a man receiving a sacred revelation. "Pink is an excellent color. You have impeccable taste."
Rhaenyra giggled, burying her face in the curve of his neck, and Aerion's eyes met yours over the top of her head. There was something in his gaze. A flicker of warmth, a flicker of something that might have been gratitude. It made your heart clench in that way you had long since stopped trying to explain away.
I love him, you thought, and the thought did not feel like a lie. It felt like the truth, strange and inconvenient and slightly terrifying though it was. Gods help me, I truly do.
You knew what people would say if they could hear your thoughts. How can you love him? After what he did to that horse? After what he did to you? After what he is? And they would not be wrong to ask. The early days had been brutal; there was no use pretending otherwise. He had hurt you, in ways that still surfaced in your dreams on bad nights. He had fucked you without asking, had demanded without giving, had treated your body like territory to be conquered and your compliance like tribute to be extracted.
But then something had shifted. Slowly, incrementally, in the way of seasons changing. He had begun to see you. The woman who praised him when no one else would. The woman who listened to his fears and his rages and his strange, tangled dreams of dragonfire and destiny. The woman who had given him a daughter and held his hand through the disappointment and taught him, patient as a stone worn smooth by water, how to be something other than cruel.
And you had seen him, the man underneath, the one who craved praise because he had never received it, the one who lashed out because he had never learned another way to ask for what he needed. You had seen him, and against all wisdom, against all self preservation, you had loved him.
He still hurt you, sometimes. When his black moods descended and his hands grew rough and the words that came out of his mouth were designed to wound. But those moments were rarer now, spaced further and further apart, and after each one he would come to you with his arms full of gifts. Dresses of silk and velvet, jewels that glittered in their velvet nests, books with leather bindings and gold leaf on the pages that you devoured in the quiet hours when he was training and Rhaenyra was napping. He would hold you afterward, his face pressed into your hair, his arms wrapped around you like a cage he was afraid you might slip through.
"You understand me," he would whisper, and his voice would crack on the words in a way that made your heart splinter. "You're the only one who does. The only one who ever has. Don't leave me. Promise me you won't leave."
And you, holding him in the dark, would stroke his short silver hair and murmur the words he needed to hear. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm yours."
You meant them, too. That was the strangest part. After everything, you meant them.
Where would I even go? you thought, watching him bounce your daughter in his arms in this borrowed garden in a borrowed castle, surrounded by roses that belonged to someone else.
You looked at Rhaenyra, at the small, fierce face that was so clearly her father's, and you thought about the day she had been born.
It had been the longest day of your life.
The labor had lasted nearly eighteen hours. You had screamed until your voice gave out entirely, had bitten straight through the leather strap the midwife had given you, had prayed to gods you had not believed in since childhood to make it stop, please make it stop, I can't do this, I'm going to die, please let me die. Aerion had paced outside the door like a caged animal, his boots wearing a groove in the stone, demanding updates every few minutes and threatening bodily harm to the maester whenever the news was not to his liking.
"Is it a boy?" he had shouted through the door, over and over, his voice fraying at the edges. "Tell me it's a boy. It has to be a boy. I'm going to name him Maegor. A strong name. A dragon's name. Tell me!"
You had heard him, even through the wall of agony that had swallowed the world, and you had felt a cold dread settle into the pit of your stomach like a stone dropped into deep water. Maegor. He wanted to name his son after Maegor the Cruel. You had prayed then, harder than you had ever prayed in your life, with what remained of your shredded voice and your failing strength. Not a boy. Please, not a boy. Whatever else you give me, don't give me a boy who will carry that name.
The gods, for once in their capricious existence, had listened.
When the baby had finally emerged, slick and furious and impossibly, breathtakingly alive, the maester had looked between her tiny legs and pronounced, with the careful neutrality of a man who knew exactly how dangerous this moment was: "A girl, my prince. A healthy girl."
The silence that followed had been more terrifying than any scream.
Aerion had burst into the room, his face pale as milk, his short hair standing up in wild disarray from running his hands through it for eighteen hours. He had stared at the child in the maester's arms. At the tuft of silver gold hair plastered to her scalp, at the violet eyes that were already open and glaring at the world with an indignation that seemed profoundly personal. His expression had twisted into something ugly.
"A girl," he had said, and his voice was flat. Hollow. A room with all the furniture removed. "I waited nine moons. Nine moons. For a girl."
He had not touched you. He had not touched the baby. He had simply turned on his heel and walked out of the room, and you had heard his boots ring down the corridor, and then the distant slam of a door, and then nothing.
The next three days had been the darkest of your new life. Aerion did not come to your room. He did not send for you. He did not acknowledge the existence of the child at all. He ate his meals with his family, trained in the yard with a brutality that left his sparring partners bloodied and bewildered, and refused to speak to anyone who so much as mentioned the baby's existence. The girl, the servants called her in whispers, because she had no name yet, and a child without a name was a ghost.
You lay in your bed, your body slowly knitting itself back together, your breasts aching with milk, and you held your daughter against your chest and wondered if this was the end. If Aerion would cast you both out, send you back to the streets of King's Landing with nothing but the clothes on your back and a bastard child in your arms. You made plans in the dark hours. Foolish, desperate plans, the kind of plans that only seemed reasonable at three in the morning when you were alone and terrified and your stitches still pulled every time you moved. You would run. You would find Dunk if he was still alive, throw yourself at his feet, beg him to take you back even though you were ruined and used and nothing like the sister he had lost. You would find work, honest work, kitchen work, anything, and you would raise your daughter to be strong and fierce and free, and she would never, ever know what it felt like to be owned.
But on the fourth day, the door had opened.
Aerion stood in the frame, and you barely recognized him. His eyes were ringed with shadows so dark they looked like bruises, his short hair a disheveled mess, his fine clothes rumpled and stained as if he had been sleeping in them, or not sleeping at all. He had been wrestling with something, you realized. Himself, his pride, his expectations, his disappointment. And from the look of him, he had lost.
"Let me see her," he said. His voice was hoarse, scraped raw, as if he had been shouting or weeping or both. "Let me see my daughter."
You did not trust yourself to speak. You simply lifted the baby from your chest. She was awake, her violet eyes tracking the movement with that unnerving intensity newborns sometimes had. And you held her out toward him.
Aerion approached slowly, cautiously, like a man approaching a wounded animal that might bite. He looked down at the small, wrinkled face, at the silver gold fuzz on her head, at the tiny fists that clenched and unclenched in the air as if she were already fighting battles only she could see. And something in his expression shifted. Not softened. Aerion did not soften, not in any way you had ever witnessed. But cracked. A fissure in the ice, unexpected and profound.
"She looks like me," he said. It was not a question.
"Yes," you whispered, your voice still ruined from screaming. "She's a true dragon, my prince. Just like her father."
He reached out one finger, just one, his hand trembling almost imperceptibly, and touched the baby's cheek. Rhaenyra turned her head toward the contact, her tiny mouth opening and closing in that instinctive rooting reflex.
"Rhaenyra," he said. "I'll call her Rhaenyra."
You knew the name, of course. Everyone in Westeros knew the name. The princess who had been called Maegor with teats, who had fought a war that tore the realm in half and refused to surrender even when the odds were hopeless. It was a name soaked in controversy, in blood, in the stubborn refusal to be anything other than what she was. It was a cruel name to give an infant daughter, in some ways. A challenge. A provocation. A reminder that girls could be as dangerous as boys, if they were bold enough.
But it was not Maegor. It was not the name of the Cruel. And on that fourth day, with your daughter finally named and Aerion's hand resting awkwardly, almost shyly, on your shoulder, you had decided to be grateful for small mercies.
"Rhaenyra," you repeated, trying the name on your tongue. It tasted like strength. Like fire. Like survival. "My little dragon."
And now, two years later, watching that same daughter tug impatiently at Aerion's doublet while he laughed, that hope had only grown. Rhaenyra was fierce and stubborn and clever and alive, so vibrantly alive, and you would make certain she stayed that way. You would die before you let that happen. You would kill before you let that happen. And the truth of that, the absolute crystalline certainty of it, was the most liberating thing you had ever felt.
"Y/N."
Aerion's voice pulled you back from the precipice of memory. He was watching you over Rhaenyra's silver gold head, his expression hovering somewhere between amusement and irritation.
"You're brooding again," he said. "You get that look on your face when you're thinking too hard. I've told you. I don't like it."
You let your expression shift, the distant look replaced by something warmer, more present. But you did not apologize; you had learned, over your time together, that apologizing for your thoughts only made him more suspicious. Instead, you reached out and straightened the collar of his doublet, letting your fingers brush the skin of his throat, a gesture of casual intimacy that you knew he craved even if he would never admit it.
"I was thinking about how happy she looks," you said, and it was the truth, or a version of it. "You make her happy, Aerion. You know that, don't you?"
He grunted, but you caught the flicker of satisfaction that crossed his features before he could suppress it. Praise. He could never get enough of it, had been starved for it his entire life, and you had learned to feed him with the same regularity you fed your daughter. All this time, and he still turned toward your words like a flower toward the sun, drinking in every affirmation, every acknowledgment, every whispered you are magnificent, you are powerful, you are loved.
"She's a dragon," Aerion said, adjusting Rhaenyra on his hip with practiced ease. "Dragons don't get sad. They incinerate the things that upset them."
"Papa," Rhaenyra said, with the sudden, intense solemnity that only a two-year-old can muster, "I want to incinerate something."
Aerion threw back his head and laughed. A real laugh, full throated and genuine, the kind of laugh that transformed his sharp features into something almost boyish, almost approachable. "That's my girl," he said, and pressed a kiss to her forehead with an uncharacteristic tenderness. "That's my little dragon. We'll find you something to burn later."
You watched them, this strange, fierce man and this strange, fierce child, and your heart performed that complicated maneuver it had been practicing for years, folding affection and exasperation and hope and fear all into one impossible shape.
This is real, you told yourself. Whatever else is happening, whatever else they say about us, this is real. He is my Aerion, and she is my daughter, and this is my life, and it is real.
Aerion shifted Rhaenyra to his other arm and extended his free hand toward you. His earlier tension seemed to have eased, replaced by something almost eager, a restless energy that crackled just beneath his skin.
"There's a play tonight," he said. "Some puppeteers have set up in the village. I've heard it's about a dragon." His mouth curved into that sharp, knowing smile you had come to recognize. "I thought we might go after supper. You and me and the little dragon here. She should see something worthy of her name."
Rhaenyra's head came up at the word dragon, her violet eyes bright. "A dragon play, Papa?"
"A dragon play," Aerion confirmed, tweaking her nose. "With fire and scales and everything a proper dragon ought to have. Would you like that?"
Rhaenyra's shriek of delight was answer enough. She bounced in his arms, clapping her small hands together, already launching into a stream of questions about whether the dragon would be big or small, whether it would breathe real fire, whether she could meet it afterward and be its friend.
You smiled, and this time there was no calculation in it at all. Aerion was trying. In his own strange, possessive way, he was trying. He had brought you to Ashford to wound his cousin, yes. He had paraded you in front of his family like a trophy, yes. But he was also here, in this sunlit corridor, planning an evening at a play with his paramour and his bastard daughter, and there was something in his face that you had learned to recognize as hope.
"That sounds wonderful," you said, and meant it. "Rhaenyra will be talking about it for weeks."
"She'll be talking about it regardless," Aerion said dryly. "The child never stops talking. She gets that from you."
"From me?" You pressed a hand to your chest in mock offense. "I am the very soul of silence, my prince."
Aerion snorted. It was an undignified sound, entirely at odds with the sharp, cruel prince the rest of the world knew. "You are a terrible liar, Y/N. You always have been."
But he was smiling when he said it, and when he offered you his arm, you took it without hesitation. Rhaenyra was still chattering about dragons, her small voice filling the corridor with improbable questions and even more improbable declarations. Aerion answered her with patience, with warmth, with the particular tenderness he reserved for her alone.
And you walked beside them through the halls of Ashford Castle, your hand on Aerion's arm, your daughter's laughter echoing off the stones, and for this moment, this single bright moment, you let yourself believe that everything would be all right.
â
The screaming started before you understood what was happening.
One moment there had been music, the thin reedy piping of a flute and the thump of a hand drum, and Rhaenyra had been bouncing on your hip with her small hands clapping together in delight. The painted dragon had been swaying above the stage on its strings, its wings catching the torchlight, its jaws opening and closing in roar while the puppeteer below made a rumbling growl deep in her throat to give it voice. Rhaenyra had laughed. You could still hear the echo of that laugh, bright and silver and utterly without fear.
Then Aerion and the white cloaks moved, and the world splintered. The first tent pole went down with a sound like a thunderclap. Silk billowed inward, red and gold and orange, catching the torchlight and becoming flame even as it fell. People were screaming. People were running. A woman stumbled into you from behind and you curled around Rhaenyra on pure instinct, your spine curving, your arms locking, your body becoming a shell with your daughter at its center. Someone's elbow drove into your ribs and you felt something grind and shift and send a bright white bolt of pain up your side.
"Mama," Rhaenyra whimpered, and her voice was small, so terribly small, the voice of a child who did not understand why the world had turned cruel between one heartbeat and the next. "Mama, I want to go. I want to go home."
"Shh," you breathed into her hair, though your own voice was shaking so badly the word hardly had a shape. "Shh, my love, my dragon, Mama's here. Mama's got you. Close your eyes, sweetling. Close your eyes and it will be over soon."
She buried her face in the curve of your throat. You could feel her tears, hot and wet, soaking through the silk of your gown. You could feel her heart beating against your chest, a frantic bird trapped in a cage of bone. You could feel every tremor that ran through her small body, and each one was a knife slipped between your ribs.
The guard Aerion had assigned to you stood at your back like a statue carved from ice. Ser Harrold, his name was, you had begged him to escort you from the pavilion the moment the violence began. You had turned to him with Rhaenyra clutched against your chest and pleaded with him to let you leave, to let you take your daughter somewhere safe, somewhere the screaming did not reach.
He had looked at you with eyes that held no more warmth than a winter pond. "Prince's orders," he had said, and the words fell from his mouth like stones dropped into still water. "You stay until he says otherwise."
"But she's frightened," you had said, and you had hated the tremor in your voice, hated the way it made you sound weak when you needed to be strong. "She's two years old, Ser Harrold. She doesn't understand what's happening. Please."
"Prince's orders," he had repeated, and he had not looked at you again.
On the stage, Aerion had the puppeteer by the wrist. She was young. That was the detail that lodged itself in your memory like a splinter, the detail that would come back to you in the dark hours of the night for years afterward. She was young, perhaps your age. Her mouth was open in a scream that you could not hear over the roaring of the crowd, and her free hand was beating uselessly against Aerion's chest, against his arm, against the unyielding iron of his grip.
She had made a dragon out of paint and wood and string. She had painted scales on its wings with her own hands, had worked its jaws with her own fingers, had given it a voice that made children laugh and grown men cheer. She had made the terrible, fatal mistake of letting her dragon be killed in the story she told. The knight had slain it with his sword and the audience had gasped and clapped and cheered the hero's victory.
Aerion had not cheered. Aerion had stared with a face like a thunderhead, and then the Kingsguard had begun to move, and now he was on the stage with the puppeteer's wrist in his hand and her dragon lying forgotten at his feet.
He started with her fingers. The first one broke with a sound like a dry branch snapping underfoot in the depths of winter. It was surprisingly quiet, that sound, almost delicate, almost polite. The puppeteer's index finger bent backward at an angle that made your stomach contract violently, and she screamed, a high thin shriek that cut through the chaos of the pavilion like a blade through silk.
Rhaenyra flinched in your arms. "Mama," she whimpered, "why is the lady screaming? Is she hurt? Mama, I want to go."
"Close your eyes, sweetling," you whispered again, and your voice was breaking now, splintering into pieces you could not put back together. "Close your eyes and think of something nice. Think of the roses in the garden. Think of the pink flower you picked. Think of anything but this."
The second finger broke wetter than the first. A muffled, grinding crack that seemed to echo in the hollow of your chest. The puppeteer's legs gave out beneath her, but Aerion held her up by her ruined hand,ĂŹand his face, his beautiful face that you had kissed and praised and learned to love, was alight with something that went beyond cruelty into a territory you had no name for.
Pleasure. A bright, burning pleasure that lit him from within like a lantern lights a room. His violet eyes were wide and shining, his lips parted slightly around his bloodied teeth, his breath coming in short sharp bursts that were almost sexual in their rhythm. He was enjoying this. He was enjoying this in a way he had never enjoyed a single moment of the years you had spent together, and the realization crashed into you like a wave into rocks, cold and brutal and undeniable.
You love him, you had thought earlier in the gardens. No, you hate him. That was the horror of it, the horror that would never leave you no matter how many years passed. You loved him, you loved the father of your child, you loved the man who had burned down a brothel for you. You loved him, and he was standing on a stage in a village called Ashford, breaking a girl's fingers one by one because her puppet show had insulted his pride.
The third finger made a sound like a walnut being crushed in a vise.
"Please," you heard yourself saying, and you did not know if you were speaking to Aerion or to Ser Harrold or to the gods who had never listened to a single prayer you had ever sent their way. "Please, someone stop him. Someone make him stop."
Ser Harrold's hand closed around your upper arm, immobilizing you. He was wearing gauntlets, the leather stiff and unyielding against your skin. "Hold still," he said, and his voice was the voice of a man who had learned long ago that obedience was safer than conscience.
The puppeteer's fourth finger snapped.
Then the giant came out of the crowd. His hair was dirty blonde, cut short against his skull in a way that suggested practicality rather than fashion, and it was matted with sweat and dust and something that might have been blood. His face was a shadowed blur in the torchlight, his features obscured by the angle and the distance and the chaos, but his size. Gods above and below, his size.
He was enormous. Seven feet of bone and muscle and righteous fury, with shoulders broad enough to block out the firelight behind him and hands the size of dinner plates curled into fists at his sides. He did not slow. He did not hesitate. He cleared the edge of the stage in a single stride, and then he was on Aerion, and his fist was connecting with the prince's face with a sound like a hammer striking an anvil.
Aerion staggered backward. His grip on the puppeteer's wrist broke, and she crumpled to the stage in a heap of brown wool and ruined hands, sobbing. Blood flew from Aerion's mouth in a dark arc that caught the torchlight and glittered like rubies scattered across the stage. He hit the wooden planking hard, his head snapping back against the boards, and for one impossible, crystalline moment, the entire pavilion went silent.
Then the Kingsguard moved. They came from every direction at once, white cloaks streaming behind them like wings, white enameled armor flashing in the firelight. Six of them. Seven. More, perhaps. They swarmed the big man the way wolves swarm a bear, throwing themselves onto his back and his arms and his legs, trying to drag him down by sheer weight of numbers. He fought them. Gods, he fought them. You saw one Kingsguard reel backward with blood pouring from the visor of his helm. You saw another take an elbow to the throat and go down choking, clawing at his gorget. You saw the big man's fists rise and fall and rise again with the relentless rhythm of a blacksmith's hammer, each blow carrying the weight of a righteous anger that no amount of white armor could withstand.
But there were too many. There were always too many. They dragged at his legs and his arms and his neck, six white cloaked knights and then seven and then eight, and still he nearly threw them off, still he nearly got free, still he nearly made it back to his feet with his massive hands reaching for Aerion again. Then one of the Kingsguard drove the pommel of his sword into the back of the big man's skull, and his knees buckled. Another kicked his legs out from under him. Another twisted his arm behind his back at an angle that made the joint scream in protest even from where you stood watching.
They forced him to his knees on the stage. One of them, a tall man with a captain's bars on his white cloak, grabbed a fistful of that dirty blonde hair and yanked his head back, forcing his face up into the torchlight.
Aerion rose to his feet. He moved slowly, carefully, the way a man moves when he is holding onto his composure by the thinnest of threads. His lip was split open, a gash that ran from the corner of his mouth nearly to his chin. Blood sheeted down his jaw and dripped onto the white silk of his collar, staining it crimson. He probed at his teeth with his tongue, grimaced, and spat a wad of blood and saliva onto the stage. Something small and white and hard skittered across the wooden boards.
âWhy did you throw your life away for this whoreâ Aerion said.
"You've loosened one of my teeth,"
The pavilion had gone very quiet. The screaming had stopped, or perhaps it had simply receded to a distance where it could no longer reach you. The only sounds were the crackle of the torches, the soft sobbing of the puppeteer still huddled on the stage, and the ragged, labored breathing of the big man as he knelt in the grip of the Kingsguard. Aerion's voice was soft, almost conversational, the voice of a man discussing the weather over a cup of wine. It was more terrifying than any scream could have been.
"So," Aerion continued, prodding at his mouth again with his thumb and forefinger, examining the blood that came away, "we'll start by breaking out all of yours."
"No." The word came out of your mouth before you could stop it, a reflex as automatic as breathing, as instinctive as flinching from an open flame. "Aerion, no."
He did not look at you. He was not capable of hearing you, not in this state, not with the blood of a puppet show on his hands and the taste of his own tooth in his mouth. He was looking at the big man the way a child looks at an insect he has caught in a jar. Curious. Utterly without pity.
One of the Kingsguard, the captain with his hand still fisted in the big man's hair, forced his head down toward the stage. Another moved to stand on either side of him, gripping his shoulders, pinning him in place. A third stepped forward, removing his gauntlets one finger at a time, flexing his bare hands with the deliberate precision of a man preparing to perform a task that required both strength and care.
"Hold him still," Aerion said. "I want to watch."
Rhaenyra was sobbing in earnest now, her small body shaking with the force of her terror. She did not understand what was happening. She understood only that her father was on the stage and there was blood on his face and the safe bright world of the puppet show had collapsed into screaming and white cloaks and a big man on his knees who was about to be hurt in a way she had no language for.
"Mama," she wept, "Mama, I want Papa to stop, make Papa stop, please make him stop."
"I can't," you whispered into her hair, and the admission was a wound that would never fully heal. "I can't, sweetling. Mama can't make him stop. Close your eyes. Close your eyes and don't look."
The Kingsguard with the bare hands stepped forward. He was flexing his fingers, working the joints loose, his movements unhurried and methodical. The captain still had the big man's head forced down at the angle required for what was about to happen. The other guards braced themselves, digging their heels into the wooden stage, preparing for the struggle they knew would come.
The big man lifted his head against the pressure of the captain's grip. It was a monumental effort; you could see the muscles of his neck straining, the veins standing out like cords, the sweat cutting tracks through the blood and dirt on his face. He lifted his head, and the torchlight fell full upon his features for the first time.
You saw his face.
Time did not slow. It did not fade. It stopped. It stopped completely, absolutely, as if some vast and terrible hand had reached down from the heavens and seized the mechanism of the world itself and held it motionless. The torches froze mid-flicker. The screaming faded to a hum that existed somewhere beyond the boundaries of hearing. The blood in your veins turned to ice and then to fire and then to something that had no name at all.
You knew that face. You knew the hands. The enormous hands that had lifted you from your mother's deathbed, that had carried you through the cold morning while the other whores watched with pity and disgust, that had wrapped you in a threadbare blanket and held you against his chest while he promised you in a cracking boy's voice that he would always, always have you.
Dunk. He was alive. He was on his knees on a stage in a village called Ashford with a Kingsguard's hand in his hair and another Kingsguard's bare knuckles preparing to break his teeth out of his skull one by one, and he was alive.
"Dunk."
You did not recognize your own voice. It did not sound like a voice at all. It sounded like something that had been torn out of you by the roots, something that had been buried so deep and so long that pulling it free left a bleeding hollow in the center of your chest.
"Dunk."
Louder this time. Louder, and it cracked on the second syllable, cracked like your mother's laugh had cracked, like a bell that had been rung too hard and too long and had nothing left inside it but splinters.
"DUNK."
Time restarted itself with a violence that made your vision swim. The torches flared back to life. The screaming returned, a wave of sound that crashed over you and through you and left you gasping. The Kingsguard hesitated, their hands pausing on their prisoner, their white helms turning toward you with the synchronized precision of hunting dogs catching a scent.
Dunk turned his head. The captain still had his fist twisted in his hair, still had his neck bent at that brutal angle, but Dunk turned his head against that grip with the slow, inexorable force of a continent shifting, and he looked at you.
His eyes found yours across the chaos of the ruined tent. You saw the recognition hit him. Saw it travel through his body like a physical blow, a shock wave that started in his eyes and rippled outward through his shoulders, his chest, his hands. His face went slack with it, the tension draining out of his jaw and his brow, replaced by something that was too raw and too vast to be called surprise. It was disbelief. It was hope, the kind of hope that had been dead for so long its resurrection was indistinguishable from agony. It was joy and grief and guilt and love, all of them crashing together in the space of a single heartbeat.
His mouth moved. Formed the shape of your name. You could not hear it over the screaming, over the roaring of your own blood in your ears, but you saw it, saw the way his lips shaped the syllables he had not spoken in years, the name he had called across a hundred alleys and a hundred dark streets while he searched for you, the name he had whispered to himself in the long nights when he believed you were dead and gone and never coming back.
He surged against the guards holding him. Not fighting to escape now. Fighting to get to you. His massive shoulders bunched and heaved, nearly throwing off the two Kingsguard who were gripping his arms. A third lunged in to reinforce them, his white cloak tangling around his legs in his haste. Dunk did not seem to notice. He did not seem to feel the hands dragging at him or the knees pressing into his back or the captain's fist still grinding into his scalp. He was looking at you and only at you, and he was trying to reach you, trying to cross the impossible distance between the stage and the place where you stood with Rhaenyra in your arms.
You surged forward to meet him. You did not think about it. You did not calculate the odds or weigh the consequences. Your body moved before your mind could catch up, driven by an instinct older than thought, older than fear, older than anything you had learned in the years since they took you from the festival. Your brother was here. Your brother was alive.
Ser Harrold's arm locked around your waist like an iron bar. "Hold still," he snarled, and he was no longer calm now, no longer indifferent. He was struggling to hold you, struggling to keep his grip on a woman who had spent years learning to be still and silent and obedient and had finally, in this single shattering moment, forgotten how.
"Let me go!" The words tore out of your throat with a force that made your vision white out at the edges. Rhaenyra was screaming in your arms, her small fists beating against your shoulders, her voice a thin high wail that you could barely hear over the roaring in your ears. "Let me go, that's my brother, that's my brother, let me GO!"
"Aerion!" You were screaming his name now, the name of the man you loved, the name of the monster on the stage, the name of the only person in this pavilion who had the power to make the nightmare stop. "Aerion, please, please, you have to stop, he's my brother,please, Aerion, PLEASE!"
Aerion turned to look at you.
His face was still smeared with blood, his lip still split and swollen, his violet eyes still bright with the pleasure of the violence he had been orchestrating. But something flickered in their depths when he saw your face, when he registered the raw, unvarnished desperation in your voice. Confusion first. Then irritation, a flicker of the familiar petulance that crossed his features whenever something did not go the way he had planned. And then something else, something that chilled you more than any cruelty could have done.
Something calculating.
"What," he said, and his voice was a blade drawn slowly across a whetstone, "the fuck are you doing? What is she screaming about?"
You could barely form the words. Your throat was raw, your chest heaving, your arms trembling with the effort of holding Rhaenyra while Ser Harrold's grip threatened to crack your ribs. But you forced them out, forced them past the sobs that were building in your chest, forced them into the space between you and the man who held your brother's life in his bloodstained hands.
"He's my brother. He's my brother, Aerion." Your voice cracked on his name, splintered into something that was half a plea and half a prayer. "The brother I told you about. Dunk. The one I thought was dead. The one who raised me. Please. Please don't hurt him. I'll do anything. I'll give you anything. Just please, Aerion, please don't hurt my brother."
Something moved in Aerion's face. A muscle in his jaw jumped. His eyes narrowed, the bright pleasure of the violence draining out of them, replaced by something harder and colder and infinitely more dangerous. He looked at you, and he looked at Dunk, and he looked back at you, and you could see him putting the pieces together. The brother you had wept for in the dark hours of the night, the brother whose name you had whispered in your sleep, the brother Aerion had forbidden you from ever mentioning again.
The brother who was now on his knees in front of him, bloodied and defiant, the man who had dared to strike a prince of the blood, and his expression closed like a door slamming shut in a winter gale.
"Take her back to her chamber," Aerion said. He was not looking at you anymore. He was looking at Dunk, and his voice was utterly without warmth, utterly without the history that stretched between you, utterly without anything that might have been mistaken for mercy. "Lock the door. No one goes in or out until I give the order."
"No." The word was barely a whisper. Ser Harrold was already dragging you backward, his arm still locked around your waist, his heels digging into the trampled grass of the pavilion floor. "Aerion, no, please, you can't do this."
"Take the child to the nursery," Aerion continued, as if you had not spoken, as if your voice did not exist, as if you were already gone. "She does not need to see any more of this. Make sure she stays there."
"No!" The scream that tore out of you was not a sound. It was a living thing, a creature with claws and teeth and a heart full of desperation, and it ripped its way out of your throat and into the torchlit air of the pavilion with a force that made the nearest Kingsguard flinch. "You can't separate us! She's my daughter! She's MY daughter!"
Rhaenyra was shrieking now, a high thin sound that rose above the chaos like a needle sliding into flesh. Her arms were wrapped around your neck so tightly that you could feel her small fingernails digging crescents into your skin, and her legs were locked around your waist, and her face was buried in the curve of your shoulder, and she was screaming, screaming, screaming. "Mama, Mama, don't let them take me, Mama, please, I want to stay with you, Mama, MAMA!"
Ser Harrold was dragging you backward. Another guard, a man in the pale grey of Prince Maekar's household, was trying to untangle Rhaenyra from your arms. His hands were gentle, gentler than you had expected, but that gentleness made it worse somehow, made it more real, made it a kindness that was not a kindness at all. He was murmuring something to Rhaenyra, some meaningless reassurance that neither you nor she could hear over the screaming, and his fingers were prying at her small grip one digit at a time.
"Don't," you sobbed. "Don't take her. Please. Please don't take my daughter."
But your arms were being pulled backward, and your strength was failing, and Rhaenyra's grip was slipping. You felt her fingers lose their hold on your dress. Felt the warmth of her body pulled away from yours. Felt the cold air rush in to fill the space where she had been, and that cold was worse than any physical pain, worse than the bruises blooming on your arm where Ser Harrold held you, worse than the raw burning in your throat from screaming, worse than anything you had endured in the brothel or the alley or the long dark nights when you believed your brother was dead.
"RHAENYRA!"
She was being carried away, still reaching for you over the guard's shoulder, her silver-gold hair bright as a candle flame in the torchlight, her violet eyes wide and streaming with tears. "Mama! I want my mama! Give me back my mama!"
You fought. You fought the way Dunk had fought, with every ounce of strength in your body, with your teeth and your nails and your fury. You twisted in Ser Harrold's grip and raked your nails across his face, felt the skin of his cheek tear beneath your fingers, felt the hot wet rush of his blood against your palm. He cursed and tightened his hold, and something in your side gave way with a sharp bright spike of agony, but you did not stop. You could not stop. Your daughter was being taken from you, your brother was on his knees with a prince's boot on his neck, and the world was ending, and you could not stop.
And then, cutting through the chaos like a blade through silk, a young voice rang out across the pavilion.
"No! Don't touch him!"
Everyone froze. The Kingsguard with his bare hands paused mid-motion, his knuckles inches from Dunk's clenched jaw. The captain's grip on Dunk's hair loosened slightly in surprise. Even Aerion turned, his bloodied mouth twisting into an expression of annoyed bewilderment.
The boy who stepped forward from the chaos of the crowd was small, skinny, with a shaved head that gleamed in the torchlight like a polished stone. He could not have been more than nine or ten years old, and he moved with the absolute, unshakeable confidence of someone who had never been told that the world did not bend to his will. He was bald and his clothes were the roughspun of a stable boy, dirty and sweat-stained, but he wore them like a prince wearing borrowed silks.
Dunk's voice was a ragged gasp, desperate and afraid in a way it had not been when the Kingsguard were beating him. "You stupid boy! Hold your tongue or they'll hurt you."
The boy did not slow. He did not even glance at Dunk. His eyes were fixed on Aerion, and there was something in them that made the prince's expression flicker with the first hint of uncertainty you had seen all night.
"No, they won't," the boy said, and his voice was calm, steady, the voice of someone stating a fact as immutable as the rising of the sun. "If they do, they'll answer to my father."
He stepped past the Kingsguard as if they were not there, as if the white cloaks and the white armor and the drawn swords were no more substantial than morning mist. He stopped directly in front of Aerion, this small bald boy in dirty clothes, and he lifted his chin and looked the prince full in the face.
"Let go of him," the boy commanded. "Wate, Yorkel, do as I say."
And the Kingsguard obeyed.
The captain released Dunk's hair. The other guards stepped back, their hands falling away from his arms and shoulders, their white helms inclining slightly in gestures of deference that stopped your heart in your chest. They knew this boy. They knew him, and they obeyed him, and that could only mean one thing.
Aerion stared at the boy. His violet eyes narrowed, studying the shaved head, the dirty clothes, the small defiant face that was upturned to his own. And then, slowly, recognition dawned across his bloodied features like a sluggish sunrise. It was followed immediately by annoyance, a deep and profound irritation that seemed to cut through even the pleasure he had been taking in the violence moments before.
"You impudent little rat," Aerion said. His voice dripped with contempt, but beneath it lurked something else, something that sounded almost like wariness. "What's happened to your hair?"
The boy did not flinch. He did not blink. He looked at Aerion with the steady, unblinking gaze of someone who had spent his entire life watching and learning and understanding things that others missed, and when he spoke, his voice carried the unmistakable weight of royal blood.
"I cut it off, brother," he said. "I didn't want to look like you."
Brother. The word landed in the center of the pavilion like a stone dropped into still water. Brother. This boy, this small bald boy in stable clothes, was Aerion's brother. Which meant he was Prince Aegon Targaryen, the youngest of Prince Maekar's sons, the one you had glimpsed occasionally in the corridors of Summerhall, the one who had looked at you like you were a puzzle he was trying to solve.
And he had just intervened to save your brother's life. The revelation halted the attack instantly. The Kingsguard could not carry out Aerion's orders now. Not against a man who was connected, through his squire, to the royal family. Not against a man who was protected by a prince of the blood, however young and however bald and however inexplicably dressed in the roughspun of a stable hand. The captain stepped back further, his white cloak settling around him like folded wings, and the other guards followed suit, leaving Dunk kneeling alone on the stage.
Aerion's face was a study in frustration. The pleasure had drained out of him entirely now, replaced by a seething, impotent fury that he could not express without defying his own brother, his own blood, in front of half a dozen witnesses. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. The blood from his split lip still dripped down his chin, and his violet eyes were dark with a rage that had no outlet.
But he was a prince, and he knew the rules, and striking a man who was connected to the royal family was a crime that even he could not simply burn his way out of.
"Take him to the cells," Aerion said finally, and his voice was flat and cold and utterly drained of the pleasure that had animated it before. "He struck a prince of the blood. That crime remains regardless of whose squire the little rat has chosen to become. He will await trial and judgment, and lock her in her chamber."
Ser Harrold hauled you backward through the ruins of the pavilion. Your legs gave out beneath you, and he dragged you the rest of the way, your heels scraping furrows in the trampled grass, your head lolling against his shoulder, your voice reduced to a raw and wordless keening that did not stop. You passed overturned benches. You passed torn silk and scattered cushions and a child's abandoned shoe.
The last thing you saw before the tent flap closed behind you was Aerion. He was still standing on the stage, his red tunic splattered with blood, his face a mask of cold, distant contemplation. He was not looking at you. He was looking at the place where Dunk had disappeared, and there was something in his expression that you had never seen before. Something that went beyond jealousy, beyond possessiveness, beyond the casual cruelty of a man who had never been denied anything.
He looked like a dragon counting its hoard, and finding a single coin out of place.
â
The door slammed shut behind you with a finality that echoed through your bones.
You had screamed until your voice gave out. You had beaten your fists against the iron banded oak until your knuckles split and bled, leaving dark smears on the wood that looked like accusations. You had thrown yourself at the door again and again, your shoulder bruising, your strength ebbing, until finally your legs had given way beneath you and you had slid to the cold stone floor with your back against the unforgiving wood and your face buried in your bleeding hands.
Rhaenyra was gone. Dunk was gone. Everyone you had ever loved had been ripped away from you in the space of a single night, and you were locked in a borrowed chamber in a borrowed castle with nothing but the silence and the dark and the terrible, circling thoughts that would not let you rest.
You pressed your forehead against your knees and tried to breathe.The hours crawled past like wounded animals dragging themselves toward death. You did not move from your place against the door. You did not lie down on the bed, though it was soft and wide and covered in Ashford's finest linens. You did not drink the water that had been left on the side table, though your throat was raw and burning from screaming. You simply sat, curled into yourself, and waited.
For Aerion. For news. For something, anything, that would tell you what was going to happen next. You thought about the look on Dunk's face when he recognized you. The shock. The joy. The desperate, agonized love. What must he have thought? What must he have assumed about you, about your life, about the choices that had led you to this place?
The shame of it burned in your chest like swallowed fire.
You did not know how long you sat there. It might have been hours. It might have been minutes. Time had lost all meaning in the darkness of the chamber, with the candles unlit and the fire unbuilt and the only light coming from the pale sliver of moon that crept through the narrow window high in the wall. But eventually, eventually, you heard the sound you had been dreading and hoping for in equal measure.
Footsteps in the corridor. Boots on stone, deliberate and unhurried, the particular cadence of a man who knew that the world would wait for him. The jingle of a sword at the hip. The faint, almost imperceptible sound of a key turning in a lock.
The door swung inward, and Aerion Targaryen stepped into the room.
He had cleaned the blood from his face since you last saw him. His lip was still swollen. His silver gold hair had been combed back from his face, still damp from washing. He had changed his clothes; replaced by a simple black doublet that made his pale skin look almost luminous in the moonlight. He looked almost calm. Almost controlled. But his violet eyes were too bright, too sharp, the eyes of a man who was holding onto his composure by the thinnest of threads.
He closed the door behind him. You heard the lock click into place.
"My dragon," you said, and your voice came out as a croak, raw and broken from screaming. You tried to rise to your feet, but your legs would not hold you, so you remained on the floor, your back against the wall, your hands still stained with your own blood. "Aerion, please. Please tell me what's happening. My brother. Where is my brother? Is he all right? What are they going to do to him?"
The change that came over Aerion's face was instantaneous and terrifying. The careful mask of composure cracked like ice hit by a hammer. His jaw tightened. His eyes narrowed. His hands, which had been relaxed at his sides, curled slowly into fists.
"I come to you," he said, and his voice was a blade being drawn from its sheath, slow and deliberate and full of promise, "after being attacked in front of half the nobility of the Reach. My lip is split open. My tooth is loose in my skull. My dignity has been trampled by some hedge knight with dirt under his fingernails and hay in his hair. And the first words out of your mouth are not 'Are you all right, my prince?' Not 'Let me tend your wounds, my love.' Not a single word of comfort or concern for me, the man who saved you from a brothel, the father of your child, the prince who has kept you fed and clothed and protected for years."
He took a step toward you. Then another. His shadow fell across you like a shroud, blocking out the pale moonlight, plunging you into darkness.
"Your first words," he said, and his voice was rising now, climbing toward a register you had learned to fear, "are about him. A stranger. A man who struck me. A man who loosened my tooth and spilled my blood in front of the Kingsguard. That is who you ask about. That is who you care about. Not me. Not your prince. Not the father of your child. Him."
"He's not a stranger," you said, and your voice was barely a whisper. You knew you should stop. You knew you should placate him, soothe him, tell him everything he wanted to hear. That was what you had done for years, what you had become so skilled at doing. But you could not. Not tonight. Not with Dunk's face still burned into your memory like a brand. "He's my brother, Aerion. He's my brother. He raised me. He protected me, and you have him locked in a cell like a criminal. Please. Please, just tell me he's all right. Just tell me you haven't hurt him."
Aerion stared at you for a long moment. The torch from the corridor outside cast his shadow long and dark across the floor, stretching toward you like a grasping hand. His breathing was audible in the silence, harsh and uneven, the breathing of a man who was losing a battle with his own rage.
"You love him," he said finally. The words were flat, toneless, utterly without inflection. "This brother of yours. This hedge knight with his dirty hands and his dirty hair. You love him more than you love me."
"That's not true," you said, and it was the truth and it was a lie and it was everything in between. "I love you, Aerion. You know I love you. But he's my brother. He's my blood. I thought he was dead. I mourned him for years. And now he's here, and he's alive, and I just want to know that he's safe. That's all. I just want to know that he's safe. Please."
"Safe." Aerion repeated the word as if it were a foreign language, a concept he had heard described but never experienced. "Safe. You want to know if the man who struck me is safe. You want to know if the man who humiliated me in front of my family and my father is safe."
He laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. It was the sound of something breaking.
"You're mine," he said, and his voice cracked on the word, splintering into something that was half rage and half desperation. "You have been mine since the night I bought you. I paid fifty gold dragons for you. I burned down a brothel for you. I gave you a home, a place in my household, a daughter who bears my name. I have given you everything. Everything. And you stand there, bleeding on my floor, asking about another man."
"I'm not standing," you whispered, and you did not know why that was the detail you chose to focus on. He crossed the distance between you in three swift strides. His hand closed around your arm, hauling you upright with a strength that would leave bruises, and you cried out as the blood rushed back to your legs and the pain in your side flared white hot.
"You are mine," he said again, and his face was inches from yours, his violet eyes blazing with a fire you had seen directed at others but never, never at you. Not like this. Not with this intensity. Not with this complete and absolute absence of restraint. "Say it. Say you're mine."
"I'm yours," you gasped. His grip on your arm was agony, his fingers digging into the bruises Ser Harrold had left, and tears were streaming down your face. "Aerion, please, you're hurting me."
"Good." He shook you, once, hard enough that your head snapped back and hit the stone wall behind you. Stars burst across your vision. "Good. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll remember who you belong to. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll stop asking about other men. Maybe if I hurt you enough, you'll finally understand that the only way you leave me is in a shroud."
"My brother," you sobbed. "He's my brother. Not another man. My brother. Please, Aerion, please try to understand."
"I understand perfectly." His free hand came up to grip your chin, forcing your face toward his, forcing you to look into his eyes. "I understand that you have spent years telling me you loved me while you dreamed of someone else. I understand that the moment he appeared, you forgot everything I have done for you. I understand that you are a whore I pulled from a brothel, and no matter how many silk dresses I put on you, no matter how much of myself I pour into you, you will never, ever stop being what you are."
The words hit you like physical blows. Each one was a fist to the gut, a slap to the face, a knife slipped between your ribs. You had known, intellectually, that this was how he saw you. You had always known. But hearing it spoken aloud, hearing it thrown at you like an accusation, like a crime you had committed against him simply by existing, was something else entirely.
"Aerion," you whispered, and your voice was so small, so broken, that you barely recognized it as your own. "I have never been unfaithful to you. I have never looked at another man. I have never wanted anyone but you. He is my brother. My brother. Why can't you understand that?"
"Because I don't care!" He screamed the words directly into your face, his spittle flecking your cheeks, his breath hot and sour with wine and blood. "I don't care who he is! I don't care if he's your brother or your father or your long lost lover! The moment you chose him over me, the moment you screamed his name instead of mine, the moment you fought my guards and clawed Ser Harrold's face to try to reach him, you made your choice! And now you will live with it!"
His hand released your chin and came across your face with a crack that seemed to echo off the stone walls.
The backhand caught you across the cheekbone, hard enough to snap your head to the side, hard enough to send a spray of blood from your already split lip, hard enough that your legs gave out beneath you entirely. You fell. You did not fall gracefully, did not fall the way women fell in the songs Dunk used to tell you, floating down like petals on a breeze. You fell like a sack of grain, heavy and graceless, your hip striking the stone floor with a jolt of pain that made you gasp, your palms scraping raw against the cold flagstones, your already injured side screaming in protest as you landed.
You lay there for a moment, stunned. The taste of blood filled your mouth, copper and salt and something that might have been despair. The world swam in and out of focus. The moonlight from the window seemed very far away, a distant silver promise of a world that existed somewhere beyond this room, beyond this night, beyond the man who was standing over you with his chest heaving and his eyes blazing.
Then he was on top of you. His weight pressed you into the cold stone floor, heavy and immovable, the weight of a man who had trained with sword and shield and lance, the weight of a prince who had never been denied anything in his life. His knees pinned your thighs. One hand caught both of your wrists and forced them above your head, pressing them into the stone with a grip that made your fingers go numb. His other hand was at your throat, not squeezing, not yet, just resting there, a reminder, a threat, a promise.
"You're my whore," he said, and his voice was a growl, low and guttural and utterly without the cultured refinement he wore like armor in the daylight. "Mine. You have been mine since the night I bought you, and you will be mine until the day you die. Do you understand? Do you understand what that means?"
"Get off me," you gasped. Your voice was barely audible, strangled by the hand at your throat and the weight on your chest. "Aerion, please, get off me, I can't breathe."
"It means," he continued, as if you had not spoken, as if your words were less than nothing, as if your voice did not exist in any way that mattered, "that I own you. Your body. Your heart. Your soul. Every breath you take, you take because I allow it. Every night you sleep in a warm bed, you sleep there because I permit it. Every moment you spend with our daughter, you spend because I have chosen to let you. And the only way you leave me, the only way you ever leave me, is if you are dead. Do you understand? Dead."
He was tearing at your dress as he spoke, the silk that he had given you, the dress he had chosen, the dress you had worn to the puppet show, the dress Rhaenyra's tears had soaked through. You heard the fabric rip, felt the cold air on your skin, and you found what remained of your strength and pushed against him. Your hands were still pinned above your head, but you bucked your hips, twisted your body, tried to throw him off the way Dunk had thrown off the Kingsguard.
It was useless. It was always useless. He was stronger than you, heavier than you, and he had the advantage of gravity and rage and years of training in violence that you had never received. He pressed you back down against the stone, and his hand left your throat to grip your jaw, forcing your face toward his, forcing you to look into his eyes.
"Say it," he demanded. "Say you're mine. Say you belong to me. Say that no one else matters. Not your brother. Not anyone. Say it."
You did not say it. You could not say it. The words were locked in your throat, trapped behind the tears and the blood and the terrible, crushing weight of what was happening to you.
You tried to squeeze your legs shut, but his knee drove between them, forcing them wide. He was hard and the sight of his cock made your stomach turn.
"Look at it," he hissed, grabbing a fistful of your hair and yanking your head forward. "Look at what you made me do. This is your fault. If you had just obeyedâ"
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. He pressed the head of his cock against your entrance, already sore and swollen from the first time, and you whimpered, a high, broken sound that seemed to please him. He held there, just barely breaching you, letting you feel the pressure, the promise of invasion.
"Please," you whispered, your voice cracked and raw. "Please, Aerion, please don'tâ"
He thrust.
The sound you made was not a scream. It was something worse, a choked, guttural sob that tore from your throat as he buried himself inside you in one brutal push. The angle was wrong, too deep, too dry despite the precum already coating your thighs. You felt every ridge and vein of his cock as it forced its way deeper, splitting you open, claiming space that did not want him.
He paused, buried to the hilt, and let out a low groan that was almost human. Almost tender. Then he began to move.
Not fast. Not yet. He fucked you slowly, deliberately, with a cruelty that made every inch of the motion deliberate. He pulled almost all the way out, then slid back in with excruciating leisure, watching your face contort with each stroke. His eyes were locked on yours, challenging you to look away.
You did. You turned your head, pressing your cheek against the cold stone, staring at a crack in the floor until your vision blurred. But he would not allow that. He grabbed your jaw, forced your face back to his.
"Watch," he commanded. "Watch me take what is mine."
His pace increased. The slow, torturous rhythm gave way to a sharp, punishing fucking that drove the air from your lungs with every slam of his hips. The wet slap of skin against skin echoed off the walls, mingling with your ragged breaths and his grunts. He leaned down, his chest pressing against yours, and bit your shoulder, not a kiss, a bite, hard enough to break skin. You cried out, and he licked the blood, humming in satisfaction.
"That's it," he whispered against your ear, his breath hot and uneven. "Make sound for me. Let the whole castle hear how much you hate it. Let them know who you belong to."
He drove deeper, harder, angling his hips to hit that spot inside you that made your back arch despite yourself. A spark of unwanted pleasure shot through your pelvis, and you bit your lip so hard you tasted copper. He noticed. Of course he noticed. He slowed down, grinding against that same spot, watching your body betray you as your hips began to rock in counterpoint to his thrusts.
"There she is," he breathed, almost reverent. "There's the whore underneath. You can't hide her from me. She wants this. She needs this."
"No," you gasped, but your body said yes, clenching around him, drawing him deeper. Hot shame flooded through you, hotter than the pain, as your cunt began to slick with something that was not blood. He felt it too, he groaned, his rhythm faltering, his grip on your hips tightening.
"I'm going to fill you," he snarled, his composure cracking. "I'm going to pour every drop of my seed into this worthless hole until you're pregnant with my heir, a son this time, and then I'll do it again. And again. Andâ"
He came without warning, a guttural roar tearing from his throat as he shoved himself as deep as he could go, his hips stuttering, his cock pulsing inside you. You felt the hot flood of his cum, felt it spill out around him, felt it mix with the blood and your own unwanted wetness. He collapsed on top of you, his full weight pressing you into the stone, his breath hot and ragged against your neck.
For a long moment, neither of you moved. Then he shifted, pulling out with a wet sound that made you flinch, and rolled onto his back beside you. The moonlight had moved, illuminating his face now haunted gleam in his violet eyes that looked almost like regret.
But you knew better. You knew he would do it again. And again. And again. Because in his world, you were already dead. You just hadn't stopped breathing yet.
He did not speak. Neither did you. You lay on the cold stone floor with your torn dress twisted around your body and your wrists still aching from his grip and your thighs slick with the evidence of what he had done, and you stared at the ceiling, and you thought of nothing at all.
After a long time Aerion rose to his feet. He straightened his clothes with mechanical precision, adjusting his doublet, smoothing his hair back from his face. He did not look at you. He did not offer you a hand to help you up. He did not speak a single word of apology or comfort or explanation.
"Your brother will stand trial," he said, and his voice was the voice of a stranger, flat and cold and utterly devoid of the passion that had consumed him moments before. "For striking a prince of the blood. The sentence will be severe. How severe depends entirely on you."
He paused at the door, his hand on the latch, his back to you.
"If you try to see him again," he said, "if you try to contact him, if you so much as speak his name in my presence, I will have him executed. Do you understand? His life is in your hands. Remember that."
The remainder of the night passed in darkness. You did not move from the floor. You could not move from the floor. The torn silk of your dress had dried stiff and crusted against your skin, and you had not bothered to cover yourself. There was no one to see. There was no one to care. The moonlight crawled across the stone floor inch by inch, and you watched it the way a corpse might watch the shifting of its own shroud, with a detachment that went beyond despair into something vast and empty and still.
Morning came grey and cold through the narrow window. The sky outside was the color of old iron, heavy with clouds that had not yet decided whether to rain. You heard the castle waking around you. Footsteps in the corridor. The distant clang of the blacksmith's hammer. Servants calling to one another in voices too muffled to understand. The tourney, you remembered dimly. The tourney was still happening. Lord Ashford's daughter still needed her champion. The world was still turning, indifferent to the ruin of your life.
Someone brought food. You heard the door unlock, heard the tray scrape against the stone as it was pushed inside, heard the door lock again. You did not get up to look at it. The smell of bread and broth turned your stomach. You had not eaten since the puppet show, since before the puppet show, since the garden when Rhaenyra had found the pink flower and you had believed, foolishly and desperately, that everything would be all right.
The morning wore on. The light shifted. The clouds outside the window thickened and darkened and began to spit a thin, miserable drizzle that streaked the glass like tears.
And then, sometime in the afternoon, you heard the commotion.
It started as a distant murmur, a disturbance somewhere in the lower levels of the castle that grew louder and more urgent as it climbed toward your door. Shouts. Running footsteps. The clash of something metallic hitting stone. You lifted your head from the floor for the first time in hours, your neck aching, your vision swimming. Something was happening. Something was wrong.
The door crashed open. It was not Aerion who entered first but a maester, an old man in grey robes with a heavy chain around his neck and blood on his sleeves up to the elbows. Behind him came two guards, household men in the pale grey of Prince Maekar's service, carrying between them a litter on which lay a figure you recognized only by the silver gold of his hair.
Aerion. He was unconscious. His face was nearly unrecognizable. His lip had been split anew, a fresh gash that ran up toward his cheekbone. One of his eyes was swollen shut, the skin around it purple and black and glistening with some kind of salve. His chest was bare beneath a makeshift bandage that wrapped around his ribs, and the bandage was soaked through with blood, bright red and seeping, the color of life escaping. His right arm lay at an angle that was not natural, and his breathing was shallow and labored and made a wet, rattling sound that turned your stomach even as it ignited something else in your chest. Something you did not want to name. Something you did not want to feel.
You scrambled backward on the floor until your shoulder blades hit the wall. Your torn dress bunched around your knees. Your hands came up in front of you, a defensive gesture that was pure instinct, the instinct of a woman who had spent the night being broken and had no more pieces left to give.
"What," you said, and your voice came out as a croak, barely recognizable. "What happened? What is this?"
The maester did not look at you. He was directing the guards to lay the litter on the bed, his hands already reaching for the blood soaked bandages, already issuing orders about hot water and clean linen and milk of the poppy. But one of the guards, a young man whose face was pale and shocked and streaked with someone else's blood, paused long enough to answer.
"Trial of the Seven," he said, and the words meant nothing to you. "The prince demanded it. Against the hedge knight."
"Trial of the Seven?" The phrase was foreign, nonsensical, a collection of syllables that refused to resolve into meaning. "What are you talking about? What trial? What hedge knight?"
The maester looked up from his work at last. "The hedge knight," he said, and his voice was clipped and efficient, the voice of a man who did not have time for explanations. "Ser Duncan the Tall. The hedge knight demanded a trial by combat. The prince escalated it to a Trial of the Seven. Fourteen knights in the lists. The hedge knight's side won, but the prince was wounded. Gravely wounded. We have done what we can for the immediate injuries, but when he regained consciousness briefly, he insisted, quite forcefully, that he be brought to you. He said he wanted you to be his primary caretaker."
The words washed over you in a tide of incomprehensible information. Trial of the Seven. Fourteen knights. The hedge knight's side won. Dunk's side. Dunk had won. Your brother had won. Your brother was alive and he had won his trial and he was free, he must be free, because if the hedge knight's side had won the trial then the gods had judged him innocent.
But Aerion was on your bed with his ribs crushed and his arm broken and his face beaten into something barely human, and he had asked for you. Even after what he had done to you on this very floor. Even after the things he had said, the things he had called you, the violence he had visited upon your body. He had regained consciousness long enough to demand that you, and no one else, be the one to care for him.
You stared at the maester. The maester stared back at you, and something in his expression softened, just slightly, at whatever he saw in your face. Perhaps it was the bruises on your wrists. Perhaps it was the torn dress. Perhaps it was the way you sat huddled against the wall like a wounded animal that had learned to expect only more pain.
"I have done what I can for the immediate wounds," the maester said again, more slowly this time. "The prince will live, though his recovery will be long and painful. But he needs constant care. Someone to change his bandages, to administer his medicine, to watch for fever. He asked for you. Given his condition and his royal status, we are not inclined to refuse him."
You looked at the figure on the bed. The man who had raped you on the stone floor less than a day ago. The father of your daughter. The monster you loved. The prince who had promised to execute your brother if you so much as spoke his name. He lay unconscious and broken, his breath rattling in his chest, and you were being told that you would be his caretaker. That you would sit by his bedside and change his bandages and mop his brow and listen to him breathe.
The absurd cruelty of it was almost beautiful, in its way. A kind of poetry written in blood and bruises and the particular viciousness of men who believed they owned the women they had purchased.
"Leave us," you said, and your voice did not sound like your own. It sounded like the voice of someone much older, someone who had survived worse things than this and would survive worse things still. "I will care for him."
The maester hesitated. "My lady, there are instructions I must give you regarding the dressing of his wounds. The risk of infection is significant, and the milk of the poppy must be administered precisely. Too much will stop his breathing. Too little and the pain will be excruciating. Do you understand?"
"I understand," you said, though you understood nothing. You understood only that your brother was alive and free, and the man who had destroyed you was lying broken on your bed, and you were supposed to heal him. You were supposed to sit beside him and tend his wounds and keep him alive so that he could continue to own you, continue to threaten you, continue to hold your brother's life in his hands like a coin he might spend on a whim.
The maester gave you his instructions. You listened with half an ear, nodding in the appropriate places, filing the information away in a part of your mind that was still functioning, still capable of processing data and making decisions. Change the bandages every four hours. Watch for red streaks radiating from the wounds. Administer the milk of the poppy in doses measured by the small copper cup on the bedside table. If he wakes, give him water. If he develops a fever, send for the maester immediately.
And then they were gone, the maester and the guards, and the door was closed, and you were alone with him.
You stood in the center of the room for a long time, staring at the bed. At the rise and fall of his chest beneath the bloodied bandages. At the hand that lay limp and pale against the silk sheets, the hand that had struck you across the face, the hand that had pinned your wrists above your head, the hand that had held your chin and forced you to look into his eyes while he destroyed you.
You could let him die.
The thought came to you fully formed, as if it had been waiting in the back of your mind all along, biding its time. You could let him die. The maester had left you with the milk of the poppy and precise instructions about dosage. You could administer too much, or too little. You could neglect to change his bandages and let the infection take hold. You could hold a pillow over his face while he slept and press down until the ragged breathing stopped forever. There was no one else in the room. There were no guards at your door, not anymore. You could end this. You could end him. You could free yourself and your daughter and your brother with a single act of will.
You looked at the copper cup on the bedside table. You looked at the pillow beneath his head. You looked at your own hands, still bruised, still crusted with your own blood, still capable of doing what needed to be done.
And then you crossed the room, and you sat down in the chair beside his bed, and you began to prepare the first dose of milk of the poppy with hands that did not tremble at all.
If you let him die now, his father would investigate. There would be questions. There had been a maester here, and guards, and they had seen you alone with him. If Aerion died under your care, the blame would fall on you. You would be executed, or worse. And Rhaenyra would have no mother at all.
Not yet. But the knowledge was there now, a small cold seed planted in the dark soil of your heart. Not yet. But someday, perhaps. Someday, if the opportunity presented itself, if the circumstances aligned, if you could be certain of escaping the consequences. Someday, you might be free of him.
â
The days that followed blurred together like watercolors left in the rain. You were not permitted to leave the room. Aerion made that clear the first time you asked, your voice carefully neutral, your eyes on the floor. He had been awake for perhaps an hour, propped up on pillows that you had arranged behind his back with your own hands, his broken arm splinted and bound, his ribs wrapped tight in fresh linen. His face was still a ruin of purple and black and sickly yellow green, his lip still split, his eye still swollen half-shut. But his voice had lost none of its edge.
"Leave?" He had laughed, a humorless sound that turned into a wince as his ribs protested. "Why would you need to leave? Everything you require is here. Food will be brought. Water for washing. Fresh bandages from the maester. You have no reason to go anywhere."
"Aerion, please. I only want to see Rhaenyra. Just for an hour. Just to hold her and know she's all right. She must be so frightened. She's only two years old. She doesn't understand why her mother disappeared."
His expression had darkened, a cloud passing over the sun. "The child is fine. She is being cared for by the nurses. She does not need you hovering over her like a hen with one chick. What she needs is a father who is not an invalid, and what I need is a caretaker who does not spend every waking moment asking to leave."
"Aerion..."
"Enough." The word was a door slamming shut. "You will stay here. You will tend to my wounds. You will keep me company. You will not leave this room unless I give you permission. Is that understood?"
So you stayed. You woke when he woke, which was often, his sleep broken by pain and fever and the strange, feverish dreams that made him thrash and cry out in the darkness. You changed his bandages with the careful precision the maester had taught you, peeling back the old linen, examining the wounds for signs of infection, applying the salves and poultices with gentle fingers. You fed him broth when he could eat, spooning it into his ruined mouth one careful measure at a time. You helped him with the bedpan when he needed it, a humiliation that made his jaw tighten and his eyes go cold, as if his body's weakness were a personal insult you had somehow engineered.
You did all of this in silence, for the most part. He did not want conversation. He did not want to be soothed or coddled or reassured. The man who had craved praise like a drug, who had turned toward your words like a flower toward the sun, was gone. In his place was a creature of pure, distilled bitterness, a man whose humiliation had curdled inside him until it became something toxic.
He had lost. That was the core of it, the wound beneath the wounds. He had been beaten by a hedge knight in front of half the nobility of the Reach, and then he had demanded a Trial of the Seven, the most sacred and dramatic form of combat the gods permitted, and he had lost that too. His side had lost. The gods themselves had declared against him, had declared in favor of the dirt-smeared giant who had loosened his tooth and spilled his blood and stolen his dignity. Aerion Targaryen, the prince who had burned a man alive for making a joke, the prince who had broken a puppeteer's fingers for telling the wrong story, the prince who believed with every fiber of his being that he was a dragon in human form, had been brought low by a nameless hedge knight with hay in his hair and dirt under his nails.
And you, who had witnessed the beginning of that humiliation, had become the vessel into which he poured all his bile.
"I should have you hanged for being related to that oaf." His hand shot out and closed around your wrist, hard enough to make you freeze. "Why would a brother fight like that? Why would a brother look at a sister like that? Tell me the truth. Was he your lover before he was your brother? Did you share a bed in the slums of Flea Bottom, before I found you?"
The accusation was so vile, so utterly, grotesquely wrong, that for a moment you could not speak at all. You could only stare at him, at his swollen face and his blazing eyes and the jealousy that was consuming him from the inside out like a fire that would not be quenched.
"He is my brother," you said, and your voice was quiet and steady and utterly without the rage that was boiling in your chest. "My brother. My blood.Nothing more. Nothing less. I have never lain with him. I have never wanted to. The very thought is disgusting to me, and it should be disgusting to you too."
Aerion held your gaze for a long moment. Then he released your wrist and turned his face away.
"Finish the bandage," he said, and said nothing more for the rest of the day.
Sometimes, rarely, they brought Rhaenyra to see you. It was never for long. Ten minutes, fifteen, never more than half an hour. A servant would bring her to the door, and she would run across the room on her unsteady two year old legs, bewildered relief of a child who did not understand why her mother had vanished from her life. You would scoop her up and hold her against your chest and breathe in the smell of her, that particular sweetness of soap and milk and sunshine that you had missed like a severed limb.
"Mama," she would say, her small hands patting your face, your hair, your shoulders, as if reassuring herself you were real. "Mama, where did you go? I looked for you. I cried and cried but you didn't come."
"Mama was taking care of your father," you would say, and your voice would be steady even though your heart was breaking. "Your father is very sick, sweetling. He needs Mama's help. But Mama loves you. Mama thinks about you every moment. Do you understand? Every single moment."
She would nod, her small face solemn, and then she would launch into a breathless account of everything she had done since she saw you last. The bird she had seen on the windowsill. The game the nurses had taught her. The dreams she had dreamed. You drank in every word like water in a desert, memorizing the cadence of her voice, the animation of her expressions, the way her tiny hands moved when she was telling a particularly exciting part.
And then Aerion would stir in the bed behind you, and the servant would step forward, and Rhaenyra would be lifted from your arms.
"No," you would say, every time, reaching for her even as the servant pulled her away. "Please, just a few more minutes. Just a little longer. She's only just arrived."
"Prince's orders," the servant would say, and the door would close, and you would be alone with him again.
The nights were the worst.
During the day, Aerion was mostly manageable. Irritable, demanding, prone to dark silences and darker accusations, but manageable. You could distract yourself with the work of caring for him, the constant rhythm of bandages and medicine and meals. You could count the hours until the next time Rhaenyra might be brought to you. You could lose yourself in the small, finite tasks that kept your hands busy and your mind from wandering to places it should not go.
But at night, when the candles burned low and the fire died to embers and the only sound was the soft, labored rhythm of his breathing, the monster in him stirred.
It started on the fourth night. You had been dozing in the chair beside his bed, your neck cricked at an awkward angle, your body aching for the comfort of a proper mattress. You were dreaming of the garden, of Rhaenyra's laughter, of pink flowers crushed beneath bare feet. And then a hand closed around your forearm, and you were jolted awake with a gasp.
Aerion was looking at you from the bed. His eyes were fever bright in the near darkness, and his hand was hot and dry against your skin. The blanket had slipped down to his waist, and you could see the bandages around his ribs, the splint on his arm, the bruises that spread across his torso like storm clouds. But you could also see, in the shadows beneath the blanket, the unmistakable evidence of his arousal.
"Come here," he said. His voice was hoarse, rough with pain and desire in equal measure. "I need you."
"Aerion," you said carefully, "you're injured. The maester said you need to rest. You could reopen your wounds. You could..."
"I don't care what the maester said." His grip on your arm tightened. "I've been lying in this bed for four days. I've lost everything. My pride. The hedge knight walks free, and I am trapped in this room like a cripple. The least you can do," and his voice hardened on the words, "is give me this."
"You're not well. Please, just wait until you're stronger. I promise, when you're healed..."
"When I am healed, I will take what I want anyway." He pulled you closer, and you could smell the sourness of his breath, the stale sweat of his unwashed body, the cloying sweetness of the milk of the poppy that still lingered on his tongue. "But I want it now. I have spent four days flat on my back like a turtle overturned, watching you flutter around me with your careful hands and your careful voice and your careful eyes that never quite meet mine. I know what you think of me. I know what you think when you look at me. You think I'm a monster. You think I got what I deserved."
"No," you whispered, but it was a lie and you both knew it.
"Yes," he said. "You do. And I don't care. You can hate me all you like, in the privacy of your own mind. But you are mine.Now. Come. Here."
He could not be rough with you, not in his condition. His broken arm lay useless at his side, and his bandaged ribs prevented any sudden movement. But he did not need to be rough to make you feel the weight of your captivity. He directed you with his voice, that voice you had once praised and soothed and loved, telling you where to touch him, how to move, what he wanted from you. He could not take you the way he had on the stone floor, could not pin you down and force himself inside you while you sobbed and pushed at his chest. But he could make you take him in your mouth while he lay back against the pillows with his eyes half closed and his hand tangled in your hair. He could make you straddle him carefully, carefully, moving with the slow precision his injuries demanded, while his one good hand gripped your hip hard enough to bruise.
"That's it," he murmured, his voice thick with pleasure and pain and the strange, twisted satisfaction of ownership. "That's my good girl. My sweet girl. You know what I need. You always know what I need."
"Now you should rest." He was already drifting, the exertion combined with the milk of the poppy pulling him back toward unconsciousness.
"You're the only one," he mumbled, his voice slurring with sleep. "The only one who stays. The only one who doesn't leave. Don't leave me. Promise you won't leave."
You did not promise. You dried your hands on a cloth and returned to the chair beside his bed, and you watched him sleep, and you thought about the copper cup of milk of the poppy on the bedside table, and you thought about what it would be like to be free.
â
The servant came for you on the seventh day. You were sitting in the chair beside Aerion's bed, your hands idle in your lap for the first time in what felt like years. He was sleeping deeply, the milk of the poppy dragging him down into a place where even his dreams could not reach him.
The door opened without a knock. You turned, expecting another servant with a tray of food, another maester with fresh bandages, another summons from the nurses saying Rhaenyra was crying for you and would not be soothed. But the woman who stood in the doorway was not a servant you recognized.
"Prince Maekar requests your presence," she said. Her voice was flat, neutral, the voice of a woman delivering a message she did not fully understand. "You are to come with me immediately."
You stared at her. Prince Maekar. The man who had called you a whore to your face, who had forbidden you from speaking to his children, who had looked at you for years with an expression of cold, unwavering contempt. He had never once spoken to you directly, had never acknowledged your existence except as a problem to be managed. And now he was summoning you?
"Prince Maekar," you repeated, and your voice came out uncertain, almost afraid. "Why would Prince Maekar want to see me?"
The servant's expression did not change. "I was not told, my lady. Only that you are to come at once. Prince Aerion is sleeping. He will not miss you. Please, follow me."
You looked back at the bed. Aerion's chest rose and fell in the slow, steady rhythm of deep sleep. His good hand was curled loosely on the pillow beside his face, his fingers twitching slightly as he dreamed. If you left and he woke to find you gone, there would be consequences. There were always consequences. But the servant was watching you with her sharp grey eyes, and something in her manner told you that this was not a request. This was an order, delivered with the full authority of the man who ruled Summerhall.
You rose from the chair. Your legs were unsteady beneath you, your body still aching from the nights of sleeping in chairs and on pallets, from the strain of lifting and turning and tending a man who outweighed you by half.
The castle was quiet at this hour. The afternoon light slanted through the narrow windows, casting long shadows across the stone floors. You had not been outside Aerion's room in seven days. The world seemed larger than you remembered. Brighter. More dangerous.
The servant led you through corridors you did not recognize, up a flight of stairs, down another corridor, until you stood before a heavy oak door banded with iron. She knocked twice, a sharp, deliberate rap that echoed in the silence.
"The woman is here, my prince," she said.
A voice from within, muffled by the door, said something you could not make out. The servant pushed the door open and gestured for you to enter.
You stepped inside. The room was small, sparsely furnished. A table. A few chairs. A narrow window that looked out over the castle's eastern wall. The fire in the hearth had burned down to embers, casting the room in shadow and flickering orange light. And standing near the window, one hand braced against the wall for support, a thick piece of wood tucked under his other arm to hold him upright, was your brother.
Dunk.
You stopped in the doorway as if you had walked into a wall. Your heart seized in your chest. Your breath caught in your throat. Your hands flew to your mouth, pressing against your lips as if to hold in the sound that was trying to escape, a sound that was half sob and half scream and half something that had no name at all.
He looked terrible. His face was a mess of bruises, purple and black and yellow-green, one eye swollen nearly shut, a gash across his cheekbone held closed with clumsy stitches. His lip was split in two places. His left arm was wrapped in a sling, and the piece of wood under his right arm was a crutch, crude and hastily made, the kind a maester might fashion for a patient who refused to stay in bed. He was leaning heavily on it, his massive frame listing to one side, his shoulders hunched with exhaustion and pain. He looked like a man who had been through a war and had only barely survived.
"Y/N," he said, and his voice was exactly the same as it had been when he was eight years old and lifting you from your mother's deathbed. Cracked. Hoarse. Full of a desperate, aching tenderness that made your chest splinter into a thousand pieces.
One moment you were standing in the doorway with your hands pressed to your mouth, and the next you were in his arms, your face buried in his chest, your shoulders shaking with sobs you had been holding back for years. His good arm wrapped around you, pulling you against him, and you felt the crutch fall away, felt him stagger and brace himself against the wall so he would not fall. He was so big. He had always been so big. Even broken and bruised and barely able to stand, he surrounded you, enveloped you, made you feel for the first time in longer than you could remember that you were safe.
"I've got you," he said into your hair, and his voice was breaking, splintering, cracking into pieces that sounded like your mother's laugh and your father's name and every promise he had ever made you. "I've got you. I've always got you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I looked for you. I looked everywhere. They told me you were dead. They told me they found your body in the river. They said you were burned beyond recognition. I believed them. Gods forgive me, I believed them."
"I didn't know," you sobbed into his chest. Your fingers were twisted in his tunic, gripping the rough wool as if he might disappear if you let go. "I didn't know they told you that. I thought you were still looking. I thought you would find me. I waited for you. Every night, I waited for you. I never stopped believing you would come."
"I'm sorry, i believed them. I believed you were dead, and something inside me died with you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, little sister. I should have kept looking. I should have known. I should have..."
"Stop." You pulled back just enough to look up at his face, at the tears that were cutting tracks through the blood and the bruises. "Stop apologizing. You searched for me. You believed what they told you. Any man would have believed it. I don't blame you. I have never blamed you. I only ever wanted you to know I was alive. I tried to send word. I tried so many times. But Aerion..."
You stopped. The name hung in the air between you like a curse. Dunk's expression darkened. His good arm tightened around your shoulders. "Aerion," he repeated, and the word came out like a growl. "What happened to you, Y/N? Where have you been all these years? How did you end up here, with him?"
You pulled away from him gently. Your legs were shaking. You found a chair and sank into it, and Dunk lowered himself awkwardly onto the edge of the table, his injured leg stretched out in front of him, his crutch clattering to the floor. He did not take his eyes off you. He watched you the way he had watched you when you were children, with that fierce, protective intensity that had once been the only thing standing between you and the darkness of the world.
"They sold me," you said, and your voice was quiet and hollow and did not sound like your own. "The men who took me. They sold me to a brothel on the Street of Silk. A high end place, for lords and merchants. The madam... she was cruel. She said I was special. She said I would make them very rich."
Dunk's hands tightened on your shoulders. His face had gone very pale beneath the bruises, and his jaw was clenched so hard you could see the muscle jumping beneath the skin.
"And then," you continued, "Aerion came, he bought me and never left me"
And then you told him about Rhaenyra.
"Her name is Rhaenyra," you said, and your voice softened on the name, the way it always did. "She's two years old. She looks like her father. But she's kind. She's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. She's the only good thing that has come out of any of this. And she's the reason I can't leave."
Dunk was silent for a long moment. His face was unreadable, a mask of bruises and exhaustion and something that might have been grief. When he spoke, his voice was low and rough.
"I'll take you away," he said. "Both of you. You and the little girl. I'll find a way. I have friends now. A prince and a lord. We can protect you. We can hide you somewhere Aerion will never find you."
You shook your head. The tears were streaming down your face again, hot and silent, dripping off your chin and onto your hands. "You don't understand. He would never let me go. He would hunt me down like a dog. He would burn cities to the ground to find me. He told me... the night after the puppet show, when he came to my room, he told me the only way I would ever leave him was in a shroud. He meant it, Dunk. I have seen what he does to people who defy him. I have seen him cut a servant's hand for spilling wine on him. I have seen him laugh while a man burned alive. If I tried to run, if I took Rhaenyra and disappeared, he would never stop looking. And when he found me, and he would find me, he would kill me. He would take my daughter and he would kill me, and Rhaenyra would grow up without a mother, raised by a monster who would teach her that cruelty is strength and kindness is weakness and love is just another word for ownership."
"He would have to go through me first," Dunk said, and his voice was hard, the voice of a man who had faced seven knights in single combat and emerged victorious. "I lost you once. I believed you were dead for years. I mourned you, Y/N. I sat in that alley and I let the darkness take me because there was no light left in the world. And then I found you again, alive, here, in this place, with that man. I am not going to lose you again. I don't care if he is a prince. I don't care if he has a hundred Kingsguard. I will find a way to get you out of here. I will find a way to keep you safe. I swear it. I swear it on our mother's grave. I swear it on everything I am."
"Dunk." You reached out and took his enormous hand in both of yours. His knuckles were swollen and bruised, the skin split and scabbed over. The hands that had lifted you from the mattress where your mother had stopped breathing. The hands that had carried you into the cold morning while the other whores watched with pity. The hands that had promised you silk and lemon cakes and a world where no one would hurt you. "I want to believe you. I want to believe there is a way out of this. But you have to understand what you're risking. He will kill you. He will kill you without hesitation, without a trial, without anything but the cold satisfaction of removing an obstacle. And if you die, if you die trying to save me, I will have nothing left. Nothing. Do you understand? You are my brother. You are the only family I have in this world besides my daughter. I cannot lose you again."
He squeezed your hands. His grip was gentle, impossibly gentle for a man who had killed knights and broken bones and fought his way through horrors you could only imagine. "You won't lose me," he said. "I promise you, little sister. You won't lose me."
â
You ran. Egg had barely finished speaking before you were out the door and flying down the corridor, your heart pounding so hard you could feel it in your teeth, your lungs burning with every breath. You did not care if anyone saw you. You did not care if there were questions. All you cared about was getting back to Aerion's room before he woke, before he realized you were gone, before the fragile illusion of your obedience shattered into a thousand irreparable pieces.
You reached the door to Aerion's chamber and paused, pressing your palm flat against the wood, forcing yourself to breathe. You could not go in looking like a woman who had just run across half the castle. You could not go in looking like a woman who had been crying in her brother's arms. You smoothed your hair with trembling hands. You wiped the tears from your cheeks. You arranged your face into the careful mask you had worn for years, and you pushed open the door.
Aerion was still asleep. He had not moved since you left. His breathing was slow and steady, his bruised face relaxed in the depths of his drugged slumber. The milk of the poppy still held him in its grip. The bandages on his ribs were unrumpled. His splinted arm lay exactly where you had arranged it. He had not woken. He had not called for you. He had not noticed your absence at all.
You closed the door behind you and leaned against it, your legs threatening to give way beneath you. You had made it. You had made it, and he did not know, and you were safe. For now. For this moment. For as long as you could keep the mask from slipping.
You returned to the chair beside his bed and sat down, and you waited.
Days passed. Aerion healed. Slowly at first, then with the stubborn, grinding determination of a man who refused to be seen as weak for a moment longer than absolutely necessary. The bruises faded from black to purple to yellow-green. The swelling around his eye went down until he could open it fully again. The split lip closed, leaving a thin white scar that tugged at the corner of his mouth when he spoke. The ribs were slower to mend, the maester said, and he would need to be careful for weeks yet, but the splint came off his arm and he began to flex his fingers, to test the range of motion, to push against the limits of his own body the way he pushed against everything else in his life.
By the end of the second week, he could walk with a stick. You were the one who helped him take his first steps. His arm draped over your shoulders, his weight pressing down on you until your knees buckled, his breath harsh and labored against your ear. You walked him across the room and back again, step by agonizing step, your body bearing the burden of his in a way that felt like a metaphor for everything your life had become.
"Good," he said through gritted teeth when he finally lowered himself back onto the bed. âThat's good. I'll be out of this room by the end of the week.â
"My father is sending me away," he had said, and his voice was flat, toneless, drained of its usual fire. "Lys. A city of whores and perfumed merchants. He calls it self reflection. A chance to contemplate my actions and return a better man. But we both know what it really is. Exile. He cannot bear to look at me. He blames me for Baelor's death, even though it was his own blow that killed him. He blames me for everything."
You had not known what to say, so you had said nothing. That was safest. That had always been safest.
"You and the girl will come with me, of course, Lys is said to be beautiful. Warm. The sea is the color of sapphires, and the women walk around in silks so fine you can see their skin through the fabric. You will like it there."
You would not like it anywhere he was. But you had smiled, because that was what you did, and you had told him that Lys sounded lovely, and you had turned away to prepare his next dose of medicine so he would not see the despair in your eyes.
After that, things shifted slightly. Perhaps Aerion felt guilty for uprooting you. Perhaps he was simply trying to secure your loyalty before the journey. Whatever the reason, he began to allow you to visit Rhaenyra in the nursery. Not for long, not unsupervised, but every day. Every single day, you were permitted to leave his chamber for an hour and go to your daughter.
It was the only thing that kept you sane. You would sit in the nursery with Rhaenyra on your lap, her small body warm and solid and alive against your chest, and you would listen to her chatter about the games she had played and the songs she had learned and the dreams she had dreamed. You would brush her hair and sing to her in the soft voice you used for no one else. You would tell her that you loved her, that you would always love her, that there was nothing in the world she could do that would make you stop loving her. And you would try very hard not to think about the fact that in a few weeks, a few months at most, you would be on a ship to Lys, and the only world Rhaenyra had ever known would disappear behind her forever.
It was on one of these days, when you returned from the nursery with Rhaenyra's laughter still echoing in your ears, that everything fell apart.
You pushed open the door to Aerion's chamber and stopped dead in the doorway. There were two guards in the room. Between them, kneeling on the stone floor, was the servant. The one who had come to you days ago. The one who had said Prince Maekar requests your presence. The one who had led you through the corridors to the room where Dunk was waiting.
She was barely recognizable. Her face was a swollen mass of bruises, her lips split in three places, her nose broken and crusted with dried blood. One of her eyes was swollen completely shut, and the other stared at the floor with the glassy, unfocused gaze of someone who had retreated so far inside herself that she might never find her way back out. Her dress was torn, stained dark with blood and sweat and things you did not want to name. Her hands, folded limply in her lap, were missing three fingernails.
You knew, in that moment, that you were going to die.
Aerion was standing by the window, leaning on his stick, his back to you. He did not turn when you entered. He simply stood there, silhouetted against the grey afternoon light, his shoulders rigid, his free hand clenched into a fist at his side.
"Close the door," he said. His voice was calm. Too calm. The calm of a sea that had gone flat and glassy in the moment before a tidal wave.
You closed the door. Your hands were shaking so badly you could barely grip the latch.
"Aerion," you said, and your voice came out as a whisper, thin and reedy and full of the terror you could not hide. "What is this? What happened to her?"
Now he turned. His face was the face you had seen on the stage of the puppet show, cold and cruel and utterly without mercy. His violet eyes were dark with a rage that had been simmering for days, waiting for this moment, and his mouth was a thin hard line that made the scar at the corner of his lip stand out white against his skin.
"Is it true?" he asked. His voice was still calm. Still quiet. Still terrible. "Did you betray me? Did you see that treasonous bastard of your brother?"
Your heart stopped. Your blood turned to ice. The world narrowed to the space between you and him, the fire in the hearth, the broken woman on the floor.
"Aerion, please, let me explain..."
"Did you see him?" He did not shout. He did not raise his voice at all. But each word was a hammer blow, driving the breath from your lungs, the strength from your legs. "This woman, this servant, has told me everything. How she came to you while I was sleeping. How she led you through the castle. How my father, my own father, arranged for you to meet your brother in secret behind my back. Is it true? Answer me. Is it true?"
Your mind raced, scrambling for a lie, a deflection, anything that might save you. But the servant was kneeling on the floor with her fingernails torn out and her face beaten to pulp, and you knew that whatever you said, whatever excuse you offered, he had already made up his mind.
"It was not my choice," you said, and your voice cracked on the words. "The servant came and said your father wanted to see me. I did not know it was a trick. I did not know Dunk would be there. I went because I was afraid to refuse. Please, Aerion, you have to believe me. I did not seek him out. I would never..."
"Liar." He spat the word like a curse. "You have been lying to me since the moment you saw his face in the pavilion. You have been lying to me while you changed my bandages and brought my medicine and performed your little duties like the devoted whore you pretend to be. All this time, you have been dreaming of him. Planning with him. Scheming behind my back. Did you think I would not find out? Did you think I would not have you watched? Did you think I was stupid?"
"No, I never..."
"Be silent." He took a step toward you, and the stick thumped against the stone floor like a death sentence. "I have listened to your lies for years. I have listened to you whisper that you loved me while your eyes were always looking somewhere else. I have listened to you promise that you were mine while your heart belonged to another. I am done listening. Now you will listen to me."
He gestured to one of the guards. The man stepped forward, his face still grim and impassive. You barely had time to register the movement before his gauntleted hand cracked across your face.
The blow sent you sprawling to the floor. Your head hit the stone with a crack that made stars burst across your vision. The taste of blood filled your mouth. Your ears rang with a high, thin whine that drowned out everything else. You tried to push yourself up, but your arms would not hold you, and you collapsed back onto the cold stone, gasping.
"Take her away," Aerion said, and for a moment you thought he meant you. But the guard was already hauling the servant to her feet, dragging her toward the door, her head lolling on her broken neck. The other guard followed, and then the door closed, and you were alone with the dragon.
Aerion stood over you. The stick thumped against the floor as he took another step closer. You could see his boots from where you lay, the fine black leather, the silver buckles shaped like dragon wings.
"Let me tell you what happens now," he said, and his voice was soft, almost gentle, the voice of a man explaining something to a child. "You are going to Lys with me. You are going to share my bed and warm my sheets and perform your duties as you have always done. You are going to smile and praise me and tell me that I am magnificent. You are going to be exactly what you have always been. My whore. My property. My thing."
He lowered himself slowly, painfully, until he was crouching beside you. His hand came down and gripped your chin, forcing your face up toward his. His fingers were cold and hard and utterly without tenderness.
"If you ever see your brother again," he said, "if you ever speak to him, if you ever so much as learn his whereabouts and fail to tell me, I will not kill you. No. Killing you would be a mercy, and I am not feeling merciful. What I will do is make you pray for death. Every single day, you will pray for it, and it will not come. Do you understand?"
You tried to speak. No words came out. Only a thin, animal whimper that you barely recognized as your own.
"And Rhaenyra," he continued, and your blood turned to ice water. "If you betray me again, if you give me even the slightest reason to doubt your loyalty, I will take her from you. Not just for a few days. Not just to the nursery. I will sell her. Do you understand? I will sell her to a brothel the moment she has her first bleeding. She will spend her life on her back with strange men between her legs, just like her mother before her. Just like the whore who whelped her. That is what happens to the daughters of traitors. That is what happens to the children of women who forget who they belong to."
"No." The word tore out of you, a desperate, animal sound. "Aerion, no, please, she's your daughter, she's your blood, you can't..."
"I can do whatever I want." His voice was flat. Final. The voice of a god passing judgment. "She is mine. You are mine. Everything you have, everything you are, exists because I allow it. Your life is a privilege. Your motherhood is a privilege. Your identity as a mother, as a daughter, as anything other than what I tell you to be, is a privilege. And privileges can be revoked."
He rose to his feet with a grimace of pain, leaning heavily on his stick. He looked down at you, crumpled on the floor at his feet, and his expression was utterly without pity.
"Your only duty is to me," he said. "You are not a mother. You are not a sister. You are not a person with a past or a family or a soul. You are my whore. That is all you have ever been. That is all you will ever be. Everything else, every moment you have spent with Rhaenyra, every breath you have taken as a free woman, has been a gift. A gift that I gave you. A gift that I can take away."
He turned to the guard who remained. The man had been standing motionless by the door, his face a mask of professional indifference. He had watched the whole thing without flinching. You wondered, distantly, how many women he had seen broken on the orders of the men who paid him.
"Incapacitate her," Aerion said. "I want her unable to walk. Not permanently. I still need her to be able to perform her duties. But I want her to remember, every time she takes a step, what happens when she forgets who she belongs to."
The guard stepped forward. You saw him coming, saw the purpose in his eyes, and you tried to scramble backward on the floor, your heels slipping against the stone, your hands clawing for purchase. It did not matter. He was on you in three strides, his hands closing around your ankle, and you heard yourself screaming, heard Aerion's voice saying something you could not understand, and then there was a sound like a branch breaking in deep winter, and your leg exploded into white-hot agony.
The world went away for a while. When it came back, you were still on the floor. The guard was gone. Aerion was still standing over you, leaning on his stick, watching you with an expression that was almost curious. As if your pain were an experiment he had conducted and he was evaluating the results.
"The maester will come to set the ankle," he said. "You will tell him you fell down the stairs. You will not mention the guard. You will not mention this conversation. You will not mention your brother or your disobedience. You will smile, and you will thank me for my concern, and you will continue to perform your duties. Is that understood?"
You could not speak. The pain was too much. Your leg was a column of fire, and every heartbeat sent a fresh wave of agony through your body. But you managed to nod, a tiny, jerky motion of your head, and that seemed to satisfy him.
"Good," he said. "I am glad we understand each other."
He limped to the door, his stick thumping against the stone with every step. He did not look back at you as he left. He did not offer you a hand to help you up. He simply opened the door and disappeared into the corridor, and you were alone.
Dunk had promised. Dunk had sworn on your mother's grave, on everything he was. And Dunk had never broken a promise to you. Not once. Not ever.
You held onto that ember as the darkness closed in. You held onto it as the pain in your ankle pulsed and throbbed and dragged you toward unconsciousness. You held onto it as the door opened and the maester's voice exclaimed in shock and you heard yourself saying, over and over, the lie Aerion had given you. Fell down the stairs. Fell down the stairs. Fell down the stairs.
And when the maester's hands began to work on your ankle, when the world went white with pain and then mercifully black with oblivion, you held onto it still.
Synopsis: Seven minutes in heaven with your college Rival Rafayell couldn't have been more insufferableâexcept it didnât end in seven minutes. One kiss turned into another, and somehow the game bled into the night, your rivalry burning hotter in the sheets. Weeks later, you act like nothing happened between you, but Rafayel doesnât take it lightly. Jealousy flickers sharp whenever he sees you laugh with someone else, as if you plan on pissing him off.
Content warnings: College AU, Rivals to lovers, Jealousy, Heavy Sexual tension, Kissing, Making out in the closet, Explicit sexual content, Rough sex, Possessiveness, Riding, Face fucking, Oral sex, Cunnilingus, Fingering, Overstimulation, Dirty talk, Manhandling, Marking/bruising, Jealousy-fueled intimacy, Consensual but rough dynamics, Rafayel gets jealous, mc wants to piss him off
Word count: 10k
chapter 1 - chapter 2 - chapter 3 â ao3
Chapter 1 - Push and Pull
You despised Rafayel Qi more than you ever wanted to admit, and nothing in this life would have satisfied you more than wiping that smug, infuriating smirk off his face. He was the kind of insufferable you could spot from across a lecture hall, lounging in his seat like the world existed for his amusement, tossing out comments that were always just sharp enough to get under your skin.
For the past two years, heâd been your personal plague, an ever-present thorn in your side. And somewhere, deep down in the place you didnât like to acknowledge, you almost admired his persistenceâhow one man could make you want to strangle him in every single encounter.
He never knew when to shut up. Always poking, always pushing, like testing the limits of your patience was his chosen sport. And oh, how youâd made it your mission to give it right back, to make his life just as miserable in return. That was the thing about the two of you, a perfect disaster of cause and effect. The light and the fuse. People didnât even bother asking how your latest spat had startedâthey just assumed it had, because it always did.
On campus, your names had become inseparable in the worst possible way, whispered together with knowing grins or exasperated sighs. Group projects? A nightmare. Debate class? Civil war. Even casual conversations in the cafeteria would somehow pivot to, âDid you hear what Rafayel said to her this time?â
You hated it, hated that your name was tethered to his like some cosmic joke.
You could still hear his voice from that afternoon in the library, casual and smooth as ever, leaning over the table with that lazy smile. âRelax, cutie,â heâd said, sliding your textbook toward himself without asking. âIf you keep glaring at me with that expression, people are going to think that you fancy me.â
You had snatched the book back, teeth clenched. âThe only thing I fancy is the idea of never having to see your face again.â
Heâd only laughed, low and infuriating. âHarsh. Guess Iâll just have to make sure you keep seeing it, then.â
You couldnât begin to fathom what crime you had committedâwhether in this life or some unfortunate past oneâto deserve being stuck with him every few weeks. Yet here you were, standing on the soft, beer-stained carpet, surrounded by a cloud of cheap perfume, laughter, and the low thrum of bass shaking the floorboards. Alcohol hummed in your veins, warm and distracting, while the partygoers whooped and hollered around the circle.
A chipped glass bottle spun on the floor, wobbling to a stop as if it had been conspiring against you all night. You stared at it like it had just declared war on you, because, of course, the neck was pointing directly at Rafayel.
For a fleeting, wicked moment, you considered grabbing it and cracking it over his annoyingly perfect head. Seven minutes in heaven. With him.
The crowd eruptedâhalf in mock horror, half in the kind of delight that came from watching a train wreck you couldnât look away from. Simone and Tara exchanged a wide-eyed glance that said they were both surprised and already placing mental bets.
You narrowed your eyes at them, but before you could say a word, movement caught your attention. Rafayel was already walking toward the closetâno hesitation, no acknowledgment of the chaos he left in his wake. He didnât even look back at you, as if it was a foregone conclusion youâd follow.
That arrogant prick.
You scoffed under your breath and stood, brushing imaginary lint off your jeans, mostly to keep from flipping him off in front of everyone. Simone and Tara nudged each other like middle schoolers about to watch a fight, grinning as though they hadnât just sold you out to the devil himself.
âDonât wait up,â you muttered at them, your voice sharp enough to cut.
A guy from somewhere in the back yelled, âMy moneyâs on murder!â
Another chimed in, âNah, theyâre either gonna make out or burn the place down.â
You ignored them all, though your jaw tightened. Seven whole minutes trapped in a cramped, dark space with Rafayelâhis cologne, his smug smirk, his constant need to one-up you. And as you reached the door, he glanced over his shoulder at last, that infuriating grin playing on his lips.
âDonât look so thrilled, cutie,â he drawled, holding the closet door open just wide enough for you to pass. âI promise to make it worth your while.â
You rolled your eyes so hard it was a miracle you could still see. âYou wish.â
His smirk deepened, lazy and sure of himself. âI do,â he said lightly, stepping in after you. âBut itâs more fun when you do too.â
The door clicked shut, sealing you into seven minutes of hell. You pressed yourself into the farthest corner as the door shut, sealing out the noise of the party. Darkness swallowed the cramped space, save for a sliver of light leaking through the crack between the door and frame. Your breath caughtânot from nerves, you told yourself, but from the sudden proximity.
His cologne lingered in the air, warm and heady, with some other undertoneâsalted, oceanicâthat clung stubbornly in your head. The realization annoyed you more than his actual presence. It was unfair, you thought, that someone so irritating could smell that good.
A faint brush against your arm made you flinch. You turned your head sharply, catching the faint outline of his profile in the gloom.
âKeep to your own space, yeah?â you muttered, your voice low but sharp. You tried to shift farther away, but the closet was far too small, and you hated the way every movement brought you back within reach of him.
His laugh came quiet but deep, curling at the edges with smugness. âMy bad, princess,â he murmured, leaning just close enough for the warmth of his words to ghost over your cheek. âDidnât realize Iâd already stepped on your toes tonight.â
You shot him a glare, even if you knew he probably couldnât see much of it in the dark. His arm was still brushing yours, his casual lean making it clear he had no intention of shifting away.
âI will step on yours if you donât move,â you warned, crossing your arms tight over your chest and turning your body slightly to shield yourself.
Instead of taking the hint, he tilted his head lazily. âSo aggressive tonight,â he said softly, mock sweetness dripping from the words. âActing like this isnât the highlight of your night.â
You huffed, the sound sharp in the close air. âIn what universe would this be my highlight?â
âIn mine,â he answered smoothly, without missing a beat.
You scoffed, the sound sharp in the thick air between you. âYouâre so full of yourself, Rafayel.â the words left your mouth like you were flicking a match, each syllable meant to cut.
He only hummed in response, low and lazy, and you hated how close the sound cameâhow it brushed over your ear like the faintest touch. The closet was warm, the air stale, and you could barely make out anything in the dark. But the sliver of light from the doorframe caught just enough of his face to make his expression clearâamused, entertained, like this was his own private game.
You scoffed again, softer this time, if only to keep from saying something that would sound too much like admitting defeat. He chuckled quietly, that smug undercurrent in every note, and then his arm brushed yours again. You stiffened, your jaw tightening on instinct, but he didnât shift away. Instead, he leaned in just slightly, tilting his head toward you until you could feel the faint stir of his breath. One hand came up to brace himself on the wall behind you, close enough that you could feel the subtle press of his body against yours.
Your pulse ticked up despite yourself. This was absurd. Infuriating. And yet your chest felt tighter than it should.
âStop touching me,â you hissed, shifting back as far as the wall would allow.
He gave a quiet laugh, as though youâd just said something endearing. âWhere exactly do you want me to go, cutie?â he murmured, voice low enough that you almost missed it. âClosetâs only so big.â
The worst part was that he was right. There wasnât an inch of space left between you. You rolled your eyes, even though you knew he could probably see the movement in the faint light. âTry harder.â
âOh, I am,â he replied smoothly, the corner of his mouth lifting in a grin you could hear in his voice.
Seven minutes had never felt longer.
He smirked, leaning in just enough to test your patience, his voice dropping to that infuriatingly casual tone he always used when he knew he was getting under your skin.
âKind of convenient, isnât it?â he murmured, the words brushing against you like a challenge. âWhole party out there, and somehow you end up locked in here with me. Almost like you rigged it. Guess you really canât stay away, cutie.â his next words ignited the fire in you even harder, âEspecially since you canât beat me when it actually counts.â
Your teeth clenched, heat prickling at the back of your neck. Before you could think better of it, your hand shot out, gripping the front of his shirt and tugging him just enough to close the already minuscule space between you.
âYouâre delusional,â your voice was low and pointed, every word pressed like a blade. âYour ego must be eating whatâs left of your brain, because youâre lying to yourself if you think Iâd choose this. Iâd rather be anywhere else.â
You held his gaze, and now you were close enough to make out the sharp line of his jaw, the faint curve of his mouth, andâannoyinglyâjust how clear his eyes looked in the thin strip of light. He stared back at you with the same infuriating calm, only a slow tug of a smirk breaking the stillness.
âFunny,â he whispered, leaning in just enough for his breath to mingle with yours. âYouâre the one hanging on to my clothes like youâre about to tear them off.â
Your own smile curled, deceptively sweet. âIâd rather tear your head off.â
The space between you tightened, silent except for the shallow drag of your breaths. You hated that the air felt heavier now, that the warmth radiating from him made your skin hum in awareness. Neither of you moved back, both locked in the same unspoken dare youâd been passing between each other since the day you met.
He smirked, and you felt your jaw tighten in sync with the way your fingers curled, bunching the front of his shirt in a hard grip. He was too close, close enough that your breath caught against his, every inhale shared in the warm, cramped dark. Your pulse spiked, not that youâd admit it, not even to yourself.
You hated this. Absolutely hated him.
A sharp scoff escaped you before you planted a hand against his chest, shoving him back just enough to reclaim a sliver of space. But before you could take another step away, his arm moved and slid down from the wall behind you until his hand brushed against your waist, steadying himself.
The light contact made your pulse trip over itself. You grit your teeth, biting back the words that wanted to snarl at him to stop touching youâthough you werenât sure if you meant it entirely.
âYou donât seem in a rush for me to let go,â his voice was carrying that lazy taunt that made every nerve in you itch. His hand stayed exactly where it was, with more purpose now, his fingers settling with a certain confidence at your waist.
Your glare could have cut glass. âWhat kind of delusional state gives you the nerve to think you can touch me?â
You shoved at his chest again, harder this time, but his grip only tightened, pulling you forward with the movement so that your body collided with his. Your breath left you in a startled grunt, the solid heat of him impossible to ignore.
You looked up at him, startled and seething, yet heat coiled traitorously low in your stomach at the new position. Every sharp exchange, every smug remark he lobbed your way had wound itself into something you refused to name, and youâd sooner die than admit Rafayel could have that kind of effect on you.
His smirk curved lower, slower this time, his voice brushing over you like the edge of a dare. âI like it when you bite back,â he murmured, leaning just enough that the air between you thinned. âMakes me wonder what youâd do if I touched you⊠on purpose.â
His gaze flicked down briefly, then back to yours, full of quiet challenge. âMy guess? Not much. You canât really one-up me.â
The air felt heavy, your breaths matching his in a quick, uneven rhythm. Tension held you both still, tethered in the narrow space between his chest and yours.
âCocky bastard,â you whispered, every word sharpened between clenched teeth. âYouâll get more than you bargained for.â you tilted your chin up, closing the space by a fraction, your lips nearly grazing his. âSo either move your hand⊠or Iâll make you.â
His smile didnât falter. If anything, it deepened infuriatingly slow, like he was savoring the moment.
âYeah?â his voice dipped just enough to brush against something inside you. âAnd how exactly would you make me?â
His fingers tightened on your waist, not painfully, but with the kind of deliberate pressure that felt like he was testing how far he could push before you snapped. Heat surged under your skin, your muscles tensing as your breath came shallow, matching his.
You couldnât even say who moved firstâonly that suddenly his mouth was on yours, hot and unyielding, all teeth and heat and reckless challenge. He kissed like he expected you to fight him, so you did, matching the push of his lips with your own bite until the taste of him left you dizzy.
Your whole body pressed into him, seeking leverage you didnât want to admit you needed. His grip on your waist anchored you, pulling you closer until there was no space left to guard. Your teeth caught his lower lip, hard enough to pull a groan from his chest, low and rough.
The cramped heat of the closet wrapped around you both, the world reduced to the tangle of limbs and breath and the sharp scent of him. Your fingers threaded into his hair, tugging as his bent knee slid between yours, shifting your weight until your back met the wall again with a muted thud.
He didnât stop. Your mouths were a frenzyâhot, rough, and desperate in a way neither of you would ever admit aloud. Your hands clutched at him, fisting the fabric of his shirt, not to pull him closerâthough it felt that wayâbut to keep yourself from stumbling under the force of it all.
The taste of him lingered on your tongue, sharp and consuming, each kiss a challenge neither of you wanted to lose.
You bit at his lower lip, he returned the favor, and your tongues tangled in a battle for dominance that left both of you breathing ragged. Teeth grazed swollen lips and the sensitive skin just beneath, his mouth dragging down to your neck. His lips were warm, his breath hotter, and when he sucked a mark there, his smirk was felt more than seen.
âSomeoneâs enjoying themselves,â he rasped against your skin, his voice low enough to scrape over your nerves.
âShut up,â you bit back, shoving at his shoulder, though your body betrayed you, arching into him when his handsâbolder nowâslipped beneath the hem of your shirt.
Your mouth found his again, urgent and unrestrained, and you yanked hard on his hair, pulling a groan from deep in his chest. The sound vibrated against your lips, and heat pooled low in your stomach.
You were both panting now, breaths coming fast and shallow, and then you felt his bulgeâhard against your hip, impossible to ignore. His thigh pressed between yours, and without thinking, you grinded down against it, the friction dizzying.
He groaned again, but this time it was laced with that infuriating amusement. âCute,â he drawled, his tone deliberately light, even as his grip on you tightened. âAlmost desperate. Must be all that pent-up frustration from wanting to fuck me this whole time.â
Your nails dragged slow beneath his shirt, scratching from his ribs down to his stomach before sliding back up again. The movement earned a low, unrestrained groan from him, his breath hitching just enough to make you smirkâthough you didnât get long to savor the victory.
His hands were already on you, firm and unapologetic as they cupped your ass, pulling you down against the solid line of his thigh. The friction sent a jolt through you both, making your bodies lurch together, grunts and gasps spilling into the heat between your mouths.
Even breathless, neither of you could resist the game.
âFeel that?â he smirked, the words curling against your ear in a delicious rasp as he shifted his leg just right, making you gasp. âYouâre soaking through, cutie. Didnât know you could get this wet just from grinding on me.â
You hissed through your teeth, catching his smirk in your peripheral, and refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing you falter.
âYeah? Then maybe you should be more worried about yourself,â you shot back, your voice low and edged with heat. Your fingers slipped lower, brushing the waistband of his jeans. âYouâre so hard, Rafayel. I bet if I touched you just a little, youâd cum in seconds.â
His grip tightened at that, a subtle, wordless admission he wouldnât dare voice.
What you donât expect is his low, rough voice brushing against the shell of your ear like he knows exactly what it does to you.
âGo on,â he murmurs, the words warm and wicked, âbe a good girl⊠touch me. We could help each other out.â The tease is casual, almost lazy, but the weight of it coils heat deep in your stomach.
Before you can throw a retort, his fingers are already at your waistband, dragging the zipper down in a slow, deliberate pull. Then his hand slips inside, the heat of his palm startling against your skin. His breath hitches in something like satisfaction, and a soft grunt escapes him, carrying both a praise and a taunt.
âSlippery already,â he drawls, his tone dipping just enough to make it sound like a secret. âMustâve been desperate for me, huh? Canât help yourself⊠even just being close to me gets you like this.â
You grit your teeth, trying to swallow the sound building in your throat, but it escapes anywayâa low, unsteady moanâas his fingers slide inside you. He doesnât ease in; his pace starts steady, controlled, and just dizzying enough to steal your breath.
Youâre too far gone to argue, too caught between his touch and the heat thrumming through you to remember whatever insult youâd been ready to throw. Instead, you crush your mouth to his, the kiss greedy and unrestrained, tasting of defiance. His fingers work inside you in a steady, deliberate rhythm, just enough to make your knees threaten to give.
You donât let him have all the satisfaction. Your hand drifts lower, finding the hard outline pressing against his jeans, rubbing in the same measured pace heâs set for you. The sound he makes is low and rough, pulled from somewhere deep, and you drink it in like victory.
Your mouths stay locked, swallowing each otherâs shallow pants and quiet moans, the kiss breaking only for sharp gasps before crashing together again. Teeth catch lips, fingers dig into clothes and skin, both of you pushing harder, fasterâdaring the other to give in first.
The tension snaps for you in a shiver, your body tightening around his fingers as heat floods through you. He swallows your moan like itâs his, kissing you harder, deeper, until youâre dizzy. A moment later, his hips jerk, a muted groan breaking against your mouth as he follows, the heat between you spilling over into something ragged and messy.
Still, neither of you pull away. You kiss until your lips are bruised, until breath comes in broken pulls, until itâs impossible to tell if youâre clinging from want or because neither of you can stand without the other holding you up.
âPretty sure that was more than seven minutes,â he murmured against your neck, his tone dripping with satisfaction before his teeth sank into your skin in playful retaliation.
A sharp sound slipped from youâhalf moan, half hissâyour body still humming from the high, even as irritation flickered hot in your chest.
âWho knew all it would take was a couple of my fingers to strip some of that attitude away, cutie?â he added, the bait curling lazily from his lips like he already knew youâd take it.
Your response was wordless at firstâa firm grip on the half-hard length straining against his jeans, followed by a hiss against his neck as your other hand tangled in his hair, tugging hard enough to make him suck in a breath.
âHow about,â your voice was low and edged with challenge, âyou get me out of here and fuck me until itâs all gone, hm?â
His mouth crashed onto yours before you could blink, the kiss bruising and impatient. His hands gripped your ass and hips with a possessive force, pulling you flush against him as his smirk ghosted over your lips.
âGladly,â he breathed, smug as ever.
âBastard,â you muttered against his mouth, earning nothing more than a quiet laugh before he hauled you out of the cramped closet.
The hallway erupted in whistles and amused voices from classmates, but Rafayel didnât so much as glance at themâhis only focus fixed entirely, and unapologetically, on you.
 â
Your hands roamed over him in desperate, greedy paths, grabbing at whatever skin you could reachâhis back, his shoulders, the flex of his armsâas he drove into you with slow, delicious thrusts that somehow felt both sweet and merciless. His body hovered above yours, holding you caged between his hips and the mattress, each movement pulling ragged moans from your throat.
The air between you was hot, tangled with the sound of panting breaths and the wet heat of messy, biting kisses that kept breaking and reforming like neither of you could stay away for long.
âI can bet,â he moaned between thrusts, his voice rough but edged with that familiar smirk, âyou were this wet every time you argued back at me⊠isnât that right?â
His flushed face hovered over yours, his gaze locked on you as his palm slid over your breast, kneading and teasing your nipple until it peaked under his touch.
You answered with a scoffing moan, biting back the urge to roll your eyes even as pleasure shot through you when he angled his hips just right, hitting deep enough to make your stomach clench. You lifted your hips to meet his thrusts, still unwilling to give him the full satisfaction of your surrender.
âWhy donât you quit being insufferable,â you grunted, your voice breaking when his teeth grazed your neck, âand fuck me properly instead?â
His fingers found your clit mid-sentence, circling in maddening, precise strokes that made your breath stutter. âMake me cum again, Iâm close.â
âWho am I to refuse you, princess?â he mocked in a low, wicked whisper, his tone all heat and challenge.
Your back arched helplessly into him as release tore through you, your body tightening around his cock in pulsing waves. His hips jerked with the rhythm of your climax, your moans mixing with his as you dragged him into a heated kiss, swallowing each otherâs sounds. His grip on your hip tightened hard enough to leave faint, perfect marks youâd find later, a wordless claim in the shape of his fingers.
Your palms pressed firmly to his chest, the heat of his skin slick under your fingers as your nails dug in for balance. You rode him in a steady, unrelenting rhythm, each movement pulling a groan from deep in his throat.
Your head tipped back, lips parted, the sound of your panting filling the room as your breasts bounced with every rise and fall. His mouth caught one nipple, sucking greedily before his teeth grazed the sensitive peak just enough to make your muscles tighten around him.
âThis must be new to you, right?â he asked, though the lift of his brows and the smug curve of his mouth made it sound more like confirmation than curiosity. His tone was breathless, feigning innocence, which only made it worse.
Too lost in the way his cock filled you, you could only grunt between gasps, âWhat are you talking about?â
His hands tightened on your waist, guiding you down harder onto him. He murmured against your chest, his lips brushing your skin before closing around your nipple again, biting until a moan escaped you.
âBeing on top,â he rasped with a smirk you could hear, his gaze flicking up to meet yours. âConsidering youâre never above me in anything.â
The taunt was punctuated by a sharp thrust upward, his hips grinding into you as a low grunt rumbled from his chest. âHow do you like it, princess?â
You bent forward, bracing a hand against his jaw, then sliding it to the back of his neck as his eyes locked on yoursâamethyst and heat-drunk, his lips wet and kiss-bruised. Through a breathless moan, you rasped out your answer, your nails biting into his skin.
âWould like it better,â you panted, âif you didnât run your mouth.â
He only smirked, that maddening curve of his lips catching the dim light before he ducked down to suck another mark into your neckâone of many already burning along your skin. His smugness was infuriating, but it was harder to focus on that when you felt him twitch inside you, his cock hitting deep enough to blur your vision.
âOh, but you do like when I run my mouth, donât ya?â his voice was low, curling with amusement before he caught your lips in a kiss that was all heat and teeth and unspent tension. You kept moving on him, chasing the high with relentless rhythm, your breath breaking against his. âSeemed to love it a few minutes ago,â he murmured between kisses, âwhen it was between your legs.â
A sharp moan tore from you when his thumb found your clit, already slick and swollen from the previous orgasm he pulled from you. The touch was almost too much, your body clenching around him in a shiver that drew a low, unrestrained groan from his chest. He chuckled against your skin, his fingers digging into the soft curve of your ass as if he meant to keep you exactly where you were.
âI even recall you moaning my name so nicely when you came around my tongueâŠâ his voice rasped against your ear, warm enough to send a shiver down your spine.
Your head tipped back, eyes squeezing shut as you bounced harder, your mouth falling open on a broken gasp. You were so close you could taste it.
âNever heard my name sound that sweet from your mouth before,â he taunted, his words smug but tangled with his own uneven breaths, knowing it must turn you on.
The sound of his grunts matched the rhythm of your moans, your bodies locked in a pace that was more a challenge than surrender, both of you teetering at the edge.
You blocked out the smug noise spilling from his lips, focusing instead on keeping your rhythm steady despite the burn in your thighs. Your voice came out shaky but biting, laced with challenge. âYou better not cum before I do, asshole.â
Your teeth sank into your lower lip hard enough to sting, and his answering thrust made your head tip back. He met your pace with deep, upward drives of his hips, each one threatening to push you over. His fingers dug into the flesh of your ass, guiding you, controlling the motion as if he owned the moment and you.
âDonât worry that pretty head, cutie,â he chuckled between low, rough grunts, the sound vibrating against your chest when he leaned in. His eyes drank you inâyour slack jaw, your unfocused gaze, the way pleasure had stolen the sharp edges of your expression. âI wouldnât miss the chance to watch you cum around my cock⊠so freaking beautiful like thisâŠâ
His lips brushed your neck in a fleeting kiss just before your body seized around him. Heat and pleasure tore through you, your thighs trembling violently as you came with a broken, shaky moan. You felt the wet rush coat him, spill between you, soak into the sheets beneath.
His groan was deep and rough, the sound dragging low in his chest as his hips faltered. You didnât need to see his face to know he was seconds away; you could feel it in the iron grip of his hands on your hips, in the heat radiating from his skin, in the breath he caught like he was holding back the inevitable.
Leaning down, you caught the warm line of his neck between your teeth, biting hard enough to draw another groan from him. Your lips found the sweet spot just beneath his ear, sucking until his muscles tensed under you.
That was all it tookâhe jerked inside you, twitching hard as heat spilled into you in thick, pulsing waves, coating your sensitive walls until you could feel it drip. His head tipped back, breath ragged, and you felt the faintest chuckle rumble in his chest, even through the haze of release.
âCanât ever say you hate me now,â he rasped, his voice still rough with the edge of release, ânot after letting me mark you like this, cutie.â
Before you could snap back, his hand slid to the back of your neck, pulling you down into a kiss that stole the rest of your breath. It was searing and messy, all heat and teeth, his lips moving against yours like he had no intention of letting you go any time soon. Your bodies were still pressed tight, the aftershocks thrumming between you, and every pull of his mouth tasted faintly of victory.
â
Rafayel wasnât the type to cling to jealousy or waste energy on expectations he never asked forâbut watching you slip back into that same dynamic, as if nothing had happened between you, lit something sharp and ugly under his skin. It was one thing to keep up the bickering, the constant push-and-pull you two seemed addicted to, but being so close to anyone else in this place? Laughing, leaning in, letting other people into your space the way you let him, even if just for one night? That ticked him off more than he wanted to admit.
He could lie to everyone else, but not to himself. He was jealous. Or at the very least, botheredâmore than before, more than he had any right to be. Especially since you seemed intent on shoving it in his face, as though proving just how easily you could cozy up to other guys on campus might put him in his place.
Seeing you dance with that colleague tonight had made his jaw tighten, a scoff of disbelief escaping before he could bite it back. Because he knew betterâhe knew what you wanted. Heâd felt it in every heated moment youâd given him, in the way your body melted under his hands, pliant no matter how sharp your words were.
You could pretend, you could denyâbut heâd already dragged the truth out of you in the dark, in the messy rhythm of tangled sheets and bitten lips. And tonight, all he could think about was how youâd come undone for him, over and over again, chasing release like a spark to a fuse you couldnât stop lightingâand now you were cozying up with another man.
The dynamic between you hadnât shifted in the slightestâyou still scoffed, still snapped at him, every exchange bristling with the same defiance he had come to expect. Normally, Rafayel thrived on it; it was what made this little game so addictive. But tonight, with the taste of you still burned into his memory, he had hoped for something differentâsome flicker of change, even if you refused to admit it.
He caught you alone near the drinks table, slipping into your space without hesitation, his shadow falling across you as you tipped the bottle. You turned your head sharply, eyes narrowing, your scoff cutting through the din of music and chatter. âWhat do you want now, Rafayel?â
The toneâbiting, impatientâmade his jaw twitch. Normally it thrilled him, but the sharp edge tonight dug deeper. Did you really despise his presence that much? Even now, after everything?
He leaned one elbow against the counter as though he had all the time in the world, his amethyst eyes catching the low light and glinting with that practiced, playful spark. He slipped the mask on as easily as a second skin, the one he always wore with you. âBack to making me work for your attention, I see.â
You rolled your eyes, ignoring the weight of his gaze as you poured yourself a shot. The liquid burned down your throat, leaving your lips wet when you licked the taste away. His eyes tracked the movement without restraint, though you didnât seem to notice.
âSometimes I seriously wonder if you donât have better things to do than pester me all day,â you muttered, as though the idea of his presence alone grated on you.
He nearly laughed, the sound curling up the back of his throat, but the bitterness still lingered like ash. He could hide it wellâhe always didâbut something in his chest coiled tighter, a heaviness he couldnât smirk his way out of.
He poured himself a shot like it was second nature, tossing it back with the same careless ease he wore like armor. Then he leaned in, closing the space between you with an unbothered smirk tugging at his lips.
âGonna pretend it never happened, is that it, princess?â his eyes found yours in the low light, sharp against sharp, daring you to flinch first.
You leaned in too, your voice dropping to a hiss that barely carried over the music. âStop calling me that.â
His laugh was low, warm, almost affectionate in its own infuriating way. âFunny,â he murmured, tilting his glass aside. âHad you in my bed, moaning for me, and the first thing you pick up after is that attitude.â
Your glare could have cut straight through him. You scoffed, turning your head deliberately, your gaze sweeping the roomâfor him, it wasnât hard to guess who you were looking for. The guy youâd been dancing with earlier. His jaw tightened before he could stop it, the weight of his stare narrowing back on you.
His voice came out rougher now, laced with the edge of something he usually hid behind a smirk. âSo thatâs what it is. Maybe I should fuck you slow next time. Sweet, steadyâsee if thatâd finally get you to acknowledge it.â his head tilted slightly, the words a challenge, a taunt, but his eyes searched yours like he wanted the truth more than the fight.
You laughed, the sound sharp as glass. Through your teeth, bitter but smiling just enough to sting, you shot back, âThereâs no next time. And Iâd rather you dropped the cocky act.â your gaze flicked up, unwavering. âNot everyone wants to end up in your bed, Rafayel.â
The smirk didnât falter on his lips, but the burn of your words sank under his skin all the same. Oh, how he loved your attitude. The sharpness in your voice, the fire in your glareâit always turned him on, but tonight it scraped against something else too. Annoyance. You dismissed him so easily, brushed everything off as if it hadnât mattered, as if youâd rather erase it than admit it was real.
But he couldnât forget. He didnât want to forget the sound of your moans, the way your nails dug into his skin, the bite of your teeth against his shoulder, your mouth desperate and hot on his. Every mark youâd left on him still burned under his skin.
His smirk came quick, practiced, though his jaw ticked in irritation he couldnât quite swallow down. âWell, you wanted it,â he drawled, voice low enough to coil between you, âand you seemed pretty determined to show me just how badly.â
The proof lingeredâyour mark, blooming faint but undeniable on the side of his neck. He saw the flicker in your expression when your eyes caught it, the twitch of your jaw before your glare sharpened even further.
You spit your words back at him, close enough now that he could smell you. Sweet perfume, deliberate and light, clinging to your skin like temptation. The thought of you applying it for someone elseâfor that guy youâd been pressed against earlierâmade his stomach knot in a way he refused to admit. His smirk stayed fixed, masking the flare of heat in his chest, but it didnât quiet the urge that nearly consumed himâto press his face into your neck, breathe you in, and let himself get drunk on you.
âSeriously, whatâs your fucking problem?â you snapped, each word sharp enough to cut. âYeah, we fucked. So what? You expect me to drop at your feet now and suck you off or something?â
Every syllable was a double-edged knifeâturning him on even as it lit a flame of irritation low in his chest. Did you really think thatâs what he wanted from you? While heâd never be opposed to the thought, that wasnât it. Not even close. What he wanted was for you to stop pretending it meant nothing, to stop brushing it off like you hadnât melted under him, clawed at him, begged for more until your voice broke.
His eyes lingered on yours, refusing to look away, holding the heat of your glare. You looked pissed, but he couldnât tell if it was your usual game or if heâd really struck a nerve this time, dug under your skin deeper than you wanted him to.
âI wouldnât be opposed to it,â he said smoothly, smirking like he hadnât just swallowed down the words he really wanted to sayâthat you were driving him insane, that youâd taken root under his skin, that it wasnât just your body he wanted. He tilted his head slightly, voice curling like smoke as he added, âDo you want me begging for it first?â
The faint shift in your expressionâhesitation, surprise, something flickering behind your eyesâwas gone almost as quickly as it appeared. You scoffed, your laugh short and bitter, already angling your body away like youâd had enough.
âI want you to leave me alone,â you shot back, each word bitten off like you meant to end it right there. Your smile was cutting, the kind meant to dismiss, to wound. âEnjoy the party, Rafayel.â
And before he could stop you, you turned toward the crowdâtoward him, the other guyâand something inside him twisted sharp, the smirk still plastered on his face doing nothing to smother the frustration building in his chest.
Watching you dance, flirt, and laugh with that guy for hours ticked Rafayel off in ways he couldnât keep buriedânot with alcohol humming in his veins. His eyes followed the sway of your hips, the way sweat caught the low lights on your skin, turning you into something untouchable and magnetic. The guy had slipped away a few minutes ago, probably for another drink or a bathroom breakâRafayel couldnât be bothered to care.
His focus was on you, only you. The words youâd thrown at him earlier replayed like a broken record in his mind, cutting sharper every time. He hadnât expected you to cling to him, hadnât even expected softness or anything close to itâbut acting as if you hadnât spent a night tangled together, bodies desperate, mouths bruisedâit set something raw and restless burning in him.
He hated it. Hated how much it mattered. Hated the circumstances, hated that it made him feel like thisâlike he wanted to drag you away and make you admit every mark you left on his skin meant something more than just a mistake. And he knew it would probably end badly. But watching another man press into your space, lay hands on youâwatching you let him, welcome himâit made his blood run hotter than the whiskey in his glass.
Rafayel wasnât stupid enough to believe you were doing it on purpose just to rile him up. But still, the thought gnawed at him. The possibility that you knew exactly what effect you had on himâand chose to wield itâmade his chest tighten in a way he couldnât laugh off anymore.
Your hips swayed slow and unbothered to the rhythm, a lazy, carefree roll that pulled him in before he could stop himself. You hadnât even realized who pressed up behind youâhe could see it in the way you welcomed the touch too easily, as if you thought it was that other guy. That thought alone made his jaw clench, the bitter edge of alcohol still coating his tongue.
His hands settled on your waist, fingers splaying possessively over the curve, and you arched in response without hesitation. That simple movementâthat youâd done it for someone elseâmade frustration coil low and sharp in his chest. His grip tightened, pulling you flush as he dipped his face into the slope of your neck. The scent of your perfume laced with heat and sweat filled his head, dizzying, intoxicating, far too easy to get drunk on.
âYou smell so good,â he murmured against your skin, his voice low enough to sink right into your bones.
You stiffened instantly, the realization snapping through you. It was him, not the guy you thought. Your body shifted as if to turn, to throw him a glare or maybe shove him away, but his arms circled tighter around your waist, holding you still, pressing you into the steady rise of his chest. His nose brushed just beneath your ear, his mouth dragging close enough that his words threaded warmth into your skin.
âWhat the hell do you think youâre doing?â you asked, your voice pitched low, sharp but not steadyâcaught off guard, unsettled.
His lips ghosted another breath over your neck, dangerous and calm all at once, the lazy drawl of his voice cutting through the bass of the music. âCouldnât keep watching that guy put his hands all over you.â
You scoffed, refusing to give him the satisfaction of stillness, your body swaying side to side with the beat as though he werenât pressed so close. He took it for annoyance, maybe even defiance, and you threw your words like sparks over your shoulder. âThen donât fucking look, Rafayel. It isnât any of your business.â
His chest brushed against your back, solid and warm, crowding you until there was no space left to claim as your own. You rolled your hips again, half in spite, half because fighting him always ended like thisâlike gravity itself had shifted around him. His breath trembled against your neck, catching faintly on the perfume he couldnât seem to stop drinking in.
âAre you drunk?â you muttered, sharp with irritation.
âNo,â he rasped, voice rougher than usual, his hips sliding in sync with yours. The deliberate press made it impossible to ignore the unmistakable hardness straining against your ass. His fingers found your hips, not tentative but claiming, tightening when you didnât shrug him off.
You scoffed under your breath, but your body betrayed you, still moving, still letting him. âThen why the hell are you all over me right now?â
He didnât answer in words first. His lips ghosted along your neck, deliberate and lazy, before catching against your skin in a kiss that lingered too long to be innocent. He pulled your hips flush against his, making sure you felt exactly what youâd provoked, exactly how hard he was.
âItâs how it should be,â he murmured, his voice a low curl of smoke, the smirk etched against your skin as he leaned into your ear. âSo do me a favor, cutie, and tell that guy to back off.â
Your laugh came sharp, edged with a bite. âI thought I told you to back off, Rafayel.â still, your hips betrayed the venom of your words, grinding against him like you couldnât stop yourself. âIâm leaving home soon, anyway.â
That pushed him too far. His patience snapped into something darker, frustration coiled tight with want. His mouth brushed your ear, tone suddenly rougher, meaner, though still soaked in heat. âThe next words out your mouth better not be that youâre leaving with him.â
His grip tightened at your waist, and the pressure sent a shiver down your spine no matter how hard you tried to fight it. You hated that your body still reacted, hated that even when you were frustratedâangry, evenâit didnât stop the rush of heat that pooled beneath your skin.
His breath brushed your ear as he leaned in, the low bass of the music vibrating through the floor and through your bones, but all you could hear was him. The two of you swayed together, not to the rhythm, but to something far more reckless.
âGet your act together, Rafayel.â your voice cut sharp, laced with sarcasm as you turned to face him. The flashing lights caught the tension in your jaw, as tight and unyielding as his own, and for a moment it felt like you werenât dancing so much as locked in combat.
His lips curvedânot into a smile, not reallyâbut into that insufferable smirk he wore whenever he wanted to rile you. âMm, harsh. Though, to be fair, Iâm not the one grinding against strangers for an audience.â his words came low, casual, but there was a rawness underneath, the kind that betrayed too much.
Your eyes narrowed, voice dripping with annoyance. âYouâre either drunk out of your mind, or youâre jealous. Whichever it isâyou have no right to say that.â
His hold only tightened, and the jealousy he refused to name aloud lingered in every breath he refused to let you take alone. His jaw ticked, a scoff breaking past his lips. It was supposed to sound amused, the way it usually did when he was poking at you, but the laugh carried a sharpness he couldnât quite disguise. Jealousy bled through no matter how smooth he tried to make it. His eyes locked on yours, unblinking, the crowd and the music dissolving into a blur behind you.
âDonât go home with him.â the words came out low, bitten off, heavier than he intended.
You scoffed, the sound sharp enough to cut, pushing against his chest to put some space between you. He barely gave, his body rooted in place, but you turned anyway, your voice tossed over your shoulder, drowned by the bass but still slicing through him all the same. âUnbelievable.â
The sway of your hips as you walked away was infuriating, deliberate, as if you knew exactly what you were doing to him. His jaw clenched tighter, watching you head straight toward the direction that bastard had gone. Before the thought could even settle, his hand shot out, catching your wrist.
You barely had time to gasp before he was dragging you through the crush of bodies, threading you through the mess of perfume and sweat and music until the two of you spilled into a darker corner, half-hidden near the bathroom hallway.
âWhat the fuââ the curse was barely past your lips before his mouth was on you.
It wasnât careful. It wasnât measured. It was a smash of lips and teeth and bottled-up want that burned through every ounce of restraint he had left. He couldnât hear another word of you telling him to back off, couldnât stand the thought of you storming away toward anyone but him.
And to his reckless satisfaction, you didnât shove him off. Not right away. Instead your lips parted, your tongue chasing his with a heat that shocked him as much as it thrilled him. The back of your shoulders hit the wall with a thud, and he pinned you there, his hand curling around your jaw like he needed to hold you still, like he couldnât risk you slipping through his fingers again.
He broke just enough space to breathe, his forehead nearly pressed to yours, breath ragged against your lips. His voice was hoarse, raw in a way youâd never heard. âIâm jealous.â
The confession scraped out of him like it cost something, but his eyes didnât waver. They bore into you, dark, heated, a storm of frustration and something softer underneath. His cheeks were warm, but his gaze was sharp, almost accusing.
âDidnât think your little act of indifference would get to me, and it didnât at first,â he said, his tone clipped, defensive, as if he needed to convince himself more than you. His fingers dug harder into your hips, holding you where you were, his frustration bleeding through every touch.
âUntil I saw him all over you. And youââ his jaw tightened again, the words heavier, almost bitten through his teeth. âYou couldnât have welcomed him more sweetly.â
âIs that so?â you scoffed, though the sound came out thinner than you wanted, betraying the heat gathering in your chest. His eyes caught the flicker of yours dropping just once to his mouth before darting back up, a slip you couldnât take back. You hated that he noticed, hated the way he thrived on it, as if your irritation was his favorite game.
âI donât remember owing you anything, Rafayel,â you managed through a ragged breath, voice sharp but trembling at the edges.
His grip tightened at your waist, fingers digging into the fabric just enough to make you stumble the slightest step into him. The closeness burned. There were people all around youâlaughing, drunk, tangled in the musicâbut the crowd blurred into nothing, leaving only the thrum of his pulse pressed against yours, the friction of your remarks colliding.
âItâs like youâre trying to piss me off on purpose,â he muttered, low and rough, the words curling warm against your ear before his mouth stole yours.
The kiss was hard, bruisingâmore a clash than a surrenderâbut your body betrayed you, answering with the same fever. Your fingers curled into the half-buttoned placket of his shirt, yanking him closer until the last breath of air between you vanished. He groaned against your lips, the sound half frustration, half need, his tongue meeting yours in a reckless tangle. The taste of him was dizzyingâbitter with jealousy, sweet with desireâand it made your head spin worse than the alcohol.
When he tore back just enough to speak, his voice was ragged, every word bitten off as though it cost him something.
âIâm jealous and pissed, and so fucking turned on.â his teeth grazed your skin as he caught the line of your jaw, then your throat, nipping at the place where your pulse fluttered out of control.
His breath spilled hot over your perfume, a scent he knew wasnât chosen for himâand that knowledge set his temper alight.
He inhaled against your neck, lips brushing dangerously close. âTell me, cutieâŠâ his tone dipped into mockery, sharp and soft all at once, âis that what you were aiming for?â
â
Shutting Rafayel up was easy enough if you played your cards right. And right now, with your thighs draped on each side of his head, his face buried between them, it was the most effective method youâd ever discovered.
Heâd pulled you straight out of that partyâcocky grin, sharp remarks, his hand at the small of your back like he had every right to lead you wherever he pleasedâand somehow, the two of you ended up here again, tangled in the mess of his sheets, tearing at each otherâs clothes like you were starving.
He hadnât wasted a second once the door shut. The moment he shoved you back onto his bed, Rafayel dragged you over his mouth, pinning you there with a kind of desperate arrogance, tongue lapping at your folds like he had something to prove.
Your thighs trembled with every stroke of him, the slick sound of his mouth against you filling the room. He groaned into you, the vibration making you jolt, fingers tightening around the headboard as you rocked against him.
âFuckâRafayel,â you gasped, the words breaking into a moan as his hands urged you down harder, forcing you to grind over his mouth like he wanted you to drown him.
You couldnât help laughing breathlessly, the edge of smugness curling your lips. âDidnât know you liked shutting up this much,â you panted, voice cracking as he sucked hard on your clit, pulling another shaky cry from you.
He hummed against you in response, and the casual defiance in it made your chest tighten with something more dangerous than lust. Still, you couldnât resist taunting him, voice pitched with a mix of moan and tease. âDo you wanna make me cum, Rafayel? Hm? So eager to please me for once?â
That had his fingers digging into your thighs, bruising and possessive. He pushed his tongue deeper, fucking you with it, and you cursed, head falling back, vision hazing. But you werenât done. You leaned into the crueler edge of the game, your smirk curling even as your words hitched mid-breath.
âMaybe the other guy wouldâve been just as eager⊠you know, the one who whispered all kind of things in my ear while grinding behind meââ
Your taunt cut off in a broken scream when he growled low into your pussy and sealed his mouth around your clit, sucking so hard your whole body jerked. The orgasm ripped through you with a violence that made your thighs quake against his grip, soaking his face as you cried out his name like you couldnât hold it back. And the bastard didnât even slow down.
âS-shit, ahhâŠâ you gasped, the sound breaking out of you before you could bite it back. His mouth didnât let up, not until you cried his name, your whole body trembling as your hips moved helplessly against his tongue, too sensitive to bear it yet too desperate to stop. A low growl rumbled in his throat at the sound of your curse, vibrating against you, and then suddenlyâhis grip clamped around your thighs, dragging a startled cry from your lips as he flipped you onto your back.
Before you could catch your breath, he was already over you, stealing your mouth in a kiss that left you dizzy, his hips grinding down into yours, the hard line of him pressing insistently through the fabric of his pants. His lips broke away only to trail down your throat, and then his teeth found you, sucking rough marks into your skin like he meant to brand you.
âYou already got me so worked upâŠâ his voice was rough, almost bitten out, âbut then you go and say his name while Iâm between your legs?â he sank his teeth lightly into your neck, the sting chased by the drag of his tongue.
Your protest melted into a groan as his fingers slid inside you, stretching you with merciless precision. He moaned low when your release slicked against his touch, making each movement faster, deeper, your body clenching around him in desperate pulses. His other hand spread over your ass, holding you open for him as his mouth closed around your breast, sucking hard, leaving your nipple aching under the wet heat of his tongue.
When his eyes lifted, messy hair falling into his flushed face, the burn in them was enough to make your stomach twist. Jealousy and hunger sharpened the edges of his gaze, the sound of his voice rough and almost mocking. âIf you wanted it rough, cutie, you couldâve just asked. No need to piss me off, pulling shit like this on me.â
Your laugh came out broken, shaky, your voice trembling on each gasp. Still, you managed, âWhereâs the fun in that?â
He kissed you then like he was trying to win something, all heat and defiance, his mouth clashing against yours in a mess of teeth and breath. You answered with equal force, your hands already curling tighter in his hair, dragging him closer until you broke the kiss just to flip him beneath you.
The motion was sharp, your thighs locking around his hips as you shoved him down onto the mattress, stealing a groan out of him that sounded far too satisfying.
âYouâre so easy to trigger, arenât you?â you taunted, breathless as you pressed your mouth to his throat, nipping at the skin until he tilted his head back with a curse. Your fingers fumbled at his belt, deliberately slow, grazing him in ways that made his jaw clench.
âMaybe itâs time someone puts you in your place. Because clearlyâŠâ you scoffed, dragging your nails lightly over his stomach as you marked his neck, ââŠyou donât know where you stand.â
His hips twitched under the drag of your palm, his breathing uneven nowâfinally losing that insufferable composure that always drove you mad. His pants and boxers were gone in what felt like seconds, and you perched just above him, teasing, stroking him in slow, deliberate movements that had his eyes darkening, his chest rising sharp with every breath.
When your mouth wrapped around him at last, he swore violently, a hand flying to your hair, gripping hard enough to make your scalp sting. The sound that tore out of him was raw, unguarded, his back arching off the sheets.
âS-shit, fuckâŠâ he hissed, the word breaking, and you almost laughed around him, because the victory was already rushing through your veins, warm and heady. The Rafayel who always had a sharp retort, always stayed a step ahead, was now groaning under your mouth, bucking helplessly into you, fingers threaded tight in your hair as if heâd lose himself without the anchor.
He looked almost beautiful like thisâbreathless, undone, stripped of every cocky remark he usually wielded like a weapon. You could admit it now, he was dangerous when quiet, his charm sharper in the silence between gasps.
âCutie shitâjust like that,â his voice cracked, raw and heavy as his hand tightened in your hair. âIâm not gonna last.â
The ragged sound of his breathing filled the space, and just when you felt him twitch against your tongue, he pulled you away with a guttural growl. His mouth caught yours in a kiss that was messy, desperate, teeth clashing as if he couldnât stand the distance for even a second longer.
âNot yet,â he rasped against your lips, his grip bruising your hips as he dragged you up into his lap. âNot until I fuck you so good you forget whatever guy you were entertaining earlier.â
You barely had time to roll your eyes before he flipped you over with startling ease, pressing you down and sliding into you in one rough, unrelenting thrust. The breath tore out of you in a broken moan, nails sinking into his shoulders as your body stretched around him.
âYouâre tight, princess,â he groaned into your ear, hips snapping forward, the sound spilling out of him low and guttural. âFuck, you take me just as good as last time.â
Whatever sharp retort you mightâve had died the moment he set a brutal rhythm, pounding into you with a pace that stole the ground from under your thoughts. Pleasure tore through you too fast, too muchâuntil you were trembling around him, clenching hard as your release crashed over you.
âSo sweet when you come for me,â he rasped, voice unraveling as your walls squeezed him tighter. âSqueezing me so goddamn t-tightâŠâ
He pulled out only to drag you forward, manhandling you face-down, ass high, the mattress dipping under his weight as he shoved back inside without warning. The thrust punched a scream out of you, raw and unguarded, and he chuckled darkly at the sound, his fingers digging deep into your hips as if to brand you there.
âYou wanted rough, didnât you?â His tone was half-growl, half-smirk, sharp with the kind of heat that left no space to breathe. He snapped his hips hard against you, deeper, faster, each movement sharp enough to leave you reeling. âWanted to make me jealous, huh? Then take it.â
Your mouth hung open, words failing as he pushed you past every edge, the drag of his jealousy turning him feral, recklessâeager to ruin you until there was nothing left in your head but him. And in truth, you loved every second of it. Because this version of Rafayelâthe one who burned with want, who touched like he was starving, who let his jealousy unravel into raw needâwas utterly, devastatingly irresistible.
.á⧠translations or reposts of my work on tumblr, ao3, or other sites ARE NOT permitted. please do not ask. do not reuse my blogpost headers, dividers, or layouts. these are original designs of my own. thank you!
You: âYou know I love you right?â you start, hesitating for a brief moment. âBut I think this isnât working âŠmaybe we should take a break.â
Hawks
âYou know what? Youâre absolutely right. We really need a good relaxing break, donât we?â youâre not expecting Keigo to agree with you, and he laughs at the shock on your face. âHow do we feel about Hawaii? You always wanted to go there, right?â
Confusion replaces the shock you felt just brief moments ago. You stare at Keigo, bewildered at the strange turn of the conversation.Â
âWhat are you talking about?â you question.Â
âWhat are you talking about, my adorably confusing girlfriend?â he laughs it off, humorously. âYou said we need a break and I totally agree with that. Plus, I think a romantic getaway is just what we need right now, itâs about time we get some vacations.âÂ
âNo, Keigo.â you stop him, âWhat I mean is that we should take a break from each other. Give it some time, yâknow.âÂ
Thereâs a moment of quiet silence and Keigoâs smiles, a stiff and hard smile that does a good job covering up the upset clenching of his jaw. Â
âArenât you being a tad bit dramatic with that? I mean, weâre perfectly totally completely fine, so whatâs with that idea?â he questions you. âWhy you tryna break something so perfect? Let me guess, attachment issues flaring up?â
âBecause itâs not perfect, Keigo.â you answer back, a bit annoyed. âAnd weâre not fine, despite what you think. If you havenât noticed, then maybe youâre not very clever, are you?âÂ
That golden gaze, usually so warm, now burns with an intensity that makes your throat tighten and a wave of regret immediately washes over you.Â
âYeah, youâre probably right.â he agrees, slowly dragging each word. âMaybe Iâm not very clever. Cause if I was more clever, then maybe I would have noticed that you have a tendency to be overly dramatic.âÂ
The turn of the conversation leaves you stunned. What?
âDramatic?â you echo, forcing your voice to stay steady. âKeigo, weâve been fighting constantly. You donât listen, and I feel like Iâmââ
ââLike youâre what? Neglected? Trapped?â he cuts you off, before stepping closer, and though his wings didnât move, you feel their phantom weight pressing down on you. âBabe, everything I do is for you. For us.â
âI work myself to the bone to make sure you have everything youâve ever dreamed of. Donât I?â his words pinch your heart. âAnd this is how you repay me? By wanting space? After everything Iâve done for you?â
âItâs not about what youâve done, Keigo. Itâs about how I feel. I just... need time to think. And maybe so do you.â
âTime to think? Whatâs there to think about, sweetheart?â he huffs, âWhoâs going to protect you, take care of you, if you leave? Hmm?â
His wings extend slightly to frame you both in the narrow hallway.
âKeigo, Iââ
âShh.â He pressed a finger to your lips, his eyes softening into something almost tender. âYouâre upset right now, and thatâs okay. But leaving isnât the answer, dove. You belong here. With me.â
Keigo cups your cheek, so tenderly and affectionately that it clenches your heart. His smile returns, warm and reassuring, as if nothing had happened.Â
âTell you what - letâs forget all this nonsense. How about I book that trip to Hawaii after all? A fresh start, just the two of us. Youâll see how perfect we are together.â
You want to protest, to grab your suitcase and leave, but his wings curl around you in a protective cocoon, and the weight of his touch - his words - render you paralyzed.
Somewhere deep down, a small voice screams at you to run. But Keigoâs voice, low and honeyed, drowns it out.
âSee? Everythingâs going to be fine,â he murmurs, pressing a kiss to your forehead. âYou donât need to go anywhere, dove. Iâll make sure of it.â
And you know, with a sinking certainty, that he meant it.
Dabi
The way his ice-blue eyes stare at you is chilling, to say the least. Dabi looks at you intently as if trying to discover something.Â
âDo you remember when we started dating?â he asks at last, leaving you surprised at the random question. âThat night on the rooftop where you become mine.â
You slowly nod, unsure of what he meant. Itâs only been six months since your relation became official, but it feels as if itâs been a lifetime ago.
Thereâs been so many major changes in it - you changed, Dabi changed, everything about your relationship changed. And not for the better.Â
âGood. Then you also remember when I told you - no - when I promised you that youâd never get fully rid of me, if you said yes. That youâd become mine, til your last breath.â his voice deepens at each step he takes towards you, looming and dark.
âThat weâd be intertwined for the rest of our lives. That nothing would stop us from being together, no matter what.â
Shivers run down your spine, and you find yourself paralyzed. Frozen. No matter how much you attempt, your limbs wonât move. Youâre completely frozen with fear.Â
âThen tell meâŠâ Dabi nears you, looking more mutilated and burned than ever. His hand rises, softly brushing against your cheek and it takes everything in you not to flinch away. â... why are you suddenly too good for me?â
âItâs not like that âŠ.â
Your meek attempt of protesting is quickly silenced when his other hand grips you by the elbow, too firm for you to slip away. He cages you with his body and hands and you are too nervous to stop the sweat that builds up in your back.Â
âGo on now, donât be shy. I wanna hear all the pathetic excuses you got.â he dryly chuckles, slightly heating up his hand or maybe itâs just an illusion of your body, at this time youâre not sure anymore. âTell me all about it. Iâm looking forward to hearing you spew out all sorts of miserable apologies and justifications you can find.â
âOr maybe youâre planning to use the good old excuse everyone uses these days. Itâs you, not me.â Dabi mocks you, but the lack of humor in his voice is evident.Â
âDabi, please.â your voice is nothing but a weak frightened whisper, âYouâre⊠scaring me.âÂ
âGood, maybe fear can drill some good sense into that frail mind of yours.â he scoffs. âCause I believe both of us know where this is headed. Youâre not leaving me.âÂ
He doesnât wait for an answer before continuing, eyes and voice pouring of determination and assurance.Â
âYou can never leave me, no matter how hard you try. Iâll always find you, you know that.â he warns, voice dipping low.
âAnd you should also be aware that your friends and family are meaningless to me. So, next time you think about pulling a stunt like this I highly suggest you think about their lives. Got it?âÂ
Deku
There are moments when you feel as though luck has abandoned you since you started dating Izuku.
Today is one of them.
Itâs partially your fault, had you realized earlier that Izuku came home in a poor pissy mood you wouldnât have brought the conversation up.Â
âSo, thatâs how itâs going to be, huh?â his tone is serious and firm, borderline resentful. âAfter everything Iâve done for you and yet you are breaking up with me.âÂ
The unnerving stare of the emerald eyes is enough to make you duck your eyes, and the way heâs towering over you, a powerful mass of muscle and scars, makes you hesitant to meet his eyes.Â
âIzuku, please.â you mutter. âItâs just⊠Itâs for the best.â
âNo, itâs not. Why donât you just say it? That youâre just gonna dump me like Iâm a piece of trash that got stuck to your shoe? Like I mean shit to you?â he spits, voice steadily rising and his words are cruel and effective enough to hit you hard and square on where it hurts the most.Â
âIzuââ
âIs this a joke to you? Huh? Am I a joke to you?â A yelp gets caught up in your throat when his fingers grab your arm. No amount of wriggling and twisting breaks his powerful grip over your wrist, his digits pressing hard against your bone.Â
âN-No! Of course not! Izuku, I donât- Please!â your lips quiver as you beg for something. Mercy. Freedom. Salvation. Anything. âPlease, letâs just talk this through andââ
âTalk about what, exactly?â Izuku presses further, messy tufts of green hair falling onto his eyes. âOn second thought, I do wanna talk about this. I wanna talk about how long these ideas have been pestering your mind. So tell me, sweetheart, how long have you been planning to ditch me to the side like garbage?â
âItâs not like that.â you try, but Izuku barely allows you to say a few words before heâs speaking over you.
âBetter yet,â he glares at you, his nostrils flare up and hand dangerously narrows around your handâs bone. âWho put this stupid idea into your head? Answer me, damnit!âÂ
You shrink at his tone, pathetic and unable to stand up for yourself, as Izuku keeps verbally charging at you.
Something in the back of your mind admonishes you for not sneaking away in the middle of night like a quiet mouse when Izuku would be deep in slumber.Â
synopsis: they spent years pretending they had already healed from each other, only to discover that some things donât fade that easilyâthey linger beneath the skin, warm and aching, waiting for one summer to burn all over again like a sunburn.
!! please read part 1 to understand the plot
tags: nsfw content, slowburn, plot-based, post-college reunion, family reunion, love triangle, yearning, unresolved feelings, mutual pining, sexual tension, nostalgia, childhood friends, growing up, masked party, ghostface, card games, domestic tension, stuck in the attic scene, angst, pilot!caleb, doctor!zayne, corporate manager!reader, reader caught in the middle, âwe never really moved onâ, all roads lead back to you, mfm threesome, tw: blood-sucking, dubcon themes, sandwiched, nicknames, oral (m!receiving), backshots, p in v, size difference, loss of virginity, overstimulation, creampie, roughness, manhandling, mdni!Â
wc: 21k
the funny thing about growing older is that nobody really warns you how quiet it becomes.
itâs the kind of quiet that slips into your life so naturally you barely notice it at first. one day you are eighteen, sitting cross-legged on your bedroom floor while your cousins chase each other downstairs and then somebody burns barbecue outside during a friday gathering. and then suddenly, without realizing when it happened, you are twenty-five years old answering emails in the evening while eating convenience store pasta over your office desk.
life did not become bad, but it simply became scheduled. you learned how to live by calendars now, by meetings and reports and client dinners. your phone buzzed more often from work than from friends these days, and your closet slowly filled with silk blouses, neutral heels, and fitted office dresses instead of oversized hoodies and school event shirts.Â
sometimes, you missed how easy everything used to feel. other times, you were grateful it no longer did.
âyouâre thinking again.â you blinked and looked up from your untouched drink. across the table, your colleague and closest friend from work, tara, narrowed her eyes at you knowingly beneath the warm restaurant lighting. around the two of you, friday night chatter filled the rooftop bar while city lights glittered far below the building.
you laughed quietly. âiâm literally just sitting here.â
âexactly,â tara replied. âyou only get that existential look when you start thinking about life.â
you rolled your eyes and finally took a sip from your drink. it tasted expensive and barely alcoholic, which felt very fitting for the kind of establishment your coworkers liked frequenting after successful presentations.
you leaned back into your chair with a sigh, letting their voices blur together briefly while laughter continued around the table. honestly, they werenât wrong. the past year had been exhausting. being a corporate manager at your age sounded impressive on paper until people realized it mostly involved sleeping too little and carrying everybody elseâs problems on your back, while pretending you had everything under control.
still, you liked the work, the independence, knowing you built this version of your life yourself. your phone buzzed suddenly beside your drink, bringing your eyes to it.Â
itâs the family groupchat.Â
your younger cousins were apparently spamming blurry photos from their movie night at your auntâs house. one picture showed three of them wrapped together in blankets while another was just an aggressively close image of pizza. you smiled despite yourself.
tara noticed instantly. âfamily?â
âyeah.â you shook your head. âmy cousins.â
âthe little kids?â
ânot little anymore,â you murmured.
that part still felt strange too. the youngest cousin who used to cry over scraped knees now posted dance covers online and borrowed makeup from you occasionally. another had recently started driving lessons. they were all growing too fast, stretching taller and louder and more complicated each year while you somehow stayed stuck remembering them as children.
maybe adulthood was just constantly realizing time moved without asking permission first.
â
the invitation arrived on a random tuesday night while you were half-awake in bed, still wearing your work blouse and scrolling mindlessly through your phone after answering one last email. you almost ignored it, thinking it was just another notification buried between work group chats, promotional messages, and missed calls from relatives... but then your eyes caught familiar words.
senior high alumni homecoming.
you blinked once. now you were fully awake.
the invitation opened into an elegant digital poster washed in dark navy and gold, far more sophisticated than anything your old student council couldâve designed years ago. beneath the formal lettering sat the event details neatly arranged across the screen. the venue, the date, the dress code... and then, at the very bottom saysâ
costumed masquerade theme.
you stared at the word longer than necessary. for some reason, it made your chest feel strangely light. below the poster, old batchmates were already reacting in the comment section.Â
it had been years. years since senior highâsince crowded hallways and sports festivals and summer evenings that felt endless back then. life after graduation moved too quickly for everyone. college separated people, and careers scattered them further. friendships became birthdays greeted through instagram stories and occasional âwe should meet soonâ conversations nobody had time to fulfill.
and yet, this invitation felt like somebody opening an old bedroom window after years. all at once, the memories from before drifted back in quietly.
you sat up against your pillows, phone glowing against the dark room while the city outside your condo windows stretched endlessly beneath the midnight sky.
would it really feel the same? you doubted it.Â
everyone was older now, real adults. people had careers, licenses, responsibilities, and probably relationships too. the thought made something inside you shift faintly. still, despite yourself, excitement curled somewhere in your chest.
you imagined seeing your old classmates again after all this time, imagined hearing familiar voices you hadnât heard in years, briefly becoming younger again just by standing in the same room together.
it sounded nice, dangerously nice. which was exactly why you hesitated.
for the next few days, the invitation in your phone stayed unanswered. you kept reopening the poster during work breaks only to lock your phone again afterward. every time someone new confirmed attendance, your curiosity deepened a little more.Â
you were grocery shopping with your mother beneath painfully cold supermarket air-conditioning while your mother pushed the cart slowly through the produce aisle, occasionally handing you random items to place inside.
you trailed beside her absentmindedly while checking your phone again, seeing someone had just sent another reminder poster.
âthree weeks left before the masquerade reunion!â
your mother glanced at you briefly. âwhat are you staring at?â
ânothing,â you answered.
she hummed suspiciously before tossing oranges into the cart. âyouâve had that same expression since yesterday.â
âwhat expression?â
âthe one you get when youâre thinking too hard.â
you looked down at the invitation again. you could almost picture it alreadyâold batchmates rediscovering each other beneath adulthood and years apart.
it felt like an invitation back to youth, just for one evening.
before you could overthink yourself out of it again, you accidentally pressed the attendance button.
confirmed.
your mother blinked when you suddenly looked so petrified. âwhat happened?â
you slipped your phone into your pocket. ââŠi think iâm going to a party.â
and thatâs it.Â
the night of the alumni homecoming arrived wrapped in gold lights.
the convention center occupied almost the entire upper floor of the hotel, glowing warmly behind towering glass windows while valet attendants guided cars beneath the entrance canopy downstairs.Â
...you didnât expect for the party to be this well-prepared and budgeted. from outside alone, the event already looked far more elegant than anything your old batch could have afforded years ago. adulthood really did strange things to peopleâapparently one of those things included having enough money to rent out ballrooms and pretend everybody had always been this sophisticated.
you stood before the large mirrored elevator walls one last time before stepping out onto the event floor.
you decided to dress as catwoman. the costume had started as a joke between you and tara during a late-night online shopping spree. but now, beneath the hallway lights of the hotel, you almost regretted how good it actually looked on you.
music pulsed through the ballroom doors ahead as hotel staff welcomed arriving guests. the moment you stepped inside, warm lighting and noise swallowed you whole.
the venue was enormous! massive chandeliers reflected gold across glossy floors while alumni crowded around cocktail tables beneath dim ambient lights, meanwhile the dance floor already held clusters of people as servers carried trays of drinks through the crowd.
and everywhere, everyone wore masks. beautiful, elaborate, confusing masks. half the challenge of the reunion seemed to be figuring out who anybody actually was. some people wore elegant masquerade masks while others committed entirely to themes and costumes dramatic enough to make identification nearly impossible. every few seconds, somebody somewhere would suddenly shriek after recognizing an old batchmate.
thinking about it, it was kind of genius. years changed people enough already, so hiding everyoneâs faces behind masks only made the nostalgia feel stranger.
for a moment, you simply stood there near the entrance taking it all in. years ago, something like this wouldâve overwhelmed you almost immediately. itâs too loud, too crowded. too many social expectations pressing against your chest all at once. but adulthood had apparently beaten professionalism into you. now, instead of panicking, you simply adjusted your clutch beneath your arm and moved forward calmly into the crowd.
it felt a little like opening a time capsule only to discover everything inside had learned how to breathe on its own.
you drifted further into the venue eventually, drink balanced loosely in your hand while conversations came and went around you in fragments. the ballroom had grown warmer now from the amount of people filling it. for once, you allowed yourself to enjoy it. to exist inside this strange overlap between who you used to be and who you became.
âdo you think calebâs actually here?â
huh?Â
your steps slowed. it happened so naturally your body reacted before your mind did.
âoh my gosh, wait, is he? did anyone see caleb?â
caleb.
the name landed against your chest with quiet, terrible familiarity. for a second, all the noise around you dulled.
instead of turning around, you stood near one of the ballroom pillars with your fingers tightening subtly around your glass.
âi think he is,â another woman answered excitedly. âsomeone said the guy wearing the nightwing costume might be him!â
...of course caleb was here. why wouldnât he be? it wouldâve been more strange if he wasnât here. the realization should not have unsettled you this much after all these years, and yet suddenly your chest felt oddly tight beneath the fitted black fabric of your clothes. because if caleb was here... then, is the other also here?Â
your thoughts stopped themselves before fully forming the name.
...zayne.
something you tried your best to bury after all these years... now had been brought up to the surface. itâs pretty naive of you to think that this wouldn't happen one way or another tonight, right?Â
you stared blankly toward the moving crowd ahead while your pulse shifted unevenly somewhere beneath your ribs. it had been years since you last saw either of them properly, years since that unbearable summer, years since tangled confessions and emotions too large for any of you to handle correctly at eighteen.
years since you walked away.
would they look different now? what if you ran into them tonight? what exactly were you supposed to say after all this time? the thought alone made heat creep faintly up your neck.
you were no longer teenagers. no longer those messy, emotionally reckless kids orbiting around each other beneath suburban summers and friday night gatherings.Â
adulthood had happened already, surely time had done its job. surely they had moved on.
âhonestly,â one of the girls behind you continued with a laugh, âi still canât believe i dated him.â
you blinked.
another voice groaned. âyou dated caleb and survived? tell us everything.â
dated.
the word echoed unpleasantly inside your chest.
âoh please,â the girl laughed again. âit wasnât that dramatic. we broke up because of distance after graduation. he was already flying all over the place for training back then.â
flying?
ah, right.
your parents did let you know a year ago that he had become a DAA pilot. somehow hearing it spoken aloud made the years feel even more real.
âheâs gotten more ridiculously handsome though,â another added. âif heâs really here tonight, maybe this is your chance to get back together.â their laughter then blurred afterward beneath the music.
you stood still for one second too long, before looking over your shoulder to see the face of the girl caleb had apparently dated.
did he really?
pfft, of course he did. why wouldnât he?
he was caleb. the golden boy turned golden man. the kind of person people naturally loved. and yet, the image still unsettled something quiet and unpleasant inside you. before memory could drag you any further backward, you immediately resumed walking deeper into the ballroom.
enough.
your heels clicked steadily against polished floors while you lifted your chin and forced yourself through the crowd again. you refused to let old emotions creep back into your chest this easily after everything.
you were not eighteen anymore. you were a grown woman nowâone who handled negotiations, presentations, and difficult people for a living. for godâs sake, you paid taxes and managed teams and owned matching dinnerware now.
get yourself together.
whatever existed between the three of you belonged to another lifetime already. tonight was only a reunion. nothing more.
you tried to shake the feeling off afterward. really, you did.
deciding you needed something sweetâor maybe simply a distractionâyou wandered toward one of the longer dessert tables situated near the center of the venue. unlike the crowded cocktail area, this side of the ballroom felt calmer. at the center of the table, a large chocolate fountain cascaded endlessly downward in glossy ribbons.
okay, maybe adulthood never truly erased simple joys.
the fountain looked ridiculously good. you grabbed one of the small dessert cups from beside the table and leaned slightly forward, carefully positioning fruit skewers beneath the flowing chocolate. the scent of cocoa drifted warmly upward.
for a brief moment, you relaxed again.
and thenâthat feeling returned. just enough to make the back of your neck grow strangely aware. you straightened slightly, fingers tightening around the dessert cup as you sensed someone standing nearby behind you. not close enough to be inappropriate, but close enough to feel deliberate.
your eyes lifted instinctively...
to a man dressed in a nightwing costume stood only a few meters away, dark domino mask shadowing his face while he casually held a drink in one gloved hand.
tall, broad shoulders, dark hair. even the postureâ
oh my god.
your entire body went rigid beneath your clothes.
shit. that had to be caleb, right?
your mind raced embarrassingly fast while the man remained completely unawareâor at least seemingly unawareâof the internal crisis currently unfolding beside the chocolate fountain.
okay, you were an adult. a very functional adult. this was not high school anymore. if that really was caleb, then the correct thing to do would obviously be acting normal. mature and emotionally unaffected. you absolutely refused to look like somebody still hung up on old teenage history years later.
hesitantly, you cleared your throat and turned toward him fully.
the man finally glanced up from his drink.
god, why did he still feel familiar even after all this time?
forcing composure into your expression, you offered him a polite smile. ââŠhey, caleb, howâve you been?â
for a few long seconds, the man simply stared at you.... strangely.
his silence stretched enough to make heat slowly creep up your neck beneath the mask. behind the dark lenses of his nightwing costume, his expression looked almost alarmed, like you had approached him with deeply concerning information instead of a simple greeting.
your confidence began deteriorating immediately. why did he look so confused?
a horrible thought then crossed your mind all at once.
did caleb seriously forget about you now?
no, that was ridiculous! surely not to that extent. before you could spiral any further into your own embarrassment, the man finally spoke.
ââŠiâm not caleb.â
the ballroom lights shifted overhead at the exact same moment, finally illuminating his eyes properly through the mask.
hazel brown, not purple.
oh.
how did you even make that mistake?
âah,â you muttered beneath a short embarrassed laugh. âiâm sorry, i thought you were somebody else.â
he really looks a lot like caleb...
the man stared at you for another second before chuckling lightly into his drink. âwell, now iâm curious. you looking for caleb?â
you frowned. âno,â you answered perhaps a little too quickly. âi just thought you were... him.â
âah.â the man nodded knowingly in a way that irritated you slightly. then he casually added, âi heard he wasnât able to attend anyway because of his schedule.â
your fingers loosened around the cup. âis that so,âÂ
âyep, something work-related, i think.â
that made sense. pilots probably werenât exactly known for stable schedules.
the strange tightness lingering inside your chest eased just slightly afterward. maybe because uncertainty felt worse than disappointment somehow. at least now there was an explanation, a clean one.
he simply wasnât here.
you nodded politely. âwell, thank you anyway.â
the man raised his glass toward you. âgood luck finding whoever youâre actually looking for.â
you gave him one last embarrassed smile before immediately turning away. jesus, what an unbelievably humiliating interaction.
as you walked deeper through the ballroom again, you tried forcing yourself not to think about it too much. honestly, maybe it was better this way. you wouldnât have to worry about awkward reunions or unresolved history suddenly resurfacing. caleb wasnât here. and if caleb wasnât hereâthen maybe zayne wasnât either.Â
you continued moving through the venue with quieter steps, eventually drifting toward the grand staircase leading upstairs to the hotelâs lounge area. unlike the crowded ballroom below, the upper floor looked dimmer and more intimate.
except, there was a crowd gathered near the lounge entrance.
you slowed, watching the way people stood clustered together around one side of the room, several guests leaned against the railings trying to peek through the gathering, while others whispered to each other with visible amusement.
your brows furrowed. what exactly was happening up there?
curiosity carried you upstairs before caution could stop you. most of the crowd, however, seemed gathered around one particular table near the center of the lounge. you stepped closer carefully, weaving between guests until the scene finally came into view.
a proper poker setup occupied one of the longer tables, cards scattered beneath the amber lighting while chips piled carelessly around half-finished drinks. several masked alumni sat around the table already looking halfway defeated.
and seated among themâwas ghostface.
itâs not the ridiculous halloween-store version. this one looked⊠unfairly good.
instead of the long black robe usually associated with the mask, the man wore fitted black clothing that sharpened the broadness of his shoulders and arms, dark fabric stretching cleanly over muscle before disappearing into grey baggy jeans that somehow made the whole look even more attractive. black gloves covered his hands while the ghostface mask itself showcased its expression permanently frozen into that eerie open-mouthed grin.
you folded your arms while lingering near the edge of the crowd, attention slowly drifting toward the game unfolding before you.
âthatâs like his sixth win already.â
âno seriously, this guyâs terrifying.â
soft laughter circled around the table, and the ghostface man only leaned back slightly in his chair, cards resting between gloved fingers with suspicious ease.
you watched another round unfold. and unfortunately, they were right. he was good, very good.Â
he played patiently, almost lazily at times, like he already knew how each round would end before the others did. every movement looked deliberate, the way he shuffled chips, the way he held cards. even the way he sat there silently while everyone else talked too much.
you narrowed your eyes beneath your mask. okay, that irritated you.
because for as long as you could remember, you had always been good at card games. most especially poker. annoyingly good, according to several cousins and former classmates who stopped agreeing to play against you years ago. and now this ghostface man was sitting there collecting victories like he owned the table, so your competitiveness stirred before you could stop it.
you remained watching for another minute, then another.
the ghostface player revealed another winning hand.
âoh come on,â someone complained loudly. âthis guyâs impossible.â
through the mask, ghostface only tilted his head in amusement.
that did it.
before you could reconsider, you stepped forward through the crowd. âcan i play too?âthe moment you stepped closer to the table, several heads turned toward you at once.
years ago, that amount of attention probably would have made your stomach fold into itself. you used to hate moments like this in schoolâthe sudden awareness of eyes, the fear of saying something awkward, the feeling of being perceived too closely.
unlike everyone else who only glanced briefly your way, the ghostface guy seated across the poker table looked up at you and⊠stayed there.
one second, and two, and three.
his mask revealed absolutely nothing, which somehow made it worse. the frozen expression carved into ghostfaceâs face remained permanently unreadable while he simply stared at you in complete silence.
you resisted the urge to fidget beneath his attention.Â
why did that suddenly feel intense?Â
âis that okay?â you finally asked, gesturing toward the empty chair. âor am i intruding?â
for a brief moment, ghostface remained motionless. thenâas though suddenly realizing he had been staring too longâhe leaned back and nodded once.
âit's okay.â
your breath caught.
that voice...
you narrowed your eyes even more beneath your catwoman mask while slowly taking the seat across from him.
his voice is dangerously familiar, not enough for certainty, but just enough to disturb you. you settled into the chair anyway while the others around the table perked up at the possibility of fresh entertainment.
âoh thank god,â somebody groaned dramatically. âplease humble him for us.â
âseriously,â another added. âthis guyâs been robbing everybody blind.â
ghostface said nothing. he only lowered his gaze back toward the cards in his hands while the dealer reshuffled for the next round.
thankfully, once the game resumed, the mask itself stopped being distracting surprisingly quickly. maybe because ghostface rarely lifted his head fully while playing. most of the time, his attention remained lowered toward the table, gloved fingers handling chips and cards with calm precision.
the first few rounds unfolded carefully. you played cleanly, watching your opponents more than your own cards while the lounge buzzed around you. years of corporate meetings had apparently sharpened your poker face because some of the players folded too early against you. ghostface, however, remained annoyingly difficult to read. his movements were too controlled, too measured.Â
you frowned while studying him across the table.
the game had somehow become quieter around the two of you, in the sense that your attention had narrowed toward the man seated across. somewhere along the way, the others around the table stopped mattering. it became a strange tug-of-war existing only between you and ghostface.
and annoyinglyâhe really was good.
the current round had gone sideways faster than you expected. one by one, the other players folded until only the two of you remained at the table, chips scattered between dim amber light and half-empty glasses.
you leaned back in your chair while mentally rearranging possibilities.
shit.
ghostface had cornered you beautifully.
your fingers tapped once against your cards while you forced yourself to think. if you folded now, youâd lose the round entirely. but if you pushed too aggressively and guessed wrongâugh. your ego genuinely would not survive losing to this stupid masked man, especially not in front of an audience.
across the table, ghostface remained infuriatingly calm. it made you bite against your lower lip while studying the chips, trying to search for another angle, another bluff, another opening somewhere inside the round.
come on. think!
you glanced upward absentmindedlyâthen immediately looked back downâbefore your eyes snapped upward again.
because ghostface was staring at you.
... very openly.
his elbow rested against the arm of the chair while his gloved fist supported the side of his face, posture almost lazy beneath the dark clothing. yet despite how relaxed he looked, the attention directed toward you felt sharp enough to press against your skin.
and unlike beforeâhe did not look away. it's like he knew exactly what position he had cornered you into and wanted to watch you struggle through it.
fine.
you stared back.
the lounge lights shifted overhead while the two of you remained suspended in this strange silent challenge across the poker table. the longer you looked, the more your eyes adjusted to the thin dark material shadowing the eyeholes of the ghostface mask.
and then, you saw them.
purple eyes...
faintly obscured beneath black fabric and low lighting, but unmistakably purple. for one horrifying second, your mind blanked completely.
wait. how common even were purple eyes? no, that wasnât the correct question. how rare were they?
your pulse stumbled unevenly while you stared at him, but ghostface remained motionless, watching you. those purple eyes continued to pierce into your soul. now, the mask felt less anonymous than before.
your gaze dropped quickly back toward the cards in your hands.
donât get distracted.
it did not matter who this man was. it did not matter why his voice sounded familiar or why his eyes looked dangerously recognizable beneath that mask. right now, there was only one thing that mattered:
you were winning this round.
you inhaled slowly and forced yourself to think again. and thenâlike a spark suddenly catchingâyou saw it. a narrow opening hidden beneath the way ghostface had structured the round. risky but possible.
slowly, you reached forward and pushed your chips inward. the table quieted, and ghostface tilted his head at your bold move.
someone nearby muttered, âoh this is evil.â
you finally lifted your gaze toward him again.âcall,â for the first time all night, ghostface hesitated. it was barely noticeable, but very much enough.
the reveal came seconds later.
âno way.â
âfinally!â
got you.
after being cornered for nearly the entire round, somehowâsomehowâyou managed to turn it around against him!
the moment your win settled in, the lounge around the table reacted instantly.
âshe actually did it,â one of them laughed.
âour man got humbled,â another added, half incredulous.
you could feel the attention return to you again, lighter this time, less intimidating than before. your shoulders eased beneath the catwoman mask as you offered a small, polite smile. and then, you turned your attention back across the table toward ghostface. âthat was a good game,â you smiled a bit wider. âyouâre really good.â
that was a fact.
he didnât respond though.Â
ghostface remained perfectly still, head tilted slightly downward as if studying you through the black void of his mask. the silence stretched just long enough to feel intentional, like he was weighing something he had no intention of sharing with anyone else in the room.
you couldnât read him, not even a little. then, after a beat too long, he lifted his hands and gave a slow, lazy clap.
once... twice... thrice.
âcongratulations, miss poker,â he said at last.
you held his gaze for a second longer than necessary, because his mannerisms bothered you. itâs the tilt of his head, the stillness between movements, and even the way he spoke felt like something your memory almost knew but couldnât fully grasp.
a familiar ghost of familiarity.
you swallowed the thought before it could form properly. instead, you let out a small breath and returned a light smile. âthanks,â you replied casually, as if none of this lingered beneath the surface.
you pushed back your chair and stood, smoothing yourself as the crowd began shifting around you again, some still talking about the game while others moved on to their own conversations. excusing yourself politely, you stepped away from the table, and as you walked past ghostface, you felt his presence remain still behind you. but you didnât look back.
you weaved through the lounge crowd toward the hallway, heels clicking against the floor. you needed a moment where your thoughts didnât feel like they were circling something you couldnât name.
the nearest restroom sign came into view at the end of the corridor. it was blissfully quiet compared to the lounge outside.
the moment the door closed behind you, the noise of the party dulled into distant vibrations through the walls, softened enough for you to finally exhale properly.
you reached up and removed your mask. âugh,âÂ
finally.
cool air brushed against your skin almost instantly, easing the slight warmth that had gathered beneath the mask throughout the night. for a moment, you simply stood there staring at your reflection in the mirror, fingers adjusting loose strands of hair that had shifted during the evening.
after using one of the cubicles, you washed your hands slowly beneath warm water, your thoughts inevitably drifting back toward the lounge outside.
toward... the ghostface guy.
your brows furrowed faintly at your own reflection, thinking about how... everything about him felt familiar. not just one specific thing, but everything. and then there were those purple eyes.
could it really beâ?
no. the nightwing guy downstairs already said caleb wasnât here. besides, years had passed already so people changed. maybe you were simply projecting old memories onto strangers because tonight had dragged too much nostalgia out of you all at once.
that had to be it.
you shut the faucet off firmly and shook the thought away before it could root itself any deeper.
it was just a man in a mask. nothing more.
composing yourself again, you slipped your mask back on and headed toward the restroom exit. except the moment you opened the door and stepped back into the hallway, your footsteps stopped completely.
someone stood just outside the womenâs restroom.
him.
the one you were thinking about just now.
he leaned lazily against the wall several feet away, hands tucked into the pockets of his grey jeans while one boot rested loosely against the baseboard beneath him.Â
you blinked once.
did he follow you here...?
ghostface only turned to you and stared back silently.
you abruptly cleared your throat, forcing politeness back into your expression before the silence became strange. âare you waiting for someone?â you asked with a small smile.
ghostface tilted his head slightly at your question. after a pause that lasted just long enough to make your chest tighten again, he answered quietly, âyeah, i was.â voice muffled enough beneath the mask.
you tilted your head at him, still trying to keep the conversation light despite the strange tension gathering in the hallway. âthereâs nobody else in the womenâs restroom,â you pointed out gently. âwhoever youâre waiting for isnât there.â
ghostface stayed leaning against the wall for another second as he chuckled, low and dangerously familiar. âreally?âÂ
your breath caught immediately.
there it is. that stupid laugh. warm, teasing, and unfairly boyish beneath all the black fabric and broad shoulders. the sound hit you harder than recognition should have, crashing straight into old summers, friday nights, basketball courts, laundry afternoons, and eighteen-year-old heartbreak all at once.
this is... caleb.Â
you knew it now.
the hallway felt even more unbearably narrow around the two of you.
you wanted to run, to run before you lose whatever careful distance you spent years building between yourself and the past. âwell,â you said carefully, âyour ex isnât anywhere nearby either. sheâs downstairs.â
for the first time since you stepped outside the restroom, ghostface, or rather caleb, looked genuinely confused. ââŠmy ex?â he repeated slowly.
you nodded once, trying to sound casual despite the heat climbing beneath your skin. oh god, you immediately decided this conversation needed to end before your dignity dissolved entirely. clearing your throat again, you stepped forward and gestured politely toward the hallway. âanyway, excuse meââ
you brushed past him. or at least, you tried to.
ây/n.â
you stopped, and the silence afterward felt strangely loud. slowly, you turned back toward him. and for some reason, the fact that he didnât call you pips or pipsqueak or those silly childish names anymore lingered in your chest.
of course he didnât. you were adults now, after all.Â
grown people with careers and separate lives and years between you. maybe those childish nicknames belonged to another version of him entirely, another version of the three of you. maybe this only proved what you already suspected downstairsâthey had moved on now. and maybe you were the only one still haunted by old things.
no, that wasnât true either.
you werenât clinging to the past. tonight only dragged it back into your hands unexpectedly. that was all.
your gaze lifted hesitantly toward him again just as he finally moved. slowly, he reached beneath the collar of his black shirt and pulled something free from underneath the fabric, revealing a dog tag necklace with a tiny apple charm attached near the chain.
itâs the one you gave him years ago when you were still taller than him as kids. he had laughed so hard back then. you remembered the exact sound. and nowânow it rested against the black fabric of his chest like something treasured too carefully for too long.
so he still had it after all these years.Â
âitâs me, dummy,â he says.
yeah, you knew.
maybe not the moment you first saw him near the poker table. but somewhere between the voice, the eyes, the way he stared too intensely, and the unbearable familiarity wrapped around every little mannerism he hadâyou knew.
your hands curled quietly into fists against your sides, because now that caleb was standing here in front of you after all these years, your body suddenly remembered too many things at once. âi know,â you murmured. âyou always make things obvious.âÂ
deep down, you missed him. you missed caleb. standing this close to him again made something ache inside your chest.
you wanted to hug him, the kind where your face disappears into someoneâs shoulder and years melt apart for a moment. and, now that you're thinking about that, you also somewhat hoped to see zayne around here and do just exactly that.
but adulthood had taught you restraint in places where younger versions of yourself used to act freely. so you stayed still.
caleb watched you carefully for a beat before fully turning toward you, one shoulder lifting lazily against the wall. âhowâd you know it was me?âÂ
you let out a small huff through your nose, âi just do.â
that answer silenced him only briefly, but enough for you to notice. something shifted in his posture before he straightened fully, removing the ghostface mask completely with one hand.
and thereâthere he was.
he wasnât the boy you remembered anymore, but a grown man.
caleb had always been handsome in that effortless, bright sort of way people naturally felt attracted to, but adulthood sharpened him into something almost unfair. his features had grown more defined over the years, jaw stronger now beneath the dim lighting, cheekbones sharper, even the bruises of exhaustion beneath his eyes somehow added to it instead of taking away.
he knew that too.
you could tell by the way he leaned casually against the wall afterward, completely comfortable inside his own skin. his grin tugged crookedly. âthere she is, thought maybe corporate life killed your personality already.â
you only smiled back. âyouâre the one dressed like a murderer at a school reunion.â
caleb barked out a laugh, warm and genuine. the sound echoed softly down the hallway.
âthere she is,â he repeated quieter this time, almost to himself. you pretended not to notice the way his eyes lingered on you as he slipped his hands back into his pockets. âso howâs your family? your mom still forcing everybody to take leftovers home after gatherings?â
you smiled faintly despite yourself. âyes.â
âand your cousins?â he continued. âthey still following you around like ducklings?â
you chortled at that. âtheyâre teenagers now. they barely acknowledge my existence.â
âthat's tragic.â
you shook your head, still smiling. but somewhere in the middle of the conversation, something settled strangely inside your chest. caleb kept asking about everyone else, your family, your cousins, your parents. everything surrounding your life exceptâ
you.
he never asked how you were. that tiny omission lingered heavier than it should have.
if this was how caleb acted now, then maybe he really had moved on already. maybe years were enough to soften whatever existed between the three of you back then, enough to turn obsession into memory and memory into something manageable. adulthood had a way of doing that to people, didnât it? sanding sharp feelings down into old stories you only revisit every once in a while.
maybe caleb was normal now, maybe he had loved someone else already. maybe he went through heartbreaks and hookups and whole relationships himself while you stayed tucked away in a corner of his past like an old neighborhood photograph.
you swallowed and forced yourself not to linger too long on the thought. âwhat about you?â
caleb looked up. âwhat about me?â
âhowâve you been all these years?â
for a second, something flickered across his face. surprise maybe. as if nobody had asked him that sincerely in a long time. he grinned again, slipping back into that familiar warmth he wore so naturally. âgood, been very busy you know.â
âwow, incredibly detailed answer.â
he laughed under his breath. âi mean, what dâyou want me to say? i fly planes now. half my lifeâs in airports. i drink too much coffee. sometimes i forget what country iâm in.â
âthat sounds mildly concerning.â
âitâs called occupational hazard.â his eyes stayed on you while he spoke, and it made something inside your chest feel unsteady in a way you hated noticing.
caleb still looked at people too directly.Â
he continued talking afterward, telling you random pieces of his life in fragments. about long-haul flights, ridiculous passengers, getting stranded once because of weather conditions, and his coworkers apparently thinking he had anger issues because he got into arguments too easily.
âthat partâs believable,â you muttered.
âoh, shut up.â his grin remained, but thinner now somehow. âi miss our neighborhood though,âÂ
the words were simple, but something about the way he said them made your stomach tighten faintly. he didnât say he missed home, he didnât say he missed being younger. he just said he missed the neighborhood.
you looked at him carefully, trying to understand what exactly he meant by it. or maybeâwhat exactly he was trying not to say.
caleb mustâve noticed your stare lingering too long because he straightened and gave you another crooked grin, this one almost sheepish beneath all the confidence he usually carried. âanyway,â he clears his throat, âi should probably stop hiding in hallways before people think iâm actually kidnapping women tonight.â he steps away from the wall afterward, clearly about to leave.
but before he could, you stopped him.Â
âhowâs zayne doing?â
caleb halted mid-step, and you watched it happen in real time.
the subtle dimming in his eyes, the way the looseness left his shoulders, as his smile slowly weakened at the corners before disappearing entirely. something restrained passed across his expression so quickly you almost missed it, held-back and quiet in the way real emotions usually were.
your brows knitted faintly together. for a second thereâhe looked like someone trying very hard not to let something show.
but the switch quickly flipped.
his smile returned so naturally that, if you werenât looking directly at him moments earlier, you probably wouldâve missed the crack entirely. âheâs good. a successful doctor now. annoyingly successful, actually.â
that sounded like zayne.
something inside you eased hearing it from caleb himself. you didn't doubt zayneâs successâyou already knew what he became years ago through mutual acquaintances and scattered updates from familiesâbut hearing caleb say it aloud made it feel more real.
you nodded. âthatâs really good to know.â
caleb only hummed.Â
but then, unexpectedly, he steps closer.
the movement was so unexpected that your body nearly reacted on instinct, feet threatening to retreat backward against the hallway floor. except you stopped yourself midway, tilting your head up at him instead with quiet confusion.
he was close enough for you to notice the faint shadows of exhaustion beneath his eyes, close enough to catch the subtle scent of cologne mixed with something colder, cleaner.
your pulse stumbled once when caleb looked down at you before his hand slowly lifted.
and then, he patted your head.
it wasnât really a pat, though.Â
his fingers lingered.
they slid gently into your hair near your temple, brushing softly through the strands beside your ear before trailing lower down your shoulder with unbearable slowness. the touch felt absentminded on the surface, almost affectionate in a casual way, but there was something underneath it that made your body go completely still, something that lingered too long to mean nothing.
his eyes softened almost imperceptibly while his fingers slipped away from your hair. âyou really grew up,â his voice had changed again, less teasing. âno longer the little scatterbrain i used to know.â
his hand dropped back to his side afterward. âyou donât have to worry about zayne too much, youâll see him soon anyway.â
you blinked. âwhat?â
so he really isn't here, then?Â
caleb tilted his head. âgrannyâs birthday. did they tell you yet?â
your mind stalled for half a second before realization hit.
oh right, grannyâs birthday. the same granny who practically raised entire neighborhoods through force-feeding and unsolicited life advice. miraculously, this year, her birthday landed on a friday.
âshe wanted everyone together again,â caleb continued. âsame setup as before.â
you stared at him. âoh, you and zayne are going?â
caleb looked almost offended by the question. âof course we are,â he said. âitâs granny.â
â
the hotel lights had long disappeared behind you, now swallowed by distance and the slow quietness of the road.
your mind remained back there somehow, back in that hallway with caleb.
you sat behind the steering wheel with one hand loosely resting against it, the other drumming near the gearshift as the city lights blurred past your windows in streaks of gold and white. the catwoman mask had already been tossed carelessly onto the passenger seat beside your purse, abandoned the moment you got into the car, but the rest of the costume remained annoyingly intact against your skin.
you suddenly understood why actresses always complained about tight outfits during interviews. you adjusted uncomfortably in your seat while stopping at a red light, your thoughts drifting back unwillingly toward caleb again.
his smile. that stupid dog-like grin he gave you before disappearing back into the crowd with a âiâll see you around, y/n,â
no longer pipsqueak, huh.
your grip tightened lightly against the wheel. you should stop thinking about him.
before your thoughts could spiral any further, your car suddenly jerked faintly beneath you, making your brows furrowed. then the engine made a strained clicking sound.
once, twice, before it died.
ââŠyouâve got to be kidding me.â the steering wheel stiffened beneath your hands as the car slowed awkwardly toward the side of the road. you managed to park safely beneath a dim streetlight, but when you tried restarting the engine again, the car only answered with another pathetic clicking noise.
you stared blankly ahead through the windshield.
for fuckâs sake. out of all nights.
you leaned back against the seat and exhaled harshly through your nose, fingers rubbing against your temple while frustration crawled into your chest. the road around you was unusually quiet this late at night, with only the occasional distant headlights passing every few minutes. after another failed attempt to start the engine, you finally groaned and grabbed your phone from the cupholder to call tara.
you dialed her impatiently while pushing the car door open.
humid night air wrapped around you the second you stepped outside. the heels you regretted wearing clicked sharply against the pavement as you walked around the front of your car, hugging your arms briefly against yourself while the phone rang beside your ear.
âcome on, taraâŠâ
the street remained mostly empty around you, lined with sleeping establishments and darkened storefronts that looked strangely eerie this late into the night. somewhere nearby, a dog barked once before silence swallowed the sound again.
and... headlights?
you looked up instinctively, only to see a dark car sat parked several meters behind yours on the opposite side of the road.
you were almost certain it hadnât been there earlier.Â
the vehicle remained completely still beneath the weak glow of a streetlamp, windows tinted dark enough that you couldnât make out whoever sat inside.Â
maybe it was nothing. maybe another driver had simply pulled over too? but something about it made your stomach tighten. your phone continued ringing unanswered against your ear while your eyes remained fixed on the unfamiliar car.
suddenly, standing out here alone in your stupid tight costume didnât feel very smart anymore.
without thinking twice, you lowered the phone and quickly walked back toward your car. the moment you slipped inside the driverâs seat again, you locked the doors immediately.
you looked through the rearview mirror.
and the dark car remained there, watching.
or maybe you were only paranoid. you hoped you were only paranoid.
the sight unsettled you more the longer it stayed there. so you tried calling again, straight to ringing. but your frustration only tangled itself together with nervousness until your shoulders felt stiff beneath the tight leather of your costume. you then sighed heavily and lowered your phone.Â
maybe you should just call roadside assistance instead. or maybeâ
knock knock.
you physically jolted so hard your shoulder hit the seat. your head snapped violently toward the driver-side window, pulse instantly spiking into your throat.
and thereâleaning slightly down beside your car beneath the dim streetlightâwas a familiar face.
older, sharper.
the softness youth once gave him had long disappeared, carved away into cleaner lines and composed restraint. even through the shadows, there was no mistaking him. not the calmness in his expression, not the piercing emerald eyes staring directly at you through the glass.
zayne.
for a second, you could only stare at him blankly.
what was he doing here? and more importantlyâwhy did this somehow feel exactly like something zayne would do? appearing at the exact moment your life tilted sideways without warning.
when your eyes met, you watch him straighten up and step aside.
was he really back in town now?Â
your fingers tightened around your phone before you slowly unlocked the car door, the cool night air hitting your skin again the moment you stepped outside.
up close, the sight of him almost startled you a second time. you swallowed once and forced yourself to compose properly despite the strange tightness gathering beneath your ribs.Â
there was no time to be overwhelmed. not here, not now.
you smiled politely in that careful adult way people did after years apart. the kind of smile exchanged between relatives reconnecting after too much time passed. âzayne,â you greeted softly. âitâs been a while. howâve youââ
âwhatâs wrong with your car?â the interruption was immediate, clean and direct.
your words stopped midair, as the smile on your face faded before you could even help it.
huh.
for some reason, the bluntness stung more than it should have. you looked at him for a second, suddenly unsure where to place your hands or your voice or yourself beneath his attention. maybe adulthood really had made him colder, or maybe he was simply always like this and you only forgot.
âiââ you started awkwardly. âsorry, i justââ
âdonât be.â his voice wasnât harsh. if anything, it was too calm.Â
you blinked once before pressing your lips together tightly.
the silence stretched briefly between you while distant cars occasionally passed somewhere farther down the road. beneath the streetlight, zayneâs gaze flicked toward your vehicle again before returning to your face.
you finally cleared your throat. âuh, my engine suddenly stopped working, i donât even know why.â
zayne nodded once. then, without another word, he stepped past you toward the front of the car.
you turned instinctively to watch him. and suddenly, embarrassingly, your chest tightened again. because it hit you all at once thenâthis was the first time you had been alone with zayne in years.
really alone.
without any family gatherings, crowded parties, and without caleb between the space separating the two of you. thereâs just the quiet road and the warm night air. and zayne standing beside your broken car with rolled sleeves and tired eyes.
he leaned slightly over the hood of the car, brows furrowing in concentration as he examined something beneath the front light. his forearms flexed when he rested one hand against the edge of the hood, and the sight made your stomach twist in a way that felt deeply inconvenient.
seriously, what the hell was wrong with you tonight?
as if sensing your stare lingering too long, zayne looked back at you directly. the eye contact hit harder now that you were adults, less innocent.
quietly, with the same unreadable composure he always carried, he asked. âwhy are you out here alone this late?â
âthere was an alumni homecoming,â you explained, hugging your arms a little closer against yourself while standing beside the car. âfor senior high.â
zayne remained crouched near the front of the vehicle, one hand braced against the hood while the other adjusted something beneath it. he only glanced up briefly before returning his attention back to the engine.
âi attended the party,â you added after a second, suddenly hyperaware of what you were wearing. âwhich is why i look like⊠this.â
the corner of zayneâs mouth twitched faintly, enough to make your stomach betray you a little.
âi noticed,â he says.
you cleared your throat and stepped closer to the car, heels crunching lightly against stray gravel near the roadside. up close, you could smell faint detergent and something sterile clinging subtly to him beneath the night air, like hospital corridors and clean laundry somehow followed him everywhere.
it felt unfairly familiar.
you looked down at him. âyou didnât hear about the homecoming?â
silence.
âthat means no, then.â
zayne hummed, entirely unbothered by your accusation. honestly, that tracked. he was always strangely detached from things happening around him unless someone physically dragged the information to his face. back then, people used to joke that zayne could probably miss the apocalypse if nobody updated him personally.
you opened your mouth to tease him again when suddenlyâ
âfuck.â grease smeared darkly against the cuff of his rolled sleeve and streaked lightly across his forearm.
instinctively, you moved toward the passenger side door. âwait, i have wipes insideââ
âitâs okay.â zayne said it so quickly that you paused mid-motion. he barely even looked at the stain. you stood there awkwardly for a second before slowly nodding and stepping back again.
silence settled afterward, the kind of silence that carried too many things beneath it.
you watched zayne work quietly for another moment. he really had changed... or maybe matured was the better word. oh â his phone is ringing.
buzzzzz!
zayne stopped immediately. with his clean hand, he pulled the phone out and glanced briefly at the screen before answering.
âbaby?â
your body stilled, completely.
zayne turned slightly away while speaking into the phone, voice lower and calmer in a way that sounded unintentionally intimate beneath the quiet road. âyes, iâm still outside.â he paused. âno, donât wait up.â
your throat tightened before you could stop it.
oh.
he had a girlfriend now.Â
you stared blankly at the road instead, suddenly unable to figure out where to look. how? when? where did he even meet her? and more importantlyâwhy did you care so much? the realization embarrassed you instantly. because what exactly were you expecting after all these years apart? that both of them would remain frozen in time waiting for you forever?
you swallowed and looked down at your hands. this entire situation felt strange and wrong somehow.
zayne was here late at night helping you alone on the side of the road while his girlfriend waited for him somewhere else. and you stood beside him in a skin-tight costume looking at him too much and thinking about things you absolutely should not be thinking anymore.
it made guilt creep slowly beneath your skin.
zayne ended the call not long after and slipped his phone back into his pocket. before he could return to fixing the engine, you stepped forward quickly and lowered the hood shut with a dull metallic thud.
the sound cut through the quiet road sharply, making zayne blink up at you.
then one of his brows lifted.
the expression was so familiar it almost threw you off balance. that look he had on his face looked exactly like his younger self againâthe same boy who used to silently judge everybody with one unimpressed glance.
you pressed your lips together awkwardly. âyou donât have to fix it. iâll just call for assistance or something.â
zayne remained leaning slightly against the car, grease staining his sleeve while he looked at you like youâd just said something ridiculous. âi can fix it.â
âyeah, but you donât need to.â
âit's fine.â
you exhaled through your nose. âzayne, seriously, i donât want to take too much of your time.â
his gaze stayed on you for a moment, and then he straightened fully, brushing his stained hand against his slacks without much concern. âthe radiator hose is damaged. your engine overheated. itâs not something you should drive home tonight.â
you stared at him silently while he spoke, watching the way the streetlight caught faintly against the sharp bridge of his nose and the loose strands of dark hair falling near his forehead.
âItâs better if i drive you home,â he added calmly. âiâll call assistance for your car afterward.â
your body stilled faintly at the offer.Â
drive you home...?
the intimacy of it settled strangely beneath your ribs, because this wasnât high school anymore. you werenât teenagers stumbling through friday nights.
you were adults now. and being alone in a car with zayne at this age felt infinitely more dangerous than it wouldâve back then. you swallowed once before the thought escaped your mouth. ââŠdonât you have a girlfriend?â
zayne paused, actually paused. his brows furrowed slightly as he looked at you with genuine confusion. âwhat?â
you immediately regretted asking.
ugh, you sounded insane now that you realized it. you cleared your throat and gestured vaguely. âthe... call earlier.â
realization dawned across his face slowly. and thenâto your complete disbeliefâzayne almost looked amused. âmy assistant? her name is baby.â
ââŠwhat?â
âbaby jane,â zayne repeated calmly. âone of the assistants in the hospital.â
you continued staring at him.
that was the dumbest thing you had ever heard.
if this explanation came from literally anybody else, you wouldâve laughed directly in their face and called them a liar. but zayne looked entirely sincere standing there. because zayne couldnât lie to save his life. back then, he used to get caught hiding things within five seconds simply because guilt physically manifested on his face.
awkwardly, you nodded. ââŠoh.â
a tiny silence followed, then you noticed the look on zayneâs face. subtle but definitely thereâmild amusement lingered quietly in his eyes while he watched you process everything.
your cheeks instantly felt warmer as you looked away. âwell, thatâs a ridiculous name.â
âeveryone says the same thing.â
after zayne finished calling assistance for your car, the two of you stood awkwardly beside the road for a moment while waiting for the details to settle. it turns out that the dark tinted car from earlier belonged to none other than zayne.Â
several minutes later, you found yourself slipping into the passenger seat. the interior smelled faintly like coffee and something distinctly himâsubtle enough that you probably wouldnât notice it if you werenât sitting this close. zayne also settled into the driverâs seat beside you, adjusting the wheel before glancing toward you.
âare you cold?â he asked, fingers already reaching toward the air conditioning controls.
you shook your head. âiâm fine.â
he paused briefly before pulling his hand away again without argument.
you stared out the passenger window while absently rubbing your thumb against your phone screen. you still felt worried about your car despite everything. what if the repair became expensive? what if the engine problem turned out worse than expected? and on top of thatâsitting in zayneâs car after all these years felt so odd in a way you couldnât properly explain.
the silence between you wasnât awkward exactly. it was worse. it was familiar.
you cleared your throat to distract yourself. âdo you still remember the way to my house?â
instead of answering verbally, zayne simply opened his maps application. you stared at the glowing screen for a second before letting out a tiny huff of disbelief.
âwow,âÂ
âi remember the address,â he said calmly while typing it in. ânot the route.â
that reminds you... back then, zayne used to remember everything about youâwhich snacks you hated, which route you preferred walking home, which pencil brand you always lost within two days.
he used to notice little things without even trying. but now he needed maps.
you looked down at your lap quietly.
this was good. this was normal. people grow up and move on. you were expecting too much from ghosts of adolescence that no longer existed the same way they once did. and, werenât you relieved? if both caleb and zayne had truly moved on from whatever complicated mess existed between the three of you back then, then you could finally breathe properly too. you no longer have to carry that strange lingering guilt that followed you through adulthood like an unfinished sentence.
now, all of you could finally leave everything behind.
when the car stopped outside your house, relief and disappointment tangled together unpleasantly inside your chest. you unbuckled your seatbelt slowly and turned toward him with a polite smile. âthank you for driving me home. i really appreciate it.â
zayne nodded. âmm.â
you stepped out of the car carefully, heels crunching lightly against the pavement again. you were already halfway toward your gate whenâ
âwait.â your name left zayneâs mouth behind you.
you turned around and stilled at the sight of zayne stepping out of the car too. in his hands was a small cake box decorated with your favorite flowers tucked neatly around the ribbon.
where did that suddenly come from? and... is that for you?Â
something about his composure became almost painfully awkward beneath the porch lights. âi heard about the reunion,â he admitted quietly. âbut my schedule didnât allow me to attend.â his tone remained flat in that very zayne way, but you caught it immediatelyâthe subtle stiffness beneath his voice whenever he was embarrassed about sincerity.
it almost made you smile.
âso, i brought something instead.â he sounded like someone reluctantly explaining why he accidentally cared too much.
slowly, you stepped closer and looked down at the lettering written carefully across the cake.
âcongratulations for getting promoted.â
you remember caleb texted you about your promotion months ago while zayne never did, but this felt exactly like the sort of thing zayne would do instead of sending a message. quietly remember just to quietly show up. quietly carry around a cake for god knows how long because he didnât know how else to express congratulations properly.
you looked back up at him. âthank you for still remembering, zayne.â
â
after a few months of postponed plans, missed friday dinners, and relatives constantly saying âwe'll be finally complete next timeâ, grannyâs birthday finally came by.
your family arrived earlier than everyone else, mostly because your mother believed being late to family occasions was some kind of moral failure. by eight in the morning, you were already outside in grannyâs front yard wearing house slippers and comfortable clothes, sitting on a small plastic stool beneath the shade while blowing balloons until your cheeks hurt.
from the open kitchen windows came the scent of garlic fried in oil, sweet spaghetti sauce simmering in giant pots, and the faint buttery smell of cake that somebody had already sliced prematurely despite strict instructions not to touch it yet. inside the house, the older aunts moved around carrying trays and arguing over whether the pasta needed more sauce while old love songs played from a speaker.
it felt so comforting, like childhood preserved in a glass jar.
your younger cousins ran circles around the yard while chasing each other with uninflated balloons, their slippers slapping against the fake grass. every few minutes one of them would come bother you for help.
at one point, one of the smaller cousins climbed directly onto your lap while you were tying ribbons around balloons, nearly making you inhale the entire thing from surprise. âoh my god,â you laughed breathlessly, pushing his forehead away. âyouâre trying to kill me before grannyâs birthday even starts!â
the child only grinned mischievously before stealing one of the candies from the nearby table and sprinting away before his mother could catch him. you watched him disappear around the gate with a smile still lingering on your face.
every now and then, the familiar metal gate creaked open again and another relative stepped inside carrying containers of food or grocery bags or wrapped gifts while greeting everyone.
and every single time, granny would brighten like sunlight itself. she sat proudly near the terrace in her favorite floral duster while greeting every newcomer as though they had returned home from war instead of merely driving fifteen minutes away. sometimes she forgot stories halfway through telling them. sometimes she repeated the same joke twice. and nobody minded.
somehow, granny had always been the center thread tying everybody together. without her, everyone drifted.
you noticed that more clearly now as an adult. how people got jobs, moved cities, entered relationships, built schedules too crowded for friday gatherings and random visits. the neighborhood no longer felt permanently alive the way it once had when you were younger. but today felt differentâtoday felt like somebody, in this case, granny, had reached into the past and carefully stitched it back together for a few hours.
you finished tying another cluster of balloons near the gate before standing up to stretch your sore shoulders. immediately, one of your aunts shoved a tray of barbecue sticks into your hands on her way past.
âbring this inside please.â
âwhy am i suddenly unpaid labor?â you complained.
âbecause youâre unmarried and still useful,â your mother replied from somewhere behind you without even looking up. almost the entire yard burst into laughter at that, so you groaned while carrying the tray toward the tables, though the smile on your face stayed anyway.
and maybe that was the strange thing about coming back here. for the first time in a long while, adulthood felt far away. here, you were still just you. still someoneâs granddaughter. still someoneâs cousin. still the girl who grew up inside these walls.
the moment you stepped inside the house carrying the tray of barbecue sticks, you immediately regretted it.
âcome here,â one of the older women called instantly, patting the empty seat beside her. another older relative leaned forward with dangerous curiosity already sparkling in her eyes. âso, when are yougetting married?â
oh no.
you forced out a polite smile as you carefully balanced the tray in your hands. âgood morning to you too.â
that only made them laugh louder. within seconds, you found yourself trapped near the dining area while several elderly women interrogated you about your love life. somebody asked whether you were secretly dating, another asked if your standards were too high now because you were a corporate manager, then one uncle declared that women became âtoo intimidatingâ once they earned too much money.
you stared at him blankly while chewing your barbecue in silence. honestly, you would rather reorganize all the monoblock chairs outside one by one than survive this conversation.
thankfully, salvation arrived in the form of chaos. one of the younger cousins suddenly darted past you like a tiny criminal and snatched another barbecue stick straight from the tray.
âhey!â you yelped.Â
the little girl burst into delighted laughter before sprinting outside barefoot while the adults erupted into noisy scolding.
âgo catch her!â
âthat child keeps stealing food!â
you did not even pretend to hesitate. âiâll go,â you announced, already escaping toward the doorway before another marriage question could be launched at your forehead.
outside, you spotted the little girl racing across the front yard triumphantly with the stolen barbecue held high in the air.
âcome back here!â you laughed, chasing after her across the grass. âyou little thief!â the child shrieked happily and nearly reached the gate beforeâsomeone suddenly caught her mid-run.
two large hands lifted her clean off the ground like she weighed absolutely nothing, and the little girl gasped before bursting into giggles.
you stopped in your tracks.
even before your mind fully processed the uniform, the broad frame, or the sunglasses glinting beneath the sunlightâyou already knew it was none other than your childhood friend.
theyâve arrived.
he stood there casually in his brown DAA uniform, one arm holding the laughing child against his side while the other stole the barbecue stick directly from her hand. âcrime doesnât pay,â he informed her seriously before taking a bite himself.
the little girl gasped in betrayal. âcaleb!â
caleb only grinned around the barbecue. even after all these years, he still carried that same careless brightness around him. the uniform hugged his frame, sleeves rolled just enough to reveal toned forearms lightly browned from the sun, while the dark sunglasses somehow made his grin look even more radiant.
caleb finally turned toward you and smiled, crooked and familiar and terribly easy. âwow,â he drawled while lowering the child back onto the ground. âthey got you working like hired staff already?â
you let out an embarrassed laugh despite yourself. âsomebody has to do the labor around here.â
âyeah?â caleb tilted his head while looking you over openly. âyou even look the part.â
your eyes widened. âwhat does that even mean?â
he laughed beneath his breath, clearly entertained by how fast you reacted. ârelax, you look adorable.â
the word hit you stupidly harder than it should have. before you could recover, caleb already brushed past you casually toward the relatives gathering near the entrance. and just as instantly, loud greetings exploded from the yard.
âcaleb!â
âyou got thinner!â
âno, he got bigger!â
relatives crowded around him fussing over his arrival while younger cousins clung to his arms asking endless questions about airplanes and flying. and somehow, quite unlike you, he handled all of it effortlessly.
then, a quieter presence approached behind him. unlike calebâs easy warmth, zayne arrived like winter air drifting through an open doorway. with a dark trench coat resting against his arm despite the sun, he wore an all-black clothing with a composed posture that remained untouched by the noisy chaos surrounding him.
he looked absurdly polished compared to the rest of the family bustling around in slippers and casual clothes. that only made him more familiar too.
his gaze found you almost immediately, quietly taking in the sight of you standing there breathless beneath the sunlight with messy hair, barbecue smoke clinging faintly to your clothes, and ribbons still tied around your wrist from decorating earlier.
your throat suddenly felt dry.
zayne gave you the smallest nod before moving past you as well, greeting the older relatives respectfully while they began fussing over him too.
and until lunchtime, you barely sat down.Â
every time you thought you finally had a moment to rest, another relative suddenly needed help carrying something, reheating food, arranging chairs, or finding missing utensils. at some point, you became the unofficial runner of the entire gathering.
still, you didnât really mind. there was something oddly comforting about the exhaustion. meanwhile, both caleb and zayne had become trapped in their own corners of socialization. every few minutes, youâd catch glimpses of them between rooms.
you saw caleb sitting comfortably among a noisy cluster of uncles and neighbors outside near the terrace, laughing easily while answering endless questions about work abroad. zayne, on the other hand, remained inside most of the time, seated neatly beside the older relatives who adored him for entirely different reasons. every auntie in the room seemed eager to brag about him to somebody else. zayne endured all of it with quiet patience, occasionally adjusting his sleeves while listening attentively whenever elders spoke to him.
by the time lunch was nearly ready, the heat inside the house had become unbearable enough that your head started hurting slightly. after setting down another tray of food onto the dining table, you exhaled and leaned toward your nearby aunt. âis there still cold water left?âÂ
your aunt nodded while fixing plates. âthere should be some in the fridgeââ before she could even finish speaking, you hear two chairs scraping against the floor at the exact same time.
you froze at the loud sound, only to see that caleb and zayne had both stood up simultaneously.
âiâll get it,â caleb said.
âi can get it for her,â zayne spoke at almost the same time.
silence...
your fingers tightened around the empty glass in your hand. and there you go.
you felt eighteen again.Â
caleb blinked first before glancing sideways at zayne with a crooked look of disbelief. zayne slowly sat back down first, though the faint tightening in his jaw betrayed him. then caleb followed a second later, leaning back into his chair while exhaling through his nose in amusement.
the younger cousins were very quick to catch on. of course they did. children always noticed first.
âtheyâre doing it again!â one of the young teenagers quickly blurted out from the couch.
another cousin burst into laughter. âoh my god, just like before!â
âright? they used to fight over helping her all the time!â
several older relatives started chuckling too, while others exchanged those suspiciously observant looks older people had whenever they sensed gossip material forming in real time.
you felt your entire face grow warm. âokay,â you interrupted, forcing out an awkward laugh. âi can just get water myself.â you escaped toward the kitchen before the conversation could worsen further, clutching your empty glass like it could protect you from humiliation.
behind you, the teasing unfortunately continued anyway. you opened the fridge and grabbed the cold pitcher of water with slightly unsteady hands. the cool air spilling from the refrigerator against your overheated skin felt heavenly as you poured yourself a full glass, trying to ignore the muffled conversations continuing from the dining area.
except certain words drifted into hearing range anyway.
âso, do either of you finally have girlfriends now?â
you paused unconsciously while lifting the glass toward your lips. outside, someone laughed, another relative joining in. âthereâs no way handsome men like these stayed single this long.â
âwhat about exes?â
âsecret children?â one uncle joked. the room then bursts into noisy reactions. you stared down quietly at your glass of water. and thenâ
ânone,â zayne answered.
one of the aunties sounded genuinely shocked. ânone at all?â
âiâve been busy,âÂ
it sounded believable, painfully believable. of course zayne would sacrifice romance for career progression with terrifying efficiencyâbut then the attention shifted toward caleb.
âwhat about you?â
you waited absentmindedly for the obvious answer, because surely someone like calebâ
âdonât want one.â
âwhat do you mean you donât want one?â somebody laughed.
calebâs voice came easier this time. âjust never wanted anybody enough.â
huh?
you hated that your mind immediately tried to interpret it. you forced yourself to drink your water while keeping your back turned toward the dining room.
they had both moved on obviously. people didnât stay stuck on childhood feelings forever.
you had barely finished your glass of water when granny suddenly shuffled into the kitchen, drawn in by the noise and laughter echoing through the dining room. âwhy is everybody so loud in here?â she asked suspiciously, though the smile already tugging at her mouth betrayed her amusement.
âwe were asking them why theyâre both still single!â
âapparently nobody wants to date these two.â
the room erupted again into laughter. you closed your eyes briefly in secondhand embarrassment while setting your empty glass down on the counter. unfortunately, when you turned aroundâyou accidentally made eye-contact with both caleb and zayne at the same time.
shit.
you immediately focused very hard on literally anything else.
before the room could spiral into even more teasing, granny suddenly clapped her hands together as though remembering something important. âoh! since youâre all just sitting there talking anyway, do me a favor, will ya.â
and just like that, every younger adult in the room developed selective hearing.
granny ignored them expertly. âhaiya, the speaker outside stopped working again,â she said with a sigh. âthe extra one should still be in the attic somewhere.â
before you could quietly escape the kitchen, grannyâs eyes landed directly on you. âyou,â you stopped yourself from reaching for the plates. âyou were in the attic this morning, right? guide them.â
you turned. ââŠthem?â
granny pointed directly toward caleb and zayne.
fuck?
being alone upstairs with the both of them is significantly more dangerous than it logically should! but refusing would only make everyone tease you harder.
you forced out a smile. âsure.â
eventually, the three of you walked upstairs together while the noise slowly faded behind you into muffled laughter. the old staircase creaked beneath your steps exactly the same way it always had growing up, and the familiar sound alone made something in you stir.
you tried to fill the silence before it became unbearable. âthe atticâs probably messier now, granny keeps throwing random things there.â
âsome things never change,â caleb replied easily from behind you. âincluding this house.â
you glanced back briefly, remembering once upon a time, this exact staircase had carried the three of you toward childhood conspiracies instead of polite adult conversations.
the attic door creaked loudly when you pushed it open, and warm dusty air greeted you immediately. the room smelled faintly like cardboard, old books, wood polish, and trapped summer heat. sunlight slipped through the tiny circular window near the ceiling, illuminating floating dust particles drifting through the air like tiny fireflies.
you could see boxes stacked everywhere of old christmas decorations, broken electric fans, bags of clothes nobody wanted to throw away, photo albums, and your forgotten toys.
all three of you simply stood there quietly.
you remembered rainy afternoons hiding here together to avoid chores downstairs, remembered flashlight games, remembered lying on flattened cardboard boxes while listening to rain hammer against the roof above you. the attic still carried traces of those years somehow, small ghosts preserved inside warm dust and old sunlight. except now, the air between the three of you felt... different.
heavier.
caleb wandered toward one side of the attic where several labeled storage boxes rested against the wall. he crouched near one marked with messy handwriting that literally read CALEB and laughed quietly beneath his breath. âwow, granny really archived my entire existence up here.â
zayne had already started scanning the room practically. âwhere is the speaker supposed to be?â he asked while looking around.
you shrugged. âi honestly have no idea. i was only here for extra chairs earlier.â
âhow helpful,â caleb commented.
you shot him a look. âthen you find it.â
he grinned without looking up from the box he had opened.
you exhaled before stepping farther into the attic yourself, carefully weaving between old storage containers while searching as the attic slowly filled with the sound of things being moved around.
caleb sat crouching on the floor near his old storage box while sorting through random junk he apparently used to ownâold basketball magazines, tangled earphones, a broken handheld game console... âdamn,â he muttered, holding up an ancient toy car. âi remember crying over this.â
you laughed while brushing dust off yourself. âyou used to cry over everything.â
âexcuse me,â caleb replied with fake offense. âi was just emotionally expressive.â
âyou cried because i beat you at mario kart once,â zayne deadpanned from across the attic without looking up from the boxes he was checking.
caleb pointed at you as he looked at zayne. âbecause she cheated.â
âi didnât cheat,â you defended.
âyou absolutely cheated, you manipulative girl.â
you snorted before you could stop yourself, bending slightly to look through another box near the far wall, unaware that both men had unconsciously looked toward you at the same time until caleb suddenly spoke again. âheh, you still do that.â
you glanced back. âdo what?â
âthat thing when you bite the inside of your cheek.â
your lips parted, and without realizing it, you immediately stopped doing it. caleb smiled faintly when he noticed.
âyou still remember that?â you asked carefully.
âyea, i remember a lot of things about you, miss poker.â
you quickly looked away and crouched beside another stack of boxes, pretending to search harder for the speaker. across the room, zayne finally straightened from where heâd been kneeling near an old shelf.
âso you cut your hair,â he suddenly said.
your hands paused before looking at him. his tone had remained completely neutral and observational, almost clinical. but somehow, hearing it from him affected you differently. you touched your hair absentmindedly near your shoulder. âa few months ago, yeah.â
zayne nodded once. âit used to reach your waist.â
caleb leaned back against the wall nearby, one knee propped upward while watching the two of you. âhe noticed that immediately when we walked in earlier,âÂ
zayneâs gaze shifted toward him. âcaleb.â
âwhat?â caleb shrugged innocently. âiâm just saying.â
you forced yourself to keep searching. âyou two are still so dramatic.â
âweâre not dramatic,â caleb replied.
zayne adjusted his sleeves, turning to caleb. âyou are.â
âsays the guy who used to get jealous over card games.â caleb grinned wider. âremember that?â he continued casually, though his eyes remained fixed on zayne instead of you. âshe used to sit beside me during poker nights and youâd stare holes through the back of my head the entire time.â
âbecause you always cheated.â
âagain with the cheating accusations,â you muttered.
âyou liked it when i let you win,â caleb now looked at you.
your heartbeat stumbled, because the way he said it didnât sound playful anymore. it sounded personal. for some reason, your mind replayed the night of the alumni event, when you unknowingly played poker against him.  slowly, you stood upright again while clutching one of the dusty boxes against your chest. âi never needed you to let me win.â
caleb looked at you then, fully. the sunlight slipping through the attic window caught faintly against the gold-brown tones of his skin while dust drifted through the space between all of you. âi know,âÂ
nobody spoke for several seconds.
downstairs, you could hear someone screaming and laughing over karaoke lyrics.
and then caleb exhaled suddenly through his nose before speaking again, âyou know whatâs funny?â he rested his forearm over his raised knee, gaze lingering on you beneath lowered lashes. âi thought seeing you again after all these years would make things easier.â
your throat tightened. you should not ask, you absolutely should not. âdid it?â
caleb stared at you for a long moment, then smiled. ânot even a little.â
you stilled at calebâs answer.
the words lingered strangely inside the attic, hanging somewhere between the dust-filled air and the slow heat pressing beneath your skin. for a second, you became painfully aware of the sunlight touching the side of your face, of the old floorboards beneath your feet, of the way your heartbeat had suddenly become embarrassingly noticeable to yourself.
and then you noticed zayne looking at caleb, but it wasnât an annoyed look, wasnât surprised either. it was quieter than that, like there was an entire conversation happening inside one glance alone.
something restrained passed between them before zayneâs eyes eventually shifted toward you instead.
you immediately laughed and shook your head, forcing lightness back into the room before the atmosphere swallowed you whole. god, they still had the same effect on you somehow. that alone irritated you a little. so instead of shrinking away from it, you turned toward caleb with a deliberately playful expression. âwhat? does that mean you still havenât moved on yet?â it was meant to be teasing, something to defuse the tension. except the moment the words left your mouth, you watched calebâs face slowly change.
there it was again.
that same crooked, dangerous little smirk he used to wear years ago whenever you accidentally walked yourself into his traps. he leaned further back against the wall behind him, eyes dragging slowly over your face before answering. âdepends,âÂ
your stomach tightened instantly. before he could continueâand before zayne could speak eitherâyou quickly cut in. âokay, iâm just gonna ask granny where the speaker actually is before we die up here.â
you turned around and headed toward the attic door before either of them could say anything else that would make your entire nervous system malfunction. the wooden floor creaked beneath your steps when you grabbed the doorknob quickly, twisting it while already half distracted by your own embarrassment.
but the knob didnât move.
you frowned, trying again harder.
âhuh?â you jiggled the handle again, now using both hands, but the old wood only rattled loudly beneath the force.
your brows furrowed deeper. âwait.â you pulled harder this time, but the door refused to budge completely. confusion now immediately shifted into disbelief. âare you serious?â you shoved your shoulder lightly against it before trying the lock again, only for the handle to stubbornly remain stuck in place.
behind you, you heard movement.
âwhat happened?â zayne asked.
âthe door wonât open.â
caleb laughed at first like he thought you were joking, but the sound faded when you hit the door again with genuine frustration.
âiâm serious.â you knocked loudly this time, âhello?!â your voice disappeared beneath the thunder of karaoke downstairs. somebody was aggressively singing an old love song now, complete with cheering relatives and clapping somewhere below.
of course. of fucking course nobody could hear you.
you tried again anyway, knocking harder until your palm stung against the wood. âgranny?!âyou abruptly turned around. âdo either of you have your phones?â
for one tiny second, caleb and zayne exchanged a look. and something about it immediately made suspicion flicker inside you.
zayne checked his pockets first before speaking calmly. âi left mine downstairs.â
your eyes moved toward caleb, watching the way he patted his jeans before exhaling through his nose. âmine too.â caleb had the audacity to look mildly entertained already. âguess weâre stuck,âÂ
âwhat do you mean âguess weâre stuckâ?â
ârelax, someoneâll notice eventually.â
âeventually?â you repeated incredulously.
the attic suddenly felt significantly smaller than before. way too small. especially now that you were hyperaware of everything again.
you swallowed.
absolutely not. there was no universe in which getting trapped inside an attic alone with these two men counted as a survivable situation. especially not when the tension between all three of you already felt thick enough to physically breathe in.
you crossed your arms tightly. âthereâs no way.â
caleb tilted his head. âno way what?â
âno way iâm getting stuck up here with both of you.â
zayne looked away for a brief second, though not fast enough to hide the faint amusement threatening at the corner of his expression.
âgeez, pipsqueak, weâre not gonna eat you alive.â
your heartbeat stumbled traitorously at the nickname. so he still does call you that, huh?Â
eventually, pacing around the attic stopped accomplishing anything except making you hotter. so with an exhausted sigh, you finally sat down onto the wooden floorboards near one of the storage boxes, crossing your legs beneath you while leaning your back against the wall. the longer the three of you stayed trapped up there, the warmer the space became.
there was barely any airflow at all.
the tiny circular window near the ceiling let in sunlight but absolutely no breeze, and the trapped heat had started settling heavily against your skin until even breathing felt sticky.Â
you fanned yourself weakly using the corner of an old magazine you found nearby. âitâs actually so hot,â you groaned. âhow is this room legally allowed to exist?â
caleb snickered from where he sat a few feet away against another stack of boxes. âwho's dramatic now?â
âyouâre sweating too.â
âwell, i sweat beautifully.â
fair. he actually was sweating though.
caleb had always been the type to run warm easily, and now that the heat had thoroughly caught up to him, the strands of his dark hair had started sticking damply against his forehead and temples, the slight sheen of sweat along his neck catching under the attic sunlight whenever he moved. with a quiet exhale, he dragged one hand through his hair and pushed it back, exposing more of his forehead before unzipping his brown DAA jacket halfway down just to loosen it.
the movement pulled your attention before you could stop it, but you instantly averted your gazeâto where zayne is quietly settled.
zayne sat near the shelves, though the heat had clearly begun getting to him too. he rarely looked disheveled, so the subtle signs became painfully noticeable once you started paying attention; his sleeves had been rolled upward twice already, dark hair sat slightly messier now near his forehead. every few minutes, he adjusted the collar of his black shirt like the fabric had become unbearable against his skin. a bead of sweat also slowly slid down the side of his neck before disappearing beneath the collarbone of his shirt.
you glanced away while continuing to fan yourself. âsummerâs getting really evil,âÂ
caleb tipped his head back against the wall. âif i pass out up here, tell people i died handsome.â
ânobody would say that.â you tugged lightly at the fabric of your shirt where it clung uncomfortably against your skin from the heat. honestly, at this point modesty felt significantly less important than survival. so before you could overthink it, you grabbed the hem of your shirt and pulled it off over your head, leaving yourself in only your thin undershirt.
immediate silence.
you looked up instinctively and caught both men staring. not even subtly.
calebâs eyes had visibly paused on you before he looked away first with a low exhale through his nose. zayne reacted faster, immediately turning his gaze aside and adjusting his shirt again.
âgeez,â you muttered defensively. âdonât make it weird.â
âweâre not making it weird,â caleb replied too quickly.
you gestured vaguely toward them. âthen take yours off too instead of suffering. we literally all grew up together anyway.â
caleb looked at you for a second before grinning slowly. ânah, you might die seeing my biceps.â
âyouâre insufferable.â
to your surprise, zayne suddenly spoke from beside the two of you. âsheâs right about one thing.â you blinked toward him, only to see that he had reached for the hem of his black shirt, pulling it off completelyâcompletely shirtless!
your brain short-circuited.Â
because unlike caleb, who at least still had clothes on, zayne had apparently decided modesty was optional now as well. the attic air suddenly vanished from your lungs, your eyes betraying you before you could stop them.
sweaty broad shoulders, defined arms, sharp collarbones damp from heat, and the... abs.
you instantly busied yourself with absolutely anything elseâthe dusty floorboards, the ceiling, the old christmas decorations nearby. anywhere except directly at zayneâs now shirtless body.
ah, spiritual enlightenment.
across from you, caleb immediately noticed. he leaned forward with visible amusement sparkling in his eyes. âwhyâre you looking away? thought we all grew up together.â
your face burned hotter. âshut up.â
âwhat?â caleb chuckled. âsuddenly shy now?â while speaking, he shrugged off his DAA jacket completely too, leaving only the fitted white tank top stretched across his chest and shoulders, all sweaty. the heat had dampened the thin fabric slightly near his collarbone, and the sight of his forearms flexing as he tossed the jacket aside did absolutely nothing good for you.Â
zayne peacefully folded his discarded top ontop of a storage box while watching the interaction unfold beside him.
âleave her alone,â he said to caleb.
caleb raised a brow. âwhy?â
zayneâs eyes shifted toward you briefly, calm and knowing. âsheâs always been a scaredy kitten like that.â the familiarity of the remark hit you directly in the chest. years ago, he used to say things like that all the time too.
you frowned at zayneâs comment. âi am not a scaredy kitten.â
caleb laughed under his breath instantly. âyeah? tell that to your eighteen year old self, i bet my life she'd also just space out and stammer around.â
âfuck you.â
âit was funny.â
âyouâre evil.â
caleb grinned. âand yet you still followed us everywhere back then.â
you opened your mouth to rebutt that immediately, only for the memory itself to betray you first. because annoyingly enoughâyou had followed them everywhere. the three of you used to move around the neighborhood like a tiny dysfunctional unit impossible to separateâsummer afternoons spent biking aimlessly around streets, convenience store runs at midnight, and then hiding in this exact attic whenever adults downstairs assigned chores nobody wanted to do.
you smiled while shaking your head. âwe were actually unbearable teenagers.â
âyou were unbearable,â caleb corrected.
âsays the one who somehow always ended up in neighborhood clashes.â you looked up to remember. âit was always at the... where was it again? oh right, the street four blocks away here.â
âand yet i survived.â
zayne spoke without looking up. âbarely.â
caleb whistled. âand the one who always used to snitch spoke just now, finally.â
âwho wouldn't snitch on a cheater.â
âwhere did that even come from? and why do you always say i'm a cheater?â
âbecause you are a cheater,â you and zayne answered simultaneously.
the three of you paused, before unexpectedly bursting into laughter together. real laughter this time, the kind that slipped out before anybody could control it. laughter made it easier to forget how much time had passed, made it easier to fall back into old rhythms.
you hugged your knees loosely against your chest while smiling. âi thought both of you would completely forget about me after college.â
the moment the words left your mouth, caleb glanced toward zayne briefly. âthat was unlikely,â zayne said.
you tilted your head, now rummaging again through the photoalbums inside a nearby box. âwhy?â
âyou were hard to miss,â caleb replied, walking toward you to crouch closer and look at the same albums.
your brows furrowed. âwe barely even talked after.â
âdidnât mean we didnât hear about you.â
you looked up. ââŠwhat?â
caleb looked up as well, meeting your eyes. âyour... promotion.â
âah.â
âcongratulations, by the way,â zayne added calmly. âfor also successfully advertising that one campaign your company did.â
your eyes snapped toward him. ââŠhow do you know about that?â
zayne looked almost confused by the question. âyou posted it.â
so they've been updated of you from afar, huh.
at some point during the conversation, both men had gradually moved closer without you noticing. caleb now sat near enough that his knee almost brushed yours, while zayne leaned against the wall beside you instead of across the attic, close enough for you to catch the clean scent of his cologne beneath the heat and dust.
suddenly, you remembered the lack of clothing again. you glanced at your own thin undershirt, and to zayne completely shirtless beside you, then to caleb in only a tank top with damp hair falling over his forehead. you cleared your throat quickly. âanyway, what about you two? you seriously never dated anybody?â
âwhy?â caleb asked lazily. âyou curious?â
ânormal people ask questions during conversations.â
âyou first,â he replied.
zayne glanced toward you too, quieter but no less attentive. somehow, having both of them looking at you at once made the space inside your chest tighten. you tried to stay unaffected. âi already answered downstairs, i think. i have never been in a serious relationship in my life.â
you looked down at your hands, shrugging. âi donât know, i guess work just became easier to focus on.â that wasnât the full truth. the fuller truth sat heavier beneath your ribsâthat intimacy had always felt strangely incomplete after them.
after whatever the three of you had become all those years ago.
you let out a forced chuckle to lighten the mood again. âwhich sounds depressing now that i say it out loud.â
âit doesnât,â zayne says, glancing down your chest, and back up your eyes. maybe it was the trapped closeness of the attic, but something about the way he looked at you right then made warmth slowly spread beneath your skin, a kind of longing stretched too thin over too many years.
caleb rests his chin against his fist. âso really no boyfriends, no exes?â
your face warmed beneath the attention. âwhy are you interrogating me?â
you opened your mouth to deflect the conversation somewhere safer. âdid either of you even find the speaker yet?âÂ
caleb groaned. âlook at her running away.â
you ignored him entirely after that, standing up too quickly from the floorboards and dusted your hands against your shorts as if you were suddenly very determined to continue searching for the missing speakerâanything to keep yourself occupied. âif we actually find this thing, maybe granny will finally stop making me carry trays around.â the old wooden floor creaked beneath your steps as you moved toward another pile of boxes near the shelves.Â
it almost grounded you. almost.
the moment you bent to check behind one of the boxes, you feel a hand suddenly wrapped around your wrist, urging you to stop and look back.
you found zayne standing closer than you realized, close enough for you to notice the faint sheen of sweat still lingering along his collarbones and chest, catching the subtle rise and fall of his breathing. his grip around your wrist wasnât painful, but it stopped you completely. âlook at me,â
whatâs gotten into him all of the sudden?
your gaze flickered everywhere except directly at him because he was still shirtless and because something about the expression on his face right now made your chest feel strangely full. âzayneââ
âlook at me.â
so you did, and his eyes looked nothing like they did downstairs around the family.
this wasnât the polite zayne. not the distant adult zayne carefully controlling every word. this looked much closer to the boy you used to know years ago.
his fingers tightened around your wrist, enough to slightly hurt. âyou always do this,â
â...do what?â
ârun away.âÂ
the words landed harder than they should have. you immediately tried pulling your wrist back a little, but zayne didnât let go. behind him, caleb had gone unusually quiet. you could feel his presence somewhere behind zayne without directly looking, still crouched, still listening.
your throat tightened slightly. âthere is... nothing to run away from.â
so they really haven't moved on yet, huh.
zayne gave you a look, one that felt almost cruel in how accurately it saw through you. âyou are right now.â
âi was-... literally just looking for the speaker. doing what weâre actually here for.â
âyou can do that while talking to us, canât you?â
âwell, whatever you both were talking about is weird.â
âweird?â he repeated quietly. his grip loosened slightly afterward, but he still didnât fully let go. ây/n, you never changed. like before, and until now, all youâve ever done is run away.â
your chest further tightened at his words, brows furrowing as you still tried to look somewhere else.
âafter what happened, you just disappeared on us.â
you swallowed hard.
âand you stopped showing up.â
hearing it said out loud like this made it sound uglier than the version youâd told yourself all these yearsâthat everyone simply grew apart naturally, that time passed, and that adulthood happened. but deep down, you knew. you knew you had distanced yourself on purpose after what happened between the three of you.
after that summer.
your voice came out smaller now. âthings got complicated. you know that.â
zayne raised a brow. âso you left?â
the sunlight filtering through the attic window suddenly seemed painfully bright against the dust floating lazily in the air. âwhat was i supposed to do?â you asked exasperatedly. for the first time since grabbing your wrist, zayne hesitated. that tiny hesitation somehow hurt even more, because it meant he didnât have an answer either.
behind him, caleb finally moved.Â
you glanced toward him instinctively.
he still sat low against the floorboards, elbows resting loosely over his knees now while he stared somewhere toward the old shelves instead of directly at either of you. his expression looked incredibly unreadable, but his jaw had tightened faintly.
âyou left us behind,â zayne breaks the silence again.
your eyes stung unexpectedly, whispering, âthatâs not fair,â
zayneâs gaze softened for only a second before hardening again beneath restraint. âisnât it?â
you hated this, you hated how small you suddenly felt beneath the weight of his stare, beneath the years sitting unsaid between all three of you. you instinctively shrank slightly backward, only for your wrist still trapped in his hand to stop you halfway.
caleb finally exhaled from behind zayne before speaking for the first time in several minutes. âzayne, donât corner her.â
zayne looked toward him briefly. âiâm not.â
âyou are.â
the attic remained painfully quiet after that. not truly silentâbecause downstairs, somebody was still butchering an old love song through the karaoke microphone while relatives laughed loudly between clinking plates and glassesâbut up here, inside the heat and dust and years sitting between the three of you, everything felt suspended.
your wrist still tingled faintly where zayne had held it, but neither him nor caleb looked away from each other. somehow, being caught between their silence felt worse than shouting.
and then, zayne spoke, still calm. âdo you ever think about that summer?â calebâs gaze flickered toward him slowly. and zayne continued before either of you could interrupt. âwe were kids, scared kids.â
your heartbeat quickened, you already knew what summer he meant. of course you did. there had only ever been one summer capable of following all three of you into adulthood like this.
âdid you wonder once, caleb,â zayneâs eyes remained on him, steady and honest in a way that almost hurt to witness. âif we were brave back then, would something have happened?â
the question settled heavily into the attic air.
caleb didnât answer. for once, he actually looked speechless. his brows slowly straightened while his lips parted faintly, like he almost had words but couldnât quite force them out. and then, eventually, his eyes shifted away from zayneâand landed on you instead.
when your eyes met, you looked away immediately.
somewhere throughout the years apart from them, hidden beneath careers and distance and adulthood, you had slowly realized something terrifying. you never actually stopped wanting them, not one more than the other, not one instead of the other.
just them. just caleb and zayneâthe boys who ruined every normal definition of love for you before you were even old enough to understand what love properly was. and maybe you could have buried that forever, maybe you almost did.
until today.Â
zayne took another step closer. this time, he was looking directly at you. âcan we have the answer now?âÂ
christ, you could hear your own heartbeat. itâs fast, loud, humiliatingly obvious. you were always afraid to admit it, but perhapsâa part of you wanted to cross that line now, to stop pretending none of this existed and to finally say something honest after years of repression.
your eyes flickered helplessly between them. and thenâyour wandering gaze accidentally caught something sitting atop one of the higher shelves across the attic.
you blinked out of yourself.Â
wait. isnât that the speaker? the stupid missing speaker?Â
your restraint grabbed onto it instantly like a lifeline. before your courage could betray you completely, you took the first opportunity to escape. the moment zayneâs hand loosened from your wrist, you slipped around him quickly and pointed toward the shelf.Â
âthere!â you said too fast. âthe speakerâs there.â
both men turned instinctively toward where you pointed, and you waste no time crossing the attic toward it before either of them could stop you again. your heart still hammered wildly inside your chest as you reached the shelf and looked upward. the speaker rested frustratingly high near the top, partially hidden behind old storage bins and random decorations.
ââŠseriously?â you stretched upward, but itâs absolutely nowhere near close enough. the shelf was too tall. you frowned while standing on your toes, fingers barely reaching for it. you glanced around desperately for something to stand on, but there werenât any proper chairs nearby. before you could stubbornly insist on climbing higher onto the unstable boxes, caleb suddenly walked up behind you.Â
âneed help?â he asks.
you blinked toward him over your shoulder. for some reason, your brain completely failed to produce a normal response. you watch how calebâs hair remained damp from the attic heat, dark strands falling messily over his forehead while his white tank top clung slightly against his chest and stomach.Â
âiâŠâÂ
calebâs mouth twitched like he noticed your sudden inability to function. without another word, he crouched down in front of you with one knee against the wooden floorboards and a broad back facing you. âcâmon,â he said while motioning over his shoulder. âget on.â
your eyes widened. ââŠwh-what?â
âyou need height, pips, unless you wanna risk your life or sumthin.â
you hesitated. behind you, zayne stepped closer too, setting a box heâd moved earlier more securely against the shelf before looking toward you. âif youâre getting it, pass the speaker to me immediately after. itâs heavy.â
you nodded weakly.
okay. fine.
you swallowed once before carefully stepping toward calebâs crouched form. âdonât drop me,âÂ
caleb laughed. âyou wound me.â still, his hands steadied against your calves as you awkwardly climbed onto his back. the moment your thighs wrapped around either side of his neck, heat rushed violently into your face.
this was humiliating.
caleb stood up carefully afterward, and the sudden loss of ground beneath your feet made you instinctively tighten your hold around him. his hands then immediately gripped more firmly on your thighs to stabilize you.
large hands...warm palms... strong fingers pressing securely against the bare skin just below your shorts...Â
you stared determinedly at the shelf instead.
focus! focus on the speaker, not on the fact that calebâs shoulders flexed beneath your hold every time he adjusted his grip on you.âcomfortable up there?â he asked, rubbing a thumb along your skin.
fuck.
âstop talking.â
âyes, maâam.â
behind you, zayne cleared his throat once. âcan you reach it?âÂ
you forced yourself to focus again and stretched upward toward the speaker stacked near the top shelf. this time you could finally reach it properly, fingers brushing against the dusty handle. âalmostââ but then, something suddenly moved near your hand, making you freeze. the ticklish sensation of what might be something alive made you look closer, and see...
âA COCKROACH!â your scream ripped through the attic instantly, jolting violently backward on instinct. âSHITââÂ
caleb startled hard beneath you from the sudden movement. âwhatâ?!â
âTHEREâS A BUGââ you wiggled frantically trying to get away from it while caleb lost balance underneath your panicked thrashing. then, the speaker tipped dangerously over the edge of the shelf. thankfully, zayne reacted fast enough to catch the heavy speaker against his chest before it crashed onto the floor.
the problem was everything else, though. you were still screaming, while caleb was still trying not to drop you. and the next few seconds happened far too fastâcalebâs balance finally gave up.
CRASH!
you landed very hard against calebâs chest as both of you crashed onto the floorboards together, the air knocking from your lungs. caleb grunted sharply beneath you from the fall, one arm instinctively wrapping around your waist to keep you from hitting the floor harder.
âare you okay?â he coughed.
âthe roachâ!â your heart still hammered wildly while you tried pushing yourself uprightâuntil sudden sharp pain tore across your palm. âahâ!â
a splintered piece of wood had been sticking upright between the uneven floorboards where your palm landed during the fall. a thin but deep cut now stretched across the center of your hand, bright red blood immediately welling against your skin.
âshit,â caleb muttered, staring at you.
you winced hard, clutching your injured hand against yourself while still half sprawled against calebâs chest.
he pushes himself upright quickly despite clearly getting hurt from the impact too. you only noticed now the way heâd scraped part of his arm against the floorboards during the fall, redness already forming along his elbow. he didnât even look at it as his attention stayed entirely on you. âlet me see,âÂ
you shook your head weakly out of reflex while pressing your wounded palm closer against yourself. âitâs fineââ
âyouâre bleeding.â his voice came lower, more serious. the teasing undertone went gone instantly. before you could protest again, caleb carefully grabbed your wrist to examine the cut more closely.
his brows furrowed hard. up close, you could see the same shift in his face whenever he got worried about you, the slight narrowing of his eyes and the way his touch became gentler without him seeming to realize it.
meanwhile beside both of you, zayne had already set the speaker down safely. you heard quick footsteps approaching, then suddenly zayne crouched near you too, immediately reaching for your injured hand with frightening calmness.
âmove,â he told caleb.
âiâm helping her.â
âand iâm a doctor.â
caleb clicked his tongue but loosened his hold enough for zayne to inspect your palm instead. now you sat there trapped awkwardly between them on the attic floor, breathing unevenly while both men focused on your injured hand. despite the pain, your face still burned hotter from the way calebâs arm remained securely attached around your waist the entire time.
instead of dwelling on that, you observed the way zayneâs entire demeanor shifted the moment he properly saw the wound. it happened so naturally that it almost startled you more than the injury itself.
one second he had been the same restrained, unreadable man from earlier, standing in the attic shirtless with sweat dampening the edges of his dark hair. and then suddenly, the doctor in him surfaced so seamlessly that it felt like watching somebody step into their true skin.
you watch his posture straightening, expression sharpened. his fingers wrapped around your wrist with control as he tilted your palm toward the sunlight. fresh blood continued slipping slowly from the cut, bright against your skin before trailing down the inside of your wrist and arm in thin warm lines.
the wound pulsed really painfully, every heartbeat making it throb even harder, enough to make you wince again.
immediately, zayneâs eyes flicked upward. âdoes it sting or ache?âÂ
you blinked at him for a second. âboth.â
zayne hummed under his breath before looking around the attic quickly, scanning the cluttered shelves and old boxes. his brows drew togetherâof course there was nothing useful here. no bandages, tissues, nothing clean enough. âwe shouldnât wrap it with anything dirty,â zayne murmured more to himself than to you.
you shifted against calebâs chest, still painfully aware of the way his arm remained firm around your waist from behind. his body felt warm beneath yours, solid, breathing against your back despite the awkward position the two of you were still trapped in on the floor.
âitâs okay, i can just use my shirt for now and wash it downstairs later when someone notices weâre missingââ you stopped yourself when zayne suddenly moved, your breath caught when he leaned downward toward your injured arm. ââŠzayne?â
he didnât answer, his gaze stayed lowered instead, almost avoiding yours. and then you felt itâthe warmth of his tongue dragging slowly along the thin trail of blood that had begun slipping down your wrist.Â
âz-zayne!â it made you flinch hard in shock, but his hand tightened carefully around your wrist to steady you before the blood could drip further. he still wouldnât look at you, expression remained frighteningly focused despite the intimacy of what he was doing, dark lashes lowered while his tongue traced upward once more against your skin.
the sensation made your stomach twist painfully because it hurt and because it didnât. because his mouth was warm and the attic was hot and your pulse was beating too hard beneath his touch. âyouâre insane,â you whispered weakly.
that finally made the corner of his mouth twitch, but he still didnât stop. slowly, carefully, zayne lifted your wounded palm closer toward his mouth. you could see the brief hesitation in his face this time, almost like he knew crossing this line would change things.Â
but even then, his lips pressed softly against the center of your palm.
âhngâ!â pain flared immediately when he applied pressure to the cut, sucking the blood from the wound to keep it temporarily clean. but the sting made your entire body tense. your free hand immediately grabbed onto the closest thing near youâ
caleb.
you pressed backward against his chest hard enough that he physically stiffened beneath you. âit hurts,â you shakily breathed.
behind you, caleb let out the faintest grunt, low and strained. his arm around your waist tightened before he could stop himself. but you failed to notice completelyâtoo distracted by zayne, by the overwhelming feeling of his mouth against your skin.
zayneâs eyes finally lifted toward yours then, emerald green, but darker now somehow. you had never realized before how intimate being cared for could feel until this exact moment. his lips remained close against your palm while his fingers held your wrist steady.
meanwhile behind you, calebâs ears had gone bright red. but you still failed to catch on the visible effort it took for him not to move beneath the repeated pressure of your body pressing against him every time the pain made you squirm. you were sitting directly between his legs, half against his chest, and every small movement from you dragged against him in ways that were making his breathing increasingly uneven.
ânghh...â calebâs grip flexed once against your waist. but before you could process that, zayne pulled back slowly from your injured hand.
your skin burned so badly it almost felt feverish, heat spreading up your throat and cheeks while your injured palm still throbbed beneath zayneâs careful hold. you stared at the faint sheen of blood left near his lower lip before he calmly wiped it away with the back of his hand. he inspected your swollen palm again with doctor-like focus despite the fact that he had literally just licked you off to suck your blood.
your breathing became uneven all over again, because you suddenly felt eighteen. painfully eighteen. back in that summer version of yourselves where standing between zayne and caleb had always felt like standing too close to a storm.
zayne tilted your wrist once more, checking the wound carefully. âthe bleeding stopped,â he murmured, in which you nodded weakly to. but he stayed crouched close in front of you though, way too close. his eyes lifted toward yours. âcan you still run away now?â
fuckâs sake, how are they this persistent?
you almost wanted to scream. why were they still like this? why were they still capable of unraveling you so easily after all these years? you swallowed hard and forced yourself to push back before you completely lost whatever remained of your sanity. âwhat if i donât?â you retorted. the words slipped out before you could stop them.Â
and the second they didâsomething behind you suddenly twitched hard against your rear. your entire body went still, feeling the solid and warm thing press against your bum, twitching ever so slightly.
is that... caleb?Â
behind you, caleb sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, like he was physically struggling, and then he made a strained sound under his breath. you felt the arm around your waist flex harder for half a second before he abruptly loosened it like heâd finally remembered himself. âokay,â caleb muttered roughly from behind you. âget off me.â
you turned your head slightly in confusion, only to find caleb looking away toward the opposite wall with a deeply tense expression, jaw tight enough to visibly flex. the tips of his ears were brightly red, damp hair sticking messily to his forehead while sweat slid slowly down the side of his neck into the collar of his tank top. he looked both irritated and embarrassed at the exact same time, which somehow made him even worse to look at.
âyou getââ
âseriously,â he muttered with a grunt, finally glancing at you briefly before immediately looking away again. âitâs hard.â
âi-i mean, itâs hard to breathe.â caleb quickly corrected himself.
zayne exhaled quietly through his nose beside you like he was holding back amusement. you stared at caleb in absolute disbelief while your brain scrambled uselessly trying to process what heâd just admitted out loud.Â
so what youâre sitting on is his...
zayne leaned toward you again before you could recover properly from calebâs admission. instinctively, you leaned backward to create distanceâbut all that did was press your body more firmly against caleb behind you.
that caused a strangled grunt escaping low from his throat, his hands instantly tightening around your hips hard enough to make you inhale sharply. âthat hurtsââÂ
you tried shifting away again, but there was nowhere to go. there was zayne in front of you, and caleb beneath and behind you. zayneâs eyes flickered downward briefly at the way calebâs grip dug into your waist before returning to your face. strangely, he didnât look annoyed. if anything, he looked calmer now. certain.
the faintest flush had spread across the bridge of his nose from the heat, but his gaze remained painfully steady on you. âearlier, you asked what happens if you stop running.âzayne leaned closer still, one hand braced beside your knee against the floorboards. âprove it.â
you stared at him helplessly. âwhat? what do youââ
âprove youâre not running anymore. and if you can do that,â he murmured, âthen weâll leave you alone.â
you swallowed hard. after all these years, after all the distance and silence and pretending nothing happened between the three of youâthey were still here, looking at you like this, wanting you like this. but deep down, you already knew something terrifying. you certainly didnât want them to leave you alone.Â
your teeth pressed lightly against your lower lip. âdeal.â
it was now or never. if they wanted you so bad to prove them otherwise, then let them take it.
before you could stop yourself, your hand lifted toward zayneâs face, fingers curled against his jaw. for the first time since reuniting with them, you stopped thinkingâpulling him toward you to kiss him.
it didn't feel rushed nor hesitant, it just felt like years and years of restrained tension finally colliding all at once.
zayne froze for barely half a second, then immediately kissed you back. harder. âfuck,â
his hand came up almost desperately to cradle your face, fingers spreading gently along your cheek and jaw like heâd imagined touching you this way too many times before. he kissed like a man who had spent years holding himself back. careful at first, then increasingly less careful every second after.
despite everything, there was still something achingly romantic about zayne. even now. even like this. his thumb brushed softly beneath your cheek while his mouth moved against yours, and the tenderness of it nearly undid you completely.
you had forgotten you were still sitting against him, pressing against him every time the kiss made you move unconsciously. this time, though, you didnât pull away. if anything, your body pressed more firmly backward on instinct as zayne kissed you deeper.Â
caleb physically tensed beneath you. his fingers dug harder into your hips. âfuck,â he breathed hoarsely, the sound barely registering through the haze that clouded your thoughts.
zayne tilted his head, kissing you slower now but somehow deeper, his grip on your face tightening when you instinctively kissed him back harder. your injured hand trembled weakly against his shoulder while the other remained curled near his jaw.
you could feel his breathing becoming uneven too, could feel the way even zayneâalways composed, always restrainedâwas starting to lose control of himself.
behind you, again, caleb let out another rough exhale. his forehead dropped briefly against the back of your shoulder like he was trying to survive this somehow.Â
you stopped trying to hold yourself back. maybe that was the most dangerous part of all thisânot them, not the attic, not the years of tension finally collapsing into something tangible. but it was you finally letting yourself want them back.
zayneâs mouth left yours only briefly before he leaned closer again, âquite too much for someone who only wants to prove something, no?â breath warm against your jaw as he buried his face near your neck. the scrape of his breathing against your skin alone nearly made your thoughts dissolve. instinctively, your eyes fluttered shut and your head tilted slightly to the side, exposing more of your neck to him without even realizing it. and zayneâs lips brushed there once, slowly. a quiet breath escaped him against your skin, and the sound alone nearly weakened your spine.
but then reality crashed back in all at once. these werenât boys anymore. they were men who had spent years wanting you, years imagining this.
before zayne could kiss your neck again, your hand came up against his jaw and pushed him backward firmly.
the movement startled him, his brows furrowed faintly as he looked at you, lips flushed from kissing. zayne genuinely looked caught off guard, and you stared back at him for one second.
if you were losing control tonight, you were at least going to make it fair.
âlet me,â you leaned downward instead, toward him. but at the same time, your hips deliberately moved backward against caleb beneath you. you started to grind your ass against his crotch in a slow, circular motion, like you were drawing his name with your hips and his growing bulge as the material.Â
instantly, a rough moan caught in his throat as his hands clamped harder around your hips, fingers flexing almost desperately against your skin. âmore... a little more...,â caleb muttered under his breath, but you ignored him on purpose. which only made him grip you tighter.
you bent toward zayne and let your lips brush teasingly along the side of his neck, just enough contact to make him inhale sharply.
this time, you were the one watching him carefully, watching the way his composure cracked apart in tiny fractures beneath your touch.
zayneâs eyes lowered, lips parted slightly as you kissed just beneath his jaw onceâsoft and slowâand you physically saw the tension leave his shoulders, a quiet sigh escaping him, relieved.
beneath you, caleb gave up entirely. âyouâre really g-getting bold, huh,â his head tipped backward while his grip on your hips grew bolder, guiding your movements against him with less restraintâevery small drag of your ass against his bulge made his breathing rougher, hotter.
zayne stared down at you with slightly wide eyes, his breath hitching in his throat as you leaned forward to press your lips against the sensitive column of his neck. he couldn't believe the sheer boldness of youâthe girl who had once fled from them was now claiming them like this. as your lips trailed a searing path down his bobbing adam's apple and over the sharp line of his clavicle, his eyes fluttered shut, and his hands, trembling with a mix of reverence and lust, slid into your hair.
with a low, commanding hum, you pushed against zayneâs chest, forcing him to lean back just enough to create a sliver of space. âlean back.â you say.Â
as you moved, your lifted your bum from caleb's crotch, momentarily breaking the contact. instead, you descended upon zayne, your mouth finding the expanse of his chest. you began to leave a trail of blooming hickies across his skin, teeth grazing his pectoral muscles as you worked your way down the hard, defined ridges of his abdomen.
âyouâre quite eager to prove it, arenât you?â zayne murmured, watching the way you kissed him lower.Â
and while you did that, your lower body continued its job on caleb. you were dry humping him through his pants with a rhythmic pace, driven by a hunger that had been denied for far too long. it made caleb into a moaning mess beneath you, his strength failing him as he braced one hand against the floorboards to keep from collapsing entirely. his other hand was white knuckled, gripping the hem of your tanktop so tightly the fabric strained.
fuck it, you were far past the point of teasing; the ache between your thighs became a sharp, demanding pulse that demanded satisfaction. driven by instinct, you slid your hand lower, trailing past the ridges of zayneâs toned abs until your fingers hooked into the leather of his belt. you were ready to tear it open, to strip him bare, but a firm, warm hand clamped over yours.
âwhat exactly are you doing?â zayne rasped.
you paused, fingers still curled in his belt, and you looked up at him with a defiant glint in your eyes. you intentionally stopped grinding your hips against caleb, leaving him momentarily unanchored. âfunny,â you retorted, your voice a breathless purr. âfor someone who kept on calling me a runaway, you're the one running away now.â
at that, a slow, amused smirk spread across zayneâs face, an expression that made your heart hammer against your ribs. ârunning?â he murmured, his gaze dropping to your lips before returning to your eyes. âyou've finally caught me.â without breaking eye contact, he unbuckled his own belt with a decisive clink, tossing the leather aside to clatter against the floorboards.
you were already breathless, a thin thread of saliva glistening on your lip as you watched him. he unbuttoned his pants and shoved his underwear down in one fluid motion. and the moment his manhood sprang free, it nearly slapped against your cheek, a heavy, throbbing weight that made your eyes widen.Â
he was... massive.Â
âcan you actually take this, y/n?â zayne whispered as he began to stroke himself, the rhythmic schlickof his hand against his skin echoing in the small space. he brings the head of his cock dangerously close to your eyes, teasing you with the scent of his musk.
an instinctive, heavy throb pulsed between your legs, and you felt a sudden, overwhelming rush of moisture. you were fucking incredibly wet, your panties clinging to you as you swallowed hard. but before you could find your voice, you felt a shift behind you. the floorboards suddenly creaked under a new weight.
you turned your head slightly, your breath catching in your throat. caleb was moving, his eyes glazed with a raw hunger as he knelt behind you. he was already unbuckling his belt, his movements frantic and desperate. âdonât think you're getting off that easy,â as he released his own huge cock, he leaned in. âhow much can you even take from us, huh, pipsqueak?â
he didn't wait for an answer. his hands were suddenly on your hips, pulling your shorts down. when the fabric fell, it revealed your white panties, darkened and translucent from how much you were soaking. the sight of your drenched lace made calebâs dick twitch violently. he didn't wait to strip you completely; instead, he pressed the hot, blunt head of his length against your entrance, rubbing the damp fabric of your panties against your swollen clit.
âstill runninâ away from this?â he grunted, a low, needy sound. âbet you canât. youâre too wet.â a high, broken whimper escaped your throat, and your strength gave out, your body collapsing forward until you slumped heavily against zayneâs muscular thighs.
zayne reached down though, his fingers firm and warm as they hooked under your chin to tilt your head back. you were met once again by the intimidating sight of his throbbing manhood. you were too far gone, too lost in the heavy, wet heat of calebâs dick pressing on you to offer any resistance. when zayne leaned forward, guiding his thick, pulsing head toward your lips, you opened for him instinctively. âopen for me.â he pushes into your mouth with a slow force that filled you to the brim.
a soft, helpless moan escaped you around him, and a thin trail of drool escaped the corner of your mouth, glistening in the sunlight. you looked up at him through hazy, hooded eyelids, eyes wide and glazed with unadulterated lust. zayne let out a groan at the sight of youâhis beautiful girl now wrapped around his dick. your hands reached up, clutching at the fabric of his pants as he wrapped his fingers around your head, guiding your movements to ensure you felt every vein of his length.
âthatâs it... just like that. take it all, y/n. show me how much you want it.â his words came to you like a caress, but below, caleb let out a frustrated, needy grunt, his pace increasing as he felt you getting even wetter, the damp fabric of your panties sliding slickly against your clit with every heavy thrust of his hips.
zayneâs head fell back, his eyes squeezing shut as you began to suck him with a slow, rhythmic pace. he was fighting for control, muscles corded and straining as he fought the irresistible urge to simply slam himself into your throat. instead, he gently pushes his hips upward to meet your mouth. and when you finally took him deep enough that the tip of your nose brushed against the base of his shaft, an uncharacteristic, broken groan tore from his throat, his fingers tightening convulsively in your hair.Â
âahh, fuck,â
caleb watched it happen, and a sting of jealousy immediately came through him. he decided to silently reach down, his slender fingers hooking into the side of your soaked panty to shove the damp fabric aside, exposing your dripping, swollen entrance to the cool air. without a moment's hesitation, he positioned his pulsing cock at your opening and began to push.
you instantly gasped into zayneâs dick.Â
âshhh, itâs okay,â he coaxed you.
but caleb hit a wall of resistance nonetheless. you were incredibly tight, your body still reeling from the shock of the sudden attention, and the sheer girth of him was overwhelming. he let out a strained grunt, muscles bunching as he struggled to force his way past your narrow walls. âyou're...too small, too tightââ he hissed through gritted teeth, working hard to breach you, while above you, zayne remained a patient man, his hands steadying your head as he waited for your mouth to finally adjust to the weight of him.
to soothe the tension, you reached up to wrap your hand around the base of zayneâs shaft while your mouth continued to worship his tip. you began to bob your head in a frantic, fast motion, your tongue swirling around him with a desperate hunger. the sudden change in pace caught zayne off guard; he let out a choked, startled sound, nearly swallowing his own saliva as he gasped, âslow... slow down, y/n...â
you didn't listen. instead, you treated his massive length like a sweet lollipop, swirling and sucking with a playful fervor. and zayne could do nothing but revel in the sensation, his head tilting back as he shut his eyes tight, a thin string of saliva escaping his parted lips.
he tasted so fucking good in your mouth.
the sight of you so focused on zayne was the final straw for caleb. a low grunt erupted from his chest, before reaching down, his large hands clamping onto your hips with a bruising, painful grip that forced a small gasp from your lips. then, with a sudden surge of strength, he slammed himself forward, driving his entire length into you in one singular thrust.
shit.
âangghh!â you screamed, the sound muffled by the weight of zayneâs dick still filling your mouth. you were finally, blissfully full, but the sensation was immediately followed by a staggering shock.Â
the moment caleb buried himself within you, he stiffened violently. a ragged, breathless gasp tore from his lungs as he felt his climax hit him with the force of a tidal wave. he was inside you, fully, and he was already coming.
âshit, shit, shitââ caleb choked out, his voice a  broken mess. trembling, his hips continued to thrust in a desperate, involuntary rhythm, but he couldn't stop. even as he pounded into you, he felt the hot, thick jets of his semen pulsing deep inside your womb, a continuous, unending stream that seemed impossible.Â
how could this happen? he had masturbated to you a thousand times, always maintaining a disciplined control, but now, the mere feeling of your heat was undoing him. he couldn't even stop coming; it was as if your body was a vacuum, pulling every drop of his cum from him in one long, continuous release.
thwack! thwack! thwack!
seeing the way his thick cock disappeared into you with every frantic thrust, caleb let out a loud moan. âso tight fâme, youâre going to... kill me,â he hooked a powerful arm beneath your thigh, hoisting your leg high up onto his shoulder to tilt your pelvis back, allowing him to drive into you even deeper. âcan you take this, huh? do you still wanna leave us behind after this, hm?â each time his tip slammed against your cervix, your eyes rolled back in your head, your vision blurring as you struggled to keep your grip on zayneâs dick.
but zayne was not about to let you find your footing. seeing calebâs dominance, he instantly felt competitive. he wasn't just a spectator anymore. he reached down, his fingers tangling firmly in your hair to tilt your head back at a punishing angle, and began to pound his dick into your mouth with a relentless pace. âunghhh...â he groaned, matching calebâs rhythm. âproving it well, arenât you?â
at this point, you could do nothing but cry out, your voice breaking into a series of high, desperate moans and whimpers as the two men relentlessly pounded into you, claiming every inch of you as their own.
â
downstairs, life went on completely unaware.
the previous broken speaker suddenly crackled back to life, making the older relatives cheer in relief while somebody loudly complained that they were in the middle of a sad song before the speaker died. immediately, music flooded grannyâs front yard again, echoing beneath the afternoon sunlight while barbecue smoke drifted lazily through the air.
children ran around the plastic tables with juice boxes in hand, somebodyâs uncle was already tipsy enough to start singing off-key, one of your aunts kept scolding people for stealing food because apparently there were still some late visitors.
granny herself sat proudly near the karaoke television with the microphone in hand, it was only after a few minutes that she suddenly looked around the crowded yard and frowned slightly. âwhere are those three?â she asked.
one of the younger teenagers nearby nearly choked trying not to laugh. another one immediately elbowed him hard. âtheyâre probably still playing upstairs,â the girl answered innocently. except the snickering afterward completely ruined the lie.
granny narrowed her eyes suspiciously. âwhat did you children do?â
ânothing!â which obviously meant something.
eventually, after enough threatening looks from the adults, the truth slipped out in pieces.
they had planned on pulling a prank on the three of you by locking the attic. the plan to leave the three of you stuck there âfor only a few minutes.â apparently, the younger cousins thought it would be funny after overhearing all the teasing downstairs earlier.
granny sighed so deeply it nearly sounded spiritual. âthose poor children,â she muttered while shaking her head.
except she still didnât go upstairs immediately, because one of the older uncles suddenly begged her to sing another song first. and like always, granny gave in.
and completely unbeknownst to everyone downstairsâsomething irreversible had already bloomed upstairs in the attic.
not a fight, not an accident, not even just old feelings returning. it was worse than that, warmer than that. something that had spent years quietly burning beneath distance and growing up.
something that had long been marking you under seasons of summer.
Pairing: Valarr Targaryen x Reader
Word Count: 13.8K âbroken to two parts
Synopsis: Forced apart by politics, Valarr marries Kiera of Tyrosh while his beloved cousin becomes a septa to escape loving him.
Part 1 | Part 2 |
Kiera came two days later.
Not with ladies.
Not with guards.
Alone.
You were in the nursery chamber, if such a word could be used for a room guarded like a treasury. Aemon slept in his cradle. You sat beside him sewing a torn sleeve. You had become very good at pretending domestic peace could exist behind locked doors.
The queen entered without being announced.
You rose so quickly the needle pricked your finger.
âYour Grace.â
Kiera looked at the blood on your fingertip.
âHow fitting.â
You folded your hand into your sleeve.
âYou should not be here.â
âNo,â she said. âI should be anywhere else.â
Her gaze moved to the cradle.
Something happened to her face then.
All her rehearsed bitterness faltered.
She crossed the room slowly.
You wanted to stop her.
You did not.
Aemon slept with one fist beside his cheek, silver lashes resting against flushed skin. He was beautiful in the unfair way Targaryen children often were, as if the gods had given them loveliness first and waited to see whether they deserved souls later.
Kiera stared down at him.
âHe looks like him,â she said.
âYes.â
âNot like you?â
âSome.â
âNo.â Her voice thinned. âEnough like you to hurt. Enough like him to matter.â
You said nothing.
She reached toward the cradle, then stopped before touching him.
âDoes he love him?â
The question surprised you.
âYes.â
Kiera laughed softly.
âOf course.â
âHe would love any child of his.â
âWould he?â
You had no answer.
Kiera turned to you.
âI bled last night.â
The words landed between you like a body.
âI am sorry.â
Her smile was dreadful.
âEveryone is sorry. The maester is sorry. My ladies are sorry. The gods are sorry, perhaps, though they show it poorly.â
She looked back at Aemon.
âI thought this timeâŠâ She stopped. Swallowed. âIt does not matter.â
âIt matters.â
âDo not be kind to me.â
âI am not trying to wound you.â
âThat is the trouble with you.â Her eyes flashed. âYou wound me while trying not to. Do you know how exhausting that is? To hate a woman and find her gentle? To want her gone and know she would go if leaving did not break him?â
Your throat tightened.
âI have thought of it.â
âLeaving?â
âYes.â
Kieraâs gaze sharpened.
âAnd?â
âHe would follow.â
âYes,â she said bitterly. âHe would.â
You looked at the cradle.
âOr burn the road behind me.â
âThat too.â
For a while, neither of you spoke.
Then Kiera said, quietly, âThe Tyroshi envoy has written home.â
You looked at her.
âHe says the king dishonors Tyrosh. That I am mocked. That Westeros laughs at painted daughters and barren wombs. That the Blackfyre boys would make better friends to those who respect their wives.â
Fear moved through you.
âDoes Valarr know?â
âValarr knows everything except when to stop.â
A bitter truth.
Kiera stepped closer.
âYou think the court wants to be rid of you because you are a scandal. You are wrong. Scandal can be endured. Scandal is wine for bored people. They want to be rid of you because you are becoming policy.â
âI am notââ
âYou are. Every choice he makes bends toward you. Every insult to you becomes treason. Every whisper against the child becomes a threat to the throne. Men who would have tolerated a mistress cannot tolerate a mother. Especially not the mother of his only son.â
Only son.
The words made the room colder.
âHe is a bastard.â
Kieraâs expression twisted.
âSo was Daemon Blackfyre.â
You flinched.
âYes,â she said. âThere. You understand.â
Aemon stirred in his sleep.
Both of you looked at him.
Kieraâs voice softened, unwillingly.
âHe is innocent.â
âYes.â
âThat will not save him.â
âNo.â
She closed her eyes briefly.
When she opened them again, the queen had returned.
âSend him away,â she said.
Your hand tightened around the torn sleeve.
âNo.â
âTo Dragonstone. To the Vale. To some holdfast loyal enough to keep him and distant enough to quiet tongues.â
âNo.â
âFor his sake.â
You stood very still.
For his sake.
Those were the words people always used when they meant to take a child from his mother.
Kiera saw the change in you and gave a humorless smile.
âSo you are a mother after all.â
âI never claimed not to be.â
âYou claimed to be a septa.â
The blow landed.
You looked down.
Kiera sighed.
âForgive me.â
That startled you more than the cruelty.
She seemed startled by it too.
Then the door opened. Valarr stood there.
The room tightened.
His gaze moved from Kiera to you, then to Aemon.
âWhat is this?â he asked.
Kiera lifted her chin.
âI wished to see the child everyone is pretending not to see.â
Valarr entered slowly.
âYou might have asked.â
âI did, husband. You refused.â
âI had reason, wife.â
âYou always have reason. That does not make you reasonable.â
A dangerous silence followed.
Then Valarr laughed softly.
Once, he might have liked her for that.
Perhaps he still did, in some distant chamber of himself unruined by wanting.
âYou should go,â he said.
Kieraâs face hardened.
âI am the queen.â
âAnd yet.â
You stepped forward.
âValarr.â
He did not look at you.
Kiera smiled.
âThere it is.â
His eyes flicked to her.
âWhat?â
âThe leash.â
You went pale.
Valarr did not move.
Kieraâs voice was quiet now, but cruel with truth.
âThey think she is your weakness. They are wrong. You are hers.â
For a moment, you thought he might strike her.
Not with his hand. Valarr would never do something so simple. But with power. With ruin. With all the invisible weapons kings kept tucked beneath their tongues.
Instead, he said, âLeave us, Kiera.â
No title.
No courtesy.
The queenâs face changed.
You saw the wound.
So did he.
For one heartbeat, shame crossed his face.
Too late.
Kiera swept toward the door.
As she passed you, she murmured, so low only you could hear, âHe will make us all pay for loving you.â
Then she was gone.
Valarr looked at you.
âWhat did she say?â
You met his eyes.
âThe truth.â
//
After that, everything worsened.
The High Septon requested a private audience.
Valarr denied it.
The High Septon requested again, publicly enough that refusal would look like insult.
Valarr granted it, then made the poor old man wait three hours outside the council chamber while he discussed harbor taxes with Lord Velaryon.
When the High Septon finally entered, he did so with three Most Devout, all in cloth-of-silver and righteous discomfort.
You were not there.
Valarr told you later, because he had the strange habit of bringing you the ugliest pieces of his day as if laying trophies at your feet.
âHe asked whether I meant to make a mockery of the Faith,â Valarr said.
You were feeding Aemon by the fire.
âAnd what did you say?â
âI said the Faith had survived worse than me.â
You closed your eyes. âValarr.â
âHe then spoke of discipline.â
âOf me.â
âYes.â
You looked down at your son.
âWhat discipline?â
His silence answered.
You lifted your gaze.
âWhat discipline?â
Valarr stood by the window, black against the red dusk.
âPenance. Removal from court. The child fostered elsewhere. Your vows formally examined.â
âExamined,â you repeated.
âThey would unmake you to punish you.â
âNo, I unmade myself.â
He turned.
âNo.â
âIt is true.â
âNo.â
âValarrââ
âYou are not some tavern girl to be dragged barefoot before pious old men.â
âNo,â you said softly. âA tavern girl would be less useful to them.â
His eyes burned.
âI will not allow it.â
The words again.
You were beginning to hate them.
âYou cannot refuse the Faith forever.â
âI can refuse this High Septon.â
âAnd when the next says the same?â
âThen I will refuse him too.â
âAnd when the city rises because the king keeps a septa in his bed and a bastard in his holdfast?â
âThen the city will learn the cost of rising.â
Aemon fussed at your breast, startled by your tension. You soothed him automatically, though your eyes stayed on Valarr.
âYou speak of your own people.â
âI speak of men who would tear you from me in the name of gods.â
âDo you hear yourself? You speak like a tyrant.â
He crossed the room in three strides.
Aemon whimpered. Valarr stopped at once.
That, more than anything, showed you the shape of your cage.
Even in fury, he could gentle himself for the child.
For you, he only burned.
âA tyrant?â he said quietly.
You adjusted your robe and settled Aemon against your shoulder.
âYes.â
Pain flashed across his face.
Good, you thought.
Then hated yourself.
âDo you think me as Maegor?â he asked.
âI think you are a man who believes love excuses whatever it destroys.â
His mouth tightened.
âWhat would you have me do? Hand you to them? Let them shave your head and parade you through the city? Let them take him?â
âNo.â
âThen what?â
âI do not know!â
The confession broke from you.
Aemon began to cry.
You rose, rocking him, your own tears hot with rage.
âI do not know, Valarr. That is the point. There may be no clean way out. There may be no happy ending waiting if only you frighten enough men. We did wrong. We did wrong, and he is innocent, and Kiera is humiliated, and the realm is watching its king choose one woman over peace.â
âI choose you over everything.â
âYou say that as if it is beautiful and righteous.â
âIt is.â
âIt is monstrous.â
His expression changed.
âDo you want me to stop?â
There it was.
The question beneath every prayer, every kiss, every locked door.
You looked at him.
Aemon cried between you.
âNo,â you whispered.
Valarrâs face softened with terrible understanding.
He came closer slowly this time and touched Aemonâs back.
Then your cheek.
âYou see?â he said. âWe are both monstrous.â
You closed your eyes and leaned, just for a moment, into his hand.
That was the tragedy of it.
You could name the cage.
You could see the lock.
You still loved the warmth of the hand that held the key.
//
The court tried subtler weapons next.
A song appeared in Flea Bottom about a holy maid whose dragon laid an egg in the Motherâs lap. Valarr banned it. By the next morning, every stableboy in the Red Keep knew three verses.
A septon from Oldtown preached that even kings knelt before the Seven. Valarr sent him home with a purse of gold and a warning so polite it frightened him more than chains.
A lady of House Rowan asked, in your hearing, whether bastards born of vows were doubly cursed or only doubly common. Her husband lost a lucrative royal contract three days later.
Every punishment proved the accusation.
Every silence deepened it.
Valarr could not see that.
Or would not.
He began bringing Aemon to council in the mornings.
Only once at first. Then again. A babe in a carved cradle beside the Iron Throne while lords discussed grain, tolls, ships, and war.
You begged him not to.
âHe is not a banner.â
âNo,â Valarr said. âHe is my son.â
âYou are making men choose how to look at him.â
âThey will look at him with respect.â
âThey will look at him with fear.â
âGood.â
âValarr, he is a babe.â
âHe is of dragon's blood.â
âHe is a bastard.â
Valarrâs eyes went cold.
âCareful.â
It was the first time he had ever used that voice on you.
You went still.
He realized it at once.
Regret struck his face.
But regret did not unmake the moment.
You stepped back.
âForgive me,â he said.
You shook your head.
âDo not command me to be careful when I am the only person in this castle still willing to tell you the truth.â
âI said forgive me.â
âYes, and all I heard was the king.â
He flinched.
You left him standing there.
That night, he came to your rooms and found the door barred.
Not locked. You did not have that power. Barred with a chair beneath the handle like some frightened maid in a song.
For a long time, he said nothing.
Then, from the other side, âOpen the door.â
âNo.â
A pause.
âPlease.â
That hurt worse.
You sat on the floor beside Aemonâs cradle, knees drawn to your chest, and pressed your hand over your mouth.
âGo to your wife,â you whispered.
Silence.
Then his voice, lower.
âOpen the door and be cruel to my face.â
A laugh escaped you, broken and wet.
âNo.â
âAre you afraid of me?â
You looked at the chair beneath the handle.
âNo,â you said.
It was almost true.
âThen why bar the door?â
âBecause if you come in, I will forgive you.â
The quiet afterward was unbearable.
At last, Valarr said, âAnd that would be so terrible?â
âYes.â
âWhy?â
âBecause one day you will do something I cannot forgive, and I will have taught you there is no such day.â
You heard him breathe.
When he spoke again, his voice was stripped bare.
âI would rather you hate me in the room than love me through a door.â
You wept then, silently.
But you did not move the chair.
In the morning, it was gone.
Not the chair.
Valarr.
For three days, he did not come.
On the fourth, he summoned you to the godswood.
You almost laughed when the message arrived. The Red Keepâs godswood had always been a poor thing, a southern imitation of northern faith, but it held the memory of childhood better than the sept did.
You found him beneath the heart tree.
Aemon was in his arms.
The sight undid all your careful anger.
Valarr looked tired. Not king-tired. Man-tired.
âI frightened you,â he said.
âNo, Valarr. You angered me.â
âThat was not what I said.â
No.
It was not.
You looked at Aemon instead of him.
âHe should be inside. The air is cool.â
âHe likes the leaves.â
âHe is too young to like anything but milk and being held.â
âHe likes what I tell him to like.â
Despite yourself, you smiled.
Valarr saw and took one step closer.
âI am sorry,â he said.
âYou say that like a king.â
âHow should I say it?â
âLike a man who may be wrong again.â
He absorbed that.
Then he nodded.
âI am sorry,â he said again, slower. âI will be wrong again.â
Your throat tightened.
âThat is better.â
âI will try not to frighten you.â
âTry harder not to become someone I should fear.â
His eyes held yours.
Then he handed Aemon to you.
A peace offering.
A surrender.
A chain.
You took your son and felt all three.
//
The attempt to remove you came in the seventh moon of Aemonâs life.
It was dressed, as all court cruelties are, in reason.
The small council gathered in full. The queen was present. So was the High Septon. So were two Tyroshi envoys in bright robes, their dyed beards oiled and curled. You were not invited, which told you the matter concerned you before anyone said so.
Valarr had you brought halfway through.
That told you he was angry.
He liked his enemies to see what they had failed to take.
You entered in pale grey, not white. Never white now. Aemon was with Helicent, under guard. The council table seemed too large, the faces around it too careful.
Kiera did not look at you.
The High Septon did.
There was sorrow in his gaze.
That frightened you more than contempt would have.
Valarr sat at the head of the table. The crown rested before him rather than on his head. He did that sometimes, as if reminding men the thing was a tool, not an ornament.
âSpeak,â he said.
Lord Lannister cleared his throat. âYour Grace, the matter is delicate.â
âThen touch it carefully.â
A few men shifted.
The older Tyroshi envoy smiled with too many teeth.
âIn Tyrosh, we say a wound covered by silk still rots.â
Valarrâs gaze moved to him.
âIn Westeros, we say guests who insult their host may leave without supper.â
The envoyâs smile faded.
Kiera finally spoke.
âLet them speak, Your Grace.â
Valarr looked at her.
The room noticed the title.
So did you.
The younger envoy bowed slightly.
âHis Grace must understand Tyrosh has borne much for friendship. Our princess crossed the sea in good faith. She remains queen in name, yet all courts hear of another woman who holds the kingâs heart, and a child who may one day be raised above lawful blood.â
Valarrâs fingers rested lightly on the table.
âBe careful of your next wods,â he said.
The envoy paled but continued.
âTyrosh asks for reassurance.â
âTyrosh asks much.â
âThe lady must be removed from court.â
No one breathed.
You felt the words before you understood them. Removed. Such a clean word. A cloth laid over a knife.
Valarrâs face did not change.
âMust she?â
The High Septon spoke gently. âYour Grace, the sister has broken vows. The Faith has been patient because the realm has suffered much. But patience cannot become approval. There are houses where she may repent quietly.â
âHouses,â Valarr repeated.
âMotherhouses of strict observance.â
âPrisons with hymns.â
âPlaces of correction.â
The room chilled.
Valarr leaned back.
âAnd the child?â
Lord Lannister answered this time.
âThe boy should be fostered by a loyal house, with honors befitting royal blood but without implication of succession.â
âRoyal blood,â Valarr said.
âYour Graceââ
âMy blood.â
A silence.
Kieraâs hands were folded so tightly her knuckles whitened.
You looked at her, and at last she looked back.
There was no triumph in her face.
Only dread.
She had wanted you gone.
Perhaps she had not wanted to see what Valarr would become when someone tried to make it happen.
The older Tyroshi envoy said, âNo insult is intended.â
Valarr smiled.
Every man in the room wished he had not.
âNo? Then you are clumsy as well as bold.â
âYour Graceââ
Valarr stood.
The room stood with him because it had to.
All but you.
You remained still.
âLet me reassure Tyrosh,â Valarr said. âLet me reassure the Faith. Let me reassure my loyal council, who have spent months mistaking my restraint for uncertainty.â
His hand settled on the crown.
âShe will not be removed.â
The High Septon closed his eyes.
âThe child will not be fostered.â
Lord Lannister looked away.
âAnd any man who speaks again of sending either from my sight will learn how little patience survived my fever.â
The Tyroshi envoy stiffened.
âThen Tyrosh must reconsiderââ
Valarr moved so quickly no one stopped him.
He seized the envoy by the front of his bright robe and drove him back against the table hard enough to scatter cups. Men shouted. Kiera rose. The Kingsguard stepped forward, then froze at a glance from their king.
Valarr leaned close to the envoyâs face.
âTyrosh,â he said softly, âwas purchased with my marriage, not my soul. If your archon wishes to sell his friendship to Blackfyre boys because I have loved a woman not chosen by his ledgers, tell him this: I have more ships than Daemonâs sons, more dragons on my banners than they have in their blood, and far less mercy than my grandsire.â
The envoy trembled.
Valarr released him with disgust.
Then he turned to the council.
âThis audience is ended.â
No one moved.
âI said,â Valarr whispered, âended.â
They fled gracefully, because courtiers are trained to make cowardice look like manners.
Only Kiera remained.
And you.
Valarr was still breathing hard.
Kiera looked at him with something almost like pity.
âYou have done it now,â she said.
He laughed.
âWhat have I done?â
âChosen.â
His gaze flicked to you.
âNo,â Kiera said. âNot her. You chose war over shame.â
Valarrâs face hardened.
âLeave.â
The queen gave a small bow.
Then she turned to you.
âI told you,â she said.
You did not answer.
After she was gone, Valarr came to you.
He reached for your hand.
You stepped back.
His expression changed.
âYou are angry.â
âNo, Valarr. I am afraid.â
âOf Tyrosh?â
âOf you.â
The words landed like a slap.
He stared at you.
You hated yourself for saying them.
You hated more that they were true.
âI protected you,â he said.
âYou made me the match to set the realm alight.â
âThey would have taken you.â
âAnd now they may take more.â
âI will stop them.â
âYou cannot stop everything.â
His eyes blazed.
âWatch me.â
//
That was the last peaceful night you had with him.
You did not know it then.
Mercy, perhaps.
He came to you late, after the castle had gone quiet.
Aemon slept in the cradle near the bed. Valarr stood over him for a long while, still dressed in black, crownless, his face unreadable.
âDo you regret him?â he asked.
You were unpinning your hair.
The question struck so deep you could not answer at first.
âNo.â
âMe?â
You looked at him through the mirror.
âYes.â
His reflection went still.
Then you turned.
âAnd no.â
A faint, humorless smile touched his mouth.
âThat sounds like a septaâs answer.â
âIt is a womanâs answer.â
He came to you.
âThen answer me as a woman.â
You should have refused him.
You had refused him in your mind a thousand times. You had imagined sending him away and keeping your soul. You had imagined taking Aemon and disappearing into some quiet place where the name Targaryen could not find you. You had imagined becoming truly holy, truly repentant, truly free.
But Valarr touched your hair, and every imagined future turned to smoke.
âI love you,â you said.
His eyes closed.
There was the boy in him still. Buried, bleeding, alive.
âI love you,â you repeated, cruelly, kindly. âThat is the root of all of it. Not your crown. Not your power. Not the child. You. I loved you when you were only a boy sulking in gardens. I loved you when they married you to another. I loved you when I took vows to survive loving you. I love you now, and it has not made me good.â
His hand cupped your face.
âNo.â
âNo?â
âIt has made you mine.â
A tear slipped down your cheek.
âYou hear love and translate it into ownership.â
âI hear love and know what the world will do to it if I do not hold tightly.â
âYou hold too tightly.â
âI know.â
The admission broke you a little.
He rested his forehead against yours.
âI know,â he whispered. âBut if I loosen my hand, they will take you.â
âAnd if you do not, you will crush me yourself.â
He had no answer.
Neither did you.
So you kissed him.
That was the shame of it. Not that you sinned in ignorance. You sinned with your eyes open, with dread in your mouth and love in your hands, with your son sleeping nearby and gods carved in silence on the wall.
Valarr held you afterward as if the bed were a battlefield and he had found you alive among the dead.
Near dawn, Aemon woke crying.
Valarr rose before you could.
You watched him lift the child, watched your son settle against his fatherâs chest, watched the king sway in the dim light with a tenderness no history would ever know how to record.
âHe will hate me,â Valarr said quietly.
You pulled the sheet around yourself.
âWhy?â
âFor what I made his mother.â
You swallowed.
âAnd what did you make me?â
He looked at you.
âLoved,â he said.
It was such a beautiful lie that you let yourself believe it until morning.
//
The poison came in a cup of spiced milk.
Not wine. Wine would have been too obvious with Tyroshi envoys in the castle and whispers of Lyseni poisons in every corridor. Not sweetmeats, because Valarr had tasters for those. Milk was harmless. Milk was domestic. Milk was what women drank when they were tired and nursing and too heartsick to eat.
It came on a tray from the queenâs kitchens.
That was the cruelty of it.
Kiera had sent no such tray.
You learned that too late.
The girl who brought it was new. Young, freckled, shaking. You noticed the shaking. Of course you did. But half the servants shook near you now, terrified of the kingâs wrath, the courtâs judgment, the godsâ displeasure, or all three.
âFor my lady,â she whispered.
âI am no lady.â
The girlâs eyes filled with sudden tears.
âNo, Septa.â
The title made you ache.
You almost sent it away.
Then Aemon cried.
You had slept little the night before. Valarr had been in council until dawn, dealing with the Tyroshi delegationâs departure and a raven from the Stepstones. The court felt like a held breath. Even Helicent had told you to rest, which meant you looked half-dead.
So you drank.
It tasted of cinnamon, honey, and warmth.
For a while, nothing happened.
Then the cramps began.
At first, you thought it was exhaustion. Then bad milk. Then fear.
By the time you understood, your hands were cold.
You sent for Valarr.
Not the maester.
Valarr.
Helicent realized before the guards did. You saw it in her face when you doubled over beside the cradle.
âSeven save us,â she breathed.
âNo,â you whispered. âNot them.â
You were tired of gods.
Valarr came running.
Kings should not run.
He did.
You were on the floor by then, Helicentâs arms around you, Aemon screaming in his cradle because he knew something was wrong in the animal way babes know. The maester had arrived and was shouting for hot water, charcoal, vinegar, things that would not matter.
Valarr saw you and stopped as if struck.
Then the world moved again.
âWho?â he said.
No one answered.
His voice became terrible.
âWho?â
The guard at the door went white.
âThe tray, Your Graceââ
âWhat tray?â
âFrom the queenâsââ
Valarr turned.
âNo,â you forced out.
It cost you more than you expected.
He was at your side instantly, dropping to his knees.
âDo not speak.â
âKiera did not.â
His face was white. Not pale. White.
âYou do not know that.â
âI know.â
âHow?â
âBecause she would have looked me in the face.â
Something moved in his eyes. Rage, grief, disbelief, love. All the beasts of him fighting in one cage.
The maester tried to reach for you.
Valarr shoved him aside so violently the old man nearly fell.
âSave her.â
âYour Grace, Iââ
âSave her.â
The maesterâs mouth opened.
Valarr drew his dagger.
The room froze.
âSave her,â he said again, softly, âor explain to the Stranger why you could not.â
You touched his wrist.
âStop.â
He looked down at you.
The dagger lowered.
That was the last power you had over him.
You knew it.
So did he.
âBring Aemon,â you whispered.
âNo.â
âValarr.â
âNo.â
âI want to hold my son.â
His face broke.
He looked suddenly young again. The boy in the garden. The prince at your door. The man beneath your hands in fever.
He rose and lifted Aemon from the cradle.
The babe cried harder until Valarr brought him to you. Then, as if confused by your stillness, he quieted into hiccupping sobs.
You touched his cheek.
So soft.
So alive.
âMy sweet boy,â you whispered.
Aemon blinked at you with Valarrâs eyes.
The cruelty of that nearly made you laugh.
You looked at Valarr.
âDo not make him a war.â
His jaw trembled.
âDo not ask me for mercy.â
âI am asking for him.â
âThey killed you.â
âI am not dead yet.â
âYou are leaving.â
There was accusation in it.
As if death were another vow you had taken without his permission.
You smiled faintly.
âI tried leaving you once. You were very dramatic.â
A sound broke from him.
Not laughter.
Not sobbing.
Something worse.
He pressed his forehead to your hand.
âI will find them.â
âYes.â
âI will burn them.â
âNo.â
His head lifted.
âNo?â
âJustice,â you whispered. âNot rage.â
âI do not know the difference without you.â
âYou must learn.â
âI refuse.â
You closed your eyes.
Pain moved through you in dark waves now. The room blurred. Helicent was praying. The maester was weeping. Aemon made small sounds against Valarrâs chest.
You forced your eyes open one last time.
âDo not kill her,â you said.
Valarr knew whom you meant.
His face hardened.
âIf sheââ
âShe did not.â
âIf she knewââ
âValarr.â
He stopped.
You gathered what strength remained.
âLet Kiera live.â
His mouth twisted with hatred.
âFor you?â
âFor me. For him. For whatever is left of the man I loved before the crown taught him fear.â
That struck.
Good.
You wanted it to.
He bent over you, shaking now, and kissed your mouth.
It tasted of salt and poison.
âI will not let you go,â he whispered.
You would have laughed if you could.
Always that.
Always his refusal, beautiful and useless before gods, death, and consequence.
âYou never learned,â you breathed, âthat love is not keeping.â
His eyes filled.
At last.
Tears.
Real ones.
One fell onto your cheek.
You thought, foolishly, that it felt like rain.
Then the room went quiet.
The official record stated that the kingâs cousin, formerly a septa of the Faith, died of a sudden wasting sickness in the first year of Valarrâs reign.
The official record lied.
Everyone knew.
No one said it.
That had always been the courtâs truest language.
The girl who brought the tray was found dead before questioning. Her tongue had been cut out. The cook hanged herself, though some said she had help. A Tyroshi servant vanished. A sellsword with a purple beard was taken at the harbor and confessed after two days in the black cells. He named the elder envoy. The elder envoy had already sailed. His ship never reached Tyrosh.
Storm, some said.
Pirates, said others.
Valarr said nothing.
That was how they knew.
Kiera was confined to her apartments for twenty-one days while the investigation unfolded around her like a noose. On the twenty-second, Valarr went to her.
No one knew what passed between them.
Years later, a maid claimed she had heard the queen screaming. Another swore Kiera never raised her voice at all. A guard said the king emerged with blood on his hand. A septon said that was a lie.
Kiera lived.
Because you had asked.
But she never again wore pink in her hair.
Three moons after your death, the Tyroshi alliance shattered.
By yearâs end, Tyroshi coin found its way to Blackfyre hands.
So all of it had been for nothing.
The marriage.
The vows.
The restraint.
The lies.
Nothing.
Except Aemon.
Valarr legitimized him on the first anniversary of your death.
The council begged him not to.
The High Septon refused to bless it.
Kiera did not attend.
Valarr stood before the Iron Throne with your son in his arms and named him Aemon Targaryen, prince of Dragonstone, blood of the dragon, his firstborn and heir until such time as the gods saw fit to give him another lawful son.
The court heard the challenge beneath the words.
The gods had seen fit to give him none.
Aemon was too young to understand. He only reached for the crown, fascinated by the rubies.
Valarr let him touch it.
Later, in the quiet, he took the boy to your old cell.
He had preserved it.
The narrow bed. The shelf of prayer books. The little table. The carved faces of the Seven. Your veil, folded where you had left it the night you first removed it for him.
Dust never settled there.
Servants saw to that.
Or Valarr did himself.
No one asked.
Aemon toddled uncertainly across the stone floor while Valarr watched from the doorway.
âThis is where your mother lived,â he said.
The child touched the bedpost.
Valarrâs face tightened.
âShe was stubborn,â he continued. âAnd too honest. And kinder than I deserved.â
Aemon looked up at him, solemn-eyed.
âMama?â
The word passed through Valarr like a blade.
âYes,â he said.
He knelt and drew the boy close.
For a moment, he could not speak.
Then, softly, âYour mama.â
Aemon patted his cheek with one small hand.
Valarr closed his eyes.
Outside, bells rang for evening prayer.
The sound filled the Red Keep, rolling over towers and courtyards, over the queenâs apartments where Kiera sat alone, over the council chamber where men whispered of Blackfyres, over the city that had sung songs of septas and dragons and sin.
Valarr stayed in your cell until the bells stopped.
Then longer.
When he rose, he lifted Aemon into his arms and looked once more at the bed, the books, the veil.
âI kept you,â he whispered.
But the room did not answer.
It was only a room.
That was the final cruelty.
Not that you had died.
Not that the realm had turned your love into scandal, policy, treason, and song.
Not even that Valarr, who had defied septons and envoys and councils, could not defy poison once it entered your blood.
The final cruelty was this:
He had kept everything.
A ribbon.
White, faded with age.
You had tied it around his wrist when you were fourteen after he lost a tourney bout and pretended not to care. For luck, you had said, though you both knew luck was only an excuse for touching.
He kept it in a small wooden box beside his bed. On the anniversary of your death, he took it out.
He did not pray. Prayer had become a language he refused to speak.
He only sat in the dark with the ribbon wrapped around his fingers and remembered the rain, the library, your hand in his, and the first vow no gods had heard.
Pairing: Valarr Targaryen x Reader
Word Count: 13.8K âbroken to two parts
Synopsis: Forced apart by politics, Valarr marries Kiera of Tyrosh while his beloved cousin becomes a septa to escape loving him.
Part 1 | Part 2 |
They said afterward that the gods had loved King Valarr too much to take him.
That was the pretty version.
The septons liked that version best. It gave the singers something soft to put their mouths around, something sweet to sell to grieving girls in candlelit septs. The Stranger had walked through the Red Keep in the spring, they said, with his hand outstretched and his face hidden beneath his hood. He had brushed his fingers over princes and squires, over washerwomen and queens, over babes still soft with milk, over old men who had thought themselves too stubborn to die.
And when he came to Valarr Targaryenâs bed, he had paused.
Perhaps the king-to-be had been too beautiful. Perhaps the Stranger had mistaken him for one of his own pale angels. Perhaps Baelor Breakspear, dead at Ashford years before, had stood at the foot of his sonâs bed in whatever kingdom the dead inhabited and said, Not him. Not yet.
That was the pretty version.
You knew the uglier truth.
Valarr had lived because you had begged every god until your throat bled.
You had knelt in the royal sept for three days while the Great Spring Sickness clawed its way through the city. You had lit candles until your fingers blistered. You had promised the Mother every kindness, the Father every obedience, the Maiden every remaining piece of innocence the world had not yet stolen from you. You had promised the Smith your hands, the Crone your mind, the Warrior your courage, and when those promises did not seem enough, you had turned at last to the Stranger.
âTake anything else,â you had whispered into the darkness beneath his carved face. âTake anyone else.â
A terrible prayer.
A selfish one.
A prayer no septa should ever have made.
But you had made it.
And Valarr had lived.
The fever left him thinner, sharper, with shadows beneath his eyes and a new stillness in him that had not been there before. His silver-gold hair had been cut short when the sweat and sickness matted it to his neck. His mouth, once quick to smile, grew careful. Men called it kingly. Women called it sorrow. You called it what it was.
He had died in part.
Only the worst of him had survived with the best.
The spring buried King Daeron. It buried princes and cousins and friends. It buried half the court in white shrouds and left the other half counting who stood nearest to the Iron Throne.
And when the bells finally stopped tolling, Valarr Targaryen rose from his sickbed and became king.
He was twenty and some years old, widowed of his youth, husband to a Tyroshi princess, and in love with a woman who had given herself to the Seven.
You.
His cousin.
His childhood companion.
His septa.
His sin.
//
You had loved Valarr before you knew love could become a crime.
As children, there had been nothing wicked in it.
He had been all dark hair and laughing eyes then, the son of Prince Baelor, the darling of the court. The servants adored him because he remembered their names. The knights and lords adored him because he was everything they wished a prince to be: handsome, courteous, brave enough to please them, gentle enough not to frighten them.
You had known better.
Valarr had been gentle, yes, but not soft. Even as a boy, there was a possessive streak in him that showed itself in small, strange ways. If another child took your ribbon, he did not cry for justice. He took the ribbon back and smiled as if he had done nothing at all.
If a lordâs son mocked your reading, Valarr waited three days, then humiliated him in the yard before half the Red Keep. If you bruised your knee, he brought you sweet cakes. If you thanked another boy for helping you stand, Valarr went quiet for the rest of the afternoon.
âAre you are sulking, my prince?â You asked him once, when you were ten and he twelve.
âI do not sulk.â
âYou are doing it now.â
âI am thinking.â
âWith your mouth pushed out?â
He had stared at you a long moment, offended in the manner of princes who had rarely been told no and almost never been told the truth.
Then he laughed.
That was how you loved him first: as laughter.
Later, you loved him as a secret.
You were older when the glances changed. Old enough to understand why ladies lowered their lashes when Valarr passed. Old enough to understand why your aunt watched the two of you too closely when you sat beside each other at feasts. Old enough to feel heat where innocence had once been.
He would stand too near. You would let him.
You would steal his cup and drink from it. He would watch the rim touch your mouth as if it were a holy thing.
In the gardens, beneath the blood-red leaves of the heart tree the Targaryens kept more for fashion than faith, he once caught your wrist and held it.
âYou are promised to no one,â he said.
It was not a question.
You looked down at his hand. His fingers were long and warm, the nails clean, the knuckles faintly scarred from yard work. A princeâs hand trying to become a knightâs.
âNeither are you.â
âI will be.â
There was bitterness in that. Strange bitterness, for a boy who had always known he would be given the finest bride the realm could offer.
You swallowed. âThen why say it?â
His grip tightened.
âBecause I wanted there to be one moment,â he said, âwhen you knew I would have chosen you.â
It was the first time your heart broke for him.
Not the last.
//
The council did not ask either of you what you wanted.
Councils never did.
By then, Daemon Blackfyre had already become more than a dead traitorâs name. His sons lived across the narrow sea, gathering sellswords, sympathizers, and hungry men who preferred a handsome lie to an ugly peace. Tyrosh was a jeweled door that could open either way. If Tyrosh favored the Blackfyres, gold and ships and swords might follow. If Tyrosh favored the Iron Throne, then Daemonâs brood would find one more harbor closed to them.
So the crown looked to Tyrosh.
Tyrosh looked to Valarr.
And Valarr was given Kiera.
âShe is beautiful,â your mother said carefully, as if beauty were mercy.
âYes, she is beautiful.â
You were offered matches too.
A Hightower cousin. A Lannister widower. A Velaryon lord with soft hands and three dead wives. Men came with compliments and jewels. They praised your Valyrian looks, your courtly manners, your piety, your quietness. They mistook grief for virtue. That was the first lesson you learned as a woman: if you were silent enough, men would call it goodness.
You refused them all.
At first gently.
Then firmly.
Then with such coldness that your uncle told you that you were beginning to make a spectacle of yourself.
âA spectacle?â you asked. âForgive me. I thought I was only refusing to be sold.â
âYou are a princess of the blood.â
âI am a girl no one asked.â
âYou will do your duty.â
âI have seen what duty does to those who do it well.â
Your uncleâs mouth tightened.
There were arguments. Tears. Threats. Pleas. Your family assumed, as families often did, that stubbornness was a fever that would break if one waited long enough.
It did not break.
When Valarrâs betrothal to Kiera of Tyrosh was announced, you went to the High Septon and asked to take vows.
He studied you for a long while. He was an old man then, with skin like folded parchment and eyes too tired to be deceived.
âMany girls come to the Seven when their hearts are wounded,â he said.
âThen the Seven must have a great many girls.â
âAnd few remain when the wound begins to heal.â
âIt will not heal.â
âYou are very young to make such a vow.â
âYet, I was old enough to be offered to old men.â
His mouth twitched, though whether in amusement or sorrow, you could not tell.
âMy child,â he said softly, âthe gods are not a cloak to hide beneath.â
âNo,â you said. âThey are a wall.â
âAnd what is it you wish to keep out?â
You thought of Valarrâs hand around your wrist.
You thought of the way he had said, I would have chosen you.
âMyself,â you whispered.
The High Septon looked at you then as if he knew everything.
Perhaps he did.
That was the trouble with holy men. Now and then, one of them was truly holy.
//
Valarr came to you the night before your vows.
You had expected him.
The chamber given to you before your formal removal to the motherhouse was small and narrow, with whitewashed walls and a single window overlooking the city. Kingâs Landing smelled of smoke, salt, and rot. Even high above the streets, the stench crept in. You stood by the window in a plain white shift, your silver hair unbound for the last time.
When the door opened, you did not turn.
âMy prince, why are you here? No guard announced you.â
âNo guard would dare stop me.â
âThat is does not give you permission.â
âNo,â Valarr said. âIt does not.â
His voice was low. Not angry. Not yet.
You heard the door close.
For a moment there was only silence and the distant noise of the city below. A cart wheel. A dog barking. Men laughing somewhere they had no right to be happy.
Then he said, âTake it off.â
Your hands curled around the windowsill.
âI have not put it on yet.â
âThe vow, then. The idea of it. Take it off.â
You closed your eyes.
âValarr.â
âNo.â His voice cracked like a whip. âDo not say my name with such warmth when you wish to leave me.â
At that, you turned.
He was still dressed from supper, though he had removed his cloak. Black velvet. Red silk. A dragon worked in rubies over his heart. He was beautiful in a way that made people foolish. You had seen hardened knights soften when he smiled at them. You had seen ladies forget their own names.
But he was not smiling now.
His face was pale with fury.
âThey told me today,â he said.
You said nothing.
âThey told me as if it were some amusing court gossip. As if my cousinâs decision to bury herself alive should entertain me over wine.â
âI am not burying myself.â
âYou are taking vows to gods you are using as gaolers.â
That struck because it was true.
You lifted your chin. âAnd you are marrying a woman for ships.â
His jaw clenched.
âAye,â he said. âI am.â
The honesty hurt worse than denial would have.
He crossed the room quickly, too quickly, and stopped before touching you. That restraint was more intimate than any touch. Valarr had always wanted things with his whole body. Horses. Victory. Your laughter. Your attention. You had watched him grow and had learned the language of his wanting. He stood before you now like a man holding himself by the throat.
âDo not do this,â he said.
âI have already done it.â
âYou have not said the words.â
âWords are not the beginning of a vow.â
âThey are the part that matters.â
âTo men, perhaps.â
âTo kings. To septons. To fools.â His eyes searched yours. âTo me.â
You looked away.
He caught your chin.
Not harshly. Never harshly. That was the worst of Valarr. His cruelty rarely looked like cruelty at first. It looked like tenderness with its hands closed too tight.
âLook at me,â he whispered.
You did.
He swallowed. âIf you ask me, I will stop it.â
The world seemed to tilt beneath you.
You laughed once, softly, without humor. âYou cannot stop your marriage.â
âI can stop yours to the gods.â
âAnd then what? I remain at court while you wed Kiera? I sit beside her and embroider little dragons onto cloth for the sons she gives you?â
âShe may neverââ
âDo not.â Your voice sharpened. âDo not make an enemy of a girl who has done nothing but be chosen in my place.â
Pain moved across his face.
âI did not choose her.â
âNo,â you said. âThat is what makes it unbearable.â
His hand slid from your chin to your cheek.
âI love you.â
You had dreamed of those words. Feared them. Buried them a hundred times.
Now that he had said them, they did not free you.
They ruined you.
âValarr,â you said, and hated how weak you sounded.
âI love you,â he repeated, more fiercely. âI loved you when we were children. I loved you before I knew what it meant. I loved you when they brought me her portrait. I loved you when my father told me the realm needed Tyrosh. I loved you when I said yes.â
Your eyes burned.
âThen why did you say yes?â
His hand fell.
For a moment he looked younger than he was.
âBecause my father asked me,â he said.
There it was. The cruel little heart of duty.
Baelor Breakspear had been the best of them. Everyone said so. Noble, just, beloved. The son every king wanted, the prince every realm prayed for. And because he had been good, because he had carried duty like a holy sword, he had taught his son to kneel beneath it.
You could not even hate him.
That would have been easier.
Valarr stepped closer. âI will find a way.â
âThere is no way.â
âThere is always a way.â
âNo, Valarr.â
His mouth twisted.
âYou would rather belong to the Seven than to me?â
âI would rather belong to something that will not ask me to watch it love another woman.â
He flinched.
Then he kissed you.
You should have stopped him.
You did not.
For one stolen moment, there was no Tyrosh, no Blackfyre, no crown, no gods. Only his mouth on yours, desperate and familiar and new, his hands in your hair, your fingers clutching the velvet at his chest. He kissed you as if he could force time backward with his lips. As if he could return you both to the gardens, to childhood, to a world where wanting did not yet have consequences.
When you broke away, you were crying.
âSo that is what you give me?â you whispered. âThe thing I must repent before I have even vowed?â
His forehead rested against yours.
âI would give you everything.â
âYou do not have everything.â
âI will.â
âYou will have a wife.â
His eyes darkened.
âI will have a queen.â
The distinction chilled you.
You stepped back.
âGo.â
âNo.â
âGo, Valarr.â
He looked at you for a long moment, and in his eyes you saw something that frightened you more than anger. Calculation. Possession. A promise not spoken because even he knew it would damn him.
At last, he bowed.
Not as a lover.
As a prince.
âAs my lady commands.â
The next morning, you put on white.
And when the High Septon asked whether you gave your body and soul to the service of the Seven, you said yes with Valarrâs kiss still burning on your mouth.
Kiera of Tyrosh arrived in a storm of color.
Her hair was pink.
Not the soft pink of a summer blush, but a rich Tyroshi pink, deep as painted glass. Her gowns were bright enough to shame flowers. Her jewels chimed when she walked. She laughed too loudly for Westerosi ladies and spoke too sharply for Westerosi lords and looked at the Red Keep as if she meant to conquer it by surviving it.
You tried not to hate her.
At first, it was easy.
She was not cruel then.
Proud, yes. Vain, certainly. Lonely, though she hid it well. She had been shipped across the narrow sea to marry a man who looked through her politely. You understood too well what it meant to be used for peace. The only difference was that Kiera had been painted and perfumed for her sacrifice, while you had been dressed in white and praised for making yours holy.
The wedding was magnificent.
Of course it was.
The crown needed the realm to see its alliance. Tyroshi merchants filled the galleries. Westerosi lords smiled with their teeth. The High Septon spoke of unity beneath the Seven. Valarr stood before the altar in black and red, his face perfect, his eyes empty.
You stood among the septas.
You told yourself he would not look at you.
He did.
Not when Kiera entered, though every head turned toward her. Not when the vows were spoken. Not when the cloak bearing the three-headed dragon was wrapped around her shoulders.
He looked at you when he said, âWith this kiss, I pledge my love.â
The court saw.
Not all of them.
Enough.
Kiera saw too.
You knew because her smile did not falter.
Only her eyes changed.
//
Years passed in the strange way unhappy years do.
Slowly while they happen.
Swiftly when you look back.
Valarr became more controlled. Marriage made him courteous. Grief made him charming. Duty made him false. He danced with Kiera at feasts, escorted her to tourneys, sat beside her in public, gave her jewels appropriate to her station and respect appropriate to her name. He never humiliated her openly.
That was a kind of mercy.
It was also a kind of insult.
A woman can be starved on courtesy. You learned that watching Kiera. She had his arm but never his warmth, his name but never his hunger. The court pitied her and envied her and mocked her in the same breath.
As for you, you became Septa quietly.
Not a septa.
Septa Quietly.
That was what the novices called you when they thought you could not hear. You tended candles, taught highborn girls their letters, sewed altar cloths, carried broth to the sick, listened to old women confess the same sins with different names. Your life narrowed until it could fit inside a prayer book.
Then the Great Spring Sickness came and tore the book apart.
You saw men die with their eyes open. Women turned black beneath the skin. Children went still between one breath and the next. The city became a mouth full of bells. Every hour, another tolling. Every tolling, another body.
Valarr fell ill three days after King Daeron.
Kiera was kept from him after her own ladies began to cough. The maesters came and went with bowls of vinegar and bloodied cloths. Lords whispered in corners. The line of succession became a dagger passed from hand to hand.
You broke your enclosure to go to him.
No one stopped you.
Perhaps they thought a septa had a right to deathbeds.
Perhaps they knew better than to stand between you and Valarr.
His chamber stank of sweat, smoke, and sickness. A brazier burned too hot. The sheets were soaked. Valarr thrashed beneath them, his hair damp against his brow, his lips cracked.
He did not know you at first.
Then, near dawn, his eyes opened.
âDo not take vows,â he rasped.
Your heart split.
âI already did.â
âNo.â His fingers moved weakly against the sheet. âI came too late.â
You took his hand.
âI am here now.â
He stared at you through fever, lost in some past that had never stopped happening inside him.
âIf I ask,â he whispered, âwill you stop it?â
You pressed his hand to your mouth.
The maester later told people that the fever broke because the poultices finally drew the heat from him. The septons said your prayers moved the Mother. The court said dragonâs blood ran too hot for common sickness to consume.
You knew none of them were right.
Valarr survived because he refused to leave you.
That was romantic only to fools.
To you, it was terrifying.
//
His coronation came before the city had finished digging graves.
The crown placed upon his head had belonged to dead men. Heavy red gold, black iron, rubies dark as clotted blood. Valarr knelt a prince and rose a king, pale from illness, beautiful as a carved saint, and colder than anyone that young had a right to be.
âKneel,â the heralds cried.
The realm knelt.
So did you.
Valarrâs gaze found you over the bowed heads of lords and ladies.
For a heartbeat, neither of you moved.
Then he looked away.
That night, he came to your cell.
Not your chamber. Septas did not have chambers. Chambers were for ladies, wives, mistresses, queens. Septas had cells. A narrow bed. A chest. A basin. A shelf for prayer books. A small window too high for much view. A life arranged to discourage wanting.
You were folding linen when the knock came.
Three soft taps.
You knew them.
You opened the door and found the king.
No crown. No cloak. Only a dark tunic, loose at the throat, and the exhaustion of a man who had been made into a symbol before he had finished being a son.
For a moment you only looked at each other.
Then you said, âYour Grace.â
His mouth tightened.
âDo not.â
You stepped aside.
He entered.
The room became smaller around him. Valarr had always had that effect. Not because he was large, though he had grown tall, but because his presence gathered every loose thing to him. Light. Air. Attention. You.
He looked around your cell.
âThis place is beneath you."
You closed the door.
It was madness. You did it anyway.
âYou should not be here.â
âNo.â
âYou are king now.â
âYes.â
âYou have a queen.â
âI know.â
You looked at him then, truly looked. The fever had hollowed him. Grief had sharpened what sickness left behind. He wore survival badly. Some men survived and became grateful. Valarr had survived and become owed.
âWhy did you come?â you asked.
His answer was quiet.
âBecause everyone I love is dead.â
A cruel answer. A true one.
You sat on the edge of the narrow bed because your knees had weakened. Valarr remained standing a moment longer, as if some last remnant of propriety held him upright.
Then he crossed the room and knelt before you.
The king of the Seven Kingdoms knelt on the bare stone floor of a septaâs cell and laid his head in your lap.
You should have told him to rise.
You should have called the guards, the High Septon, the queen herself.
Instead, your hand moved into his hair.
It was shorter than it had been before the fever. Soft still. Dark still with the streak of silver. You stroked it as you had once done when you were children and he had fallen asleep beneath a tree after too much training.
He shuddered once.
Only once.
Valarr hated weakness. Even in grief, he rationed it.
âI dreamed of you,â he said against your skirts.
âYou were fevered.â
âI have been fevered for years.â
âYou should not say such things.â
âThen command me silent, Septa.â
The title from his mouth should have been mockery.
It sounded like prayer.
You closed your eyes.
âBe silent, Valarr.â
He obeyed.
For a while, that was all it was.
A king kneeling.
A septa touching his hair.
A grief so vast that even sin seemed small beside it.
After that, he came often.
Not every night. That would have been too easy for the court to mark and too difficult for either of you to deny. Valarr was careful when care suited his desires. He came after council meetings that left him cold-eyed and quiet. He came after letters from the Stepstones. He came when rumors of Blackfyre movements reached the city. He came on his fatherâs nameday and said nothing at all.
Sometimes he spoke.
Of rule. Of loneliness. Of the absurdity of men twice his age telling him what must be done while fearing he might actually do it. Of Kiera, though rarely. Of Tyrosh, never kindly. Of the dead, only when darkness had softened him enough to bleed.
Sometimes you spoke.
Of the girls you taught. Of the small cruelties of court ladies. Of a washerwomanâs son who had survived the fever and now left flowers before the Mother every dawn. Of prayers you could no longer say without feeling dishonest.
Sometimes you argued.
âYou cannot have Lord Costayne whipped because he bored you.â
âHe did not bore me. He contradicted me.â
âA dreadful crime.â
âIn council, yes.â
âPerhaps if you wished never to be contradicted, you should have become a septon. Men only pretend to listen to them.â
That made him laugh, briefly.
You lived for those laughs.
You hated yourself for it.
Other nights, he only sat on the floor with his back against your bed, and you read aloud from books he did not care about. The Seven-Pointed Star. Histories of dead kings. A dull treatise on Dornish inheritance law that made him groan so pitifully you nearly smiled.
âAre you trying to send me to the Stranger?â he asked.
âI thought you had escaped him.â
âI may surrender if you continue.â
âThe law is important.â
âThe law is what men call desire once they have written it down.â
You paused.
He glanced back at you, eyes half-lidded.
âWhat?â he asked.
âYou are too clever when you are tired.â
âI am too honest when I am tired.â
âThat is worse.â
âYes,â he said softly. âIt is.â
The air changed then, as it sometimes did.
Nothing had happened, and yet everything had. His shoulder against your knee. Your hand resting too near his throat. The faint scent of him, smoke and clean linen and something warmer beneath. You would become aware of your own body as if it were a strangerâs. The vows you had taken would rise up around you like white walls.
And Valarr would look at you as if walls were only things men built so dragons might have something to break.
âYou should go,â you would whisper.
He would stand.
He would go.
Until one night, he did not.
It rained that night.
Hard rain, black against the window, drumming on the roof of the Red Keep like fingers on a coffin lid. Valarr came late, soaked through, his hair darkened with water, his face set in an expression you knew too well.
âWhat happened?â you asked.
He did not answer.
âValarr.â
He turned away and braced both hands on your little table.
You noticed then the blood on his sleeve.
Not much.
Enough.
You crossed to him quickly. âAre you hurt?â
âNo.â
âPlease do not lie to me.â
âIt is not mine.â
That should not have comforted you.
It did.
You hated that too.
âWhose?â
He laughed once. âYou ask that as if names matter.â
âThey do to the dead.â
âHe is not dead.â
âValarr.â
He looked at you then.
The rain traced his face like tears he would never shed.
âLord Penrose suggested the realm would sleep easier if my marriage produced a child.â
You went still.
âHe further suggested,â Valarr continued, too calmly, âthat if the queen remained barren, the council might consider whether the fault lay with foreign blood.â
Your stomach turned.
âWhat did you do?â
âI reminded him that my wife is queen.â
That surprised you.
Then Valarr smiled without warmth.
âAnd then I broke his nose.â
You exhaled.
âYou cannot break the nose of every man who insults Kiera.â
âI can try.â
âShe will hear of it.â
âGood.â
The word was sharp.
Understanding came slowly, then all at once.
You stared at him. âYou defended her because they insulted what belongs to you.â
His eyes darkened.
âShe is my queen.â
âShe is your wife.â
âShe is a piece of the peace they purchased with me.â
âAnd I?â you asked before you could stop yourself. âWhat am I?â
The rain filled the silence.
Valarr turned fully toward you.
âYou know.â
âI want to hear you say it.â
A dangerous request.
His face changed.
Not softened. Never only that. It opened, and what looked out was hunger wrapped in grief.
âYou are the part of me they did not manage to sell.â
Your breath caught.
He came closer.
You should have stepped back.
You did not.
âValarr.â
âYou asked.â
âAnd you answered like a man trying to ruin me.â
âNo.â His hand rose to your cheek. âI answered like a man already ruined.â
His thumb brushed the edge of your veil.
You caught his wrist.
âNo. Do not.â
He stopped.
That was the awful thing. He always stopped when you said it like that. He would have defied kings, councils, septons, and gods, but not your hand on his wrist.
It made the next words yours.
It made the sin yours too.
You let go.
He watched you.
Slowly, with fingers that trembled only once, you reached up and removed your veil.
Valarr made a sound like pain.
Then his mouth was on yours.
This kiss was not the one from years before. That had been youth, desperation, a door closing. This was something older. Darker. Not a beginning, but a surrender after a siege so long both castle and conqueror had forgotten peace.
He kissed you against the wall, rain beating the stones, your veil fallen between you like a shed skin. His hands were reverent until they were not. Yours were no better. The Seven looked down from the little carved faces on your shelf.
If they judged you, they did it silently.
Later, you lay in the narrow bed beside him, your hair loose over his arm, your body aching with the knowledge of what could never be undone.
Valarrâs fingers moved slowly along your shoulder.
âDo you hate me?â he asked.
You looked at the ceiling.
âNo.â
âDo you hate yourself?â
You closed your eyes.
âYes.â
His hand stilled.
âI will hate the gods for you.â
A laugh broke from you, small and wretched. âThat is not comfort.â
âIt is all I have.â
âNo.â You turned your face toward him. âYou have a kingdom, your grace.â
His gaze moved over you with unbearable tenderness.
âThen why is this the only place I can breathe?â
You had no answer.
So you kissed him again.
//
The court knew.
Not at once. Not with certainty.
But courts do not need certainty. They feast on suspicion until it fattens into truth.
A guard posted too often near the septaâs corridor. A king seen leaving the royal sept before dawn. A queenâs face gone still whenever your name was spoken. A septa whose eyes lifted too quickly when the king entered the hall, then lowered too late.
Whispers began as all court whispers do: softly, with delight disguised as concern.
âHis Grace is very devout.â
âIndeed. He visits the sept so often.â
âNot the sept, dear lady.â
âHush.â
Laughter behind fans.
Silence when you passed.
Pity from women who would have taken your place in a breath. Hatred from those who knew they never could.
Kiera did not confront you immediately.
That was her strength.
She waited.
It happened in the queenâs solar, where you had been summoned to deliver embroidered altar cloths for a charitable procession. Kiera stood by the window in a gown of green silk, her pink hair braided with pearls. She looked like a jewel someone had set in the wrong crown.
âLeave us,â she told her ladies.
They went reluctantly.
When the door closed, Kiera did not turn.
âYou sew beautifully,â she said.
âYour Grace is kind.â
âNo. I am rarely kind. I am honest when it amuses me and gracious when watched.â
You said nothing.
She turned then.
Her eyes were dark, clever, and tired.
âI used to think you plain.â
The insult was so unexpected that you almost laughed.
âMany do.â
âNo,â she said. âThey think you holy. That is different. Holiness makes men imagine beauty where perhaps there is only quiet.â Her gaze moved over your face. âBut I was wrong. You are beautiful. Worse, you look breakable.â
âI do not know what to say to that.â
âThere is nothing to say. That is why I said it.â She stepped closer. âDo you enjoy it?â
Your fingers tightened around the folded cloth.
âYour Grace?â
âDo not make me vulgar alone.â
Heat rose to your face.
Kiera smiled then, and it was not pleasant.
âThere. So you can blush. I wondered.â
âI have done you wrong,â you said quietly.
âYes.â
The word was clean. Sharp. Almost merciful.
âI have prayed for forgiveness.â
âFrom me?â
You looked at her.
Kieraâs smile vanished.
âDo not insult me with silence, Septa.â
âNo,â you said. âNot from you.â
She absorbed that.
For a moment, the queenâs face showed something raw beneath the paint and pearls.
âGood,â she said at last. âAt least you know I am not one of your gods. I cannot be appeased with candles.â
âI never meant to hurt you.â
âNo woman ever means to hurt the wife. She only means to be loved by the husband.â
You had no defense.
Kieraâs voice lowered.
âDo you know what they say of me in this castle?â
You did.
âThey say I am barren,â she said. âThey say Tyroshi women paint their hair because their wombs are empty of natural color. They say His Grace would have had sons by now if he had married a proper woman of Westeros. They say perhaps the gods close me because I worship with an accent.â
Her mouth trembled. Only once.
âAnd now they say I could not even keep him from a septa.â
Shame moved through you like sickness.
âI am sorry.â
âI know.â Her eyes hardened. âThat is the worst of it. I think you are.â
She came closer still, close enough that you could smell her perfume. Something sweet and foreign, spiced with bitterness.
âListen to me, little white saint. I cannot stop him wanting you. I learned that before I ever spoke my vows. I cannot stop men laughing behind my back, or women pitying me, or the small council measuring my belly with their eyes every moon. But I can survive. That is what girls like me are taught when we are sent across seas to marry strangers. Survive the bed. Survive the court. Survive the humiliation.â
Her gaze cut into yours.
âSo do not stand before me wearing the face of a martyr. You have his love. I have his name. Neither of us has been given enough.â
That was the first time you pitied Kiera.
Truly pitied her.
Not as an obstacle.
As a woman.
âI would undo it if I could,â you whispered.
âNo,â Kiera said. âYou would not.â
And because she was right, neither of you spoke again.
//
You knew you were with child before the maester confirmed it.
Your body told you first.
Then the Motherâs face did.
You were lighting candles in the sept when the smell of tallow turned your stomach. You gripped the altar so hard your nails scraped wax. Above you, the carved Mother looked down with her wooden mercy.
For one wild heartbeat, you wanted to laugh.
A septa, pregnant.
A king, adulterous.
A queen, barren.
A realm, watching.
The gods had a cruel sense of balance.
You hid it for as long as you could. Septaâs robes helped. So did fear. You ate little, spoke less, and avoided Valarr until avoidance itself became confession.
He found you in the garden one evening near dusk.
Not the public gardens where courtiers strolled and flirted and lied, but the smaller herb garden near the sept, where novices cut mint and fennel for the kitchens. You had gone there because the smell settled your stomach.
Valarr came without escort.
He had a gift for that. Appearing alone when he should have been surrounded, making privacy seem like fate instead of arrangement.
âYou are avoiding me,â he said.
You kept your hands folded inside your sleeves.
âI am busy, your grace.â
âYou are a terrible liar.â
âAnd you are a king with too much time.â
His eyes moved over you.
Something in your face betrayed you.
Valarr went very still.
âWhat is it?â
âNothing.â
He crossed the path.
You stepped back.
That hurt him. You saw it. You were glad. Then ashamed of gladness.
âTell me,â he said.
âNo.â
His jaw tightened.
âDo not make me command it.â
That awakened your temper.
âYou may command lords, armies, ships, and taxes. You may command men to kneel and women to smile. You may even command your poor wife to sit beside you while the court counts her failures. But do not command me, Valarr. Not in this.â
His face changed at the mention of Kiera, but he let it pass.
âWhat is this?â
You turned away.
The herb garden blurred.
Behind you, his voice softened.
âLook at me.â
You laughed once, bitterly. âYou are always asking me to do that before you ruin me.â
His hand touched your sleeve.
âHave I ruined you?â
You looked at him then.
There was no hiding after that.
Valarrâs eyes dropped from your face to your body, still unchanged to anyone who did not love you too much.
His breath caught.
âNo,â you said. âDo not look pleased.â
But he did.
Gods help you, he did.
Not merely pleased. Transformed.
Wonder moved over his face first, then hunger, then something darker and more dangerous than joy. Possession. Triumph. Awe.
âMy child,â he whispered.
You closed your eyes.
âDo not say it that way.â
âWhat way?â
âAs if the world has given you a gift.â
âIt has.â
âIt has given us a scandal.â
âIt has given me what my marriage has not.â
You slapped him.
The sound cracked through the garden.
For a moment, even the birds seemed to hush.
Valarrâs face turned slightly with the blow. When he looked back at you, there was no anger in him.
Only heat.
Only pride.
âYou should not speak of her that way,â you said, trembling. âNot to me. Never to me.â
His cheek reddened where your palm had struck.
âYou defend her.â
âI wronged her. That does not mean I will help you make her smaller.â
Something like admiration flickered in his eyes.
Then he smiled faintly.
âMy fierce little septa.â
âI am not yours.â
The smile faded.
âYes,â he said. âYou are.â
Fear moved through you.
Not of him.
Of how badly you wanted those words to comfort you.
Valarr reached for you, and this time you let him touch your waist. His hand spread there, careful, reverent. Beneath his palm, your body held a secret no robe could sanctify.
âI will protect you,â he said.
âThat is what frightens me.â
âNo. It should comfort you.â
âYour protection is a room with no door.â
His gaze lifted to yours.
âThen do not make me close it.â
The words were soft.
The threat was not.
You pulled away.
âDo you hear yourself?â
âI hear every whisper in this court sharpening itself for you. I hear Tyrosh waiting to be insulted. I hear lords who could forgive a king a mistress but not a septa, not a cousin, not a child born under the eyes of seven gods they pretend to fear.â His voice dropped. âI hear them deciding what must be done.â
âAnd what must be done?â
His eyes were bright in the dusk.
âNothing,â he said. âBecause I will not allow it.â
That was Valarrâs answer to all things he could not bear.
He would not allow it.
As if the world were a door he could bar from the inside.
//
The child was born during a storm.
Thunder rolled over Kingâs Landing. Rain lashed the windows. Somewhere below, the city flooded its gutters and drowned its rats. In the Red Keep, a septa labored in a hidden chamber while the king paced outside like a dragon in chains.
No bells rang.
No heralds waited.
No queenâs ladies gathered with linen and smiles.
You had only two women with you: old Septa Helicent, who had known before anyone and said nothing, and a midwife Valarr trusted because her entire family had been moved into royal protection three days before your pains began. Protection, he called it. Insurance, his eyes said.
The labor was long.
Pain stripped prayer from you. Not all at once. Slowly. First the formal words went, then the pleas, then even the names of the gods. By the end, you had only Valarrâs name, bitten between your teeth so often Helicent finally leaned close and murmured, âChild, if you must blaspheme, do it with breath enough to live.â
You might have laughed if you had not been splitting apart.
When the babe finally cried, the storm seemed to answer.
A son.
Small, furious, red-faced, alive.
His hair, when washed clean, showed pale as moonlight.
Septa Helicent crossed herself.
The midwife did not speak at all.
Valarr entered before anyone could stop him.
Kings were not meant to see such rooms. Men preferred womenâs suffering after it had been cleaned, swaddled, and presented as joy. Valarr came into the blood and sweat and steam of it without flinching.
His eyes found you first.
Then the child.
Something broke open in him.
You saw it happen.
He approached as if nearing an altar.
âIs heâ?â
âHe lives,â you whispered.
Valarrâs face twisted.
For one terrifying moment, you thought he might weep.
Instead, he knelt beside the bed.
Again, the king knelt.
He touched the childâs cheek with one finger.
The babe turned blindly toward him.
âMy son,â Valarr said.
The room changed around those words.
Septa Helicent looked down.
The midwife went pale.
You closed your eyes.
âNot so loud.â
âWhy?â
You opened them.
Valarrâs face had hardened.
âBecause walls hear,â you said.
âLet them.â
âValarrââ
âLet every stone in this rotting castle hear me.â
âYou will destroy him.â
âNo.â He looked down at the babe. âI will give him the world.â
âHe is a bastard.â
âHe is mine.â
âHe is mine too.â
His gaze returned to you.
For a moment, there was the old softness.
âYes,â he said. âThat is why he will be treasure.â
You wanted to believe him.
Seven save you, you did.
âWhat will you name him?â Helicent asked, perhaps to pull the room back from the edge of treason.
You had thought of names in secret. Holy names. Quiet names. Names that might protect a child born from sin. Aemon, for the Dragonknight who had loved and refused. Baelor, for Valarrâs father, who had died honorable. Jaehaerys, for peace neither of you had earned.
Valarr answered before you could.
âAemon.â
You looked at him.
His mouth curved sadly.
âFor the man who loved what he could not take.â
Your throat tightened.
âThat is cruel.â
âIt is only history.â
âNo,â you whispered. âIt is a warning.â
Valarr leaned close and kissed your brow.
âThen let him be warned and loved.â
The babe cried between you.
Outside, thunder shook the sky.
By morning, the whole court knew.
They called him the septaâs dragon.
Not where Valarr could hear.
Never there.
In public, the court was careful. The lords bowed. The ladies smiled. The small council said nothing directly and everything sideways.
âThe matter of certain rumors, Your Graceââ
âRumors bore me.â
âThe Faith may require reassuranceââ
âThen reassure it.â
âThe queenâs dignityââ
âIs not yours to spend.â
âTyrosh may take offenseââ
âTyrosh fattens itself on offense.â
It might almost have been amusing if it had not been so dangerous.
Valarr moved you from the septaâs corridor to rooms within Maegorâs Holdfast after the third âaccident.â
The first was a servant who spilled hot water too near the cradle.
The second was a loose stair carpet.
The third was a dead rat found beneath your pillow, its little body split open and stuffed with white thread.
You stared at it for a long time.
Valarr, when shown, became very quiet.
By sunset, three servants had been questioned. By dawn, one had confessed to being paid by a man in the livery of a minor lord whose daughter had once hoped to marry into the royal line. By noon, that lord was stripped of his place at court. By nightfall, his daughter had entered a motherhouse in the Reach with more haste than calling.
âYou cannot keep doing this,â you told Valarr.
He stood beside Aemonâs cradle, one hand resting on the carved wood. The babe slept beneath a blanket embroidered not with dragons, at your insistence, but with seven-pointed stars.
âI can.â
âYou cannot make enemies.â
âI already have enemies.â
âMore enemies.â
âThen I will have more men hanged.â
Your blood chilled.
âYou are not jesting.â
âNo.â
âValarr.â
He looked at you.
The candlelight made his eyes look almost black.
âThey put a dead thing in your bed.â
âTo frighten me.â
âTo tell me they can reach you.â
âAnd if you kill every hand that reaches?â
âThen the rest will learn.â
You crossed the room and lowered your voice, though there were guards beyond the door now, his guards, white-cloaked and silent.
âYou think fear is loyalty.â
âNo. I think fear is useful when loyalty fails.â
âThat is not the same as justice.â
âJustice is a story men tell when they want revenge approved by gods.â
You stared at him.
There were moments now when you saw the king he might become if everyone kept trying to take from him. Not Maegor reborn. Not Aegon Unworthy. Something sadder. A good prince with his heart rotted around one forbidden thing.
âDo you want our son to inherit a kingdom afraid of his father?â
At that, Valarrâs face softened.
âOur son,â he repeated.
You looked away, angry that the words had slipped.
He came to you and touched your face.
âYou see?â he whispered. âYou can say it.â
âThat does not make it safe.â
âNo,â he said. âBut it makes it true.â
Truth was not the same as safety.
You had learned that too late.
Kiera asked to see the child once.
Valarr refused.
You heard of it from Septa Helicent, who heard it from a serving girl, who heard it from the queenâs own tiring woman.
âShe went white as milk,â Helicent said, rocking Aemon as if gossip and lullabies were sisters. âThen she laughed. The poor thing.â
âDo not call her that.â
âPoor?â
âThing.â
Helicent studied you.
She was old enough to have lost patience with both romance and despair.
âYou pity her.â
âYes.â
âGood. Pity is cleaner than hatred, though it stains just as stubbornly.â
You reached for Aemon. He came gladly, rooting against your shoulder with a soft, impatient sound. His little fist caught your veil. You no longer wore the full habit. Valarr had forbidden it after one of the younger septons preached against wolves in white wool. He had not named you. He had not needed to.
You had argued.
Valarr had won.
Or rather, Valarr had looked at the veil as if it were strangling you and said, âNot in my rooms.â
His rooms.
His keep.
His guards.
His child.
His.
That was how he loved when frightened. By making language into chains.
âWill you let her?â Helicent asked.
You looked down at Aemon.
âLet whom?â
âThe queen.â
Your son yawned.
You touched his tiny mouth with your finger.
âShe has a right,â you said softly.
Helicent snorted. âRights are what powerful men give names to after taking them.â
âYou have become cynical in your old age.â
âI was born cynical. Age only made me rude.â
You smiled despite yourself.
Then the door opened.
Valarr entered with two Kingsguard behind him. He dismissed them with a glance.
He noticed your smile and paused.
A hunger came into his face so naked that you had to look away.
âSepta Helicent,â he said, courteous as ever. âLeave us.â
The old woman rose with difficulty.
âYour Grace,â she said, and gave him a look that would have shriveled a lesser man. âTry not to make any more history before supper.â
Valarrâs mouth twitched.
When she left, he came to you.
Aemon stirred at the sound of his voice.
Valarr held out his hands.
âHe has only just settled,â you said.
âHe knows his father.â
You surrendered the child because refusing him small things only made him reach for larger ones.
Valarr took Aemon with startling gentleness. That was the part no one would have believed. The dark possessive king who made lords tremble could spend an hour studying his sonâs fingers as if they contained all the secrets of Old Valyria.
âHe has your mouth,â Valarr said.
âHe has your temper.â
âHe is a babe.â
âHe screams when displeased as if he expects the realm to correct itself.â
âThen he has royal instincts.â
You laughed.
Valarr looked at you again.
There it was. That aching softness that made all his sins harder to survive.
âCome here,â he said.
âI am here.â
âCloser.â
You went.
He shifted Aemon carefully into one arm and drew you against him with the other. For a moment, the three of you stood together before the hearth, a blasphemous little family hidden at the heart of the realm.
This story contains extremely dark and potentially disturbing themes, including:
Non-consensual sexual content, marital rape, coercion, forced pregnancy themes, pregnancy obsession, physical abuse, emotional and psychological abuse, manipulation, captivity and isolation, forced dependency, gaslighting, degradation, choking, dissociation, medical trauma, reproductive horror, trauma bonding, obsessive possessive behavior, violence, graphic emotional distress, suicidal thoughts, loss of identity, mental breakdowns, unhealthy power dynamics, emotional neglect, references to death/missing persons, disturbing family dynamics, and depictions of severe psychological deterioration.
This work also contains explicit depictions of yandere behavior and prolonged abuse that may be upsetting to sensitive readers. Please read with caution.
đ« Important Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction intended for mature audiences only. The behaviors, relationships, and actions depicted in this story are not healthy, romantic, or acceptable in real life.
The purpose of this story is to explore horror, obsession, psychological control, and the destructive nature of possessive love through fictional storytelling. Reader discretion is strongly advised.
A/N: Part 3 bcuzâbcuzâmommy said soâ
Masterlist / [Part 1] / [Part 2]
The air in the luxury suite is thick with the scent of expensive cologne and the raw, musky smell of sex.
You are pinned to the silk sheets, your palms sliding against the fabric as you struggle to keep your balance on all fours.
Behind you, Yuta is relentless. His white dress shirt is damp with sweat, clinging translucently to the hard ridges of his back and shoulders, straining against his muscles with every violent surge of his hips.
His trousers have long since been pushed down, hanging precariously loose around his hips, leaving nothing between his heat and your trembling body.
Slap!
A sharp, stinging blow lands across your right cheek, the sound echoing through the silent room.
You gasp, trying to shift your weight to escape the sting, but his fingers dig deeper into your flesh, his grip bruising and possessive as he fucks you still in place.
"Don't move," he growls, his voice a low, dangerous rasp against your ear. "I didn't tell you to move, did I?"
He thrusts deeper, hitting your cervix with a blunt force that makes you cry out in pain, a high-pitched whimper that only seems to fuel him.
"Hahh.. three.." He begins to mutter, his voice strained and heavy with exertion, counting the repetitions of his assault.
"Five..." Thud. "Nine..." Thud. "Thirteen..."
His hot breath ghosts over your skin as he leans forward, his chest pressing against your back, and reaches around to grip your jaw.
His fingers are iron, forcing your head back and twisting your face so you're forced to look at him. "Thirteen days almost, sweetheart..."
His eyes are dark, shimmering with a cruel sort of amusement. He leans in, pressing a mocking, lingering kiss to your lipsâ "And still no sight of your women thing?" he whispers, his voice dripping with mockery.
"Is my baby finally having a baby?"
The words hit you like a physical blow. Your eyes widen, flooding with a mixture of shock and genuine terror.
The idea, the implication of his seed taking root inside you, sends a jolt of panic through your spine. You tremble violently under him, your breath hitching in a sob.
He sees it. He sees the fucking terror reflecting in your pupils, and he lets out a deep, guttural groan that melts into a dark, triumphant chuckle.
"Aww haha..." He throws his head back, a predatory laugh escaping his throat, and in that moment, you feel him change.
Inside you, his cock pulses and swells, growing thicker, harder, stretching your walls to their absolute limit. The sensation is overwhelming, an intrusive fullness that feels like it's splitting you apart.
"W... whatâ!" you gasp, your voice cracking. "Stop... please! You're... you're going to break me! Stop it!!!!"
"Break you?" he mocks, his grip on your jaw tightening as he begins to drive back into you, harder than before. "Oh sweetheart... just the way I like it..."
Plap! Slap! Plap!
Every time you try to crawl away, another sharp smack lands on your ass, forcing you back down.
"Ah ah, what's wrong? "feels so good"? "Can't take it anymore"?" He continues to mock you, his words dirty and degrading, whispering about how you're nothing more than a vessel for him, how your body was made to be used this way.
Despite the way he fills you, his hips driving hard enough to keep grinding against your swollen clit, he doesn't let go. He doesn't even climax. As if holding the fuck back until it just bursts.
â
Two weeksâŠ
Two weeks after Italy, Taipei welcomed you back under a dull gray sky.
The penthouse looked exactly the same as before. Clean marble floors. Floor-to-ceiling windows stretching over the city. Soft music playing somewhere in the background. Everything polished to perfection.
Yuta had barely been around since returning.
The staff informed you on the very first morning that heâd already left before sunrise. Apparently work had piled up during the honeymoon, and now he was âextremely busy.â The explanation came with breakfast already arranged neatly on the table like nothing was wrong.
At first, the distance felt relieving.
You could finally breathe without him constantly standing behind you, touching you, watching you, speaking into your ear like he owned every inch of space around you.
But after a while, you realized he never truly left. You noticed it in the way the staff hovered around you no matter where you went.
If you sat in the library, a maid suddenly needed to reorganize shelves nearby. If you stood near the balcony too long, one of the guards appeared outside the doors. If you stayed inside the bathroom for more than twenty minutes, someone knocked softly to ask if you were alright.
You were never alone long enough to relax. Even the silence felt supervised. And then there were the nights.
Yuta only came home late now. Sometimes after midnight. Sometimes closer to dawn. You usually woke to the mattress dipping behind you before feeling his hand slide beneath your dressâŠ
Then came the sex.
No⊠not exactly sex⊠but, rape.
You stopped trying to soften the word in your head because that was exactly what it was. He took what he wanted from your body whenever he returned home irritated, exhausted, or in need of control. Half asleep or not, willing or not, it never mattered.
And somehow the worst part wasnât even the violence. It was the way he acted afterward.
The soft kisses pressed against your shoulder. His fingers combing through your hair while he held you against his chest. The quiet voice asking if you missed him while bruises darkened beneath your clothes. Like cruelty and affection meant the same thing to him.
And the pregnancy comments only made everything worse.
At first, you ignored it. Stress could delay periods. Lack of sleep could too. Your body had been through enough lately to explain it away.
But the days kept passing. And every morning, that sick feeling in your stomach grew heavierâŠ
â
You sat at the dining table one afternoon, absentmindedly finishing the last bite on your plate when a maid immediately stepped beside you with a folded napkin. Before you could react, she gently wiped the corner of your lips.
You frowned, pulling back slightly. âI can do that myself.â
âIâIâm sorry ma'am.â The maid lowered the tissue at once. Her voice sounded careful. Practiced. âSir asked us not to let you overexert yourself.â
Your brows knitted together. âWiping my own mouth is overexerting myselfâŠ?â
For a second, she looked unsure. Then the expression disappeared just as quickly. âIâm only following orders.â
â.......â You glanced around the room after that and finally noticed all of them again.
Two maids standing near the kitchen entrance. Another adjusting flowers that didnât even need adjusting. One of the guards visible through the open doorway, standing motionless outside.
Always there. Always fucking there.
There was no sign of any electronic devices around you, he knew you better than you knew yourself. About your little tactics. About what you're actually capable of. Well he couldn't risk thatâŠ
Though, the only things left were books.
Books, meals, sleep, and him. Perfect right?
Sometimes you caught yourself staring at your reflection in the mirror for too long, trying to recognize the person looking back at you.
Other times, you just stared out across the city in silence, watching people move far below while your own world remained trapped inside these damn walls. And eventually, even that became routine.
One afternoon, you woke to silence.
No footsteps outside the bedroom. No voices. No hands touching you awake. Just silence. For a moment, your exhausted brain almost forgot where you were.
Your body ached the second you tried sitting up. A sharp soreness pulled through your hips, your thighs still weak as your feet slowly touched the floor.
The oversized shirt hanging from your body slipped slightly off one shoulder as you stood there for a second trying to steady yourself.
The room smelled faintly of him still. Cologne. Smoke. Something warm and masculine buried deep into the sheets no matter how often the staff changed them.
You hated that you noticed it now.
Slowly, you walked toward the mirror near the dressing area. Your reflection came into view piece by piece until you finally stopped in front of it completely.
For a long moment, you said nothing. Bruises colored your skin like fingerprints someone forgot to erase. Faint purple marks wrapped around your wrists.
Dark hickeys lingered beneath your collarbone and along your throat, barely hidden beneath the loose fabric sliding against your chest. Your lips still looked swollen.
Your gaze slowly lowered. The shirt draped loosely over your stomach, soft fabric shifting slightly with every breath. You found yourself staring there longer than necessary.
Nothing looked different yet. Not reallyâŠ
Your fingers moved slowly, hesitating before resting lightly against your own abdomen. Warm, soft, normal.
But your mind refused to see it that way anymore. Because now every little feeling inside your body terrified you. Every wave of nausea. Every moment of dizziness. Every strange ache suddenly carried meaning now.
You wondered quietly when your body had stopped belonging to you. The thought came suddenly enough to make your chest ache.
Your eyes lifted back toward the mirror again. The ring caught your attention next. Resting perfectly against your finger.
â.......â Your fingers curled slowly into your palm before you suddenly looked away from the mirror entirely, unable to keep staring anymore.
A soft knock broke the silence before you could sink any deeper into your thoughts. Three careful taps against the bedroom door.
You lowered your hand from your stomach immediately, shoulders stiffening slightly as the handle turned a second later.
One of the maids stepped inside quietly with her head lowered. She looked youngâprobably younger than youâand lately she had started avoiding eye contact almost completely.
âMaâam,â she said softly, standing near the doorway. âYour bath is ready.â
Eventually, you turned away from the mirror and walked toward the bathroom slowly, bare feet sinking into the soft carpet beneath you. The maid followed a few steps behind without speaking, carrying folded towels against her arms.
The bathroom lights were already on when you entered. Steam curled faintly through the air from the large bathtub filled near the marble edge, the scent of expensive oils lingering heavily in the warmth.
The maid quietly placed the towels down nearby before reaching toward the hem of your oversized shirt. âMay IâŠ?â
You flinched before you could stop yourself. The girl froze immediately, fingers pulling back at once. âIâIâm sorry,â she murmured quickly.
Your eyes closed briefly. âNo,â you said tiredly after a moment. âItâs fine.â
Nothing about this felt fine anymore. Still, you lifted your arms weakly and let her help remove the shirt from your body.
Her movements remained careful afterward, almost mechanical, like sheâd trained herself not to react to what she saw.
But you noticed the pause anyway. The brief hesitation when her eyes caught another dark bruise along your ribs.
The way her fingers tightened slightly around the fabric before she forced herself to continue normally.
You stepped into the bath slowly, the hot water immediately stinging against your sore skin hard enough to make you inhale sharply.
The maid pretended not to notice. She knelt quietly beside the tub afterward, gathering your hair over one shoulder before pouring warm water down your back with practiced hands.
Neither of you spoke for a while. Only the soft sound of water moving filled the room.
By the time you stepped out of the bath, the steam had already begun fading from the mirrors.
The maid wrapped a towel carefully around your body before helping dry your hair in silence.
The bathroom door opened quietly afterward, warm air from inside spilling back into the colder bedroom as you stepped out slowly, one hand absentmindedly gripping the towel tighter against your chest. That was when you heard them.
ââŠdid you see her back earlier?â The voices came from just beyond the partially opened dressing room door. Soft whispers.
You paused instinctively as another maid answered quieter this time. âThere were bruises everywhereâŠâ
A small silence followed before the first voice spoke again, sounding uneasy now. âI heard sir was arguing yesterday too. She looked frightened when she came downstairs.â
âYou shouldnât talk about this here.â
âI know butââ
Your footsteps shifted slightly against the floor. The conversation stopped immediately. Dead silent.
A second later, two maids quickly appeared near the doorway carrying folded clothes, both of them freezing the moment they noticed you standing there.
The younger one lowered her eyes so fast it almost looked painful. âMaâam,â she murmured quickly.
The other forced a polite smile onto her face, though the tension around her mouth gave it away instantly. âYour clothes are preparedâŠ!â
You stared at them for a long moment. Neither woman looked up again. Not once. And somehow that hurt more than if they had openly pitied you.
Because you understood then. They saw everything. The bruises. The crying. They heard the screaming through the walls just like everyone else in this penthouse probably did. And stillâNothing.
No one asked if you were okay. No one tried helping. No one even dared acknowledge it aloud for more than a few seconds before fear swallowed the words back down again.
Of course⊠of course they wouldnât help.
People always chose survival over strangers. Especially when the stranger was already doomed. So instead, the maids simply stepped closer and began helping you dress like nothing had happened at all.
â
And by the fourth week, the penthouse no longer even looked like your home. You realized it the moment you stepped out of the elevator and nearly froze at the sight in front of you.
Workers moved in and out of the hallway carrying boxes large enough to block entire doorways. Expensive shopping bags covered the marble floors in neat stacks, names of luxury brands printed across them in gold lettering.
Garment racks stood near the living room filled with tiny pastel clothes still wrapped in plastic. Someone wheeled in a cream-colored cradle while another carefully carried armfuls of stuffed animals toward the upstairs rooms.
For a second, you genuinely thought you had walked into the wrong floor.
A maid brushed past you carrying folded blankets. Another followed behind her with baby bottles still inside unopened packaging.
The realization hit your stomach so suddenly it made you feel sick. Nobody had asked you. Nobody had even mentioned it. They were already preparing for it like the decision had been made long ago.
You stood there silently while workers shifted furniture across the floor, voices overlapping softly around you.
âCareful with that corner.â
âNo, the crib goes upstairs.â
âSir said the white curtains, not the beige ones.â
Then another voice cut through the noise. Sharp. Irritated. âNo. Not there.â
You turned instinctively.
Yuta had just walked in through the front entrance, still dressed in dark work clothes, his tie hanging loose around his collar like heâd pulled at it during the drive home.
His expression looked terrible. Jaw tight. Brows furrowed. One hand shoved into his pocket while the other pointed impatiently toward the staircase.
âI already told you the dresser goes beside the wall, not near the window,â he snapped at one of the workers. âDo I have to repeat myself five times?â
The poor man immediately apologized and hurried to fix it.
Yuta exhaled sharply through his nose, clearly seconds away from losing his temper furtherâThen he saw you.
And just like that, everything changed. The irritation disappeared so fast it almost felt unsettling to watch.
His shoulders loosened slightly. The tension left his face. That familiar polished smile slipped back into place like a mask being carefully worn again.
âSweetheartâŠâ His voice softened instantly as he walked toward you.
His gaze flickered over your face before motioning casually toward the scattered baby items around the penthouse. âDo you like the colors I picked?â
He didnât even wait for an answer. âI had them redo half the room because the original furniture looked cheap.â He clicked his tongue lightly.
âAnd the mattress materials here are apparently terrible for infants, so I imported better ones from Italy. Ahâand the clothes upstairs should be washed again before use. I donât trust factory chemicals touching the babyâs skin.â
Those words kept hitting harder every time he said it. Meanwhile he continued talking so naturally, like this conversation wasnât completely insane.
âI also ordered three different strollers because I couldnât decide which design looked best.â A small amused breath left him. âYouâd think spending money would make choices easier.â
ââŠâŠ.â Your throat tightened quietly.
Yuta stepped closer then, lowering his voice slightly as if sharing something intimate. âWe need to think of a name too, right?â
That smile returned again. Soft. Beautiful. Completely fakeâŠ
His fingers slid around your hand before lifting it carefully toward his lips. He pressed a slow kiss against your knuckles without breaking eye contact.
âWellâŠâ His mouth curved faintly. âIâll leave that to you, Y/N.â The way he said your name almost sounded affectionate.
âI know youâll be a perfect mommy.â
The whisper settled beneath your skin like poison. You felt utterly sick.
Yuta must have noticed something shift in your expression because he leaned back enough to finally give you space to breathe again.
âIâll call a doctor soon to confirm everything properly,â he continued casually. âThough I canât exactly let my darling be alone with another man, can I?â
A quiet laugh slipped from him, teasing. âMaybe Iâll have the consultation done here instead.â
You said nothing. Your eyes dropped away from him instead, focusing somewhere past his shoulder while the workers continued moving around in the background.
The silence stretchedâŠ
âWhat?â he asked softly, his head tilted slightly. âStill not happy?â
ââŠâŠâ You clenched your jaw. There was no point answering. No point fighting. So instead, you turned slightly as if to leave.
The movement barely lasted a second before his hand closed around your wrist.
âMm. Come upstairs with me.â
His grip wasnât rough, but it wasnât optional either. He started guiding you toward the staircase while speaking over his shoulder to the workers again. âNot that room. The nursery is the third oneââ
Your vision blurred suddenly. You blinked hard. The floor beneath your feet tilted strangely.
At first you thought maybe youâd stood up too quickly, but then the dizziness worsened so violently your stomach twisted. The voices around you became muffled. The lights overhead blurred together painfully.
Your legs gave out. Everything lurched sideways.
âSweetheart?ââ
You barely registered Yutaâs voice before strong arms caught you against his chest. His tone changed instantly. Sharp, Panicked. âY/N!?â
The last thing you felt was his hand gripping the back of your head before darkness swallowed everything whole.
â
The doctor arrived less than twenty minutes later.
By then, you had already woken up. UnfortunatelyâŠ
You sat against the headboard of the bedroom while one of the maids adjusted a blanket over your legs for the third time despite you insisting you were fine. Your head still throbbed faintly from the fall downstairs, though honestly the worst part wasnât the dizziness anymore.
It was Yuta. He hadnât left your side once. Not while carrying you upstairs. Not while barking orders at the staff downstairs. Not even now.
He stood near the windows in silence while the doctor unpacked equipment onto the bedside table. One hand remained tucked into his pocket while the other rested against his jaw, thumb rubbing slowly beneath his lower lip.
âAny nausea recently?â the doctor asked gently while wrapping the blood pressure cuff around your arm.
You hesitated only briefly. âA little.â
âLoss of appetite?â
âSometimesâŠâ
The doctor nodded thoughtfully. âDizziness before today?â
âYes.â From the corner of your eye, you noticed Yuta finally move.
âWhen did it start?â he asked quietly.
The doctor glanced toward him before looking back at you. âStress can heavily affect the body,â he explained calmly. âEspecially sleep, eating habits, hormonal balanceââ
âShe hasnât been sleeping properly,â Yuta interrupted immediately. âBut other things are fine.â
Your jaw tightened.
The doctor gave another small nod while writing something down. âThat would explain the weakness and fainting. Her blood pressure is lower than normal as well.â
Yutaâs brows furrowed slightly. âHm?â
âShe needs rest,â the doctor continued. âLess emotional strain. Proper meals. Hydration.â
A bitter thought nearly made you laugh. Less emotional strain. Inside this house?
The doctor finished checking your pulse before finally stepping back slightly. âFor now, I donât believe this is anything severe.â
Silence settled briefly afterward. Then Yuta spoke.
âAnd the baby?â
The room went still.
The doctor blinked once. ââŠBaby?â
Yuta looked up slowly from where he stood beside the bed. âSheâs late, so... â
The doctorâs expression shifted into visible confusion. âI see,â he said carefully. âBut there are currently no signs of pregnancy.â
The silence afterward felt horrifying. The doctor continued speaking, unaware of the sudden tension thickening the room.
âA delayed cycle can happen from stress alone,â he explained. âExhaustion, hormonal imbalance, dietary changes, supplementsâŠâ He adjusted his glasses slightly. âHas she been taking anything recently?â
Your heartbeat slammed hard against your ribs. Before you could answer, Yuta spoke first. âWhat kind of supplements?â
âNothing dangerous from what I can tell,â the doctor replied casually. âBut certain herbal products or dietary habits can disrupt menstruation temporarily.â
You kept your eyes lowered. Too scared to look at him.
The room became unbearably quiet. And somehow that felt far worse. Slowly, you lifted your gaze. Yuta was staring at you. Completely still.
The softness from earlier was gone now. No smile. No warmth. Just that unreadable expression settling across his face while his eyes searched yours in silence.
Then finallyâ
ââŠI see.â
His voice came out calm. Too calm. And that terrified you more than if he had shouted.
â
Your mind slowly drifted back before you could stop it. Back to the dining table. Back to the silver trays placed in front of you after every meal without fail.
Fresh fruit always waited there afterward. Strawberries. Grapes. Pears carefully sliced by the kitchen staff. Sometimes melons. Sometimes oranges. But your eyes always searched for one thing only.
Papaya.
At first, maybe it really had been because of Italy. Because of the honeymoon. Because of the filthy way Yuta had used it on you with his fingers while laughing softly at the mess dripping down your thighs. The memory alone still made disgust crawl beneath your skin.
Maybe that was why you kept asking for it afterward.
The maids never questioned you. If anything, they seemed relieved whenever you requested food willingly. Papaya appeared more often after that. Fresh slices during breakfast. Chilled cubes beside lunch. Fruit platters after dinner.
But eventually the fruit became something else entirely. An opportunity.
The black cumin seeds had been easier to hide than expected. Tiny enough to disappear beneath spoons of yogurt. Mixed quietly into tea whenever the maids looked away long enough. Sometimes crushed between your fingers beneath the table before swallowing them quickly with water.
Small things. Desperate thingsâŠ
You hadnât even known if they would work. Honestly, part of you had believed they wouldnât. But fear made people try anyway.
And every time Yuta touched your stomach afterward⊠every time he talked about children with that twisted softness in his voice⊠every time you imagined something inside you becoming half of himâYou kept going.
You werenât trying to hurt yourself. You just couldnât bear the thought of carrying him inside your body.
And now here you were. Sitting in suffocating silence while the truth settled into the room like smoke.
The doctor had left only minutes ago. Too quickly. Too awkwardly. His polite smile had looked strained near the end, especially after noticing the atmosphere shifting colder and colder with every second.
The bedroom felt enormous now. Too quiet. You still hadnât looked at Yuta properly. Couldnât.
The weight of his silence pressed against your skin harder than shouting ever could. Then finallyâ
âExplain.â
The word came out low. Not angry, Not loud, Just⊠broken.
Your fingers tightened slightly around the blanket pooled in your lap. Slowly, reluctantly, you lifted your eyes. And your breath caught.
Yuta stood near the foot of the bed exactly where the doctor had left him, except now he looked like something had been ripped open inside him.
His eyes were wide. Red.
The veins beneath them visible from strain while his brows twisted together tightlyânot with rage, but something far worse. His hands hung clenched at his sides so hard the knuckles had gone pale.
And then you saw itâa single tear slipping down his face.
Your chest tightened painfully. Not because you pitied him. But because somehow this looked more horrifying than violence.
Yuta noticed you staring and laughed once under his breath, except the sound came out uneven.
âExplain,â he said again. His voice cracked this time.
âExplain the damages youâve caused.â
The last few words nearly broke apart completely as he spoke them. You had never seen him like this before⊠so devastated.
His breathing became uneven as he dragged a hand over his face before looking at you again, eyes glistening violently now.
âI bought everything,â he whispered hoarsely, almost like he was talking to himself. âI prepared everything for you.â
The nursery downstairs flashed through your mind instantly. The clothes, the cradle, the tiny socks folded neatly into drawers.
Yuta swallowed hard enough for you to see his throat move. âYou let meâŠâ His voice faltered. âYou let me believe there was a baby.â
A horrible silence followed. Then finally his expression changed. Not into anger. Something emptier. Something colder.
His jaw tightened while his wet eyes stayed fixed on yours without blinking. âAnd all this time,â he murmured quietly, âyou were trying to kill it.â
â.......â
Yuta moved before you could say anything.
One second he stood near the window, breathing unevenly beneath the dim bedroom lights, and the next he was in front of you.
You instinctively shrank back slightly against the mattress, but he dropped to his knees beside the bed so suddenly it startled you.
His hands reached for yours immediately, almost desperately, fingers trembling as they wrapped around your wrist.
His red-rimmed eyes searched your face desperately, as if he was still waiting for you to laugh and tell him this was all some misunderstanding.
âWhyâŠ?â His voice cracked badly.
His fingers trembled violently as he pulled one of your hands toward his face, pressing your palm against his cheek almost desperately. Like he needed to feel you. Like he needed proof you were real.
âWhy did you do it?â he whispered. A tear slid beneath your palm. His eyes squeezed shut briefly before opening again, glossy and bloodshot.
âI did everything for you.â The words came out rushed now, unstable. âI gave you everything, didnât I?â His grip tightened around your wrist.
âYou like money? I gave it to you. Clothes, jewelry, trips, this fucking penthouseââ his voice shook harder, ââanything you looked at, I bought it.â
You stared at him silently while his breathing turned harsher.
âYou wanted comfort, I gave you comfort.â He laughed weakly through tears, the sound almost pathetic. âLuxury? Fine. I gave you all of it.â
His free hand lifted slowly toward your face then, fingers brushing through your hair with terrifying gentleness.
âSo whyâŠâ he whispered brokenly, thumb trembling against your temple. âWhy wonât youâŠâ The sentence died in his throat.
You watched the exact moment something inside him snapped. His expression twisted suddenly. Not into hatred. Something worse.
His hand slid down from your hair toward your neck. ThenâHe shoved you backward onto the mattress hard enough to knock the air from your lungs. Your head hit the pillows as his hand wrapped around your throat instantly.
âWHY WONâT YOU LOVE ME!?â
The scream ripped violently out of him. Your eyes widened in shock as his grip tightened.
âWHY!?â he shouted again, strangled. âWHY WHY WHY!?â
You clawed weakly at his wrist, choking on air while tears blurred your vision.
âWHY CANâT I THROW YOU AWAY!?â His face crumpled horribly as another sob tore through him. âWHY CANâT I JUST LEAVE YOU!?â
His hand tightened harder. Your breathing turned sharp and broken beneath him. Tears spilled uncontrollably from his eyes now, dripping down his face before landing against your own skin.
âI triedââ he choked out hysterically. âI fucking triedââ His voice collapsed entirely. âWHYâŠâ
His forehead pressed against yours roughly as his body trembled above you. âWhat have you done to meâŠ?â
The words barely came out audible. Then suddenlyâHis grip loosened.
Air rushed painfully back into your lungs as you gasped hard beneath him, coughing weakly while your chest heaved.
Yuta stared at you for one horrible second longer before something inside him finally gave way completely. His shoulders shook violently. And then he buried his face against your chest. Crying.
He broke down against you like something ruined beyond repair, fingers gripping helplessly at your clothes while uneven sobs wrecked through his body.
Meanwhile you lay there beneath him shaking, your throat burning beneath the marks of his hand while tears rolled silently into your hairline.
You didnât know which hurt worse anymore. His loveâŠ? Or the fact that some part of him truly believed this was love at allâŠ
â
The penthouse had gone strangely quiet after that day.
The low hum of the air conditioning still drifted through the ceilings. Footsteps still crossed the marble floors at all hours. Somewhere downstairs, pots clinked softly in the kitchen while the chefs prepared meals no one seemed interested in touching.
Two maids stood near the kitchen island that evening, folding freshly dried linens with slow hands. âThey still havenât come out?â one of them whispered carefully, glancing toward the staircase.
The older maid beside her frowned faintly. âNot at all.â
âBut itâs been two daysâŠâ The younger girl lowered her voice further. âI brought dinner upstairs earlier and the tray from yesterday was still outside the room untouched.â
A long pause followed. Only the sound of boiling water filled the silence between them. Thenâ
âDo you think everything is okay?â the younger maid asked quietly. âThe doctors keep coming almost every few hoursâŠâ
The older woman immediately shot her a sharp look. âDonât ask questions you donât need answers to.â
The girl swallowed. âI just⊠itâs scary.â
Because it was. Everyone in the penthouse had heard it. The shouting. The sound of furniture hitting walls. The muffled sobbing that sometimes carried faintly through the hallways late at night. And worseâYour screams.
The younger maidâs fingers tightened around the folded towel in her hands. âLast night I heardââ
âEnough,â the older woman cut in quickly, her expression hardening. She glanced once toward the upper floor before lowering her voice further. âDo you not remember the previous workers?â
âThe guards. The drivers. Half the staff from before.â The older woman folded another towel with stiff movements. âThey disappeared overnight.â
ââŠWhat?â The younger maid froze slightly.
âI donât know exactly what happened,â she admitted quietly and finally looked directly at the younger girl now, eyes sharp with warning. âSo if I were you, Iâd stop listening at doors and stop asking questions.â
Her voice dropped even lower. âIf we donât keep our mouths shut, it wonât take long to replace us too.â
âSo better keep a blind eye unless you want to lose more than your job.â
ââŠâŠâ The younger maid immediately went silent. Because everyone here understood the same thing. Something terrible was happening.
And nobody was going to stop it.
â
Upstairs, the atmosphere in the bedroom was suffocating, smelling of stale sweat, musk, and the metallic tang of blood.
The doctor, a middle-aged woman with a clinical expression that couldn't quite mask her discomfort, stood between your trembling legs.
You were draped across the edge of the bed, your hips tilted up, your pussy exposed and raw. The doctorâs gloved fingers trembled slightly as she performed the internal examination, the latex snapping against your swollen, inflamed walls.
She sighed, pulling her hand away and noting something down on her clipboard with a shaky hand.
"No... no sign of pregnancy yet," she murmured, her voice devoid of emotion but laced with a hidden pity. She looked at the bruising around your thighs and the way your entrance was gaping, unable to close fully after days of relentless penetration.
"There are minor injuries... mucosal tears. She is physically exhausted. She should rest, Mr. Okkotsu. If you continue at this pace, you risk permanent damage or a severe infection."
Yuta, who had been leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, his dress shirt left unbuttoned and hanging loose from his frame, looked worse than he had days ago. A phone rested against his ear while his other hand rubbed slowly over his jaw.
His voice sounded rough. Hoarse. Weak in a way you had never heard from him before.
âNo, move the meeting to Thursday,â he muttered flatly into the call, eyes distant. âI said Thursday, not tomorrow⊠I wonât be there.â
Then his jaw tightened slightly. âI donât care what the board thinks right now.â
Another pause followed before he dragged a tired hand through his dark hair, exhaling sharply through his nose.
âHandle it yourselves for once.â
The call ended abruptly. And only then did he finally lift his eyes toward the room again, letting out a low, dark hum that rumbled quietly in his throat.
He didnât look concerned. Hell no.
"So," he muttered, his voice a dangerous rasp. He stepped forward, the floorboards creaking under his weight. "So what you're saying is... she's still functional. She can still take it."
The doctor opened her mouth to protest, but Yuta didn't give her the chance.
"Get out," he commanded, his tone cold and final. He didn't even look at her as he waved her away, his eyes locked onto your shivering form.
The moment the door clicked shut, the silence was shattered. Yuta didn't waste a second. He didn't use lubricant; he didn't use tenderness.
He grabbed your waist with bruising force, hauling you back toward him and slamming his cock back into your ravaged pussy with a violent, wet thwack.
"Agh! Noâ!!" you shrieked, the sound tearing from your throat, but he smothered your cry by shoving his hand over your mouth, pinning your face into the mattress.
Thrust!
He began to fuck you with a renewed, desperate aggression, his hips slamming against yours with a rhythmic, punishing force.
He was breathing heavily, the sound jagged and labored, as if the very act of moving was starting to drain him. Yet, his grip was iron.
"No sign yet, huh?" he hissed into your ear, his voice dripping with a mocking, obsessive edge. "Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Maybe... I'm not deep enough. Maybe we... we just need to stay connected... all the time."
"Hmh..." He groaned, a guttural sound of possession, as he drove himself in to the hilt, bottoming out against your cervix.
He didn't pull back. He stayed there, buried deep inside you, his cock pulsing and filling you to the point of bursting. He wrapped his arms around you, locking you against him, refusing to let a single millimeter of space exist between your bodies.
"I don't intend to let you go," he whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of lust and madness. "Not until you're carrying my seed... not until you give me what I want.
He spent the rest of the night like thatâhalf-asleep but still hard, still plugged inside you, his weight crushing you into the bed.
Whenever you tried to shift or sob, he would simply thrust once, hard and deep, to remind you who owned every inch of your insides.
â
The next morning, the cycle repeated. He didn't let you leave the bed. When the doctors returned to check for infections or the elusive pregnancy, he kept his hand firmly on your hip.
Between the medical checks, he took care of your basic needs with a brutal efficiency. He didn't ask if you were hungry.
He gripped your jaw, forcing your mouth open, and shoved food and water down your throat, barely giving you time to swallow before the next bite came.
He fed you just enough to keep your heart beating, just enough to ensure your body could sustain a pregnancy.
As the days bled together, it became apparent that Yuta was fading. His skin had grown pale, his eyes sunken, and his movements were slower, more labored.
He was getting weaker, his own health deteriorating under the weight of his unhealthy obsession. But the madness in his eyes only grew.
Even as his body failed him, he couldn't stop. He just⊠won't stop.
â
And, the next day, the doctor came again. She was trembling now, her clipboard shaking as she looked from the medical readings to the gaunt, manic expression on Yutaâs face.
"Still... nothing," she whispered, her voice cracking.
Yuta snapped. "Are you even fucking checking it right?!" He didn't just speak; he roared, the sound echoing off the marble walls of the penthouse.
He slammed his hand against the bedside table, sending a glass of water shattering across the floor. "I have been inside her for days! Every hour! Every single minute! Why isn't she getting pregnant?!"
The doctor flinched, stepping back, her eyes darting to your broken, shivering form. "It's... it's probably because... of the damages already caused," she stammered, her voice barely audible.
"The constant trauma to the cervix, the inflammation... the body is in shock. But... don't worry... she's... she's not infertile yet, she just needsâ"
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Yuta bellowed, his voice raw and guttural. "Get out! All of you! Get the fuck out of my sight!"
He didn't wait for them to gather their things. He practically shoved the medical team out of the room, the heavy mahogany door slamming shut behind.
The silence that followed was more terrifying than the screaming. You lay there, your legs splayed, your pussy a raw, gaping mess of red and swollen flesh, leaking a mixture of blood and old cum.
You tried to crawl away, a pathetic, instinctive movement, but Yuta was faster. He lunged, his fingers locking into your hair with a violent jerk that snapped your head back, forcing your spine to arch.
He didn't give you a second to breathe. He hauled you upward and shoved his thick, throbbing cock deep into your throat.
"Gacwkâ!" You choked, your eyes bulging as he rammed himself upward, hitting the back of your throat with bruising force.
He wasn't looking for pleasure; he was punishing you for the doctor's news. "Useless," he hissed, his voice a dark, wet rasp against your skin.
"A useless, broken little hole. Why won't you just take it? Why won't you just grow my fucking baby?"
He gripped your throat with his other hand, squeezing tight, cutting off your air until your face turned a bruised purple and your lungs burned for oxygen.
Just as you began to black out, he ripped himself out of your mouth with a wet pop, leaving a string of saliva trailing from your lips.
Before you could even gasp for air, he flipped you over and slammed his cock back into your pussy with a violence that made you scream into the pillows.
He reached around and pinched your nose shut, forcing your mouth to hang open in a silent, desperate gasp for air.
He held your nostrils tight, ensuring you couldn't bite him or scream, reducing you to a shaking, breathless object beneath him.
"I'll fucking make it happen," he groaned, his pace becoming frantic, his hips slamming into you with a rhythmic, desperate thud.
He was shaking, his own body failing him, but the obsession drove him forward. With a guttural, animalistic howl, Yuta finally peaked.
He drove himself in as deep as physically possible, bottoming out against your cervix, and erupted. You felt the hot, thick jets of his cum flooding your insides, filling your ravaged pussy to the brim, the pressure almost unbearable.
But he didn't pull out. He stayed buried inside you, twitching, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Then, the madness took over.
While still inside you, he reached down, shoving two fingers into the opening of your pussy, right alongside his cock.
He began to pump his fingers in and out, swirling them aggressively, pushing the pooling semen deeper and deeper into your canal.
"I'll push it in," he whispered, his eyes wide and glazed with insanity. "I'll push it all the way to your womb... I'll force it inside you."
He continued to finger you brutally, stirring the seed and the blood, believing that through sheer physical force, he could override biology.
He worked his fingers deep, scraping against your sensitive, torn walls, shoving the cum upward in a desperate, delusional attempt to conceive.
You lay there, pinned and breathless, feeling the wet, sliding friction of his fingers and the heavy weight of his cock, knowing that in his mind, this wasn't sex anymoreâit was a siege.
â
At some point, you stopped remembering what your body used to feel like before all of this. Before the endless exhaustion dragging through your bones. Before every muscle constantly ached. Before your hips felt sore every time you even shifted beneath the blankets.
You couldnât walk properly anymore. Couldnât stand for long without your knees threatening to give out beneath you. Sometimes even lifting your own hand felt exhausting.
And Yuta⊠well, most nights now, he simply sat back against the headboard and pulled you onto his lap instead, large hands gripping your waist while he made you ride him slowly for hours until your vision blurred from exhaustion.
If your body weakened and slumped forward, heâd only tighten his hold and murmur soft little praises against your ear like you were doing something good for him. Like you were finally learning. That became your routine now.
Afterward, the maids would come in quietly with lowered eyes, never looking directly at either of you for longer than necessary. One cleaned the sheets while another carefully wiped your skin down with warm washcloths, gentle hands avoiding the bruises decorating your thighs and waist.
None of them ever spoke much anymore. Not with Yuta nearby.
Even now, he stood outside on the bedroom balcony, cigarette burning slowly between his fingers while smoke curled around him in pale ribbons.
Another meal arrived not long after. Soup. Rice. Fruit cut into perfect little pieces.
One of the maids carefully sat beside you on the bed, lifting the spoon toward your lips. âPlease eat a little more, maâam,â she whispered softly.
You swallowed mechanically. One bite. Then another. And thenâYour stomach twisted violently.
The nausea hit so suddenly your eyes widened before you even understood what was happening. You barely managed to turn your head aside before vomiting harshly onto the floor beside the bed.
The maids startled immediately. âQuicklyâ!â
âTowelsââ
âMove the sheetsââ
The room erupted into hurried movement while your body trembled weakly against the mattress, your throat burning painfully.
But Yuta didnât move. He remained standing near the balcony doors, cigarette still resting between his fingers while he watched the scene unfold with an expression too blank to understand. Then finallyâ
âCall the doctor upstairs,â he said quietly.
One of the maids immediately rushed out. At this point, the doctors practically lived inside the penthouse anyway.
Yuta had arranged entire rooms downstairs for medical staff weeks ago, though nobody openly acknowledged why. Maybe because even he still refused to fully believe it after what happened before.
Or maybe because he was terrified to believe it. Not after what you had done to him. Not after losing it once already.
But this time was different. This time your body had finally given in beneath the weight of him. And Yutaâhe looked almost frighteningly calm after the confirmation came.
Like a man gripping something too tightly because he knew exactly how easily it could disappear.
You had become what he wanted. Exactly what he wanted. And to celebrate that victory, he threw a party. A massive one.
â
The penthouse downstairs filled with expensive flowers, soft music, laughter, glasses clinking together beneath warm golden lights.
Important guests arrived dressed in luxury while staff carried trays of champagne through the halls all evening.
You could hear everything from upstairs. Every faint murmur, laugh. Every distant note from the piano downstairs. It almost felt unreal.
Because somehow, despite being the center of it allâyou werenât invited to your own pregnancy celebration.
Yuta still had you dressed for it anyway.
The maids carefully groomed you hours beforehand, brushing your hair until it shined beneath the bedroom lights before slipping expensive fabrics over your weak body piece by piece. Jewelry rested against your skin. Perfume touched your throat.
You looked beautiful. Perfect. Like something meant to be displayed. But once they finished, the bedroom doors locked again.
And you remained there alone while the party continued beneath your feet. Your hands slowly tightened into the sheets.
Why was this happening to you?
The thought came suddenly. Sharp enough to hurt. Your breathing started trembling before you even realized it.
Where did it all go wrong? Was it the moment you met him? The moment you accepted the contract? The honeymoon? The first time he touched you?
Or had your life always been leading here from the beginning�
âWhyâŠâ your voice cracked softly into the empty room. âSeriously, why?â
You pressed both hands over your mouth immediately, trying to stop the sound escaping your throat, but your body had already begun shaking violently.
Nobody was coming for you. Nobody. Not your family. Not your friends. Not anyone. And maybe the worst partâMaybe they truly didnât care enough to.
A broken laugh escaped through your fingers.
Did the money really matter that much? Had your existence become something so easily traded away?
Your shoulders curled inward as another sob ripped out of your chest, harsher this time. Tears streamed down your cheeks uncontrollably while your breathing turned uneven and panicked.
Maybe you should just end itâŠ
The thought slithered into your head so naturally it terrified you.
Maybe if you disappeared, all of this would finally stop. No more locked rooms. No more hands touching you whenever he pleased.
But even that felt pointless. Because somehow, even your own body didnât belong to you anymore.
You broke down harder after realizing that. Your vision blurred completely as muffled cries escaped helplessly through your palms, shoulders shaking violently while the room around you began feeling smaller and smaller.
And thenâa hand suddenly gripped your shoulder hard enough to hurt.
You gasped sharply. Your head jerked upward immediately through blurred vision only to find Yuta standing over you.
He tilted his head slightly to the side, brows faintly knit together in confusion as he stared down at your ruined face like he genuinely couldnât understand what he was looking at.
Slowly, his thumb brushed beneath your eye, smearing tears and mascara together carelessly.
âTch tch tchâŠâ he muttered softly. âRuined all the makeup.â His fingers slid across your cheek almost absentmindedly.
âI was planning to do other things with this later too.â A quiet sigh left him before he stepped back slightly, completely ignoring the fact you were still trembling apart in front of him.
As if your crying simply wasnât the important part here. Then casually, he reached into the pocket of his slacks. And pulled out a phone.
Your breath caught instantly. That was your phone. The same one he had taken away weeks ago.
Yuta glanced down at it briefly before holding it loosely in front of you with a faint smile curling onto his lips.
âI was thinkingâŠâ he said lightly, almost conversationally, âsince this is such incredible newsâŠâ His eyes slowly lifted back toward yours.
âWe should let your family know.â
âAfter all,â he continued softly, amusement slipping into his voice now, âthey gave me such a wonderful gift~â
ââŠâŠâ Your hand moved instinctively toward the phone the second you saw it, desperation flashing across your face as your fingers reached for it without thinking.
But Yuta was quicker. He pulled it away smoothly before you could touch it, the corner of his mouth curling upward as he watched the panic flicker through your expression.
Slowly, deliberately, he lowered the phone against the front of his slacks instead, pressing it teasingly near his crotch while his eyes remained locked on yours. A knowing smirk spread across his face.
âAh, ahâŠâ he murmured softly, almost amused by your reaction. âYou know what to do first.â His head tilted slightly, dark eyes glittering with expectation.
âGet on your knees, sweetheart.â
â
The moment you sank to the floor, the cold marble biting into your skin as you knelt before him. Yuta stood tall, a towering figure of dominance, looking down at you with a mixture of possessiveness and amusement.
He didn't wait for you to initiate; he reached down, unzipping his fly with a slow, metallic rasp, his cock sprang free, thick and pulsing, smelling of musk and heat.
He guided your head forward, forcing your mouth open to accommodate his girth. As you began to suck him, the wet, sliding sounds of your tongue and lips filling the silence, Yuta let out a casual, low groan of pleasure. âUghmâŠfuck.â
He reached down, his fingers gently caressing your cheek, tracing the line of your jaw with a tenderness that felt sickening.
While you were occupied, your mouth stretched wide and your throat working to take him in, Yuta casually held your phone in his other hand.
He began to tap the screen, the soft clicks of his fingernails against the glass rhythmic and indifferent. He scrolled through your contacts with a bored expression, shrugging slightly as he scanned the names, his eyes searching for a specific target.
âWho should I call?â he mused, his voice airy and detached. âHmm⊠maybe this one.â
He dialed the number and held the phone away from his ear for a moment, listening to the long, agonizing ring. You could feel the vibration of the call through his thigh, your eyes watering as you continued to bob your head, the thick head of his cock hitting the back of your throat.
Finally, a womanâs voice answered, sounding tired and fragile. âHelloâŠ?â
Yutaâs reaction was immediate and cruel. He gripped the back of your head, his fingers digging into your scalp as he shoved himself deeper into your throat, forcing a muffled, choking gag from your lungs.
He didn't flinch at your struggle; instead, he spoke into the phone with a terrifying, calm composure. âAm I speaking to Y/Nâs mother?â he asked, his tone almost polite.
There was a heavy, suffocating silence on the other end of the line before the woman answered, her voice trembling.
âIâm her close aunt⊠who is this?â
Yuta hummed softly, a sound of mock contemplation, while his free hand moved to caress the bulge of his cock where it disappeared into your throat, feeling the desperate contractions of your muscles. âShe wishes to speak with you,â he said simply.
âWhat?â The ladyâs voice shifted instantly, transitioning from confusion to a sharp, panicked edge. âWhoâŠ? What do you mean? Who is this?!â
Yuta repeated your name casually, like it meant nothing. Then, with a sudden movement, he shifted the phone, pressing the speaker directly against your ear.
The voice that exploded from the phone wasn't one of hope or reunion; it was a scream of raw, jagged rage and unbearable grief. âWhat are you saying?!â
The woman suddenly snapped, her voice cracking violently through the speaker. âDonât play with us like this!â
âShe died!â the woman cried. âWe saw the reports about the Taipei flight! We already buried her thingsâ!â
Your breathing stopped.
âWeâre already suffering enough!â she continued desperately. âDo you understand that?! We still canât even accept what happened to our girl!â
Every word hit like a knife directly into your chest.
âPleaseâŠâ her voice broke apart now, raw with grief. âPlease stop doing this to us⊠and donât contact us again.â
âBeepâ
ââŠâŠâ
Your mind couldnât process the words properly. It felt like your thoughts had suddenly detached from your body entirely.
Dead.
They thought you were dead.
Yuta felt you stiffen, and with a soft, satisfied grunt, he pulled his cock out of your mouth with a wet schlick sound. He looked down at your devastated face, a playful, mocking glint in his eyes as he wiped a stray drop of pre-cum from his tip.
âOops,â he whispered, his voice dripping with faux innocence. âForgot to pull out before.â
He stepped back, leaving you collapsed on your knees, the phone still humming with the remnants of the aunt's sobbing rage.
You remained frozen on the floor. You refused to process what had just happened. Your lips parted soundlessly before a shaky breath finally escaped your chest. âIâŠâ The word cracked apart immediately.
âIâm aliveâŠâ Your own voice sounded unfamiliar. Weak, lost.
âI am aliveâŠâ you whispered again, eyes unfocused as tears continued slipping helplessly down your face. âWhy would she say thatâŠ?â
Your breathing started shaking harder. âWhyâŠ?â
The thoughts came too quickly after that, slamming into each other inside your head until nothing made sense anymore.
Maybe she lied. Maybe she knew. Maybe they all knew.
Your hands trembled violently against the floor as another broken sound escaped your throat.
âI⊠is she lying for moneyâŠ?â you mumbled desperately, almost to yourself now. âIs that itâŠ? Why would she do thatâŠ? WhyâŠ?â
The nausea returned immediately. Everything hurts. Your body, your head, your heart.
The pregnancy had already turned your emotions unstable for weeks now, every feeling too sharp, too overwhelming, too impossible to controlâand thisâthis shattered whatever little stability you had left.
Meanwhile, beside you, Yuta simply tucked himself back into his slacks with slow, unbothered movements.
His expression looked almost bored, like this entire situation had become mildly inconvenient rather than horrifying.
He glanced briefly at the expensive watch around his wrist before lifting his eyes toward the bedroom door just as one of the workers hesitantly peeked inside.
âSir,â the man said quietly, avoiding looking at you completely. âThe guests are asking for you downstairs.â
Yuta barely spared him a glance. âIâll be there in a few minutes.â
The worker nodded quickly before disappearing again. And stillâYou remained collapsed on the floor crying.
Yuta exhaled softly through his nose before finally stepping toward you again. Slowly, he crouched down and placed a hand atop your head, fingers brushing lightly through your messy hair almost affectionately.
âY/N,â he murmured gently.
Something inside you suddenly snapped. Your hands shot forward without warning, gripping tightly onto the front of his collar. You didnât even know what you were trying to do anymore.
Fight him? Push him away? Beg?
Your entire body shook violently as you stared at him through swollen, tear-filled eyes.
âIâm not dead!â you screamed suddenly, voice breaking apart halfway through the words. âWhy did she say that?! What did you do?!â
Yuta blinked once. Then his expression softened with almost insulting calmness.
âI didnât really do anything, sweetheart,â he said casually. His hand moved to your cheek, thumb brushing beneath your eye while you struggled to breathe properly.
âThey just tend to believe everything theyâre told.â
Yuta tilted his head slightly before continuing almost thoughtfully, âIt seems they really didnât care that much in the end.â
âThatâs why they forgot you so easily.â
âNoâŠâ the protest came out weaker this time, barely audible.
Yutaâs hands suddenly cupped your face completely, forcing your eyes toward him. âShhâŠâ he soothed softly, thumbs wiping away tears that wouldnât stop falling. âYou still have me, baby.â
One of his hands slowly slid downward, resting gently over your stomach. âAnd our baby is growing inside you, right?â
His voice lowered further, warmer now. âYou have your own family now.â A kiss pressed against your forehead. âYou donât need anyone else.â
Yuta kept kissing your face slowly between words, like he was comforting a frightened child.
âYouâre no longer Y/NâŠâ His lips brushed against your trembling cheek.
âYouâre only Mrs. Okkotsu now.â
âSay it,â he whispered softly. His forehead rested lightly against yours. âSay it for me.â
You didnât even realize you were crying harder until your chest began hurting from it. Your mind felt broken open. You were so tired. So unbelievably tired.
Your lips trembled weakly before the words finally stumbled out in a shattered whisper.
ââŠMrs⊠OkkotsuâŠâ
The reaction was immediate.
Yuta pulled you into his arms so quickly it almost startled you, holding you tightly against his chest while a shaky breath escaped him.
âThere you are,â he whispered warmly against your hair. His arms wrapped around you possessively, almost protectively now, while his fingers stroked slowly up and down your back.
Sweet praises spilled endlessly from his lips after that. Like you had finally become exactly what he wanted.
And as he held you there trembling in his arms while the party continued downstairs beneath your feet, he closed his eyes briefly before whispering quietly against your templeâ
âI finally understand my father nowâŠâ
His hold tightened slightly.
ââŠIt's only because of you.â
â
Then the silence begins. The kind that settles slowly over years.
The usual soft music downstairs was gone. Screams, cries, arguments, footsteps racing through marble halls. One by one, they disappeared until the penthouse no longer sounded alive at all.
Only the workers remained. Even now, two of them struggled near the grand staircase, carefully pulling a massive framed painting through the hallway while arguing in hushed voices.
âHigherâhigher, or itâll look uneven.â
âIâm trying. The frameâs too heavy!!â
âNo, sir specifically said the center wall.â
The older worker exhaled tiredly before adjusting his grip again. âCareful with the corner. If this gets damaged, weâre dead.â
The painting was enormous. Tall enough to dominate the entire wall once finally lifted into place above the fireplace.
After several long minutes of repositioning, stepping back, adjusting again, and nervous murmuring between themselves, they finally managed to secure it properly.
âStraight?â
ââŠA little left.â
âUh⊠there?â
âMm. Perfect.â
The workers slowly stepped away afterward, heads lowering immediately the moment footsteps approached from behind.
A small child wandered into the room first. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Tiny fingers curled around the sleeve of his sweater as he stared up at the massive portrait hanging above the fireplace with open curiosity.
Inside the painting, you looked beautiful. Beautiful in the way expensive things were preserved.
Your painted figure sat near the window of the penthouse, dressed entirely in soft white fabric while golden light spilled across your skin.
One of Yutaâs hands rested possessively against your waist in the portrait, his wedding ring carefully painted into view. Meanwhile your own expression looked distant. Empty⊠dead. But perfect to everyone else.
The little boy pointed upward immediately. âSo she⊠is my mother?â His voice chirped softly through the room.
The sharpness in his face had deepened with age, though the elegance never left him. A few strands of dark hair fell loosely across his forehead while his hand rested lazily in his pocket.
At the childâs question, his gaze slowly lifted toward the portrait. For a moment, he simply stared at it in silence. Thenâ
âHm.â A faint smile touched his lips. His hand moved gently onto the boyâs head, fingers smoothing through his hair while he continued looking up at the painting.
âYes,â he said quietly. âIsnât she so gorgeous to be kept this way?â
The child nodded immediately. âVery pretty!â
Yuta chuckled softly beneath his breath before patting the boyâs head once more. Then finally, his eyes lingered on your painted face one last time before he spoke.
âSynopsis: Prince Valarr was born for the crown. You were the only one who made him forget it.
Pairing: Valarr Targaryen x reader
Setting: Modern AU â
Word Count: 8K
Part 2: The Misunderstanding
Queen Dowager Myriah is overjoyed.
She sends flowers the morning after your mother tells the palace you have agreed. An absurdly beautiful spill of pale roses, cream ranunculus, and tiny star-shaped blossoms tucked into the center, as if subtlety has become beneath her now that she has been proved right.
The card bears only four words in her unmistakable hand:
"At last, my star."
You laugh when you read it, though your face grows warm all the same.
Then, two days later, another message arrives.
The queen dowager requests the pleasure of your company for lunch in her private apartment at the Red Keep on Saturday.
Your mother reads it over your shoulder and smiles in the knowing way mothers do.
âShe adores you,â she says.
You trace the edge of the card with your thumb. âThat is not helping.â
âNo?â
âNo.â You look down at the invitation again, at the elegant seal, the date, the hour. âI feel like I have been summoned in very expensive stationery.â
Your mother laughs softly. âThat is because you have.â
You spend far too long deciding what to wear.
Not because Myriah would ever judge you harshly. She has known you too long for that. She has called you my star since you were small enough to sit beside her on velvet settees swinging your legs and asking very serious questions about tiaras and constitutional monarchy. She has always looked at you with a kind of particular warmth, as though House Dayne had loaned the family something precious and she meant never to mishandle it.
No, it is not her opinion that troubles you.
It is his.
You tell yourself not to be foolish.
You tell yourself the matter is settled now, at least in principle. The families have spoken. You have agreed. He has agreed. There is no reason for your heart to behave like something wild every time you picture seeing him again.
And yet.
This will be the first time since you learned the truth.
The first time since you heard that when Prince Valarr Targaryen was asked whether he wanted this match, he said yes.
That knowledge has been living in you ever since with a sweetness almost too sharp to bear. You had not realized how much it would alter the world, how every old memory of him would suddenly seem lit from beneath by new possibility. Every glance, every kindness, every maddeningly careful silenceânow all of it feels different. Weighted. Dangerous.
By the time your car turns through the Red Keep's gates on Saturday, your pulse is behaving so disgracefully that you have half a mind to order the driver home again on principle.
You do not, of course.
The palace rises ahead all pale stone and glass, severe and glittering in the noon light. Inside, the corridors are cool and polished, the hush of the place as familiar to you as your own familyâs front hall and yet somehow less forgiving today. A lady-in-waiting leads you through the queen dowagerâs private rooms with a smile that suggests she knows more than she is saying.
Which, you think grimly, is likely true of everyone in the building.
The doors open.
And there is Queen Dowager Myriah.
She rises from the sofa at once, silver hair immaculate, silk blouse soft as moonlight beneath a dove-gray jacket, and when she sees you, her whole face lights with such unmistakable affection that something in your chest loosens.
âThere you are, my star,â she says.
You smile, but keep your posture careful. âYou are kind, Your Highness.â
âOh, do stop that at once.â She waves one elegant hand between you. âThat dreadful formality.â
A laugh catches in your throat. âYou are the king's mother.â
âAnd you are you.â Her mouth curves. âI have known you too long for âYour Highnessâ to survive in private.â
âIt seems improper.â
âIt is private,â she says. âImpropriety is one of the few privileges age has earned me.â
You are still smiling when she opens her arms, and then you are going to her as naturally as you would have at fifteen. She kisses both your cheeks, then draws back to hold you at armâs length, looking you over with shameless satisfaction.
âPerfect,â she declares.
âYou have not even let me speak.â
âI have eyes.â
âThat has always been your most dangerous quality.â
âIt has indeed.â Her gaze sharpens with amusement. âAnd you are blushing already. Promising.â
You laugh softly, helpless against her. âYou are impossible, Your Highness.â
She gives you a look.
You sigh with exaggerated obedience. âNana.â
âThere,â she says, pleased. âMuch better. Sit down.â
The room is one of her smaller private salons, warm with late light, books, pale flowers, and the sort of quiet luxury that feels inherited rather than arranged. Lunch has been laid in the adjoining room: white linen, silver, chilled water, a long shallow bowl of peonies, everything elegant enough to remind you that nothing in royal life is ever truly casual.
Queen Dowager Myriah keeps one hand wrapped around yours as she leads you toward the sitting area.
âHave your parents recovered from behaving sensibly?â she asks.
âBarely.â
âKing Baelor?â
âI assume still kingly and unbearable.â
âAs God intended.â She pats your hand. âAnd you, my dear? Are you frightened?â
The question is so direct that for a second you can only blink.
âA little,â you admit.
âGood,â she says, to your surprise. âIt would be far more worrying if you were not. Fear means you understand that what matters is never entirely safe.â
Before you can answer, there is a soft knock at the door.
The queen dowagerâs expression does not change.
Not even slightly.
Which is, naturally, your first warning.
âCome in,â she says.
And there he is.
Prince Valarr steps into the room in a dark suit with no tie, the severity of palace formality softened only enough to make him more dangerous rather than less. The silver streak in his dark hair catches the light like a blade. His face is composed, beautiful in that grave and wintry way of his. Those mismatched eyes go first to his grandmother.
Then to you.
Your heart stops so completely it almost feels theatrical.
He inclines his head. âGrandmother.â
And then, to you, with perfect princely calm, âLady Dayne.â
The title lands like something cool against your throat.
Not cruel. Not rude. Not even distant enough for anyone else in the room to question.
And yet.
Lady Dayne.
Not your name.
Not the softness you had half-feared, half-hoped for.
Only immaculate courtesy.
It upsets you at once.
Not because he has done anything wrongâworse luck, he has done nothing wrong at allâbut because after days of thinking of his yes, after nights spent lying awake with your own traitorous thoughts, some foolish part of you had expected⊠not warmth, exactly. Not anything improper.
Only some small sign that the world had changed for him too.
Instead, he looks as he always does, composed, elegant, almost remote.
Queen Dowager Myriahâs gaze flicks once between the two of you.
If she notices the sudden stiffness in your spine, she is merciful enough not to say so.
âValarr,â she says mildly, âhow punctual of you. I was just telling our star that my family has become impossible to manage.â
Prince Valarr moves farther into the room. âThat would suggest a recent development.â
âOh, it is recent. I was managing you all splendidly until everyone began pretending to have no feelings.â
Your face grows warm.
Valarrâs expression does not change at all, which somehow makes it worse.
He says only, âHow unfortunate for you.â
Queen Dowager Myriah smiles like a cat with jewels. âSit down.â
He does.
Not beside you.
Across from you, at an angle just formal enough to be unremarkable and just far enough to make your own self-consciousness feel suddenly childish. A footman appears with tea. Queen Dowager Myriah asks after some charity gala. Prince Valarr answers. You answer when spoken to. The conversation moves, easy on the surface, but beneath it something tight and bright has begun pulling inside your chest.
Because he is so normal.
That is the trouble.
He is perfectly pleasant. Perfectly attentive. Perfectly himself in the public sense of itâmeasured, articulate, grave with flashes of dry wit when Myriah provokes them. He asks whether your drive to the palace was easy. He listens when you answer. He passes you the sugar bowl when you do not take any.
He does everything a prince should do.
And nothing a man newly promised should do.
No softness. No slip. No secret look held too long. No sign at all that he has spent even one hour of the last week thinking about the fact that you agreed to him.
It is absurd how quickly hurt can take root in uncertainty.
By the time lunch is announced, you are angry with yourself for minding.
And because you are angry with yourself, you become quieter.
Queen Dowager Myriah notices that too.
The lunch itself is exquisite and almost entirely wasted on you.
There is chilled cucumber soup and salmon with herbs and tiny buttery potatoes and fruit tart so delicate it ought to be framed rather than eaten. Myriah, who has clearly arranged the seating herself, places you on one side of her and Prince Valarr on the other, which means you spend the entire meal acutely aware of the line of him just within your peripheral vision and no closer than that.
He speaks to you when conversation requires it.
He asks whether your mother is well. Whether your brother has returned from his trip. Whether you are still involved with the arts foundation in the south.
Each question is thoughtful. Each answer of yours feels brittle in your own mouth.
You hate that.
You hate even more that the queen dowager seems to be enjoying herself.
At one point she says, with suspicious innocence, âValarr tells me the heritage brief you prepared last year is still the best thing his office received on the coastal schools.â
Your head lifts.
Prince Valarrâs gaze remains on his glass. âI said it was thorough.â
Queen Dowager Myriah arches a brow. âYou said it was excellent.â
For the first time since entering the room, a flicker of something that is not quite composure passes over his face.
He says, very evenly, âIt was excellent.â
You should be pleased by that.
You are, a little.
But the pleasure is tangled up with too much else nowâhope, embarrassment, a childish need for some sign he is not regretting this already.
âThank you,â you say.
He inclines his head once.
And that is all.
By dessert, you begin to understand that what hurts is not his restraint itself, but the feeling that it has sharpened since the agreement rather than softened. As though now that the thing is real, he has retreated farther behind the crown instead of stepping out from it even a fraction.
You think, helplessly, that perhaps this is what he wanted all along; a match. A suitable arrangement. House Dayne and House Targaryen and all the right people nodding at the symmetry of it while you stand beside him in photographs learning to pretend your own heart has not been foolish enough to expect more.
The thought stings so sharply you nearly drop your fork.
Queen Dowager Myriah glances at you at once. âMy star?â
You look up too fast. âSorry?â
âYouâve gone very far away.â
âNo.â You summon something like a smile. âOnly tired.â
It is a poor lie.
The queen dowager lets it pass anyway, which is perhaps more dangerous than if she had challenged it.
When lunch is over, coffee is served back in the salon. Queen Dowager Myriah tells some story about Valarr at twelve behaving like a tiny constitutional lawyer over a Christmas seating dispute, and you laugh because the image is too impossible not to. For one brief second, Prince Valarrâs mouth softens too.
Then, just as quickly, it is gone.
The whole afternoon feels like that. Moments almost warm enough to live on, snatched back before you can be sure they happened.
Eventually, Queen Dowager Myriah is called away by a private secretary with the apologetic look of a man interrupting something he suspects may be more dangerous than official business. She rises with a sigh so theatrical it could only be deliberate.
âTry not to be idiots while Iâm gone,â she says.
âGrandmother,â Prince Valarr says.
âWhat?â
He does not answer.
She smiles at both of you with maddening serenity and disappears through the inner doors.
When Queen Dowager Myriah leaves the room, the silence she takes with her is not the comfortable kind.
It is thinner than that. Sharper.
The sort that makes you aware of every small soundâthe ticking of the clock on the mantel, the faint clink of porcelain as the footman clears the coffee tray in the next room, the quiet shift of Prince Valarrâs breathing where he stands a few feet away.
You are both too aware now.
Of the agreement. Of the knowledge of it. Of the fact that the old shape of your lives has already begun to change, whether either of you has found the courage to meet it gracefully or not.
And because the silence feels unbearable, because you cannot stand another moment of standing in the middle of the room looking at one another as though one wrong word might split the floor open, you do the thing you always do when feeling comes too close to the bone.
You make light of it.
You turn from the window, fold your hands behind your back to stop yourself fidgeting, and say with a brightness that is only half false, âWell.â
Prince Valarr looks at you.
Not sharply. Not unkindly. Only with that grave stillness of his, as though he has heard not just the words but all the nervousness hidden beneath them.
You try to smile. âThis is absurdly formal for two people who are apparently going to be engaged.â
His expression changes, though only by a fraction. âApparently?â
âYou know what I mean.â You tilt your head a little, reaching instinctively for the version of yourself that has always been safest with himâthe one who teases, who coaxes, who tugs at the edges of his composure until he becomes something less distant and more human.
"I thought perhaps we might be allowed to be at least a little less ceremonial in private. It feels absurd to suddenly behave like diplomats.â
A pause.
Then, because he says nothing, you go on, lighter still, âShould we at least acknowledge the situation? Shake hands? Exchange diplomatic statements? Congratulate one another on surviving our families?â
You mean it as a rescue. A bridge.
For a moment you thinkâhope, perhapsâthat the corner of his mouth might soften.
A way back into the familiar ease that has always belonged to the two of you before the world began naming things too loudly.
But instead of softening, Prince Valarr seems to go very still.
Not the stillness of ease.
The stillness of a man who has suddenly been asked to cross a bridge he had hoped to reach by another road entirely.
His gaze drops once, briefly, then returns to your face.
âIf this is to go forward,â he says, âI intend to conduct myself properly.â
The words land with more force than they should.
You blink. âI wasnât asking you to conduct yourself improperly.â
âI know.â
âThen what are you saying?â
His jaw tightens by the smallest degree.
The answer, when it comes, is measured in exactly the way that has begun to frighten youâeach word chosen too carefully, each phrase built to stand upright even if his heart does not.
âI am saying,â he replies, âthat you need not worry. You will have every consideration due to you.â
For a moment you only stare at him.
Because surely that cannot be what he means to offer you now. Not after all the restless, tender, half-spoken things that have passed between you over the last months. Not after his yes. Not after your own.
But Valarr, perhaps feeling the silence as accusation, continues.
âI understand what this arrangement asks of you,â he says. âAnd I will not fail in what is required of me.â
Something cold moves through you.
Required.
Arrangement.
You feel yourself straighten without meaning to.
There is no softness in his tone. No visible warmth. Only that maddening princely steadiness, that terrible restraint that can make even concern sound like policy.
You say, more quietly now, âRequired of you.â
Prince Valarr seems to realize, too late, that he has stepped onto dangerous ground.
He says your name, but still too carefully. Still as though he is approaching something fragile with gloves on.
âI mean that I know my duty.â
There it is.
Duty.
The word falls between you like a blade.
You had been prepared for many things from himâreserve, awkwardness, even distance born of caution. But not this. Not this neat, strangling language of obligation. Not the sound of your future in his mouth as though it belongs in the same category as state papers and formal obligations and public decorum.
And because hurt arrives so much faster than dignity ever does, you hear yourself laugh.
Only once.
A small, bright, dreadful sound.
âHow reassuring.â
Prince Valarrâs brow furrows. âThat is not what I meant.â
âNo?â You fold your arms lightly across yourself, less in defensiveness than in simple self-preservation. âBecause from where Iâm standing, it sounds very much as though you are trying to assure me youâll be an excellent public servant about the whole thing.â
His expression tightens.
âI am trying,â he says, very evenly, âto tell you that I will take this seriously.â
The words should be comforting.
Instead they wound.
Because seriousness is not what you wanted to hear. God help you, of all the humiliating things, you wanted something warmer than seriousness. Something that belonged to you and not the crown.
You look at him and think, with a sharp rush of shame, that perhaps you have been a fool. Perhaps all this time you have mistaken attentiveness for feeling, protectiveness for desire, familiarity for something more intimate than it ever was.
Perhaps when they approached him, he said yes because that is what he does. Because he is Crown Prince Valarr and Crown Prince Valarr says yes to difficult things and impossible expectations and beautifully arranged cages if they come dressed in duty.
And perhapsâperhaps it could have been anyone.
Or nearly anyone.
Only you happened to be convenient. Known. Safe. Less terrible than a stranger.
The thought is so ugly it almost makes you feel sick.
You say, with far more calm than you feel, âWould you have agreed no matter who it was?â
Prince Valarr goes still again. That alone is almost answer enough.
But you wait.
At last he says, âThat is not the question before us.â
Pain flashes through youâhot, immediate, humiliating in its clarity.
âNo,â you say. âOf course not. Why answer directly when there are so many careful ways around it?â
His voice lowers. âYou are being unfair.â
âAnd you are being cryptic.â
The control in his face slips then, not into anger exactly, but into strain.
âI am trying to speak honorably.â
âWhy?â
The word flies out of you before you can stop it.
Prince Valarr looks genuinely taken aback. âWhat?â
âWhy?â you repeat, and now the hurt is in it whether you want it there or not. âWhy must you keep speaking as though this is something being assigned to you? As though marrying me belongs in the same category as legislative briefings and public obligations and the thousand other things you endure because the crown asks it of you?â
He stares at you.
For one terrible second, neither of you says anything.
Then he replies, too quickly, âBecause that is precisely what marriage to the heir is.â
The room seems to go quiet in a different way.
Deeper.
More final.
You feel something inside you close.
Not breakânot yet. Breakage is louder. This is quieter than that. A withdrawing. A small door being shut.
You nod once.
âI see.â
âYou do not.â
âNo,â you say, very softly. âI think perhaps I do.â
Prince Valarr takes a step toward you. âListen to me.â
But now you cannot seem to stop. The thoughts are coming too fast, arranging themselves into a shape you hate even as you believe it.
âIf your father had proposed someone else,â you say, âsome princess from abroad or some other noble house lordâs perfect daughter or any suitable girl with a family name and a decent smileâwould you be standing here saying exactly the same things?â
His face changes.
Not enough.
Not in the right way.
And because he does not answer immediately, because the silence itself feels like a kind of mercy he is trying to extend instead of the truth you deserve, you think:
Yes.
Yes, he would have said yes to anyone reasonable. Anyone acceptable. Anyone who fit the role cleanly enough.
And youâyou were simply the lesser evil.
The easier choice. The familiar one. The one who would not make him start from nothing.
The thought humiliates you so thoroughly you almost cannot bear to stay in the room.
You take a breath that feels thin in your lungs. âYou agreed because it is your duty.â
Prince Valarr says your name again, more sharply now.
But you keep going, because stopping would mean feeling the whole of it at once.
âPerhaps I should be grateful,â you say with a steadiness you do not feel, âthat of all the women your family might have selected for you, I happened to be the least inconvenient.â
The words hit him.
You see that they do.
His face hardensânot with indifference, but with something much more pained. Yet he is still too controlled, still too disciplined, and that discipline now feels to you like the cruelest thing in the world.
âThat is not true,â he says.
âIsnât it?â
âNo.â
âThen tell me plainly what is true.â
You hate the plea hidden inside the demand.
You hate even more that he seems to hear it.
Prince Valarrâs hands flex once at his sides. A tiny, betraying movement. His gaze holds yours with such intensity that for one wild moment you think he might finally say it. Whatever it is he has buried under all that duty and care and impossible restraint. Whatever has lived in his eyes every time he thought you werenât looking.
Instead he says, âWhat is true is that I would never treat this lightly.â
And that, somehow, is worse.
Because there it is againâthat same cursed language of responsibility, grave and honorable and entirely wrong for the wound already opening inside you.
You step back.
Just one pace.
It feels like much more.
âI know,â you say. âThat is the problem.â
He looks at you as though he cannot understand how he keeps failing in exactly the place he means most to be careful.
And perhaps he truly cannot.
Perhaps this is the tragedy of him; that he feels too much and has been trained so thoroughly to translate every private thing into duty that even now, standing before the woman he is meant to marry, he cannot say anything without trying to make it sound noble first.
You give him a smile then.
A small one.
Polite enough to be devastating.
âYou neednât worry, Your Grace,â you say. âI understand perfectly. I wouldnât dream of asking you for anything beyond what is required.â
The title hits harder than it should.
Valarrâs expression goes very still.
âLet me explain,â he says quietly.
You glance toward the window instead. "You neednât explain.â
âI think I do.â
âNo.â You fold your hands lightly together. âTruly, thereâs no need. I shouldnât have asked in such a childish way.â
The word lands between you and displeases him at once.
âChildish?â
âIt was an unfair question.â
âIt was not unfair.â
You turn back then, because gentleness is becoming harder to maintain if you do not at least meet his eyes. âIt was. You answered as you should have.â
Something tightens in his expression.
âAnd how,â he asks quietly, âshould I have answered?â
The question is too dangerous.
Because the true answer would shame you if spoken aloud. You would have liked him to say he wanted this. Not nobly. Not correctly. Simply and ruinously and without hiding behind the architecture of his title.
But you will not ask for that.
Not now. Not if it has not been offered freely.
So you shake your head once. âIt doesnât matter.â
âIt matters if I have upset you.â
âYou havenât upset me.â
It is almost true. He has not upset you in any dramatic sense. He has only reminded you, with all the grace and restraint of his nature, that perhaps you and he have not been standing in the same place at all.
And before he can answerâbefore he can say something else careful and dutiful and devastatingly wrongâyou look toward the door and say, with all the composure you can gather around yourself like armor, âI think perhaps your grandmother has kept lunch long enough.â
It is the flimsiest excuse in the world.
He knows it.
So do you.
But it is also the only escape either of you is dignified enough to take.
When Queen Dowager Myriah returns a moment later, one glance at your face and one at Prince Valarrâs is enough to make her pause.
You are standing by the window again, too straight and too calm. Valarr is near the center of the room, his expression controlled to the point of severity.
The air between you feels altered. Bruised.
Queen Dowager Myriah, who has ruled people all her life and therefore recognizes disaster on sight, says nothing at first.
Only studies the two of you with a stillness that is suddenly far less indulgent than before.
You turn to her and smile.
It costs you.
âThank you for lunch, Your Highness,â you say. âIt was lovely.â
//
Prince Valarr knows he has made a mess of it almost the moment he leaves his grandmotherâs apartment.
Not while he is still inside them. Not while Queen Dowager Myriah is skewering him with one cool look after another and you are all elegance and composure beside the window, thanking her for lunch in a voice so perfectly calm that no one less practiced than she is would hear what it costs you.
No.
It happens afterward, when he is alone in the corridor and the doors close behind him with a soft, final sound.
He stops walking.
Only for a second.
Long enough for the silence around him to sharpen into thought, and for that thought to arrive fully formed and merciless:
He had frightened you away.
Not with temper. Not with cruelty. Worse than that. With restraint so badly chosen it had felt like indifference. With duty, that old faithful shield of his, drawn too quickly and held too coldly between you until your face had changed in front of him.
He can still see it.
The way your expression had not broken, exactly. You were too poised for that. Too proud. Too practiced in kindness to let yourself humiliate either of you with visible hurt. But something had withdrawn behind your eyes. Something had gone careful. And when you said, perhaps I was foolish enough to hope for the man, the words had landed with such terrible softness that he has felt them in his chest ever since.
Valarr had spent years imagining how dangerous it would be to speak too plainly where you were concerned.
He had not understood, until that afternoon, that speaking too carefully could be just as disastrous.
That evening, Myriah corners him in the long gallery before dinner and says, without preamble, âTell me, grandson. How did you mess lunch up?â
Valarr, already tired past patience, replies, âThank you, Grandmother. Your support is invaluable.â
She studies him for a beat, then says, more quietly, âDid you tell her it was your duty?â
He says nothing.
That is answer enough.
Myriah closes her eyes for one brief second, as if appealing to saints who gave up on her family generations ago. âOh, Valarr.â
âI did not mean it as she heard it.â
âOf course you didnât. That is what makes men so exhausting.â
He draws in a breath. âI was trying not to presume.â
âYes,â Myriah says dryly. âAnd instead you managed to sound like a constitutional obligation in a very handsome suit.â
He almost winces.
Almost.
âFix it,â she says.
âHow?â
Her gaze is suddenly less amused, more knowing. âBy deciding whether you would prefer to be understood or merely admired for your restraint.â
He looks away then, through the long windows into the fading light beyond, and thinks of your face.
Thinks of the quiet retreat in you.
Thinks: understood.
But understanding, he has always known, requires the one thing he is worst at giving freely.
//
The announcement is made three days later.
The palace communications office prepares the statement. The papers lose their minds exactly as Myriah predicted they would. The country behaves as though it has been personally gifted some sacred modern fairytale: the heir and the Dayne girl, old blood and old names, duty and glamour and all the rest of it. Photographers gather outside the palace gates. News anchors speak in reverent tones. Social media becomes uninhabitable.
You stand beside him in one of the smaller state rooms while the first official photographs are taken.
The room is all pale stone, gilded mirrors, and controlled light. Someone has chosen white flowers. Someone else has chosen a dress for you that makes the cameras adore you on sight. You are beautiful, of course. You always are. But today there is something in you that seems almost too delicate for the room, some brightness gone quieter than usual.
You smile gracefully.
Anyone else would call it perfect.
Valarr sees the sadness in it at once.
Not sadness enough to scandalize. Nothing obvious. Only a faint reserve at the edges, as though some part of you has stepped half a pace back inside yourself and not yet been coaxed out again. If he did not know your face as well as he does, he might miss it. But he does know it. God help him, he knows every shift of it.
The photographers ask for another angle.
He places a hand lightly at the small of your back, because that is what is expected and because he cannot seem to stop himself from wanting the contact.
You do not flinch.
You do not soften into it either.
That hurts more than it should.
When the cameras pause to adjust lenses, you glance toward him with a smile so lovely that no one in the room would question it.
âTry not to look as though youâre attending a funeral,â you murmur, too low for anyone else to hear.
He looks at you.
There it is againâthat old impulse of yours to lighten, to needle, to tug him back toward something more human. Even now. Even with that new distance in you. You are still trying to provoke him into warmth, as though some part of you refuses to surrender the version of you that has always existed with him.
The trouble is that you do it differently now.
More carefully.
As if testing whether the old ease is still permitted.
Valarr feels it like a knife.
âI am not,â he says quietly.
One brow lifts. âNo? Youâre only one frown away from national mourning.â
The nearest photographer laughs politely, assuming you have made some charming private joke.
Valarr should answer in kind. Should give you something back immediately, something dry and low enough to make you laugh properly the way you used to.
Instead, because he is aware of the room, because he is aware of having failed you already, because he is suddenly frightened of mishandling even this, his mouth only shifts by the barest degree.
You see it.
Of course you do.
And though you smile as though satisfied, he can tell you are not.
That is the beginning of it.
Not estrangement.
Nothing so dramatic.
Something quieter and, for that reason, harder to bear.
Over the next week, Valarr becomes acutely, miserably aware of all the ways you have changed around him.
You are never rude.
Never cold.
You are, in fact, almost impeccable.
At public appearances, you are exactly what the country wants you to beâgraceful, charming, composed, warm enough to soften him in photographs, elegant enough to look born for the role. You stand beside him at hospital visits and foundation meetings and the opening of a gallery wing, and each time you seem to instinctively understand where to stand, when to smile, how to tilt your face for the cameras, how to make the whole arrangement look effortless.
And still, beneath all that perfection, he feels the difference.
You hesitate now, where once you would have moved toward him without thinking.
You still tease him, but the teasing has acquired a faint edge of caution, as though you are trying to re-create something that no longer feels entirely safe in your hands.
You still seek his attention, but never as openly. Never with that same easy certainty that he would meet you there.
It is in small things.
At a charity breakfast, a waiter offers champagne too early in the day and you glance at Valarr as if to make some remark about public decadence, then seem to think better of it and only smile into your coffee.
At a school visit, one of the children tells you both that you look like âa prince and princess in a movie,â and you laugh, but when you turn toward Valarr, it is with a touch more restraint than he remembers, as though waiting to see what version of him will greet you.
At a foundation dinner, he arrives at your side between conversations and you say, lightly, âAh. The crown appears.â
Once, you would have said it with that wicked little glint in your eye, inviting him into the joke. Now you say it almost gently, giving him the option to remain only the prince if he prefers.
He hates that option.
He hates more that he is the one who created it.
What becomes unbearable, in the end, is that you still try.
That is what undoes him.
You are hurt, he knows you are hurt, and still you keep offering him these tiny openings. These small bright provocations. A teasing comment here, a dry aside there, a look meant to coax a smile from him when the room grows too stiff or the event too dull. You keep trying to reach for the man in him.
But you do it from farther away now.
As though you no longer trust that he will meet you there.
And Valarr, who has built half his life on discipline, discovers to his disgust that distance from you feels less like dignity and more like punishment.
He notices everything.
The slight pause before you take his arm now when photographers ask you to stand together.
The way your smiles at him have become more deliberate, less instinctive.
The fact that you no longer linger after events unless etiquette requires it.
The way, when others are around, you tilt your body toward him correctly but not unconsciously.
Most people would never see it.
Most people would say you are settling into your role beautifully.
Valarr thinks, with increasing fury at himself, that he has made you careful where you used to be easy.
And because he is Valarr, because his instincts are as much curse as virtue, his response is not to leave it alone.
It is to begin noticing everyone else.
Everyone who makes you laugh too freely. Everyone who steps too close. Everyone who has the good fortune to receive the warmth you are withholding, however slightly, from him now.
At a museum fundraiser, an old university friend of yours falls into step beside you while the receiving line reshuffles. He says something that makes you laughânot the soft social laugh, but the real one, the one that lifts your whole face and makes your eyes shine.
Valarr, half a pace ahead, hears it and turns before he can stop himself.
You are smiling at the man.
Openly.
A little distractedly.
It is not improper. There is nothing there beyond history and ease. But Valarr feels something dark and immediate move under his ribs all the same, sharp enough that for one vicious second he imagines ending the conversation by rank alone.
Instead he says, âLady Dayne.â
Not loudly.
Not harshly.
But with enough presence in it that both of you look up.
Your expression shifts when you see himânot fear, never that, but that new alertness, that tiny check of movement as though wondering what version of him is approaching this time.
He offers his hand.
âThe ambassador from Florence.â
Your friend steps back at once, murmuring something gracious.
You place your hand in Valarrâs.
It should soothe him.
It doesnât.
Because even through gloves, even with your fingers resting in his as naturally as they have a hundred times before, he can feel the hesitation that came first.
Later, in the car back to the palace, he says, before he can stop himself, âYou seemed to enjoy his company.â
You turn your head slowly, surprise in your face. âDaniel? We went to school together.â
âI know who he is.â
âThen why do you sound as though Iâve been caught in diplomatic scandal?â
Valarr says nothing.
You study him for a moment longer.
And thenâGod help himâyou smile a little. Not warmly. Not coldly. Just with a touch of that old mischief he has been starving for.
âWas that jealousy, Your Grace?â
He looks out the window. âNo.â
âSuch a pity. It almost sounded flattering.â
The comment is light.
Playful.
An offering.
He should take it. He knows he should. Turn to you. Give you one dry answer that lets the air change back into something less careful.
Instead he only says, âYou are impossible.â
And you laugh, but there is a fragility in it now, as though even the old game no longer trusts itself to survive unchanged.
That night, Valarr lies awake in his rooms and understands, with bleak precision, that he is being made to live inside the consequences of his own restraint.
He wanted to be honorable.
He wanted not to presume.
He wanted to make absolutely certain you would never feel trapped, never feel claimed before you had chosen him freely.
And in doing so, he has managed to achieve the exact opposite of what he wanted: you have begun stepping back of your own accord, not because you do not care, but because you care enough to protect yourself where he failed to.
Queen Dowager Myriah, when she sees him two days later at breakfast looking as though sleep has become a political enemy, says only, âStill being noble?â
Valarr gives her a look.
She butters her toast with infuriating calm. âI ask because the girl has started smiling like a person who has decided not to bleed in public, and I thought you might enjoy knowing that is your work.â
He sets down his coffee cup with unnecessary precision.
âWhat would you have me do?â
Myriah glances at him. âSpeak.â
He says nothing.
She sighs. âNot like an heir. Like a man.â
âThat is not as simple as you make it sound.â
âNo,â she agrees. âIt is only far more necessary.â
Valarr looks past her then, through the breakfast room windows into the palace gardens below, and thinks of you standing beside him beneath a burst of flashbulbs, all elegance and light, with that small sadness hidden in your smile where only he can see it.
He thinks of your hesitations. Your careful teasing. Your distance.
He thinks, with a kind of fierce helplessness, that he cannot bear it much longer.
Because for all your poise, for all your effort to remain kind and bright and yourself, he knows the truth now:
you are keeping away from him.
Not far.
Just enough.
And Valarr, who once thought distance the safest form of devotion, discovers that distance from you feels less like safety than loss.
Summary: A scholarship student rejects the quiet, gentle Valarr Targaryen to focus on her future, only to end up trapped in a deeply abusive relationship with his charismatic cousin, Aerion Targaryen. Years later, isolated and broken, she discovers that the man she once thought was safe may have only been hiding a different kind of cruelty all along
CW: Graphic rape/non-con, coercion, domestic abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, physical violence, financial abuse, manipulation, victim blaming, misogyny, toxic relationships, stalking/obsessive behavior, filmed assault, non-consensual recording, blackmail implications, gaslighting, degradation/humiliation, strangulation/choking, hair pulling, explicit sexual content, trauma bonding, possessiveness, isolation, panic attacks, violence against women, dead dove themes, dark romance, ânice guyâ entitlement, abusive power dynamics.
WC:16k
You met Valarr Targaryen on a Tuesday in late September, and for the rest of your life you would remember the exact quality of the light in that lecture hall. You were eighteen, and you had never been so tired in your life.
The scholarship sat in your chest like a second heartbeat, It followed you everywhere from your cramped dorm room to the dining hall where you calculated every meal against your declining balance to the library where you stayed until the security guard kicked you out at midnight every single night. You weren't here to make friends. You weren't here to fall in love. You were here because you'd clawed your way out of a town that wanted to swallow you whole, because you'd worked doubles every summer since you were fifteen, because you'd written scholarship essays with your actual blood until your fingers cramped and your eyes burned and some committee in a wood paneled room somewhere had decided you deserved a shot. One shot. That was it. And you were notâabsolutely notâgoing to blow it on some boy with pretty eyes.
Valarr sat two rows ahead of you in History of Westerosi Political Structures, and obviously you noticed him. Everyone noticed him. It would've been weird if you didn't. He had that thing, that quiet unhurried way of existing in a room like he'd never once wondered if he belonged there. His hair was dark, almost black except for that one streak of silver gold at his left that practically screamed Targaryen. And not just any Targaryen. His dad was Baelor, the heir of the Targaryen conglomerate, the one all the business magazines said was going to drag the family empire into the modern era. Which meant Valarr had been born into the kind of money you couldn't even wrap your head around. The kind where buildings have your last name on them.
He should have been insufferable. You kept waiting for him to be insufferable. The legacy kids usually were, treating college like a four year networking mixer with occasional exams, wearing their wealth like armor, never thinking twice about any of it because they'd never had to. But Valarr didn't seem to fit that mold.
The first time he talked to you was week two. You'd forgotten a pen, which was so stupid, so completely avoidable but you'd been running late from your work study shift at the admissions office, still slightly sweaty under your backpack because the building had no AC and it was still summer hot in September. You were patting down your pockets with increasing desperation, already doing the mental math of how much lecture you'd miss if you sprinted back to your dorm, already feeling that hot wave of shame at your own disorganization, when someone tapped your shoulder.
You turned. And there he was, leaning forward across the gap between the rows, holding out a plain black ballpoint pen. "Here," he said. His voice was lower than you expected. Quiet. "I always carry extras."
"Thanks," you said. And you meant to leave it there. You really, genuinely meant to. But then he shifted in his seat, half turned toward you, and you got your first real look at his face.
Strong jaw. Straight nose. The kind of bone structure that belonged in statues and his eyes. One brown, warm like earth after rain, soft and deep and almost gentle. One blue, pale and sharp and unreadable as winter ice. The mismatch was so striking you forgot what you were going to say. You just stared at him like a complete idiot while the professor called the class to order, and Valarr Targaryen gave you this tiny, almost shy smile, and turned back around.
It happened slowly after that. So slowly you didn't even notice it was happening until it had already happened, which you'd realize later was probably the point.
Valarr didn't push. That was the thing you kept coming back to, the thing that undid you. He didn't chase you, didn't treat you like some challenge to conquer, didn't pull any of the moves you'd spent high school learning to deflect. He just... showed up. Casually. Gently. Like it was the most natural thing in the world. He'd fall into step beside you on the walk from lecture to the library, not crowding you, matching his pace to yours so easily it felt accidental. He'd ask about the reading. Or what you thought of the professor's argument. Or whether you'd started the essay yet. And somehow these totally mundane conversations would stretch into twenty minutes, thirty, until you were standing outside the library doors still talking while people pushed past you with their backpacks and their coffee cups and their midterm stress.
He was easy to talk to. God, that was the worst part. He was so easy to talk to. He actually listened when you spoke. He remembered things you'd mentioned offhand weeks ago. He asked follow up questions that showed he'd been paying attention. Being around him felt... safe. Which was terrifying, because you'd spent years building up walls specifically designed to keep people like him out, and he was walking through them like they weren't even there.
The first time you realized he might actually like you was a Thursday in late October.
Midterms were eating you alive. You'd been in the library for six hours straight, running on vending machine crackers and the dregs of a cold brew you'd bought that morning. Your eyes were burning. Your neck was a disaster. You were genuinely considering just sleeping under the table rather than walking all the way back to your dorm.
Valarr appeared at your elbow so quietly you startled, nearly knocking over your water bottle. He was holding a paper cup from that coffee shop off campusâthe good one, the one you could never justify spending money atâand he set it down next to your laptop like it was nothing.
"You mentioned once that you liked oat milk lattes," he said. And when you just stared at him, he shrugged with one shoulder, almost embarrassed. "You've been here since noon. Figured you could use it."
"Valarr, I can'tâthis place is so expensive, let me pay you backâ"
"It's a gift." He said it firmly, his blue eye holding you in place. "No strings. You work harder than anyone I know, and you deserve a coffee. That's it."
You should have refused. You knew you should have refused. Thanked him politely and pushed the cup back across the table and reinforced every wall you'd been letting crumble. But you were so tired. And the coffee smelled like vanilla and warmth and something you couldn't name, and Valarr was looking at you with his brown eye full of gentle concern and his blue eye full of something deeper, something you weren't ready to put a name to yet.
You took the cup. Wrapped both hands around it. Let the heat seep into your fingers.
"Thank you," you said. Your voice came out smaller than you meant it to.
"My pleasure," Valarr said. And then he pulled out the chair across from you, opened his laptop, and stayed.
He didn't ask you out for another month. He waited until finals were over, until you'd turned in your last paper and stumbled out of the library into the weak December sun like some kind of cave creature seeing light for the first time. You were giddy with relief, and when he found you on the quad you didn't immediately tense up the way you usually did. You smiled at him and he smiled back, that shy almost smile you'd come to recognize, and he said, "Can I take you to dinner? Not as a study thing. As a date."
The smile died on your face. The panic hit immediately that old familiar voice screaming at you that you couldn't afford distractions, that your scholarship required a 4.3 GPA minimum, that boys like him didn't date girls like you without eventually realizing their mistake and moving on. You thought about your mom working doubles at the diner back home. You thought about the student loans you were already racking up even with the scholarship. You thought about the career you needed to build, the life you needed to secure, the thousand ways everything could fall apart if you let your focus slip for even one second. You thought about all of it in the space of maybe three seconds while Valarr stood there with his mismatched eyes full of careful hope.
"I can't," you said. The words came out in a rush, tumbling over each other. "Valarr, I'm sorry, I justâI can't. I'm on scholarship. I have to stay focused. I can't do the relationship thing right now."
You watched his expression shift. The hope didn't shatter he was too controlled for that, too well bred. But it dimmed. The blue eye went distant, and the brown eye went so sad, so impossibly sad, and you felt like the worst person alive.
"Okay," he said. "I understand. Really."
And then he did something that genuinely shocked you. He stepped back. Didn't push for an explanation. Didn't try to argue you out of it. Just stepped back, giving you physical space, and nodded once. "I'll see you next semester, then. As friends." The word friends landed softly, carefully. A peace offering. "Good luck with your grades."
â
Valarr kept his word. The next semester, he didn't linger after class. He didn't bring you coffee. He didn't seek you out in the library or walk you across the quad or send you articles related to your shared coursework. When you passed each other on campus, he'd nod politely and keep walking. Distantly. Politely. He'd drawn a line and he was holding it, and you should have been relieved. This was exactly what you'd asked for. Space. Distance. The ability to focus entirely on your studies without the complication of a boy who made your heart beat too fast.
You were fine. You were totally fine. You threw yourself into your coursework with an intensity that bordered on obsessive. You pulled all nighters in the library. You aced your midterms. You impressed your professors. You did everything right. And if your stomach dropped a little every time you saw the back of his dark head in lecture, if you sometimes caught yourself looking for him on the quad before you remembered you weren't supposed to be doing that, well. That was your business. No one else's.
You kept the pen, though. It was still in your bag, buried at the bottom, and every time your fingers brushed against it you felt a tiny, stupid pang of something you refused to name.
And then Aerion Targaryen walked into your Political Theory seminar in the spring of your sophomore year, and everything went wrong.
You didn't know he was Valarr's cousin at first. You just knew he was a lot all this bright, sharp energy that filled the room the second he walked in, like someone had turned up the volume on the world. He was beautiful in the way that made you instinctively suspicious. Silver-gold hair worn slightly long, swept back from his forehead. Violet eyes so pale they almost didn't look real. A smile that seemed to hover at the corner of his mouth like he was in on a joke no one else had heard yet. He dressed like money and moved like power and spoke like every word out of his mouth was a gift he was generously choosing to share with the room.
He was ten minutes late on the first day. "Sorry I'm late," he announced to the professor, not sounding sorry at all. "Won't happen again."
It would happen again. You knew that instantly. It would happen constantly.
The universe had a real sense of humor, because the professor paired you together for the semester long research project through a random draw. Random. Sure. Aerion slid into the seat beside you with this fluid, careless grace, close enough that you could smell his cologne.
"Looks like we're partners," he said. His violet eyes swept over you with an assessment so frank it felt like being photographed. "What's your name?" and the way he said it made you feel like a puzzle he'd just decided to solve.
The project was on authoritarian power structures, and here's the thing that drove you absolutely crazy: Aerion was brilliant. Like, genuinely, infuriatingly brilliant when he bothered to try. He had this mind like a razor, quick and sharp and precise, and he could draw connections between historical events and modern political theory that none of your other classmates would have ever thought to make.
He also did none of the assigned reading. Showed up to your meetings late. Tried constantly to derail your work sessions into personal conversations you refused to engage in. He asked you invasive questions with the casual entitlement of someone who'd never seriously been told no. Where were you from? What did your parents do? How did you afford a school like this? You deflected every single one with clipped, professional answers, and he smiled at each deflection like you'd just scored him a point in some game only he was playing.
"It's impressive, you know," he said one evening, about three weeks in. You were in a study room in the library, you at the table with your laptop and your color coded notes and your carefully organized research materials, him sprawled in a chair with his feet up on the windowsill like he owned the building. "The whole scholarship thing. Working-class hero narrative. Very inspiring."
"It's not a narrative," you said, not looking up. "It's my life."
"Even better." He tilted his head, hair catching the fluorescent light. "Authenticity is so rare around here. Everyone else is so dreadfully boring. Trust funds and daddy issues, no original thoughts in their heads." He gestured vaguely at you. "You're different. I like that."
"Good for you."
He laughed like you'd done something delightful. "You really don't like me, do you?"
"I don't know you."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting."
He dropped his feet from the windowsill and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, those pale violet eyes fixed on your face with an intensity that made your skin prickle. "Let me take you to dinner," he said. Not a question. A statement. "Not as project partners. As a date."
"No." You didn't hesitate. The word came out hard and immediate.
"Why not?" He sounded genuinely curious, like your refusal was a fascinating anomaly he'd never personally encountered before.
"Because I'm not interested."
"You might find you're wrong about that."
"I'm not."
"Humor me."
"No."
The silence stretched. You kept your eyes on your laptop screen, your fingers frozen on the keyboard, your heart beating way too fast. When you finally risked a glance up, Aerion was smiling again. But it was a different smile than before. Sharper at the edges. Hungrier.
"Well," he said, settling back into his chair. "I suppose we'll see."
He asked again a week later. And again the week after that. And again, and again, and again. Each refusal treated as a minor setback rather than a boundary a small hurdle to clear instead of a wall he should stop running into. He left a note in your textbook, a single line on stupidly expensive stationery: Dinner. Friday. Think about it. He showed up at your usual study spot with two coffees and this easy, familiar air like you'd invited him. When you ignored his texts, he found reasons to text you again. When you gave him one word answers, he treated them like conversation. When you told him, flat and explicit, that you were not interested in dating him and never would be, he smiled that wolf smile and said, "Never is a long time."
The worst partâthe absolute worst partâwas that he never crossed a line you could point to. He never threatened you. Never cornered you. Never raised his voice or got angry or did anything that would justify filing a formal complaint. He was just constant, humming presence at the edge of your life, wearing you down through sheer persistence. Your friends started to notice. Your roommate made some offhand comment about how he must really like you, and how hot he was.
Three months into the project. Two weeks before finals. You broke.
It was a Tuesday night. You'd been studying for eighteen hours straight, running on nothing but adrenaline and cheap energy drinks that left your hands shaking. You'd just gotten an email from the scholarship committee reminding you about GPA requirements for renewal, and the subject line alone had sent your anxiety spiraling. You were exhausted and terrified and so achingly lonely in a way you couldn't admit to anyone, least of all yourself.
Aerion found you in the library at eleven p.m. Your head was in your hands. There were tears burning behind your eyes that you absolutely refused to let fall.
He didn't say anything. Just sat down across from you, folded his hands on the table, and waited.
"What do you want," you said. Your voice was scraped raw. You didn't look up.
"I want you to let me take you to dinner."
"God, Aerion, I don't have time for this, I can'tâ"
"One dinner." His voice was softer than you'd ever heard it. Gentler. Almost... tender, if you didn't know better. "That's all I'm asking. One dinner. If you still hate me after, I'll leave you alone. You have my word."
You looked up.
His violet eyes were earnest. Open. Free of their usual calculating gleam. In the dim library light, he looked almost human. Almost kind.
"You'll really leave me alone?" you asked. You hated how small your voice sounded.
"If that's what you want. Yes."
You didn't believe him. Not really. But you were so tired. So impossibly, bone deep tired of fighting on every front your classes, your finances, your future, and now this man who wouldn't stop pushing and pushing and pushing no matter how many times you told him no. The thought of one less battle, even just temporarily, was so seductive you couldn't think straight.
"Fine," you said. The word tasted like surrender. "One dinner."
â
Five years later, and you had gotten very, very good at lying to yourself.
The apartment was obscene. That was the word that always came to mind when you let yourself think about it. Obscene. Floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city skyline, a kitchen you could have fit your entire childhood home inside, furniture that cost more than your mother had made in a decade of double shifts at the diner. Aerion had insisted you move in after graduation. Hadn't asked, really. Had just sort of arranged it. One day your stuff was in your cramped studio apartment with the leaking ceiling and the neighbors who fought at three in the morning, and the next it was here, in this penthouse that never quite felt like yours, your clothes hanging in a walk in closet the size of a bedroom, your toothbrush in a marble bathroom that echoed when you breathed too loud.
You were a stay at home girlfriend. That was the term Aerion used, always with that little smile of his, like it was cute. Like it was a choice. "She's focusing on home right now," he'd tell people at parties, his hand on the small of your back, his thumb tracing possessive circles through the fabric of whatever dress he'd picked out for you. "Taking some time before figuring out next steps." And people would nod and smile because Aerion Targaryen was charming, Aerion Targaryen was magnetic, Aerion Targaryen was the kind of man you didn't question in public.
What they didn't know, what no one knew, was that you'd applied to forty seven jobs your first year out of college. Forty seven. You'd tailored your resume, written cover letters until your eyes crossed, shown up to interviews in your one good blazer with your heart hammering in your chest. And every single time, you'd gotten the same polite rejection email a week later. "We've decided to move forward with other candidates. We wish you the best in your search." At first you thought it was just the job market. Bad luck. The economy. Then you'd had that one interview at the think tank downtown, the one where the hiring manager had actually called you personally, had sounded genuinely confused. "I don't understand," she'd said. "You were our top candidate. But we got a call from someone in the Targaryen legal department. Something about a potential conflict of interest? I'm so sorry."
You'd confronted Aerion that night. He hadn't even denied it. Had just looked at you with those pale violet eyes and that lazy, half amused smile and said, "Why would you need to work? I take care of you. Everything you have, I give you. Isn't that enough?"
It wasn't a question. It was never a question.
Now you were getting ready for another family party, and you were running late, and your hands wouldn't stop shaking. You sat at the vanity in the bedroom. You leaned close to the mirror. The bruise was on your cheekbone this time, just under your left eye, a mottled bloom of purple and yellow that makeup could cover but never quite erase. You'd gotten good at this part. Color corrector first, the peachy one that canceled out the purple. Then concealer, two shades lighter than your skin, patted in with your ring finger in gentle, careful motions. Then foundation, then powder, then a sweep of blush to make yourself look alive.
The bruise was from two nights ago. You'd burned the risotto. Such a stupid thing. Such a small, ridiculous thing. The risotto had burned because you'd been distracted, because you'd gotten a message from an old classmate who'd just been promoted, who was doing actual work in your actual field, and you'd been standing at the stove staring at your phone and feeling something enormous and terrible rise up in your chest. Grief, maybe. Or envy. Or just the dawning, suffocating realization that you had become a ghost in your own life. And then the smoke alarm had gone off, and Aerion had come into the kitchen, and you'd seen his face, and...
Well. You were very good at concealer now.
"Are you almost ready?"
His voice came from the doorway, and you just kept patting foundation onto your cheekbone with steady fingers and met his eyes in the mirror. Aerion leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, looking like something out of a magazine spread. He always looked like that. It was almost offensive, how beautiful he was. The silver gold hair swept back, the sharp jaw, the custom tailored charcoal suit that probably cost more than your entire undergraduate tuition. His tie was loosened just slightly, that careful casualness he cultivated, and his smile was warm. He looked like a man who had never done anything wrong in his life.
"We're supposed to leave in an hour," he said. "You know how my father gets about punctuality. I don't want to be late." A pause. The smile sharpened, just a fraction. "Don't embarrass me."
"I won't," you said. Your voice came out smooth. Pleasant. Exactly the way he liked it.
He crossed the room in a few easy strides and leaned down to kiss you. His lips were soft, gentle, the same lips that had smiled against your skin a hundred times, the same lips that had whispered cruel things in the dark.
"Good girl," he murmured against your mouth. And then he was gone, footsteps retreating down the hallway, leaving the bedroom door open behind him like always.
You turned back to the mirror. The bruise was hidden now. You couldn't see it at all. If you didn't know it was there, you'd never guess. You looked fine. You looked normal. You looked like a woman who had everything.
Valarr.
The thought came unbidden, the way it always did these days. Creeping in at the edges when you were too tired to keep your defenses up. You used to push it away immediately, shove it back down into whatever locked box you kept your regrets in. But lately you'd been letting it linger. Just for a moment. Just in the privacy of your own head, where Aerion couldn't reach.
You thought about that Tuesday in late September, the gold light in the lecture hall, the way Valarr had leaned forward and held out a pen like it was the most natural thing in the world. You thought about coffee in the library, his shy almost smile, the way he'd said "My pleasure" like he actually meant it. You thought about him walking away across the quad, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold, giving you exactly what you'd asked for even though it clearly broke his heart to do it.
"One dinner," you'd said to Aerion. One dinner, and then he'd leave you alone. And here you were, five years later, hiding bruises under expensive makeup in an apartment that felt like a cage, getting ready to smile pretty for a family that would never be yours, living a life that had stopped feeling like your own so gradually you hadn't even noticed until it was too late.
What would have happened if you'd said yes? To Valarr. To the one who listened like your words mattered. The one who'd stepped back when you asked him to, who'd respected your no even when it hurt him. The one whose eyes had looked at you like you were something precious, something worth protecting, not something to be owned.
Would he have brought you coffee at midnight? Probably. He'd done that even when you weren't his. Would he have celebrated your successes instead of quietly ensuring you never had any? Almost certainly. Would he have made you feel like a person instead of a possession, a partner instead of a prisoner?
You'd never know. Because you'd been eighteen and terrified and so focused on protecting your future that you'd closed the door on the one person who might have actually wanted to build one with you.
And now you were here. Concealer on your cheekbone. A designer dress laid out on the bed. An hour until you had to perform happiness for a family that probably knew exactly what their son was and didn't care. You set the makeup brush down. Looked at yourself in the mirror. Your eyes were dry. You'd stopped crying a long time ago, tears didn't help, tears just made him angrier. Maybe I should have given him a chance.
You let the thought sit there, heavy and impossible, as you reached for your dress. Somewhere in the apartment, Aerion was whistling. You could hear him moving around, getting his watch, pouring himself a drink even though the party hadn't started yet. In forty five minutes you'd be in the car beside him, your hand in his on the center console because he liked to hold it while he drove, liked the way it looked. In an hour you'd be smiling at his father and making small talk with his sisters and pretending, always pretending, that everything was fine.
But for right now, just for this one moment, in the quiet of the bedroom with the city lights flickering on outside the window, you let yourself imagine a different life. One where you'd said yes to a boy in a lecture hall. One where you'd let yourself be loved by someone gentle.
One where the bruise under your makeup wasn't there at all.
"Five minutes!" Aerion called from the living room. His voice was bright, cheerful. The voice of a man who had never lost a thing in his life.
"Coming," you called back.
You stood up. Smoothed down your dress. Checked your reflection one last time. The concealer was holding. The bruise was invisible. You looked perfect. You always did.
â
You spotted the wine stain before Aerion did, which meant you had approximately three seconds of knowing it was coming before the disaster actually hit. A bloom of dark red spreading across the pale gray of his suit jacket, seeping into the fabric that probably cost more than your mother's car. Your hand flew to your mouth. The wine glass tilted in your other hand, still half full, still capable of doing more damage.
"I'm so sorry," you started, the words coming out automatic, rehearsed. You had gotten very good at apologizing over the years. "Aerion, I'm so sorry, I didn'tâ"
He looked down at the stain. Then up at you. And the smile that spread across his face was the warm, easy smile of a man who was not at all bothered, a man who found the whole thing vaguely amusing. Around you, the party continued its low hum of conversation and clinking glasses. His father Maekar was across the room, deep in discussion with some business associate, and you knew, you knew, that Aerion was going to kill you.
"Accidents happen," he said, his voice smooth as glass, dripping with that fake charm that made everyone else in the room relax while it made your blood run cold. He reached out and took the wine glass from your hand, setting it on a passing server's tray with deliberate, theatrical care. "Why don't you come help me find something to change into? I think there's a guest room with some spare suits."
His hand closed around your upper arm. Gentle. Light. Anyone watching would have seen a solicitous boyfriend guiding his embarrassed girlfriend away from the crowd. They would not have seen the way his fingers dug in just a little too tight, the way his thumb pressed into the soft flesh of your inner arm with precise, calculated pressure. The way his grip was less invitation and more command.
"That's okay," you said, your voice already going smaller, already shrinking the way it always did around him. "I can stay here, you don't need my helpâ"
"No, no." His violet eyes fixed on you, and behind the warmth was something cold and glittering, something that promised retribution. His smile didn't waver, but his grip tightened fractionally. A warning. "I insist."
The guest room was on the second floor of Maekar's estate, down a long hallway lined with portraits of dead Targaryens staring down with their violet eyes and their cold, aristocratic faces. Aerion didn't say a word the whole walk. He just kept his hand on your arm, steering you through the house like you were a misbehaving child being removed from a restaurant, his pace brisk and controlled. Your heels clicked on the marble floor. Your heart was hammering so hard you could feel it in your throat, in your temples, in the tips of your fingers.
The door closed behind you. The click of the latch was the quietest sound in the world and somehow the loudest. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
The mask dropped instantly. One moment he was the charming heir, all warmth and easy smiles, the next he was something else entirely. His face twisted with rage, his voice a low, vicious snarl that he kept carefully contained within the room's four walls. He let go of your arm only to grab a handful of your hair, twisting it around his fist, yanking your head back so you were forced to look at him. Forced to see the disgust in his eyes.
"I'm sorry," you gasped. Your scalp was on fire, sharp lances of pain radiating down your neck and into your shoulders. Tears sprang to your eyes automatically, your body's learned response after years of this. "Aerion, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, my hand slipped, Iâ"
"You humiliated me." His face was inches from yours. You could smell the wine on his breath, the expensive cologne he wore, the sharp copper edge of his anger. "In front of my father. In front of everyone. Do you have any idea how that looked? Do you have any idea what they think of me now, having to drag my clumsy fucking girlfriend upstairs because she can't hold a glass properly? Like some kind of goddamn babysitter?"
"It was an accident, I swearâ"
"Everything with you is an accident." He released your hair with a shove, and you stumbled, catching yourself on the edge of a heavy mahogany dresser. The corner bit into your hip. "God, you're useless. You can't cook a simple risotto without burning it. You can't hold a conversation at a party without staring at the floor like a frightened rabbit. You can't even stand in one place without ruining a five thousand dollar suit. What do you actually do? What is the point of you? Tell me. I'm genuinely asking."
You didn't have an answer. You had learned a long time ago that there was no right answer. Anything you said would be wrong. Anything you said would make it worse. Silence would make it worse too, but silence was at least faster.
"Nothing," he answered for you, his voice dripping with contempt. "You do nothing. You are nothing. I gave you everything. I gave you a home, I gave you clothes, I gave you a life most women would kill for, and you can't even stand next to me at a party without fucking it up." He stepped closer, and you flinched back against the dresser. Something flickered across his expression, satisfaction, maybe. Pleasure. He liked that. He always liked that. "You know what the worst part is? You don't even try. You don't even pretend to be grateful anymore."
"I am grateful," you whispered. The words tasted like ash.
"No, you're not." He tilted his head, studying you like you were a disappointing piece of art he'd overpaid for. "You're a burden. You're dead weight. And I keep you anyway, because I'm a good man, and I take care of what's mine. Do you understand that? Do you understand how lucky you are that I haven't thrown you out on the street?"
"Yes," you said. The word was barely audible.
"Yes what?"
"Yes, I understand."
"Good." He stepped back, smoothed down the front of his stained jacket, and took a breath. The transformation was instant. The rage receded, the mask slid back into place. "I have to go change. Because of you. Stay here. Do not come back to the party until I come get you. I don't want anyone seeing you like this."
Like what, you wanted to ask. Like a woman who had just been screamed at until she couldn't breathe? Like a woman who was trying very hard not to cry and failing? Like the thing he had made you into? But you just nodded, the way you always did, and he left, and the door clicked shut behind him, and you were alone.
You sank onto the edge of the bed. The tears came then, not the pretty kind, not the delicate crying of movies and photographs. The ugly kind. The kind that came with shaking shoulders and snot and sounds you tried to muffle with your hand because even alone you were afraid of being too loud, afraid he might hear, afraid he might come back. You pressed your palm against your mouth and cried until your ribs ached, until your throat was raw, until you felt hollowed out and empty and so tired you could not remember what it felt like not to be tired.
You didn't hear the door open.
"Hey. Are you alright?"
The voice was quiet. Low. Familiar in a way that made your stomach drop before your brain even caught up. You looked up, and there he was.
Valarr. He stood in the doorway with the hallway light behind him and his eyes were fixed on you with an expression you could not quite read. Concern, maybe. You had not seen him in months. Not really. Sometimes you would catch glimpses at these family gatherings, a nod across a crowded room, the back of his head disappearing around a corner, but you never talked. Aerion made sure of that. Aerion made sure of a lot of things. "Stay away from him," he'd told you once, his hand around your wrist, his voice pleasant and conversational. "I see the way he looks at you. If I ever catch you talking to him, I'll make you regret it." And you'd believed him. You'd always believed him.
"I saw what happened," Valarr said. He stepped inside, closing the door quietly behind him. "With the wine. And him bringing you up here. Are you okay?"
You swiped at your eyes with the back of your hand, smearing what was left of your carefully applied makeup. "I'm fine. It's fine. I just got overwhelmed. It's nothing."
Valarr didn't move. "That didn't look like nothing. I was watching. He had his hand in your hair before the door even closed."
"It's fine," you repeated. The word felt hollow even to you. It was the word you said most often, the word you used like a shield, and it had never once protected you.
"No." He took a step closer. Then another. His voice was still quiet, still careful, but there was something steely underneath it now. "No, it is not fine. Does he do that often? Does heâ" He paused, like he was bracing himself, like he was not sure he wanted the answer. "Does he hit you?"
The question hung in the air between you. No one had ever asked you that. Not your friends from college who had drifted away one by one, not your mother who you only talked to on holidays now, not a single person in five years. You opened your mouth to lie, to say no, to do what you always did. To protect him. To protect the fiction you had all been living.
"Yes," you whispered.
The word came out before you could stop it. And once it was out, something broke open inside you, some dam you had been building for half a decade, brick by careful brick. The tears started again, harder this time, and you could not stop them.
Valarr crossed the room in three quick strides and knelt in front of you. He didn't touch you. He was always so careful about that, always leaving you space. His mismatched eyes were level with yours, and his voice was steady and sure.
"I'll help you," he said. "Okay? I'll help you. You don't have to stay here. You don't have to go back to him. I will take care of everything."
"You will?" Your voice was so small. Pathetic. You hated how pathetic you sounded.
"Yes." He reached out then, slowly, giving you time to pull away, and when you didn't he took your hand. His grip was warm and solid and achingly gentle. He disappeared into the ensuite bathroom and came back with a glass of water and a damp washcloth, which he pressed into your hands with that same careful gentleness.
"Here," he said. "Drink this. It'll help."
You drank. The water was cool and clean and it steadied something in your chest, slowed the frantic hammering of your heart. Valarr sat down in the armchair across from the bed, elbows on his knees, watching you with an expression that was hard to read.
For a while, neither of you spoke. The silence was almost comfortable. Almost. Then Valarr leaned back in his chair, and something in his face shifted.
"You know," he said, his voice still quiet but different now. Cooler. The softness leaching out of it. "I don't understand."
"Understand what?"
"You." He gestured vaguely at you, at the room, at everything. "This. All of this. I've been trying to figure it out for five years. Five years of watching you. Five years of asking myself what I did wrong."
You lowered the water glass. A cold trickle of unease ran down your spine. "What do you mean?"
"I mean..." He laughed, but there was no humor in it. It was a hollow, bitter sound. "I was right there. I was right there in that lecture hall, and you said no. You said you had to focus on your studies. You said you couldn't do the relationship thing. You looked me in the eye and told me you weren't ready for anything serious." His voice was climbing now, the careful calm starting to crack. "And I accepted that. I backed off. I walked away. And then a year later, you're with him? With Aerion?" He said the name like it tasted of something rotten. "What was it? The money? The excitement? The bad boy thing? Because it sure as hell wasn't his personality."
"That's notâit wasn't like thatâ"
"No? Because from where I'm standing, it looks exactly like that. I asked you out. I was respectful. I gave you space when you said no. I did everything women say they want. I was the nice guy. I was the one who listened. And you still chose him. You chose the man who treats you like garbage while I got to stand on the sidelines and watch."
"You don't understand what happenedâ"
"You're right. I don't." He stood up abruptly, pacing to the window and back. The carefully controlled calm was crumbling now, something bitter and raw bleeding through the edges. "I have spent five years watching you with him. Watching him drag you to these parties like a trophy. And I kept thinking, she chose this. She chose him. She looked at me and looked at him and decided he was what she wanted. She decided the monster was worth more than the man who actually cared about her."
"He wore me down." The words came out broken, barely a whisper. "Valarr, he wouldn't stop. He asked and asked and asked and I was so tired, I was so exhausted from saying no, and he just kept coming back, he kept pushing, heâ"
"So you just gave up?" He turned to face you, and his expression was something you had never seen on him before. Contempt. Disgust. A kind of wounded, ugly bitterness that had been festering for years, rotting him from the inside out. "That's your excuse? He was persistent, so you just spread your legs and let him have what I asked for respectfully? Do you hear how that sounds?"
"That's not fairâ"
"Fair?" He barked out a laugh, sharp and humorless. "You want to talk about fair? What was fair about the way you treated me? You had standards for me. You had boundaries for me. I had to be patient, I had to be respectful, I had to take no for an answer like a good little boy. But for him? For the guy who wouldn't stop, who chased you like a dog after a bone, who grabbed what he wanted and didn't ask permission? That's the one you let in. That's the one you gave five years of your life to."
"I was eighteen." Your voice cracked. "I was eighteen and I was scared and he was so relentless, Valarr, you don't know what it was like, you don't know what he's like when no one's watchingâ"
"I know exactly what he's like." He was pacing again, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. "I grew up with him. I've known him my whole life. I know he's cruel. I know he takes what he wants and breaks it when he gets bored. And still you chose him. Still you get into his car and sleep in his bed and play the perfect girlfriend at every family dinner while I get to sit across the table and pretend I'm not dying inside."
"You don't get to blame me for this." Your voice was shaking now, but not with fear. With anger. A tiny spark of the person you used to be, the girl who had clawed her way out of a dying town, the girl who had sworn she would never let anyone take her future away. "You don't get to stand there and act like I deserved this. Like I asked for this. Like I wanted to be beaten and controlled and turned into nothing."
"I'm not saying you deserved it." He said it like it was obvious, like it was reasonable, like he was explaining something simple to a child. "I'm saying you chose it. Every day for five years, you have chosen it. You could have left. You could have asked for help. You could have come to me at any point and I would have saved you. But you didn't. You stayed. You stayed and you let him do this to you and now you want me to feel sorry for you?"
"I had nowhere to go." The tears were streaming again, hot and fast, but you didn't wipe them away this time. "He made sure of it. No job, no money, no friends. You think I didn't want to leave? You think I didn't try? He took everything from me. Everything."
"Poor little victim," Valarr said, and his voice was soft now, almost gentle, somehow worse than the yelling. "Poor little thing who had no choices and no options. Except you did have a choice. Five years ago, you had a choice. Me or him. And you made it. And now you get to live with it."
"Then why are you here?" The question came out sharp, desperate. "If you hate me so much, if you think I deserve all of this, why did you bring me to this room? Why did you tell me you'd help me?"
He stopped pacing. The room went very still.
"I'm going to help you," Valarr said, and his voice had changed again. Something had shifted in the quiet of the room, some subtle recalibration of the air between you. "I meant that. I will get you out of here. I will keep you safe. But I need something from you first."
You looked up. His mismatched eyes were fixed on you, and for the first time you noticed that neither one was gentle anymore. The brown eye was not sad. It was hungry. The blue eye was not concerned. It was calculating.
"What?" you asked. Your voice came out wary. The hope that had flickered in your chest a moment ago was already starting to gutter.
He didn't answer right away. Just leaned back against the dresser, crossed his arms over his chest, and let the silence stretch. You had seen Aerion do that a thousand times. Use quiet as a weapon. Let the other person fill the empty space with their own anxiety. The recognition made your stomach turn.
"I've been thinking," Valarr said finally. "About fairness."
"Fairness."
"Yes." He tilted his head, that silver gold streak catching the lamplight. "I did everything right. I was patient. I was respectful. I brought you coffee at midnight because I wanted to see you smile. I walked you to the library in the rain. I asked you on one date, one single date, and when you said no, I backed off completely. I let you go. Do you remember that?"
"I remember," you whispered.
"So I've been wondering." He stood up slowly, unfolding himself from the dresser with a deliberate, almost lazy grace that made your skin crawl. "What do I get? For being the good one. For doing it the right way. For waiting and hoping and watching from a distance while he got to touch you and keep you and break you. What's my reward?"
Your blood went cold. The washcloth slipped from your fingers and landed on the carpet with a soft, wet sound.
"I'm not asking for much," he said, taking a step toward you. Then another. His voice was still quiet, still reasonable, like he was discussing a business arrangement, like this was all very logical. "One night. You owe me that much, don't you think? After everything? After you chose him over me and let him..." He gestured vaguely at your face, at the concealed bruise you had spent an hour covering up. "Let him do that to you. Let him mark you. I would never do that to you. I would be gentle. I would be good to you. I would show you what it could have been like, if you'd made the right choice."
You couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe. The room felt like it was shrinking, the walls pressing in, the air growing thin.
"You owe me," he continued, his voice dropping lower, almost intimate. "Five years I've waited. Five years I've watched him have what should have been mine. Do you know what that does to a person? Do you know how many nights I lay awake thinking about you? About what he was doing to you? About what I would have done differently if you'd just given me a chance?" He shook his head slowly. "You broke something in me. You and your choices. So now I'm asking for a chance to fix it. One night. One night of you actually choosing me, for once in your miserable life."
"One night," he repeated, and now he was standing right in front of you, close enough that you could smell his cologne, something clean and understated, so different from Aerion's heavy, cloying scent. "And then I'll help you. I'll get you out of here. I'll set you up somewhere safe, somewhere he can't find you. A new apartment. Money to get started. Whatever you need. All you have to do is give me what you gave him. What you gave him for free, for five years. I'm only asking for one night. That's more than fair."
"No." The word came out strangled. You pushed yourself off the bed, backing away from him. "Valarr, no. I can't. I won't. This isn't you. This isn't who you are."
"You don't know who I am." He was still advancing, still calm, still speaking in that reasonable tone like you were the one being irrational. "You never bothered to find out. You were too busy falling into his bed."
"I'm not like him," Valarr said, his voice softening, almost pleading now. "I told you. I would never hurt you. I'm not a monster. I'm not going to hit you or scream at you or leave bruises on your face. I just want what's fair. Don't you think it's fair? After five years of watching you with him, after everything I went through, don't I deserve something? Anything? Or do I just get to be the good one forever, the one who waited and respected you and got nothing while the bastard who broke you got everything?"
"You're scaring me."
"Good." His jaw tightened. "Maybe you should have been scared five years ago, when you made the choice that led us here. Maybe you should have thought about consequences. Maybe you should have considered that actions have reactions, that treating someone like they're invisible, like their feelings don't matter, like they're not good enough, might eventually come back around."
"Please," you gasped. Tears were streaming down your face, hot and fast. The concealer was probably ruined. The bruise was probably visible. None of it mattered. "Valarr, please, you're not like this, you're not this person, I know you're notâ"
"Maybe I wasn't." His grip on your hair tightened, twisted, and the pain was blinding and familiar and somehow worse because it was him. "Maybe you made me this way. You and him. You made me into this. You taught me that kindness gets you nowhere. You taught me that the only way to get what you want is to take it."
You lunged for the door. You made it three steps. Your hand was on the doorknob, the cool metal pressing into your palm, the hallway freedom just one twist away. Your fingers closed around it. You started to turn it.
And then his hand fisted in your hair and yanked you backward. The pain was blinding. The same pain Aerion had given you an hour ago, the same spot, the same brutal pressure on your scalp. You screamed, a short, shocked sound that was more surprise than anything else, and stumbled backward into his chest. His other hand clamped around your upper arm, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, hard enough to leave marks that would bloom purple and yellow tomorrow.
"Don't," he said into your ear. His voice was still calm. Still quiet. That was the worst part. That was the part that would haunt you later. How calm he was. How controlled. How utterly reasonable he sounded while his fingers twisted in your hair and his grip ground bruises into your arm. "Don't make this harder than it needs to be. I said I'd be gentle. I meant it. I am not going to hurt you the way he hurts you. But you have to stay. You have to give me this. After everything, you owe me this much. You know you do."
"Please," you whispered. The word was barely a sound.
His breath was warm against your ear. His chest was solid against your back. "Shh," he murmured. "It's okay. It's going to be okay. Just stay still. Just let me have this. You gave him everything for five years. You can give me one night. That's fair. That's more than fair. You know it is."
You closed your eyes. The darkness behind your lids was almost a relief, no mismatched eyes, no handsome face twisted into something unrecognizable, just blackness and pain and the sound of your own heartbeat thundering in your ears.
Behind you, pressed against the solid warmth of his chest, Valarr Targaryen breathed slowly and evenly and didn't let go.
He dragged you across the room by your hair, the sudden, violent yank snapping your head back. Your heels scraped uselessly against the polished hardwood floor, the sound a sharp contrast to the muffled music drifting from the party downstairs. Your free hand clawed desperately at his wrist, your nails digging into his skin, but Valarr didn't even flinch. He didn't slow. The bed loomed ahead, a massive four poster monstrosity draped in deep red silk that matched the expensive dress you'd spent minutes zipping yourself into.
He released your hair just long enough to shove you forward with a brutal force. You pitched onto the mattress, the silk bedspread slick under your palms, your skirt riding up your thighs. Before you could scramble off the other side, his weight crashed down on your back, driving the air from your lungs in a wheezing gasp. One hand pinned both your wrists together behind your spine, squeezing so hard you felt the joints pop. The other hand fumbled at his belt buckle, the metallic clink of the buckle and the rasp of the zipper loud and predatory in the quiet room.
"Noâplease, Valarr, pleaseâ" Your voice cracked, a fragile sound. You twisted beneath him, bucking your hips, trying to throw him off, but he was a wall of muscle. He drove his knee into the small of your back, grinding your hips deep into the mattress, pinning you flat.
"Shh," he breathed, his voice still possessing that terrifying, measured calm. "You're making this ugly. Don't make it ugly."
He released your wrists for a split second, not to let you go, but to reach into his pocket. He pulled out his phone. The screen glowed, casting a cold, clinical light over your terrified face as he propped the device up against a lamp on the nightstand. He tapped the screen, the red 'REC' icon blinking into existence.
"Look at the camera," he commanded, his voice devoid of emotion. "I want to remember the exact moment you realize you have no choice."
"Stop it! Put it away!" You screamed, fighting with a renewed, desperate strength. You drove your elbow back, catching him hard in the ribs. He hissed, a sound of annoyance, and for a second the weight on you eased. You lunged forward, half off the bed, your fingers grazing the edge of the nightstandâ
His hand clamped around your throat, cutting off your air and dragging you back onto the center of the bed. He flipped you onto your back with a violent heave, his hips settling heavily between your thighs. His free hand gripped the hem of your dress, shoving the fabric upward, bunching the expensive silk around your waist. You kicked wildly, your heel catching his shin, and he grunted. He didn't let go; instead, he grabbed your ankle, wrenching your legs wide apart. The fabric of the dress stretched taut, clinging to your curves, but it didn't rip.
"Stop fighting," he said, his eyes locking onto yours. "You can't stop this. You can't stop me. The sooner you stop, the sooner it's over."
He didn't bother removing your panties. He simply hooked a finger into the side of the lace, pulling the fabric harshly to the side, exposing your wet, trembling folds. He freed his cockâthick, flushed, and leaking pre-cum. He lined himself up, the blunt, hot head of his member pressing against your entrance, demanding entry.
"Look at the phone," he whispered, his hand gripping your jaw, forcing your head to turn toward the recording device. "Look at yourself. Look at how pathetic you are."
You squeezed your eyes shut, shaking your head, but he tightened his grip on your jaw, bruising the skin. "Open your eyes. Look at it."
As you stared into the lens, he thrust forward. The stretch was fire, a burning, agonizing invasion that made your whole body arch off the mattress. A scream ripped from your throat, echoing through the room, but it was drowned out by the sound of his heavy breathing. Your nails raked across his cheek, drawing long, red lines of blood. He didn't even blink. He pulled out almost entirely and then slammed back in, deeper and harder, the bed frame creaking violently beneath the force of his assault.
You clawed at his chest, your legs kicking and thrashing, your heels sliding uselessly against the silk sheets. He was too heavy, his body an anchor pinning you to your own nightmare. Every movement was a rhythmic, punishing drive, the wet, slapping sounds of his cock hitting your pussy filling the room, punctuated by your jagged sobs.
"Fight," he murmured, his hips settling into a relentless, piston like rhythm. His hand remained locked on your jaw, forcing you to keep your eyes on the phone, documenting every tear, every grimace of pain. "Fight all you want. It doesn't change anything. You're mine tonight. Just tonight. Then you can go back to Aerion and tell him how much better I am."
Your hands found his throat, your fingers squeezing in a desperate, wild attempt to choke him, to stop the relentless invasion of your body. He laughedâa low, breathless sound of genuine amusementâand drove into you so hard that your grip broke, your head knocking back against the headboard. Stars burst behind your eyes, the world spinning into a blur of red silk and violet light.
His pace quickened, becoming frantic and brutal. His breath grew ragged, his composure finally cracking as he neared the edge. You felt it in the way his hips stuttered, the way his fingers dug deep, bruising crescents into your thighs.
"Noâdon'tâdon't cum inside meâ"
He didn't listen. He let out a long, low groan, his body shuddering violently above you as he slammed himself deep into your womb. You felt the hot, thick flood of his cum filling you, pulsing inside you in waves, some of it spilling out and dripping onto the red silk of the bedspread.
He stayed buried for a long moment, his forehead resting against yours, his breath warm and slow, while the phone continued to record the aftermath, your trembling limbs, your vacant eyes, and the visible heaving of your chest.
Then he pulled out with a wet sound. You lay there, legs splayed, your dress bunched up around your waist, your panties twisted aside, a wet trail of his seed sliding down your inner thigh. Your entire body trembled with a shock you couldn't shake. Your throat was raw, your voice gone.
He looked down at you, wiped the smear of blood from his cheek with the back of his hand, and smiled. "See? You're fine."
â
Two months later the card was still in your wallet. Two months later, and you hadn't thrown it away. You told yourself it was because you couldn't risk Aerion finding it in the trash, finding it anywhere, asking questions. You told yourself a lot of things. But the truth was simpler and more shameful: some broken part of you still believed you might need it. Might need him. The man who had hurt you. The man who had offered you a way out with one hand and held you down with the other.
You hadn't told Aerion what happened that night. When Valarr finally let you goâafter, after, afterâyou had stumbled back into the party with your dress smoothed down and your hair finger combed and your face scrubbed clean of tears and concealer both. The bruise was visible. You told Aerion you'd fallen in the bathroom. He'd looked at you with those pale violet eyes, flat and disinterested, and said, "You're a mess," and gone back to his conversation. He didn't ask about the red marks on your arm. He didn't ask why you were shaking. He didn't ask anything.
You were grateful for that, in a horrible way. Grateful that your boyfriend's complete lack of interest in your wellbeing had finally worked in your favor.
Valarr had given you his card as you were leaving the guest room. Pressed it into your palm with those long, elegant fingers, his mismatched eyes soft and earnest, like he hadn't justâlike he wasn'tâ
"Call me," he'd said while buttoning his shirt. "If you still want my help. I'll be more than happy to give it." A pause. A small, almost shy smile. "I told you. I'm not like him. I keep my promises."
You'd taken the card. You didn't know why. Maybe because you were in shock. Maybe because some desperate animal part of your brain was screaming at you to keep every possible escape route, even the ones lined with teeth. Maybe because you'd spent so long being told what to do that you'd forgotten how to make choices of your own.
Whatever the reason, the card stayed. Tucked behind your student ID in the wallet you barely used anymore because Aerion paid for everything. A little rectangle of cream-colored cardstock with VALARR TARGARYEN embossed in silver and a phone number below.
You never called.
â
Valarr waited.
The first week after the party, he was patient. He understood. She needed time to process. What had happened between them was intense, emotional, she was probably just gathering her thoughts, working up the courage to reach out. He kept his phone on him at all times. Checked it compulsively. Every buzz made his heart stutter.
The second week, he was still patient. Mostly. A little annoyed, maybe. He'd made his offer very clear. He'd been generous. More than generous, given the circumstances. She owed him a response, at the very least. A thank you. An acknowledgment. Something.
The third week, he started to get angry. He'd done everything right. That was the part he kept circling back to, the thought that spun in his head at three in the morning when he couldn't sleep. He'd been the nice one. The good one. He'd backed off when she said no, all those years ago in the December cold on the quad, not because he gave upâhe never gave upâbut because he was playing a longer game. Let her focus on her studies. Give her space. Show her he was different from the other men, the ones who took and took and never asked. He'd constructed the whole thing so carefully. The coffee in the library. The gentle concern. The way he'd walked away without arguing. It was all designed to make her see him as the safe choice, the right choice, the one she'd come back to when she was ready.
And then a year later she was dating Aerion. Aerion. His vapid, cruel, reckless cousin. The one who'd never worked for anything in his life. The one who treated women like accessories and people like toys and the world like his personal playground. Valarr had watched them together at that first family party, Aerion's arm slung possessively around her shoulders, her smile brittle and nervous, and he'd felt something crack open inside him. Something he'd been holding together with careful hands for years.
He'd dated other people. Of course he had. He was a Targaryen; options were never the problem. He'd taken models to galas and heiresses to dinners and a very earnest PhD candidate to a weekend in Dorne that she'd described later as "lovely but a little intense." None of them stuck. None of them were her. None of them had looked at him with those eyesâgod, those eyesâand said no, I can't, I have to focus, and then turned around and spread their legs for a man who didn't even pretend to be kind.
He started checking Aerion's social media. It was easy. Aerion posted constantly, his life was a curated gallery of wealth and beauty and casual cruelty, and at the center of it, always, was her. Her in a designer dress at a charity gala. Her on the deck of a yacht, wind in her hair, smile not quite reaching her eyes. Her in the kitchen of that penthouse apartment, looking startled, caught mid-motion by Aerion's phone camera. "My little homemaker," the caption would say. "Isn't she precious."
It ate at Valarr. It gnawed at him from the inside. He used to check your social media obsessively, but you'd deleted everything. So he followed Aerion instead. He saved every photo. Catalogued every post. Built a shrine of you in the dark of his phone screen while his resentment curdled into something unrecognizable.
After the party, after the guest room, after he'd finally taken something for himself, he thought things would change. He'd sent her the video the next morning. A short clip, just a few seconds, enough to remind her what had happened. What they'd shared. He hadn't included his face in the frameâhe wasn't stupidâbut she would know. She would remember. And she would understand that he was serious, that his offer was real, that he was willing to help her if she was willing to be helped.
But two months passed, and she didn't call.
The video had been sitting on his phone since that night. He'd watched it more times than he could count. Late at night, mostly. In the dark of his own apartment, with the city lights flickering outside the window, he'd press play and watch her face crumple, watch her try to twist away, watch the exact moment she realized that the nice one wasn't nice after all. It made him feel something complicated. Shame, maybe, somewhere deep down. But mostly it made him feel powerful. Made him feel like he'd finally evened the score.
And she hadn't called. Two months of silence. Two months of waiting. Two months of watching Aerion's Instagram stories and seeing her there, still playing the perfect girlfriend, still living in that penthouse, still choosing him over and over and over again. Valarr had given her an escape. He'd given her a way out. All she had to do was pick up the phone. All she had to do was say yes to him the way she'd said yes to Aerion. Was that so much to ask? Was he really so unworthy of her that she'd rather stay with a man who hit her than spend one night with someone who actually cared?
His feed changed as Aerion posted a photo of you that morning. You were sitting on the balcony of the penthouse, the city spread out behind you, a cup of coffee in your hands. You were wearing a silk robe. You were smiling. The caption read: Five years with this one. Still the best decision I ever made.
The rage built slowly and then all at once. He was in his study when he made the decision. His phone was in his hand, the video loaded and ready. Valarr typed out a message.
Thought you should see this. Found it on an old phone. Looks like your girlfriend isn't as loyal as you thought.
He attached the video. His thumb hovered over the send button. For a momentâjust a momentâhe imagined her face when Aerion saw it. Imagined what would happen to her. Imagined the bruises that would bloom under her skin, the tears, the terror. He imagined her finally understanding that she should have chosen him. That he was the only one who could have kept her safe.
She'd had her chance. Two months of chances. She'd made her choice.
He pressed send.
The message whooshed away into the ether, delivered and read almost immediately. Valarr set his phone down on the desk, leaned back in his chair, and waited.
Somewhere across the city, in a penthouse apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows and a kitchen that cost more than a house, Aerion Targaryen's phone buzzed. And buzzed. And buzzed.
â
The water was just coming to a boil when you heard the front door slam.
You knew that sound. Knew it in your bones, in the scar tissue of five years. The way the hinges rattled. The way the deadbolt snapped back against the frame. The way the air in the apartment changed instantly, thickened, became something you had to push through just to breathe. You didn't turn around. Your hands stayed on the cutting board, knife moving through vegetables with the mechanical precision of long practice. Dinner had to be ready by seven. Dinner was always ready by seven. The last time dinner hadn't been ready by seven, you'd spent three days covering a bruise on your jaw.
"What," Aerion's voice came from behind you, low and shaking with something you'd learned to recognize, something worse than the usual rage, "the fuck is this?"
You turned.
He was holding his phone. His face was a color you had never seen before, not the usual flushed red of a burned risotto or a spilled drink, but something deeper. Something almost purple. The veins in his neck stood out like cords, thick and pulsing. His violet eyes were wild, unhinged, the pupils blown so wide they had swallowed the iris almost completely. His free hand was clenched so tight at his side that his knuckles had gone white, and you could see a tiny thread of blood where his own fingernails had broken the skin of his palm.
Your mouth went dry. Your fingers went numb. "What's what?"
"Don't." He took a step toward you, and you backed into the counter automatically. The edge of it bit into your spine. You could feel your kidneys pressing against the marble, the sharp ridge of the cabinet handle digging into your lower back. "Don't fucking play stupid with me. Don't you dare play fucking stupid with me." He thrust the phone toward you, and you flinched back so hard your head cracked against the cabinet. "The video. Valarr sent me a video. Of you. Of him. In the guest room at my father's house." His voice splintered on the last word, something raw and wounded bleeding through the fury, something that was almost a howl. "You fucked my cousin? In my father's house? During a family party?"
The world tilted sideways. You grabbed the counter to steady yourself.
"No," you said. The word came out fast, desperate, your free hand coming up in front of you like it could shield you from what was coming. "No, Aerion, that's not, it wasn't like that, he, I didn'tâ"
"He what?" Aerion was across the kitchen now, phone forgotten on the counter, his hands grabbing your shoulders and slamming you back against the cabinets so hard the dishes inside rattled and a wine glass somewhere tipped over and shattered. "He what? He seduced you? You tripped and fell on his dick? What's the excuse this time, huh? What's the story you're going to spin me?"
"He raped me."
The words hung in the air between you. Three words. Three impossible, horrible words that you had never said out loud before, not to anyone, not even to yourself in the dark of the bathroom with the shower running to cover the sound of your crying. You had carried them for two months in silence, too afraid of what Aerion would do if he knew another man had touched you, too afraid of what Valarr would do if you tried to tell, too afraid of everything all the time every single day.
Aerion went very still. For a moment, one brief stupid hopeful moment, you thought maybe he believed you. Maybe he would stop. Maybe some buried part of the man you had once thought you loved would surface and see you, really see you, andâ
"You lying whore."
His hand closed around your throat. Not the theatrical choking he did sometimes when he wanted to scare you, not the warning squeeze he used to remind you who was in charge. This was different. This was his whole hand, his whole strength, his thumb pressing into the soft hollow beneath your jaw and his fingers digging into the sides of your neck and his grip tightening and tightening until the world started to sparkle at the edges.
"He raped you?" Aerion's face was inches from yours, his breath hot and sour with the scotch he'd been drinking since lunch, his violet eyes blazing with something that went far beyond anger into a place that was genuinely terrifying. "You expect me to believe that? Valarr? Boring, pathetic, do-everything-right Valarr? You think I don't know you? You think I don't know you've been in love with him since college? You think I'm stupid?"
"I haven't," you choked out, your hands scrabbling at his wrist, trying to pry his fingers away. His forearm was like iron. You might as well have been clawing at a statue. "I never, I chose you, I stayed with youâ"
"You chose me because I was the only one who wanted you!" He shook you, your head snapping back against the cabinet, and pain bloomed bright and hot at the base of your skull. "You think I didn't know? You think I didn't see the way you looked at him at every family dinner? The way you'd get all quiet and sad whenever he was in the room? The way you'd watch him when you thought I wasn't looking?" His voice dropped to a venomous whisper. "I saw everything. I see everything. You don't take a piss without me knowing about it, you understand me?"
"No, Aerion, please, I neverâ"
"He sent me a video." He shook you again, harder, and your teeth clacked together. "Of you. With him. In a bedroom. At my father's house. You expect me to believe you weren't a willing participant? You expect me to believe my boring pathetic cousin suddenly turned into a rapist? How stupid do you think I am?"
"I didn't want it!"
"Liar!"
He released your throat just long enough to backhand you across the face. Your head snapped to the side, your cheek exploding with pain, and you tasted blood where your teeth had cut the inside of your mouth. Before you could recover, his hand was back around your throat, squeezing harder this time, and black spots were dancing in your vision.
"Let me tell you what's going to happen," he said, his voice terrifyingly calm now, the way it always got right before the worst things happened. "You're going to tell me the truth. All of it. How long it's been going on. How many times. Where. When. And then, once I know everything, I'm going to decide what to do with you. Maybe I'll let you stay. Maybe I won't." His thumb pressed harder into your throat, and you made a sound that wasn't even human. "Or maybe I'll just squeeze until you stop moving, and then I'll call my father and tell him you attacked me. Who do you think they'll believe? Me? Or the gold digging scholarship bitch who's been leeching off him for five years?"
"Please," you rasped. The word was barely a sound. Your vision was narrowing to a tunnel. "Aerion, please, I can't breathe, I can'tâ"
"Good. You don't deserve to breathe."
Your hand flailed out. Searching for anything. Anything at all. Your fingers brushed the handle of the knife on the cutting board, but you couldn't, you wouldn't, that wasn't who you were. You kept reaching. Your lungs were burning. Your throat was collapsing. The tunnel was closing to a pinprick, and somewhere in the distance you could hear Aerion still talking, still threatening, still promising all the ways he was going to make you pay for betraying him.
Your fingers closed around the handle of the stockpot. The pot on the stove behind you, the one you had filled with water for the pasta, the one that had been boiling for five minutes now, the one you had put on before everything went wrong. You didn't think. You couldn't think. There was no thought left, only instinct, only the animal drive to survive. You swung.
The pot came off the stove in a great arc of silver and steam. Aerion saw it coming. His eyes widened, his grip on your throat loosening, his mouth opening to say something. He didn't let go fast enough. The boiling water hit him full in the face.
The sound he made wasn't human.
Aerion screamed, a high horrible animal sound, and his hands flew to his face. He stumbled backward, clawing at his own skin, his perfect beautiful face already blistering red, his silver-gold hair plastered wetly to his skull. The water had soaked through his shirt, his chest, and he was still screaming, still stumbling, his feet slipping on the wet tile floor. He reached out for something to steady himself, his hand catching the edge of the kitchen island, but his fingers were wet and his grip was weak and he was still screaming, still clawing at his own ruined face.
He went down.
It happened so fast. One moment he was upright, shrieking, his hands pressed to the red raw mess of his cheeks and eyes. The next he was falling, his feet skidding out from under him on the water-slick floor, his body twisting as he went down, his arms windmilling uselessly. There was a sound, a sound you would hear in your nightmares for the rest of your life, the thick wet crack of skull against marble. A sound like an egg breaking. A sound like the end of something.
And then silence.
You stood with your back against the counter, your chest heaving, your throat burning where his fingers had been. The pot was still in your hand, empty now, dripping the last few drops of scalding water onto the floor. Steam rose from the puddle spreading across the tile. Aerion lay on his back in the middle of it, his eyes open and unseeing, his mouth slightly parted, a dark red stain beginning to seep out from under his head and mix with the water on the floor. His face was still blistering. His hands were still curled into claws where they'd been tearing at his own skin. He looked surprised. Even with the burns, even with the blood pooling beneath him, he looked surprised.
He wasn't moving.
He wasn't breathing.
"Aerion?" Your voice came out as a croak, barely a whisper, your vocal cords scraped raw by his grip. You couldn't feel your hands. Couldn't feel your face. "Aerion, get up."
He didn't get up.
"Aerion, this isn't funny. Get up."
He didn't get up. The kitchen was very quiet. The water on the floor was still steaming, curling up in lazy wisps, and the only sound was the faint hum of the refrigerator and the distant noise of traffic twenty floors below. Outside the window, the city lights were flickering on against the darkening sky, and somewhere far below, people were going about their lives, getting dinner, meeting friends, laughing at jokes, while you stood in a penthouse apartment with a pot in your hand and your boyfriend dead at your feet.
His face was still beautiful, even now. Even with the burns. Even with the blood spreading beneath him like a dark halo. The man who had hit you and choked you and isolated you from everyone who loved you. The man who had made sure you could never leave, never work, never have a life that didn't revolve around him. The man who had been seconds away from killing you.
He was dead. He was actually dead. Slowly, very slowly, you set the pot down on the counter. Your hands were shaking so badly it clattered against the marble.
Your phone was on the kitchen island. Aerion's was still there too, the screen dark now, the video Valarr had sent still waiting in his messages like a bomb that had already gone off. You didn't look at it. You didn't want to see it. You didn't want to see yourself in that guest room, didn't want to see what Valarr had done to you, didn't want to think about how he had filmed it, how he had saved it, how he had sent it to Aerion knowing exactly what would happen. There would be time for that later. For now, there was only this: the body, the blood, the silence.
You picked up your phone. Your hands were shaking so badly you could barely unlock it. The screen blurred in front of your eyes, and you realized distantly that you were crying. You hadn't noticed when you'd started.
You had to call someone. You had to call 911. That was what you were supposed to do. That was what innocent people did when accidents happened. They called for help, they explained what went wrong, they trusted the system to believe them.
But you weren't innocent. Not in the eyes of his family. Not in the eyes of the world.
Maekar will kill me.
The thought hit you like a physical blow, and the shaking got worse. You remembered Maekar at the party two months ago, his cold violet eyes, the way he had barely acknowledged your existence because you weren't a person to him, you were Aerion's accessory. You remembered the Targaryen lawyers, the ones who had called your potential employers and made sure you never got a job, the ones who had erased your career before it even started. You remembered the way the family closed ranks around their own, how they had spun every scandal, buried every misstep, destroyed anyone who threatened their reputation. You had watched it happen to a former business partner of Maekar's who had dared to sue. The man had lost everything. His company, his home, his marriage. The Targaryens had not even broken a sweat.
They wouldn't believe you. They would look at Aerion's body on the floor and your handprint on the pot and the bruises on your neck, and they would spin it. They would say you were the abuser. They would say you had been taking advantage of him for years, living off his money, isolating him from his family, bleeding him dry. They would find your old classmates, your old coworkers, anyone who had ever seen you snap under pressure, and they would twist every moment into evidence. The scholarship girl with the chip on her shoulder. The gold digger who finally got caught. The monster who murdered the golden boy in his own kitchen.
You had seen what Targaryen money could do. You had been on the receiving end of it for five years. They could bury you so deep no one would ever find you. They would make sure you spent the rest of your life in a cell, or worse, and no one would ever know the truth about what Aerion did to you, what Valarr did to you, what this family had done to you since the moment you stepped into their orbit.
You couldn't call 911.
You couldn't call your mother. What would she do? Fly across the country on money she didn't have, sit in a courtroom while the Targaryen legal team tore her apart, watch her daughter get dragged through the mud and convicted of murder? No. You couldn't do that to her. You couldn't do that to anyone you loved.
There was only one person who might help you. Only one person who had the power to stand against the family, who knew their secrets, who owed you. God, he owed you something after what he had done. The thought made you sick. Made you want to crawl out of your own skin. But the body was still on the floor and the blood was still spreading and you were running out of time.
You scrolled through your contacts with shaking fingers until you found the number you had never saved but knew by heart anyway. The number from the card that was still in your wallet, tucked behind your student ID like a poison pill you had been saving for an emergency.
Valarr.
The phone rang once. Twice. Three times. With each ring, your chest got tighter, your breath got shorter, and the reality of what you were doing pressed down on you like a physical weight. You were calling the man who had assaulted you. You were asking him for help. You were so broken and so desperate and so completely out of options that the man who had held you down in a guest room two months ago was your only chance at survival. Wasn't that the sickest joke of all? That after everything, the only person you could call was the one who had helped put you here in the first place?
He picked up on the fourth ring.
"Hello?"
His voice was calm. Even. Almost pleasant. Like he had been expecting you. Maybe he had been. Maybe he had been waiting by the phone for two months, just like he had been waiting for years, patient and careful and so sure that eventually you would come crawling back. The quiet one. The careful one. The one who listened like your words mattered, right up until he stopped listening entirely.
"Valarr." Your voice came out as a sob, barely recognizable, scraped raw by Aerion's grip on your throat. "Valarr, please, I need, I need help, something happened, Aerion he, he tried toâ"
"Slow down." Still calm. Still measured. Still so controlled it made your skin crawl even through the panic. "Tell me what happened."
"He saw the video." The words tumbled out of you in a flood, unstoppable, each one tripping over the next. "The video you sent him, he saw it and he came home and he was so angry, Valarr, he was choking me, he was going to kill me, he said he was going to squeeze until I stopped moving and then tell his father I attacked him, I couldn't breathe, I thought I was going to dieâand the water was boiling on the stove and I grabbed the pot and I threw it at him and he slipped, I swear he slipped, I didn't push him, I didn't mean to kill him, he just fell and his head hit the floor and he's not moving, he's not breathing, Valarr he's dead, Aerion's dead, I don't have anyone else, please, please you have to help meâ"
You were rambling. Sobbing. Hyperventilating so hard the words were barely coherent. Somewhere in the middle of it you had slid sideways against the cabinets, your forehead pressing against the cold marble floor, the phone still clutched to your ear. Aerion's body was three feet away. You could smell the blood. You could smell the boiled water and the steam and the faint lingering trace of his expensive cologne. His eyes were still open. He was still looking at you.
Valarr was silent for a long moment.
"Stay there," he said finally. His voice had shifted. The calm was still there, but underneath it was something else, something sharp and focused and almost eager. "Don't call anyone. Don't touch anything. Don't move the body. Just stay exactly where you are."
"Are you, are you going to help me?"
"Yes." The word came quickly. Too quickly. "I'm going to help you. I told you I would, didn't I? I keep my promises."
Your sob of relief was so violent it hurt. "Thank you. Thank you, Valarr, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry for not calling you before, I should have called you right after it happened, I should haveâ"
"Shh." His voice softened, almost gentle. Almost kind. Almost like the boy from the lecture hall who had handed you a pen a lifetime ago. "Don't apologize. Just stay where you are. Don't move. Don't talk to anyone. I'll be there in twenty minutes."
"Okay."
"And don't tell anyone else. No police. No family. No one. Do you understand? If you call the police before I get there, I can't protect you. The family will eat you alive."
"Yes. Yes, I understand."
"Good girl."
The line went dead.
You dropped the phone. It clattered on the marble floor, skidding through the cooling water and coming to rest against the leg of the kitchen island. You didn't pick it up. You just lay there with your cheek pressed to the cold tile, your breath coming in ragged hitched gasps, your throat throbbing with every heartbeat. Three feet away, Aerion stared at the ceiling with his burned face and his unseeing violet eyes.
You waited for the man who had ruined your life to come save it.
â
Three years later, you walked down the aisle in a dress that cost more than your mother's house, and everyone said you made the most beautiful bride.
The tabloids called it a love story for the ages. A Tragedy That Became a Triumph, one headline read, accompanied by a photo of you and Valarr at some charity gala six months ago, his hand on the small of your back, your smile soft and demure. After the tragic accident that claimed the life of Aerion Targaryen, his grieving girlfriend found solace in the arms of his cousin. Now, three years later, the couple is set to wed in what insiders are calling the society event of the year. The article went on to describe your dress, custom Vera Wang, off shoulder, a cathedral train that stretched twenty feet behind you, and the venue, the Targaryen estate's private chapel, and the guest list, which included senators and CEOs.
What the article didn't mention was that you hadn't chosen the dress. Valarr had. He'd brought in three designers and made you try on dozens of gowns while he sat in an armchair with a glass of scotch and vetoed each one until he found the dress he wanted. What the article didn't mention was that you'd woken up the morning of the wedding and thrown up three times in the ensuite bathroom, so quietly that Valarr wouldn't hear, your forehead pressed against the cool marble of the toilet seat. What the article didn't mention was that the smile you wore as you walked down the aisle was the same smile you'd learned to wear at Aerion's family parties, the same performance of happiness you'd been giving for years, the same mask you'd never been allowed to take off.
The chapel was full of Targaryens. They filled the pews in their designer suits and their tasteful dresses, their silver gold hair catching the light from the stained glass windows. Maekar was in the front row, his face as unreadable as ever. If he suspected anything about his son's death, he'd never shown it. Valarr had done his work well. The official report had ruled Aerion's death a tragic household accident, a slip on a wet kitchen floor while cooking alone. No mention of you. No mention of the video. No mention of the bruises on your neck or the boiling water or the way Aerion's eyes had stared at the ceiling seeing nothing. Valarr had made it all go away.
And then he'd made you his.
"You'll stay with me," he'd said that night, three years ago, when he'd arrived at the penthouse and found you still huddled on the kitchen floor. He'd knelt beside you, careful not to get blood on his trousers, and his mismatched eyes had been so full of gentle concern. "I'll take care of everything. I'll protect you. But you have to do exactly what I say. Do you understand?"
You'd nodded. You'd been in shock. You'd been so grateful, so pathetically grateful, that someone was going to make the nightmare stop.
"Good," he'd said. "From now on, you're mine. You should have been mine from the beginning. But don't worry. I'm going to fix everything."
He'd framed it as grief housing at first to the public. You were too devastated by Aerion's death to live alone, too fragile to be on your own, and Valarr, kind, generous, patient Valarr, had opened his home to you. The family thought it was sweet. The tabloids thought it was romantic. No one thought to question why the grieving girlfriend needed to be sequestered in her dead boyfriend's cousin's penthouse.
When you'd tried to bring up the possibility of leaving, of starting over somewhere new, he'd sat you down in his study and explained, very calmly and very clearly, exactly what would happen if you tried.
He had evidence. He'd always had evidence. He also had footage from a security camera across the street from the penthouse, footage that showed him entering the building that night and leaving with you, footage that didn't match the official timeline of Aerion's death. He had text messages. Phone records. A paper trail that, in the wrong hands, could unravel everything. And if you ever left him, if you ever tried to go to the police, if you ever breathed a word of the truth to anyone, he would make sure the whole world knew what really happened. Not just your role in Aerion's death, though that was bad enough, but everything. He'd make you the villain. The scheming scholarship gold digger who seduced both cousins, who murdered one and manipulated the other, who deserved to rot in a cell for the rest of her life.
"After everything I've done for you," he'd said, his voice so reasonable, so calm, "after I saved your life and cleaned up your mess, this is how you repay me? You think you can just leave? You think anyone else would have done what I did for you? I protected you. I lied for you. I buried a body for you, and you want to walk away like none of it happened." He'd shaken his head slowly, that sad almost-smile on his face. "You made this mess. I fixed it. Now you owe me. That's how this works."
After a while, you stopped thinking about leaving. It was easier that way. Valarr wasn't like Aerion. He never hit you, never raised his voice, never left bruises that you had to cover with concealer. His cruelty was quieter, more precise. A comment about your weight delivered with a look of tender concern. A reminder of what he'd done for you, what you owed him, slipped casually into conversation at breakfast. A hand on the back of your neck at parties, just a little too tight, just enough to remind you who you belonged to. "I waited so long for you," he'd say sometimes, in the dark of the bedroom, his fingers tracing patterns on your skin. "I was so patient. I did everything right. And now here you are. Finally."
The proposal had been a public affair. Of course it had. The Targaryens didn't do things privately. Valarr had gotten down on one knee at a benefit gala, in front of three hundred people and a photographer from Vogue, and when he'd opened the ring box and asked you to marry him, every camera in the room had turned to capture your reaction. You'd said yes because there was no other answer. You'd said yes because his hand was on your wrist under the table and his mismatched eyes were fixed on you with that familiar, patient intensity, and you'd learned a long time ago that saying no to a Targaryen man didn't mean anything if they didn't want it to.
Now you were walking down the aisle toward him. The organ music swelled. The guests rose to their feet. You could feel their eyes on you, hundreds of eyes, all of them seeing the beautiful bride in the beautiful dress, all of them believing the beautiful lie. Valarr stood at the altar with his hands clasped in front of him, his dark hair immaculately styled, that streak of silver gold catching the light.
He smiled at you as you approached. That shy almost smile from the lecture hall, the one that had undone you when you were eighteen years old and too exhausted to see it for what it was.
Your father wasn't walking you down the aisle. You didn't have a father to do it. Valarr had offered to have his father escort you, but you'd refused. It was the one thing you'd managed to refuse. And so you walked alone. Each step down the long white runner felt like a door closing behind you. The chapel doors, heavy and ornate, had already been shut. There was no breeze. There was no escape.
You reached the altar. Valarr took your hands in his. His grip was warm and steady and exactly as tight as it needed to be.
"You look beautiful," he murmured, low enough that only you could hear. "I've been waiting for this for a long time."
You smiled. It was the smile you'd learned to wear. The smile of the grateful survivor, the lucky bride, the woman who had been rescued from tragedy and given a second chance at love. Behind that smile, behind the mask you'd worn for so long you couldn't remember what your real face felt like, something small and buried and nearly dead whispered a truth you couldn't speak aloud. You had traded one cage for another. You had escaped Aerion's hands around your throat only to find Valarr's hands around your life. And no one would ever know. No one would ever see it. Because Valarr wasn't like Aerion. He never hit you. He never left bruises. He just made sure you could never, ever leave.
The priest began to speak. The congregation settled into their seats. Somewhere in the front row, Maekar Targaryen watched with his cold, unreadable eyes, and the twins Daella and Rhae dabbed at their perfect tears, and the whole Targaryen dynasty bore witness to the final piece of the story Valarr had been writing since the moment he handed you a pen in a lecture hall nine years ago.
"I now pronounce you man and wife."
Valarr cupped your face in his hands and kissed you. His lips were soft. Gentle. The kiss of a man who had never done anything wrong in his life.
Synopsis: General!Zayne x Wife!Reader
What to do when after a triumphant return, your adorable wife starts acting cold and independent?! Zayne is about to tear himself apart. The night he told you he was leaving again, he had clearly sensed something was wrong, so why did he still lead the army north as planned?
If he had left a few days later,
If he had stayed by your side,
If he had taken you with him,
Would everything have been different?
Warning(s): Slight graphical descriptions of violence + SA. Hurt/comfort! TBH this all started because I wanted to write Zayne yearning so this fic is literally just 90% constipated feelings and 10% plot. If Zayne and reader spent 1% more time communicating instead of overthinking and overworking themselves this all probably could have been avoided LOL.
22k words
A/N: Thank you to everyone who has been patiently waiting for this (very belated) fic! I had so many different ideas for how this would go at first, and went a little overboard on the pinning ¯\_(ă)_/ÂŻ. Grab some popcorn for the ride!
1.
Fallen leaves swirl furiously in the autumn wind as Zayne tightens his grip on the reigns of his horse.Â
The mid-afternoon sun reflects the general's silhouette, shrouded in a military cloak, as he hugs a sandalwood food box tighter in his arms. Inside are his wife's favorite pastries, the oil-paper wrappings tied with red string, exuding the fragrant scent of jasmine.
"Follow close," his command rings to the rest of the party, its tone as cold as cedar.
"Yes, sir." Greyson calls, urging his horse faster as the battle report from the defense line on the northern border of Anlan rustles in his bag. The general was in a rush to return, riding day and night from the front lines, having successively captured Tong county, just to surprise his wife.
Zayne stops at the street corner opposite the main entrance of the Anlan prefecture court. In the northern continent, women were rarely involved in public affairs, let alone any governing branch. However, the Anlan territory had only been established in the last few years, and most of its power came from the agriculture and trade routes running through the northern borders. You were the eldest daughter of the most prominent merchant family from the capital, whose last name carried influence and protection critical for stability in the area. Hence, when Zayne was asked to choose a wife soon after he was instated the governor of the land, your name was at the top of the pile of offers received, over princesses and other royal family connections.Â
Since you were young, your dream was to follow in your father's footsteps, refusing to be another "sophisticated" young lady, locked away in her chambers until she was wed. Your father, aghast at first, eventually learned to appreciate your sharp eye for business, and it was only under his irrefutable stance against staunch opposition that you were allowed to open your own store fronts and expand the family business.Â
More than three years ago, on the stormy night you left for Anlan with your new husband, your dear father, fearing unrest in the newly established northern province, secretly entrusted the reins of the northern trade routes to you.Â
Zayne specifically instructed that your identity not be revealed within the Chamber of Commerce and on official records. Though your abilities were undeniable, it would not be able to withstand public criticism. He didn't want competing families to accuse your house of using his power to gain prominence, when in reality, it was the other way around.
As the flickering golden lanterns cast shadow across the grand building, your striking figure emerges from behind the large, bronze doors.Â
Greyson calls to Zayne, who is in the middle of reviewing documents. "General, the lady is leaving. Should we call her back?"
Zayne looks up and says coldly, "Wait."
His gaze follows your back. Your apricot robes brush lightly across the snowy floor of the courtyard. As you reach the exit, he sees the young man following behind you offer his arm as leverage as you cross the doorstep.Â
He recognizes the man as Rafayel, the youngest son of the Qi family, an ancient house known for their patronage of the arts. He says something intelligible, and you raise your eyebrows as if replying, "you're so clever".Â
Below the steps, the horseman opens the front drape of the palanquin. Rafayel's right hand, gloved in deerskin, protects the top of your head. You get into the seat first, pearl earrings swaying in the cold breeze.Â
Rafayel takes the reins of his horse from the squire behind, falling into step beside you.Â
Greyson takes a sharp breath, internally screaming at the horseman as he watches you take off, "what kind of staff are you?! Not a semblance of proper judgement for the lady of the house?!"Â
Zayne's knuckles are blue and white from gripping his brush.Â
"General, should I go stop them?"
"No need. Back to the mansion."Â
The sandalwood food box rattles softly on the bumpy return journey. Zayne's head is bowed the whole time, face obscured by shadow, his expression unreadable. Greyson, smelling the sweet aroma of jasmine pastries, dares not to say a word.Â
Twilight climbs over the fence of the Li mansion as the gate opens for the return of the master.Â
"General Li, you're back ahead of time!"Â
Housekeeper Yvonne, dressed in a dark green gown, greets him with a smile, bowing as she takes his military cloak. "The kitchen is preparing dinner. The lady said she would be back for dinner before she left this morning."Â
Zayne nods, "I brought back some swallow nests."Â
"I'll take them to the kitchen right away! They'll be ready for the Lady when she returns."Â
"I'll be in my study".
Upon Greyson hauling the entire bag of military and governing documents onto his study table, Zayne waves his hand, indicating he is to be left alone.
He looks out the window at the magnolia trees in the courtyard.Â
When he last left Anlan, it was early spring. The magnolias were in full bloom, crystal clear and white, like snow and lotus. You were standing with him under the trees, admiring the flowers.
Now, as he returns, it is nearly winter.Â
Before opening the large bag of files, Zayne glances at the painting in frame. The first lunar new year the two of you celebrated together. You wore a red dress, smiling brightly, holding his arm.Â
Yvonne comes in moment later with a tea tray. A celadon teacup sits on the corner of the table, steam rising, the fresh harvest of Tieguanyin leaves floating on top.
At 7:15, Yvonne pours the first cup of tea.
âThe Lady is usually home by now,â she comments. âGeneral Li, should we send someone to the court to check?â
âNo need,â Zayne replies without looking up.
At 8:00, the bells ring, signaling evening. Yvonne adds tea for the second time.
âGeneral, the Lady could be held up by something. Would you like to eat first?"
âNo rush.â Zayne reviews the military supplies list, the tip of his wolfhair brush sweeping across the documents.
At 9:00 sharp, the bells chime for the second time. Another half hour later, Yvonne enters again, slowly this time.Â
âGeneral⊠the Madam is backâŠshe said she has already eaten.â
His brush stills, ink bleeding into the page. Zayne leans back in his chair, the wood creaking softly.
"Where is she?"
Usually at this time, the sound of your boots clicking on the floor would grow louder as they approach.
You normally greet him faster than Yvonne. Before you even appear, your voice precedes your arrival; he can see you excitedly push open the door, hearing you sweetly call "Zayne!" and then let you throw yourself into his arms saying, "I missed you so much."
But you didn't appear.
"Madam went back to her room to rest. She said she spent the whole day at the administrative building checking accounts and is very tired." Yvonne pauses, then asks hesitantly, "The food is still warm. Would you like to go to the dining room?"
The thunk of the brush's handle hitting the table stands out in the heavy silence of Zayne's study. He stands up, "I'll be there shortly".
The sound of his military boots clapping against the bamboo halls is deep and powerful.
The lamps in the corridor hall cast Zayne's long shadow onto the doorway, just enough to cover your handmaid as she hurriedly leaves the room.
She carries the sandalwood food box in her hands, the oil-paper package inside untouched, the red string that tied it together hanging loosely, like a thread of fate that was severed.Â
Noticing his gaze, the maid looks troubled.Â
"G-general Li! The Lady said the pastries were too sweet⊠s-she can't stand the taste anymoreâŠ"
2.Â
Zayne pushes the sliding door open, seeing the person he had been longing for sitting with her back to him, facing the dressing table. Your figure swayed with the candlelight as he looks through the beaded curtain hanging from the doorway. The dressing mirror reflects your movements as you wipe rouge from your lips with a silk handkerchief.
"You're back."
You don't turn around, calm voice revealing little joy at your husband's safe return from the front lines.
"New roads along the northeast trade routes were completed - the journey was greatly shortened." Zayne stops behind you.
You clear the surface of your dresser, putting away a gardenia hairpin into your makeup box. "I saw in the report that you undermined a riot set up by rebels and had a decisive victory."
"Hmm. The news traveled faster than expected." He places his palms on your shoulders, lifting one hand to gently stroke your hair. "I didn't receive any letters from you this time."
"The war is urgent, I was afraid of disturbing you, general," you reply smoothly.
In the past, Zayne would receive letters from you without fail, and he would always dismiss everyone from his tent as he opens the envelope.
The smooth paper would smell of pine and musk. You send them with a sprig of evergreen tucked inside, saying they would refresh him. At the end of each letter would be a drawing of a little figure with a pink flower in their hair and a smiling face. You said this little figure represented you. The letters are short, but the sentiment is deep, mere words insufficient to express the full depth of your longing.Â
At the crack of dawn before the start of a battle, Zayne would take out your letters and read them repeatedly, his finger tracing the ink as if caressing a face hundreds of miles away. He would imagine the expressions and feelings you had when you wrote each word before carefully folding the letter and placing it in the inner pocket of his armor, close to his heart.
"Hmmm," Zayne's fingers curl slightly around a lock of your hair. He has no choice but to accept your words.Â
You change the subject as you close your jewelry case. "Have you eaten yet?"
"No," sensing your lack of interest in conversation, Zayne's voice lowers. "Come with me."
"I thought Yvonne informed you that I already ate."
"There's swallow nest soup for you in the kitchen." His icy fingertips graze the back of your neck.
You shudder, turning your head slightly to avoid his touch. "I'm already full."
"Come keep me company." Zayne leans down, hands bracing against the edge of your dressing table, trapping you between it and his chest. The silver buckle of his belt presses against the small of your back, the coldness of the metal seeping through your robe sends a shiver down your spine.
You try not to look at your overlapping figures reflected in the mirror as you continue to remove your earrings. "I'm tired, Zayne. Hurry and go eat, don't keep Yvonne and the others waiting."Â
Zayne's nose grazes your neck, jaw tightening for a moment as he faintly detects a scent that wasn't yours. He stares at the shadow cast by your eyelashes before brushing his nose against your earlobe, pink from your fiddling with the earrings.
"Zayne, you should go." You struggle slightly to leave his grasp, but he only tightens his arms around you, chin now resting on top of your head. He repeats firmly, "stay with me."Â
3.
Zayne's slender fingers hold a jade spoon, stirring rock sugar into a porcelain bowl filled with swallow's nest soup before pushing it towards you. The steam rising from the bowl creates a hazy filter, blurring the once familiar face sitting across the table.Â
He picks up silver chopsticks and begins to eat.Â
You lower your eyes, staring blankly at the translucent snow swallow. It is thick and syrupy, no doubt of the highest quality. You unconsciously keep stirring the spoon, its soft, tinkling sounds filling the silence between you.
Zayne finally breaks the emptiness.
"How have you been these past few months?"
"Thanks to your hard work, everything is good," you reply.
"What have you been up to these days?"
In the past, you would chatter to him excitedly, telling him all sorts of interesting news; but now, you only give him a perfunctory reply, "you know, the same old. Busy with the Chamber of Commerce matters."Â
The night wind infiltrates through a window slightly ajar. The cold breeze carries the scent of cedar and pine, ruffling the hairs around your ear.Â
Zayne raises his hand, stopping abruptly an inch from your temple. He gently tucks a stray hair behind your ear as you look at him with indifferent eyes.Â
Silence falls at the table once again.
You, having only eaten a few bites of the swallow nest as the soup grows cold, lean back in your chair and close your eyes in fatigue. The warm lanterns cast a trembling shadow across your face. Zayne watches you quietly, the wool fabric of his military coat wrinkling from his tight grip under the table.Â
As midnight approaches, you cough softly as Zayne's cool, cedar scent suddenly envelops you, feeling your back hit the sheets on your bed. "General, you must be exhausted from days of travel. You should rest early."
The arm around your waist pauses, then tightens. Zayne buries his face in your neck, breath carrying the chill of a thousand miles of wind.
"It's alright."
You press your hand tightly against the sash of your nightgown. "Zayne⊠can you spare me tonight?"
"I haven't been home in a long time. You told me it was cold and lonely in the bedchamber without me here, the quilt as cold as ironâŠ" his words burn your earlobe.
"T-that was a long time ago," you tilt your head, trying to curl into a defensive ball, but he draws you closer in his arms. "I was just joking!" your voice turns into a suppressed yelp as he nibbles at your collarbone.
"Zayne! Nngh, I'm tired."
Zayne's palms burn against your waist, softly rubbing the silk before moving down to your lower abdomen.
"I've been⊠cough⊠busy looking through the merchant guild's accounts⊠cough cough" tears well in your eyes as you try to catch your breath.
Zayne stops to help you sit up, pouring you a cup of warm water to bring to your lips.
"A cough?" he frowns, "I'll call the doctor tomorrow." He pulls your gown up, wrapping your figure tightly in the blankets.
"It's fine, I'll be better by tomorrow," you croak.
"Hmm⊠sleep."
The incense clock burns past 2am.
The elaborate brocade quilt builds a whole mountain range between you and Zayne. You're curled up into a ball, fast asleep on the far edge of the large bed.Â
Zayne's posture is perfect, lying straight on his back, hands folded across his abdomen as always. A faint sigh escapes his throat, betraying a trace of his emotions.
4.Â
Morning light streams into the room as you wake up.
Struggling to move, you freeze when you realize you have company. Zayne's arm is wrapped around your waist, holding you tightly in his embrace. His breath, still slightly groggy, brushes against the back of your neck, like the thin mist of early autumn. Despite the limited amount of time you have spent with your husband, you know this is highly unusual.Â
You gently nudge his chest with your elbow, trying to get up, but Zayne's arms tighten abruptly, pulling you back into his warm embrace.
"It's so late, why are you still here Zayne?" Usually, he would be at the military headquarters by now.Â
His chin brushes against the top of your head, his voice hoarse with the sound of early morning, "Just got back, wanted to sleep a little longer with you."
You turn to look into his half-closed eyes in disbelief. The autumn sun had just risen above the horizon, casting a hint of amber light on his dark pupils.
"Feeling better?" He asks.
"Yes. Zayne, I have to get up."
"It's still early, why aren't you sleeping?"
Zayne watches as the collar of your nightgown slips half an inch down, revealing the faint red kiss mark he had left on your collarbone the night before.
You feel your breath catch, "I have an appointment with the Secretary-General of the City Hall for morning tea."
"Let him wait." He suddenly rolls over, casting you into his shadow. "Sleep a little longer. I'm going to the military headquarters."
You silently watch his back as he gets out of bed, the sunlight outlining the smooth lines of his shoulders and back, like a meticulously painted mountain ridge.
You lie in bed for a bit longer, a whirlwind of emotions coursing through your head. Exhausted but unable to sleep, you finish dressing and call for breakfast.
The table is set with your favorite home-cooked dishes, but you have no appetite and only touch your chopsticks a few times.
"Madam, careful, it's still hot." Yvonne brings over a porcelain bowl steaming with hot water, the earthy aroma of snow fungus mingling with the sweetness of loquat and rock sugar. "The General ordered the kitchen to start cooking before dawn, and it's been simmering for two hours."
"âŠ" You sigh softly to yourself.
The porcelain spoon gleams amber in the bowl. You ask someone to fetch news of the latest updates from trade ledger and border situations, glancing at the rows of numbers and inventory as routine. You shuffle the papers to see the newest military report at the bottom of your stack.Â
Sunlight streams over the headline: news of yesterday's victory, that the army led from Anlan captured the last city in the northwest territories without a fight. From hereon out, all the cities through Tong county would be under the jurisdiction of Anlan. Â
Your eyes flicker slightly in confusion. So, even before the war was over, Zayne had already left the front lines to return?
Pushing the seed of discomfort down, you call for your handmaid to get ready. You have quite a few important meetings to go to today.Â
5.Â
Inside the Anlan Chamber of Commerce, delicate oil lamps illuminate the board meeting room, a circular table seating exactly thirteen elders of the most prominent trading groups. A harsh scoff leaves your lips as you flip listlessly through the thick stack of paper transactions in your hands.Â
Li Sheng, nephew of the current governor and owner of "Shengji Trading Company," speaks in a hoarse voice, his greasy face turning a deep purplish-red. "Is the Madam trying to cut off my livelihood?"
You close the ledger, the cover striking the sandalwood table with a dull thud, seemingly bringing this standoff to a close.
"The amount of overstated expenses over the past three years is enormous. Mr. Li should be thankful he's only being expelled."
The hall falls silent. The other eleven elders, seated in their armchairs, either sip tea or fiddle with their thumb rings, their expressions varied.
Li Sheng suddenly slams his fist on the table and stands up. "Over the years, I've served the Chamber of Commerce tirelessly; even if I haven't achieved anything, I've certainly put in the hard work!"
"Mr. Li's hard workâŠ" You open another ledger, your fingertip tracing the dense red circles, voice still calm, "âŠis it embezzling Chamber of Commerce funds to purchase a Western-style house in the west of the city and keeping more than a dozen concubines?"
Li Sheng's face instantly turns deathly pale.
You pick up your blue and white porcelain cup to take a sip of fresh longjing tea and continue, "Also, last month at the docks, you smuggled a batch of goods. That money was enough to buy 30% of the shops on East Street in the south of the city."
Gasps rise and fall in the council chamber. The elders exchange bewildered glances, their eyes filled with shock and complex emotions.
Li Sheng's purple clay teapot shatters on the floor with a crash, tea splashing everywhere. He roars, "Youâyou're slandering me! Without the support of us old businesses, how would a mere girl like you hold onto your position in this room?"
"Mr. Li," you smile lightly. "I am already saving you much face, considering your uncle is the governor of Anlan, by merely stripping your title of elder and not boycotting all your ships and goods altogether. Are you perhaps trying to involve customs and the police?"Â
Cold sweat pours down Li Sheng's neck, his gold teeth grinding together, but he couldn't utter a single word.
You put down your teacup and glance at everyone. "Gentlemen, those who agree to the expulsion, please raise your seals."
The elders exchange glances, none daring to speak out rashly.
"I agree," Rafayel, sitting on the lower left, is the first to raise his family seal.
With a representative from the Qi family, one of the most senior members of the Chamber of Commerce, having expressed his opinion, the others gradually follow suit.
Li Sheng slumps into his seat, his face ashen.
You gesture for the doorman to see the guest out, "Mr. Li, please."
The doorman steps forward, making a respectful but unyielding "please" gesture.
Li Sheng stands slowly, his steps unsteady. He reaches the door, and suddenly turns back, glaring at you with resentment.
His figure disappears outside the door, but the atmosphere inside the hall does not ease. The remaining elders bow their heads in thought, whispering among themselves, as if weighing something.
You reopen the ledger, "I urge everyone to work together and not let a few parasites ruin the foundation of the Northern trade guild."Â
Rafayel smiles lazily. "The Y/N Company is wise, we will certainly give our full support."
The other elders echo his sentiments.
6.Â
Greyson's hand, poised to push open the door to the General's office, freezes in mid-air.
The private room, which usually filled with faint smell of jasmine, is now steeped in an invisible, chilling atmosphere. On a small round table to the side, a porcelain liquor bottle is mostly empty.
The old horseman, whom Greyson had taken upon himself to call over today, feels a chill run down his spine. In his memory, this iron-fisted superior only ever drank tea instead of alcohol, even at military victory celebrations.
What's wrong? Could it be because of his wife? He wonders to himself, unable to think of anyone else besides his wife who could make the General act so strangely.
Greyson nods slightly to him, calling out, "General Li, Old Liu has arrived."
Zayne doesn't utter a single word, simply tilting his head to indicate acknowledgement of new company, his expression unreadable.
Horseman Liu knows the General doesn't have much time for him, so he chooses his words carefully.
"The lady manages the Chamber of Commerce well; her position in the council of elders has been unopposed. The other merchant families take her seriously now⊠they used to meet in the private rooms at the grand brothel in the red light district. The lady laid down conditions before she even entered the private room that next time, she'd like to discuss business in a quieter place. The singing and dancing downstairs give her a headache."
The embers of the lantern on Zayne's desk highlight his bloodshot eyes, making the horseman swallow hard.
"The lady doesn't touch a drop of alcohol, just a cup of jasmine tea. The merchant owners all rely on her family's connections; they wouldn't be stupid enough to urge her to drink." He stares at the pattern on the carpet, his voice tense.
"And all those old smokers are also well-behaved; no one dares to light one in front of the lady. They're all holding back."
Zayne's expression remains unchanged. He leans forward slightly, calloused fingers drumming lightly on the cedar table. The General's reaction is impossible to decipher, and the horseman dares not bring up anything else. He suddenly recalls a scene from half a month agoâ
You stood on the cargo ship's deck, the river wind ruffling your plain gray shawl. The box of pastries that Rafayel had personally delivered was given to the porters' children.
You commented:Â "Let him do what he wants; I'm just happy to have some peace and quiet."
He sighs inwardly. The General's wife always knew how to act with propriety.
"The lady is always busy with the trading company's affairs. Wives of high-ranking officials have sent her countless invitations, but she simply doesn't have time to go." He straightens his back, glancing at his superior's expression, but inwardly he feels a little uneasy.
7.
Last night, after escorting Madam back to the mansion, horseman Liu had a brief conversation with Greyson, who was waiting in the stables.
âThe war isnât over yet. I didnât know the General was rushing back to Anlan to see Madam today. She was originally going to return to the mansion at the usual time, but the owner of the largest perfume factory in the empire suddenly said he had time for a face-to-face meeting, so Madam had to change her plans. On the way there, Madam and the Qi family boy were discussing how to secure the cooperation. She left as soon as the deal was closed." Old Liu rambles on before stopping to catch his breath, a hint of annoyance bubbling as he looks up to see Greyson's unimpressed expression.
âWait, Greyson, are you interrogating a prisoner? Asking me so many questions.â
Greyson's gaze sharpened as he continues, âOne last question: Why hasnât Madam asked you to contact me to inquire about General Li's situation lately?â
In the past, whenever Zayne was away on military affairs, you'd worry that contacting him directly would interfere with important matters, so you would ask old Liu to contact Greyson, who travels with him. He would then report to the General and relay the situation from the border as instructed. But this time, old Liu only relayed the message that the Madam was doing well.
Greyson suspects perhaps it was your unusual behavior that prompted Zayne to readjust his battle plan, personally leading a night raid and swiftly capturing Shanwan, the third largest city in Tong county.
The supply route to Shanwan had already been cut off by the Anlan army; it was only a matter of time before they surrendered. Thus, after signing the transfer order and handing over related matters to Commander Jiang, General Li immediately set off for home.Â
"Madam said⊠she was afraid General Li would be distracted."
ââŠâ Greyson stares at him hard. âThen why did it take you so long to come back tonight?â
He couldnât help but recall Zayne's unusually cold and somber expression on the return trip.
Old Liu shrugs, âMadam said she felt dizzy and lightheaded after staying in the private room for so long, so she asked me to drive her to the docks for some fresh air. Then she went to her favorite bakery to buy some sweetsâŠâ
He suddenly stops, a dull thud sounding as he slaps the wooden fence, startling Greyson.
âWhat do you mean, Greyson? Are you doubting the Madam?â His voice, filled with anger, echoes in the empty garage.
âThatâs not what I meant!â Greyson quickly shakes his head, his tone rising in defense. âI just wanted to know if Madam is truly alright after General Li led the troops northâŠâ He pauses, his voice lowering slightly, ââŠis she really well?â
He knows very well that you are the person Zayne cared about most. Last night, when the old Liu told him that you haven't asked about Zayne's well-being because you were afraid of disturbing his work, he was immediately concerned. Was this unusual behavior hiding something?
âDonât mention itâŠyou have no idea how difficult it was for Madam to take over the Chamber of Commerce at the beginning.â Old Liu leans against the car, sighing. He looks up at the dark sky and slowly begins, âThose old bastards took advantage of their seniority, taking turns making things difficult for Madam, leaving her with countless messes. Once, they instigated a strike at the docks, and Madam dealt with it all night while running a high fever.â
As he speaks, he kicks at some gravel, the stones knocking against the iron chains, particularly jarring in the stables.
ââŠThey dared to treat Madam like that? Why havenât you mentioned it?â Greyson's voice rises, filled with anger. Zayne would be heartbroken if he knew.
âGeneral Li is at the front lines. Madam said the war is of utmost importance and she doesnât want him to have more things to worry about. She wonât let me mention anything bad, only reporting good news. Fortunately, everything was resolved later.â The horseman's expression holds helplessness mixed with admiration.
Already knowing what Greyson was going to say, he explains further, âMadam said that some things canât be settled with power and force alone; it requires people to willingly follow.â Greyson's shoes crunch on the weeds sprouting from the cracks in the ground.
âMadamâs efforts to win over the various families in the merchant guild were greatly aided by the Qi family. While its not their focus, the Qi's have been dabbling in trading for generations. The Madam isnât heartless; she canât just ignore them after theyâve supported her. But I can swear on my life, it's only a business transaction, nothing more.â
Greyson stays quiet, head bowed deep in thought.
8. Â
You return to your quarters after a long day, eating dinner alone as Yvonne mentions the General is still at the military headquarters, not likely returning home tonight.
Only the sound of wind rustling through the leaves could be heard in the distance. Walking through the long corridor back to your chambers, you stop for a moment to look up at the crescent moon: sharp, bright, and clear against the cloudless night sky. You force a smile from between your teeth.
This is how it is supposed to be like, you remind yourself.
Zayne was never the one for superfluous formalities. Even your wedding was not publicly announced anywhere in the capital; just a simple, solemn ceremony in front of both sets of parents, and your name added to the Li family registry.
When you first married him, you were still young, optimistic, and naive, not understanding the severity and responsibility that came with the title "Lady of Anlan".
The night your father sat with you until dawn, breaking down the different accounts, ledgers, business partners, and adversaries your family faced up north, you felt a fog lift from in front of your eyes. You had vastly underestimated the criticality of your union, as well as the danger you were being put into.
On the arduous journey up north, your handmaids complained about the harsh conditions and insufficient rest, often quarreling with Greyson or another one of Zayne's subordinates about the nerve they had to not adjust their travels plans at all for the new lady of the house. You were too sheltered, too coddled, too precious to be treated like any one of his soldiers.Â
Inside your carriage, bamboo seats were cushioned with fur and draped with layers of warm fabrics. You watch as Zayne dismounts his horse to discuss the next leg of the journey with his men. There is no time (nor place) to stop for meals in the middle of the day, with the next town to rest at still many more hours away. You silently pick at the flatbread in front of you, offering a portion of dried fruits and nuts to your handmaids. Their gasps of excitement and "thank you's" barely cross your mind.
Your "husband" has barely talked to you at all since leaving the capital. If you didn't know better, you'd think you were a piece of cargo he was instructed to bring up to Anlan.
As calls rise from outside to pick up the reins again, a harsh knock sounds on the door. Your maid opens it, and to your surprise, Greyson is outside, holding a small box of wax paper. He just about throws the package over, muttering something that sounded like "The General had this prepared for you... forgot about it" before disappearing back into the crowd.Â
Curious, you unwrap the layers of wax... to find a pile of candies. Unable to resist, you carefully try one. The flavor of honey and jasmine floods your mouth, nearly overwhelming your tastebuds with its sweetness after days of bland food. Your eyes widen, wondering where in the world Zayne got his hands on sweets since leaving the capital.
You lean out the small window, feeling the cold air brush your hair and cool your warm face. The shadow of Zayne's figure is tall and straight, marching ever steadily forward towards the north.
Your father's words ring in your ears: "I will be informing the traders guild about my relinquishment of the northern business to you, but not about your position as the General's wife. You will have enough targets on your back once you reach Anlan as a trader. I don't want you to be swept up in political turmoil."Â
After arriving in Anlan, Zayne settles you comfortably into his residence, informing all of his staff and servants of your new status. He doesn't bat an eye when you told him of your wish to join the Chamber of Commerce, even offering to keep your relationship a secret outside of the house. He leaves for the front lines barely a few weeks later.
You remember the nervousness and fear in your body as you help him fasten his armor. His large palm, while not warm, grasps your fingers tightly, almost as if wanting to comfort you.
"If you need anything," his low voice carries a hint of warmth, "don't hesitate to let me know."
The rational part of your brain finds the thought amusing, as if you'd ask anything of him while he's fighting for his life at the whims of the empire.
But the last thing he says before he leaves stuns you: "Don't wait for me. If anything happens, I've made sure that you'll be well taken-care of, whether it is here or back home."Â
You write him many letters.Â
And so, your relationship for the past nearly three years has stayed like this: You finding your footing as the only woman in the Chamber of Commerce while Zayne comes home for a few months at most out of the year. Sometimes, in the midst of your work, you momentarily forget that you're even married, but as you return to the Li residence at the end of the day, waves of longing crash into your chest, suffocating you at night until you hear the thumps of horse hooves and the distinct jingling of bells on Zayne's reins, reassuring you that your husband is safe and has come back to you.
You sigh at yourself, shaking your head as you think of your childish behaviors from before.
Your marriage was built on a strict partnership, a joining of political and economic factors. Years of living in the north showed you the grit and discipline it took to stabilize this area; yet Zayne does it with such practiced ease. If Zayne's character is what lends him the title of "Lord of Anlan," nothing less should be expected from the Lady. There is no place in your marriage for playing house; all you needed was to honor your role in securing business and protecting the trade going through Anlan, while Zayne served as its protector.
Knowing Zayne, you wouldn't have expected anything less from him on keeping his side of the deal. As for your own selfish desires, you shouldn't have dared to yearn for anything more.
While your seat at the table of elders was settled, new problems continue to arise. Li Cui, the current governor, has been imposing heavy taxes on all the civilians while his tyranny and corruption runs rampant. You knew that Li Sheng, having his uncle's support wasn't going to back down without a fight.
You're an experienced negotiator now, your time in the north having sharpened your intellect and methods. You have a nagging feeling that the disruptions at the borders may have something to do with all of this. It's a headache to process. The last thing you wanted was to get Zayne in hot waters because of the trade arguments. This was the battle you signed up to fight yourself, and you realize with a shudder that your father's words were correct: involving yourself in the trade wars with the position as the General's wife would only put yourself into even more danger, whether as a political pawn, or worse, a bargaining chip against Zayne.
Perhaps Zayne already believed that your prolonged solitude and the burden of single-handedly managing the crisis here had sown seeds of resentment, and that you gradually no longer needed him. This misunderstanding was like a fog, shrouded in unspeakable bitterness and a subtle sense of relief, making it impossible for you to discern the boundaries of your emotions. You should be grateful for his interpretation, it's better than the sudden acts of affection he's been showing, out of guilt no doubt for leaving you here. Yet your heart aches with something that feels like remorse.
Zayne's care has always been like this: silent and still like a vast glacier, yet omnipresent like the boundless earth, indulging your willfulness, supporting your ambition, allowing you to grow freely without worry. But now, it seems that this unreserved trust and tolerance has become your most insurmountable obstacle.Â
9.
Before your eyes can adjust to the dim lighting of your bedchambers, a tall figure looms behind you, carrying a familiar, slightly cool scent.
Your heart skips a beat, and you softly call out, "Zayne?"
Before you can finish speaking, you spin around and bump into Zayne's arms. Your back hits the cool wall, and he holds you tightly with one arm, the other protecting the back of your head, his movements gentle yet allowing no escape.
Zayne leans down, resting his forehead on your shoulder, his 6' feet frame awkwardly curled up, as if surrendering himself completely to you.
The unfamiliar, bitter smell of alcohol mixes with the crisp scent of cedarwood and assaults your sensesâ Zayne has been drinking?!
His nose buries in the collar of your overcoat, his voice low and husky: "Headache," he mutters as his cool lips brush lightly against your carotid artery, sending a tingling sensation through you.
"Headache?" Your first instinct is to massage his temples as usual to ease his discomfort, but your hand freezes in mid-air.
"Mmm," Zayne responds softly, his disheveled bangs brushing against your neck, causing a ticklish sensation.
You finally curl your fingertips, letting your nails dig into your palms.
He suddenly releases all his pressure, pressing his entire weight onto you.
"...You're too heavy." You bend your elbows against his chest, trying to create some distance between your bodies, but he grabs both your wrists with one hand, easily lifting them above your head.
Zayne's strength isn't oppressive, but it carries an irresistible force, wanting to hold you firmly while being afraid of hurting you.
Only then do you notice he isn't wearing his military uniform, but a silk shirt. The soft, smooth fabric clings to his muscular chest, gleaming faintly in the moonlight.
To where is he expecting to go wearing that� A question arises in your mind, but it is interrupted by his next action.
Zayne's nose brushes against your brow again, his warm breath on your face. You turn your head away, your voice tinged with helplessness, "Zayne, let goâŠ" The next moment, a cool kiss lands on your lips with a nibbling force. His tongue licks away the rouge from your lips, prying open your teeth, and chasing after your tongue.
The lingering aroma of strong liquor mingles with the floral scent of your lipstick, creating an indescribable bitterness and astringency.
How much did he have to drink? You wonder, no wonder he says he has a headache.
Zayne's usual demeanor is overly stable, giving the illusion that he only ever has calm and resolute emotions. But tonight, he seems pushed to the brink of losing control by some unseen force.
You slightly open your eyes, your gaze falling on Zayne's trembling eyelashes, still immersed in the kiss. They cast soft shadows on his eyelids like fine fans.
Zayne is always restrained, rarely drinking, let alone getting drunk.
You feel a mix of emotions: nervousness, confusion, guilt, but also discomfort.
You understand that this unusual behavior stems from your overly obvious change in attitude toward him. While he may not love you, it must be jarring to see such behavior from a spouse. But this is Zayne... He was the one who proposed this arrangement in the first place; what difference would your attitude make?Â
You know Zayne too well; asking him will only result in silence.
He habitually seals all his true emotions beneath the icy depths of his eyes, like a silent iceberg, always revealing only his calmest side. He will never proactively ask why you are being cold to him. Perhaps before returning to Anlan, he can still convince himself, believing that you simply don't want to distract him on the front lines. However, your indifference upon his return makes it impossible for him to deceive himself any longer.
Once upon a time, his deliberately maintained distances, evasive glances, and cold responses were like fine needles, silently piercing your heart.
Do your actions now also cause him such torment and pain?Â
In the past, your heart would already be aching just thinking of this. But now, reason suppresses emotion, and the calm lake of your heart remains undisturbed.
You close your eyes tightly, casting aside those inappropriate thoughts.
10.
The other side of your bed is cold and empty when you wake up at dawn. While a little disappointed, you understand. Even you're not quite sure how to face Zayne at the moment. To your surprise, Zayne did not go to the military quarters today. Instead, he took meetings in his study, the hallway busy with the footsteps of various messengers and commanders.Â
You don't see a glimpse of Zayne until he returns (sober this time) close to midnight, the sound of the wooden door creaking immediately waking you from a restless sleep. Figuring you weren't getting any rest anyhow, you light the candles by the bedside and take out some ledgers to read as you wait for him to wash himself.
When Zayne comes back, he sits on the edge of the bed, looking down at you. "Where do you want to go tomorrow? I'll go with you." His cool voice holds a hint of apology for waking you, like a night breeze rippling across a lake.
You look up at him, your fingertips lightly grazing the edge of a page, and reply in a hoarse voice, "I'm very busy. And the General is... someone I can't be seen with in public. What if people find out?"
When he first arrived with you in Anlan, Zayne, fearing for your safety, refused to disclose your relationship. Unexpectedly, this became your excuse, coming back to haunt him.
His cold eyes flicker slightly as he gazes at you, trying to discern from your subtle expression whether your words are a joke or genuine.
A moment later, Zayne says, "You said we'd be fine at long as we're careful."
He clearly remembers how you playfully shook his arm last autumn, trying to persuade him to go to the lantern festival with you. "Zayne, it's alright, we'll wear masks! Worst case scenario is that you're found out to have married a merchant's daughter. I don't care what they think."
But now you chuckle, a hint of wariness in your smile. He still treats you as a child! "Things are different now." You pause, then change the subject. "The military isn't without its problems, is it? I saw in the newspaper that there have been bandits causing trouble around Shanwan."
Zayne's expression hardens. "The banditry is being dealt with; there's no need to worry."
You hum in agreement, "Good. The General should focus on military affairs; don't worry about me."
"What are you looking at?" He suddenly leans in close, his low voice burning against your ear.
A spare drop of water escapes his hair, sliding down your neck and into your collar, sending a slight shiver down your spine.
Your fingertips unconsciously tighten around the edge of the document. "The documents for tomorrow's bidding meeting." You try to keep your voice steady, but a slight tremor escapes it.
"Hmm." Zayne responds briefly, his tone languid after his shower. "Have you seen the new dresses I brought for you? Do you like them?" His voice is flat, but you shudder as his breath grazes your ear.Â
"I saw them, they're very beautiful." You answer softly, your gaze fixed on the paper in front of you, but you can no longer make out the words as the light is suddenly blocked from your line of vision.
Zayne retreats from your personal space and instead moves to face you.
He looks down at you, his voice still cold and deep. "I'll go with you tomorrow." It isn't a suggestion, but a declaration.
A simple white sleeping robe hangs loosely around Zayne's waist, water droplets rolling down his bulging chest muscles, leaving glistening trails between his various cuts and scars.
You know he is referring to the bidding meeting, but at this moment, his presence is too intense, somewhat affecting your normal thinking.
"No need. You didn't go to the military headquarters today, and seeing all those commanders came to the mansion... There must be many important matters that the General needs to handle..." Your voice trails off as you notice his gaze growing colder.
Zayne suddenly leans over, kneeling before you, his long fingers gripping your chin and forcing you to meet his gaze.
"I said, I'll go with you."
His fingertips are cool, yet they make your body burn.
"Zayne, really, there's no need, someone will go with me tomorrow..."
Someone? Who? Rafayel?
Your next words are cut short as Zayne suddenly snatches the documents from your hands, the pages scattering on the floor like feathers. The next second, he grabs you by the nape of your neck and you're being slammed into the mattress, his burning kiss carrying a punitive undertone. Zayne's tongue pries your teeth open, conquering every soft inch, as if to unleash some unspeakable emotion.
11.
How can Zayne tell you that he is insanely jealous?
Seeing Rafayel with you outside the Chamber of Commerce building his first night back, he knew deep down that what the two of you had was only professional camaraderie and nothing more. But rationalizing it was one thing, while controlling his surging jealousy was another.
Cumulatively, in the nearly 18 months he has been away from Anlan, Rafayel got to work with you almost daily. He had the luxury of seeing your focused expression as you work at your desk, hearing your soft voice discuss plans⊠It is perfectly normal for him to be attracted to your intelligence and wit. Just imagining that person perhaps tenderly draping a coat over you while you nap, gazing at your sleeping face with adoration, makes Zayne's temples throb; envy burns fiercely.
For you, he can temporarily tolerate that person approaching you under the guise of business, but his patience was already being stretched to its limit, ready to snap at any moment. If one day a hint of concern beyond that of a colleague flickers in your eyes when you look him, or if he dares to overstep the bounds even slightlyâ
Zayne can't guarantee how long he can maintain this façade of civilized conformity.
Actually, he should blame himself the most.
Why did he leave you alone in Anlan? If he had kept you by his side⊠Zayne can almost picture it: You reading quietly beside him while he reviews documents, precisely taking inventory while he inspects the military camp, offering your soft lips as prize upon his victorious returnâŠ
He should have disregarded everything and kept you by his side, watching over you day and night. Then he wouldn't be tormented by jealousy now, his mind wouldn't be consumed by those dark thoughts.
Today there's Rafayel Qi, but who knows if there are others secretly coveting you, or worse, people not as honorable as the Qi boy? What might happen in the future?
Zayne's eyes darken. His hand gripping the back of your neck tightens unconsciously, his kiss deepening and intensifying, almost brutally seizing your breath, as if trying to meld you into his very bones.
Sometimes, he truly wants to lock you away in the deepest recesses of the Li mansion, never letting anyone see even a glimpse of you.
When does such a crazy thought arise in someone usually so calm and composed?
He never imagined he could love someone so deeply⊠When he sees the infatuated gazes others cast upon you, those dark thoughts gnaw at him like an insidious infection. You are the most precious flower he carefully nurtured and cherished. Why can't you bloom only for him? He knows how absurd and shameful his thoughts were, but when faced with you, reason could never prevail over his emotions. You are the source of all his desires, the object of his heart's longing, and the direction he moves towards.Â
"ZayneâŠ" you gasp for breath between his lips.
Zayne regains his senses slightly and releases his grip. The turmoil within him shows no trace on his face. He simply looks at you calmly, wiping the moisture from your lips with his fingertips, his voice low and husky: "You really want the Chamber of Commerce people to go with you?"
You blink, puzzled. "The textile factory is my own business. I'll go with the old factory director and a few managers."
"..." Zayne pauses for a moment, his dark eyes fixed on you. "The military won't stop functioning just because I'm gone."
The implication is clear: he will definitely be with you tomorrow.
Your lips are slightly numb. You purse them and mutter softly, "But Zayne is the backbone of Anlan... some matters can only be handled by you."
Zayne reaches out and ruffles your hair. "Anlan's military system is very sound, with a well-established emergency response mechanism. Even if something were to happen to me one day, everything will be fine." His tone is calm, as if stating a completely ordinary fact.
Your face pales at the words, and you instinctively grab his arm. "Zayne, how could you say that?! Quick, say pei pei pei to take it back!"Â
Zayne's gaze flickers. Seeing you like a frightened fawn, your wet eyes brimming with panic, a faint, wicked sense of pleasure spreads through him uncontrollably.
"Zayne, say it quickly!" Your voice trembles with urgency. "Nothing can happen to you!"
"Hmm. Pei pei pei." Zayne genuinely follows your words, a faint, tender tone at the end. His thumb gently traces your tense jawline, feeling your breathing gradually slow.
You let out a long sigh, your tense body relaxing.
"You're worried about me?" Zayne asks calmly, the glacier in his eyes already melting into spring water.
"The General is too important to Anlan" You reply quickly, your eyes darting around, avoiding his gaze. Your hand is instantly grasped by him, his rough, calloused fingertips rubbing against your delicate digits.
"And what about to you?"
The direct question makes your breath catch in your throat.
The instant you lowered your eyes, Zayne could tell that you were running away again. He knows these little gestures of yours all too well.
Never mind. He sighs softly to himself. He doesn't want to push you too hard. Silly baby. Just asking a hypothetical question, and you're almost in tears.
It's alright. He has plenty of patience to wait for you to open your heart to him again.
12.
As promised, Zayne accompanies you on the way to your appointment the next day. It takes a shocking amount of coaxing and a peck on his cheek to get him to stay in the carriage instead of walking you into the hall himself.Â
Dusk approaches outside the window as your negotiations finally come to a close.Â
You answer each of the technical questions with professional and concise descriptions, subtly pursing your lips into a barely suppressed smile as you see the suppliers exchange glances and nod in satisfaction. You know your chances of winning this deal is high.Â
By the time you exit the large gates, only the last vestiges of orange-red remain on the horizon.
Under the sycamore trees, your carriage awaits.
Old Liu quickly steps forward and opens the door for you. You bend down and get in.
âWas the bidding meeting successful?â Zayneâs voice is still cold and deep, but you detect a subtle concern within it.
âIt went quite smoothly.â You lean back, tense nerves finally relaxing. âOur samples and quotes are very competitive, and the review panel seems quite satisfied.â
You glance at him, deliberately emphasizing your words. âZayne, donât interfere. I want to secure this order fair and square.â
Zayneâs expression is calm, but his tone reveals a hint of pride. âOkay. I wonât interfere.â
You gaze at the fluttering sycamore leaves outside the window, mentally calculating several details of the bidding project.
Zayne suddenly takes a document from his sleeve and hands it to you. âTake a look at this.â
You take the document, and as soon as you read the first page, you are immediately drawn to the detailed data: It lists the climate characteristics of the various military units stationed in the Eastern Military Region, the annual temperature logs and humidity variation.
Further on, there is even a comparative analysis of the wear and tear rates of different military branchesâ uniforms. Each set of data is stamped with different colored seals to distinguish key points, the organization astonishingly clear.
âZayne, whatâs thisâŠ?â You look up at him, puzzled.
âThe Eastern Military Region is about to launch a new round of bidding for military supplies and uniforms.â
Your eyes widen slightly. âAs far as I know, their supplier has always been Anlan Textile.â A renowned leading enterprise in the textile industry, backed by the full support of the capital's government.
âThis order is too big; Anlan Textile alone won't be able to handle it,â Zayne explains simply. âThe Eastern army will expand by two divisions this year.â
You hesitate, glancing at the paper in you hands. âZayne, isnât giving me this⊠against regulations?â Although you are thrilled with this opportunity, your professional ethics compel you to ask.
Zayneâs expression remains unchanged. âItâs just to let you understand the clientâs needs in advance.â He pauses, then adds, âBut you have to return it to me after you read it. This does count as confidential military intel.â
Hearing the seriousness in his tone, you canât help but chuckle. He is clearly indulging you, yet pretending to emphasize discipline. Considering your textile factory's current situation, you decide to accept the offer.
âOkay,â you reply, carefully placing the documents into your file. âThank you, Zayne."Â
âNo need to thank me for such a small matter.â Zayne closes his eyes, but you can hear the displeasure in his tone at the formalities.
ââŠIâm thanking you on behalf of the factory workers, Zayne.â
13.
A vermilion screen partitions the inner side of the private room into a secluded space in the restaurant that Zayne brings you to. He sits in the main seat, outer coat removed, revealing crisp black robes that accentuate his broad shoulders and narrow waist, the jade pendant you gifted him for your first anniversary hanging from his belt catching your eye as the only pop of color.Â
âZayne, have you ordered?â You sit down in the chair he pulls out for you.
He doesnât answer. Instead, he pours tea into the cup in front of you. Steam swirls between you, creating a hazy mist.
The freshly served Longjing shrimp are arranged exquisitely on the porcelain plate, the emerald green tea leaves contrasting beautifully with the pinkish-white shrimp, carrying the aroma of a fresh harvest.
âTry it.â Zayne scoops a full spoonful into your bowl.
You pick up a shrimp and put it in your mouth, its sweetness and freshness washing over your taste buds. âThe shrimp is very tender.â
He then places a few more of your favorite dishes on your plate.
As the meal progresses, a sudden crash of shattering porcelain erupts outside the door, followed by drunken shouts.
Your chopsticks hover for a second, your brow furrowing slightly.
Zayne remains composed, carefully placing the tenderest piece of meat from under the gills of a yellow croaker into your bowl. He then calmly says to Greyson behind the screen, âGo and see.â
Greyson responds and goes out, returning a moment later. Remembering what the horseman told him a few days ago, his face darkens considerably at the sight.
âReporting to General Li, itâs Deputy Director Xiong of the Municipal Court, drunk and trying to barge in.â He pauses, his tone hesitant. âHe says he wants the Madam-â
âLady Y/N has quite the airs!â
Greyson's report is abruptly cut off by a roar. Your wrist trembles as you nearly spill the hot tea in your cup.
âFirst you say something comes up and you canât make it, then you say you have a headache and leaveâŠÂ Iâll see what excuse you have left tonight!â
The veins in Zayne's hand slightly bulge as he holds silver chopsticks. He looks up at you, his eyes frosty. âLooks like this isnât the first time you've crossed paths."
ââŠ.â You lower your eyes, silent.
âCome here,â he says in a deep voice.
You hesitate for a moment, then stand up. Just as you reach his side, he pulls you onto his lap.
You can feel the cold from the jade pendant pressing against your lower back through your dress. You tense slightly, letting him hold you.
Footsteps approach from outside, and the crude shouts become clearer.
âLet him in,â Zayneâs voice is like ice cutting through water.
Greyson bows and withdraws.
Without guards outside the entrance, the silhouette of a large, swaying figure is quickly seen through the screen.
âEver since the Lady stepped into this restaurant, she hasnât escaped my watchful eyeâŠâ A rough, raspy voice, reeking of alcohol, echoes through the air. âSo, youâve been hiding here having an affair? Shouldnât you do me the honor of accepting a drink? This shot of baijiu should do it.â
Crashâ
The sandalwood screen is kicked over, and a fat man with a dark-red face staggers in. The belt of his fur coat has loosened, revealing a wrinkled white robe underneath. A short blade hangs askew at his hip, bouncing against his thigh with his swaying belly.
Zayne doesnât even lift his gaze. His slender fingers hold a silver spoon, carefully spreading golden crab roe onto a meatball.
You freeze, feeling the arms around your waist tighten even more, the pendant digging painfully into your sacral spine.
Someone like Deputy Director Xiong doesn't even have the rank to be in the presence of the General. Naturally, he doesn't realize that the man before him is has influence over the military, political, and business circles of the entire Northern Territories.
He stands arrogantly in the center of the private room. âHow high and mighty the newest addition to the circle of elders actsâ He glances at the you, who, after his repeated failed attempts to woo, now obediently nestles on a strangerâs lap, and sneers sarcastically, âSheâs still making money while lying in a manâs arms.â
The silver spoon suddenly strikes the edge of a porcelain plate, producing a clear clink.
Zayne lifts his eyelids, his gaze cold, but his voice as indifferent as if ordering tea.
âTeach him manners.â
Greyson, who has been waiting at the door, can no longer contain himself. He strides forward, his iron first gripping the back of Deputy Director Xiongâs collar and yanking him sharply.
The dull thud of the sheath of his long sword slamming against the back of the disruptor's knee rings out simultaneously with the thunderstorm outside the window.
Deputy Director Xiong screams and falls to the ground, the liquor bottle in his hand clattering to the floor. He trembles as he reaches for his blade, cursing, âDamn it! Do you know who I amââ
Greyson's boot grinds down on his wrist, the cold tip of his blade pressed against his neck, instantly choking the foul words in his throat.
Deputy Director Xiong, his eyes blurry with drunkenness, sizes up Zayneâs handsome face, impeccable attire, and composed demeanor, mistaking him for just a rich and powerful playboy. Contempt flashes in his eyes.
âBrother, Iâm from the Courthouseâ His fleshy face twitches, his cloudy eyes fixed on your cheek pressed against the manâs chest, grinning recklessly. âDonât let a woman ruin your reputation here, Iâll send you a few pretty girls who know how to serve you laterâŠâ
Before he can finish, Zayne slightly tilts his chin at Greyson while simultaneously raising his hand to cover your eyes, his warm palm pressing down through your eyelashes.
Smashâ!
The sound of a bottle shattering echoes through the private room.
âAhh!â Deputy Director Xiong screams, grabbing at his right hand. He collapses onto the ground before falling silent.
The smell of blood mixes with alcohol in the air. Having vaguely guessed what happened, you instinctively snuggle closer to Zayne, hearing a whisper above you.
âItâs alright.â
You blink under his palm. He thinks you are scared, patting your back gently and slowly. He's unaware that you're actually secretly wishing you could go kick the man a couple more times.
Outside, a sudden downpour pounds against the windowpane. Large raindrops pelt the glass. Hurried footsteps echo in the corridor, leather shoes tapping frantically on the marble floor.
Mayor Jiang rushes around the corner, freezing as he sees the scene, his pupils shrinking sharply. Two guards drag the unconscious Deputy Director Xiong, who lies like a tattered sack, out of the private room. His limbs slam against the floor with a dull thud, leaving a trail of blood on the carpet.
Who dares to be so audacious as to injure a municipal official like this in the city?
Seeing another man in military uniform kick the large manâs ribs twice more from the shadows of the corridor, Mayor Jiang instinctively takes a half-step back, his lower back hitting a wooden shelf holding a vase.
The clinking of porcelain startles the tall man guarding the door of the private room. When the manâs sharp gaze sweeps over, the mayor gaspsâ
It is clearly vice-commander Guan, who works alongside General Li.
At last yearâs New Yearâs gathering at the capital, this man stood a few steps behind Zayne, the scabbard on his hip gleaming coldly under the lights.
âGeneral Li, Mayor Jiang requests an audience.â
Mayor Jiang stands stiffly outside the door, watching the guards move with practiced ease. The blood-stained carpet is quickly rolled up and replaced, the screen restored to its original state. A delicate incense diffuses the stench of blood.
The private room is instantly restored to its elegant state, as if nothing has happened. Only then does Zayne release his hand from your eyes, switching to caress the back of your hand.
âEnter.â
The single command sends the mayor's knees trembling. He steps timidly into the room, only daring to confirm, upon seeing Zayne seated in the main seat, that the commander-in-chiefâwho should have been on the front lines at the border has secretly returned to the city.
Rumors have long circulated among the high-ranking officials of Anlan that Zayne had a wife whom he loves dearly. Could this be the woman he is currently protecting in his arms?
âI-I greet General Li⊠and Madam!â Mayor Jiang's forehead beads with sweat, his adamâs apple bobbing between the collar of his crisp shirt, his voice trembling. âDeputy Director Xiong lost his composure after drinking and offended you both. I apologize on his behalfâŠâ
Zayne remains silent, picking up a silk handkerchief and meticulously wiping away nonexistent stains from your fingertips. His slow, deliberate movements cause the atmosphere in the private room to plummet.
Completely ignored, the mayor grows increasingly terrified.
After a long pause, Zayne finally speaks.
âThe municipal government should give him a good sobering-up.â
This casual remark sends a chill down the spine of the mayor, who hastily bows humbly. âYes, yes, General Li!â
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees you shift slightly in the manâs arms, and the notoriously ruthless Zayne immediately adjusts his posture to make you more comfortable.
He suddenly understands why Deputy Director Xiong is beaten half to death. He must have had the audacity to offend Zayneâs beloved.
Zayne suddenly lowers his head, his thin lips landing a kiss on your fingertips.
The unexpected intimacy makes your cheeks burn.
He looks up, asking in his usual calm voice, âHow should we handle this? Itâs up to you, Madam.â He deliberately emphasizes the word Madam.
Despite already guessing your identity, hearing Zayne confirm it personally still causes Mayor Jiang to swallow hard, a suppressed urge rising in his throat.
He vaguely remembers you speaking at the city hall as a representative of the trading guilds at the annual meeting. No wonder the Governor noted that Zayne took time out of his busy schedule to attend inconspicuously in the back; he doesnât understand then, but now it all makes sense.
âDeputy Director Xiong has been extorting protection money from vendors for a long time, driving people to their deaths. Why do all the complaint letters sent to Governor Li Cui disappear without a trace?â The helpless eyes of the vendors in the trade market flash through your mind. âPlease, Mayor Jiang, investigate this thoroughly.â
âMadam, please rest assured!â The mayor bows even lower, almost at a right angle. âWe will definitely investigate this issue to the end and give you a satisfactory explanation!â
âNot an explanation for me, but an explanation for the people of Anlan,â you correct solemnly.
âYes, yes, Madam is right!â
Zayne waves his hand casually. Mayor Jiang, as if granted a pardon, scurries several steps back before daring to turn and close the door.
The rain patters outside the window. The private room returns to silence.
You lean against Zayne, unconsciously twisting your fingers. The mayor's shocked expression still lingers in your mindâ
He must have recognized you from the Chamber of Commerce.
You have met him when you go to the city government on business; he even expressed some reservations about you, a young woman working amongst the elders. If the news leaks, the Chamber of Commerce building will likely be swarming tomorrow.
âNo need to worry.â Zayne sees right through you. His fingertips trace your cold palm, gently prying open your curled knuckles one by one, then interlocking your fingers tightly. âIf he doesnât even have this much sense...â The unfinished words stick in his throat, sharp as a blade, just like the hand around your waistâseemingly gentle, yet brooking no escape.
His cool breath suddenly brushes against your earlobe.
âBut youâŠâ Zayneâs grip on the back of your neck tightens, his voice cold and questioning. âWhich matter do you plan to begin your explanation to me?â
You stiffen like a cat being gripped by the scruff of its neck.
After a moment, you whisper, âI had old Liu find some men to beat that guy up a few times. We specifically choose times when he is drunk in dark alleys, so they canât find out⊠We donât go all outâjust to teach him a lesson.â
âDo you want me to praise your thoughtfulness?â His dark eyes hold a chill, making your throat tighten.
âThe General wasn't in Anlan thenâŠâ Your voice is barely audible, then rises again. âIt is my fault for not letting old Liu report it. If you must blame someone, Zayne, please donât punish him.â
Zayne is silent for a moment, his voice dropping even lower. âYou certainly know how to think of others.â
You lower your eyes, staring at the dark pattern on his shirt, saying nothing more. He isnât wrongâand you feel that you didn't do anything wrong either.
Zayneâs gaze is indifferent. Suddenly, he grabs your chin, forcing you to look directly into his eyes.
âSo youâre feeling wronged?â
His dark eyebrows lower, carrying a sense of impending doom.
âDo you still remember who I am to you?â
ââŠ.â Your nails dig unconsciously into your palms.
âAnswer.â Each word is emphasized heavily, as if he's issuing a command on a battlefield.
âMy⊠husband.â You murmur the two words, your voice so soft it's almost drowned out by the rain.
âSo you still remember.â The chill in Zayneâs voice sends a shiver down your spine. âSince when did you learn to treat your husband like a stranger?â
14.Â
"They're really just trivial matters... I saw no need to bother you." You lower your eyes, concealing the complex feelings behind them. "I can handle it myself."
"Trivial matters? Is a husband wanting to protect his wife considered a trivial matter?" Zayne's fingertip traces your lips, the pressure almost punishing. "What kind of horrible thing needs to happen in order for you to tell me about it?"
Seeing your silence, he presses on coldly. "Just because I'm not in Anlan, does that mean I can't make decisions for you?"
"..." Your hands crumple the fabric of your dress.
Zayne lowers his gaze to your pale lips, his brows knitting tightly, like frost weighing down pine branches.
"Or..." He suddenly releases your hand and leans back in his chair, his voice as cold as winter snow. "Is the lady going to use my words about the clear separation between politics and business to distance herself from me again?"
You clench your teeth, your chest aching with a dull pain. A turbulent undercurrent roars behind his usually indifferent gazeâclearly, Zayne is reaching his breaking point.
"Do you see me as your husband, or a stranger?" The words are uttered wistfully, a sense of helplessness creeping into his voice. "What exactly are youâ"
His voice fades as your lips suddenly cover his.
Zayne's lips are slightly cool, carrying the faint scent of tea. His body tenses faintly. Your fingertips tighten around his shirt, and you hear your own heart pounding like a drum.
You lower your eyelashes, suppressing your trembling, daring only to lightly suck on his lower lip, like holding a melting snowflake in your mouth, trying to seal away all the unresolved questions with that soft touch.
You have always felt that Zayne consistently avoids discussing the reason for your deliberate distance. But you know even more clearly that if he dares to break through that final barrier, you will be the first to crumble.
You always thought you were undeserving of the place of Zayne's wife, knowing the difference in your status. He only married you because of your family's connections, so you worked relentlessly to be useful, refusing to back down even when faced with danger. You know well that he cares deeply for you as a person, yet he was the one who deliberately kept his distance in the beginning. Now that you've finally come to understand why being the Lady of Anlan is such a dangerous position, when you finally steeled your resolve to prioritize self-preservation â for his sake as well â why is he suddenly concerned? Those secrets buried deep in your heart are like a venomous snake coiling around it. Every touch brings excruciating pain.
So Zayne, pleaseâ
You repeat it silently countless times in your heart.
Don't ask.
"Have I..." his voice wavers for a moment, his large form suddenly seeming vulnerable as he lifts his hands to your face, "angered you, my lady?"
His hand goes to wipe the thin sheen of sweat from your brow, but the moment his fingers touch your skin, he sees your eyes suddenly fill with tears.
Glistening drops roll down and land on the back of his hand, catching him off guard with their heat.
"Why are you crying all of a sudden?" His knuckles brush your cheek, touching damp warmth.
You shake your head without answering, but the tears fall even more fiercely. In the moonlight they resemble broken pearls, each one striking his heart.
Zayne steadies your back with one hand and gently strokes the back of your head with the other, drawing you closer to him.
"It's alright. I'm here." He catches a tear at the corner of your eye, the salty taste melting on his lips. His usually cold voice softens slightly. "I promise, I won't let that happen again."
You wrap your arms around his neck and rest your chin heavily on his shoulder, your nails almost digging into his flesh. Long-suppressed grievances surge out with your sobs, like a bursting spring tide soaking through his shirt.
"It's all your fault..." you murmur, voice trembling, tears warm against his shoulder.
"Mm," he responds indulgently, his palm firmly supporting the back of your neck. "It's my fault."
Your broken sobs tighten his heart. He places a hand on your back, slowly stroking your spine in comfort.
"Zayne, why⊠why did you leave?" you cry, your body trembling.
His arms around you tremble faintly as well.
These past few days, you have been so cold toward him. How much grievance has been building inside you since tonight's events that you cannot control your emotions anymore?
A heavy weight lifts from Zayne's heart. He would rather you vent like this than keep it all buried inside and ruin your health.
"Why⊠leave me⊠alone⊠here?"
Your question cuts like a dull blade, pain spreading through his chest.
He understands how many sleepless nights hide behind those tears, how the bitterness of waiting and anxiety twists your heart into piecesâburdens you should never have to bear.
"The front lines are dangerous," Zayne says calmly, his palm stroking your back even more slowly.
He longs to come back to Anlanâhow could he not want to stay with you day and night?
But the war is urgent, and fatalities are indiscriminate. Even with his confidence, he dares not risk your life, so he leaves you in Anlan.
His eyes, usually as calm as the deep sea, now surge with self-reproach, heartache, and an unyielding love.
"Don't cry, my darling."
Still lost in his emotions, Zayne suddenly lifts you gently, his Adam's apple bobbing as he whispers against your lips.
You startle, your sobs stopping abruptly as you look up through tearful eyes.
"How do you want to punish me?" Zayne presses his nose against yours, your breaths mingling. His voice is low and hoarse, almost a sigh. Your tear-streaked face, flushed nose, and lips reddened by bitingâevery detail is deadly to him.
He truly is beyond saving.
This should be the moment to comfort you gently, yet the sight of your tears stirs his heart. Soft kisses land on your trembling eyelashes.
"Whatever you want," Zayne murmurs heavily, his voice like water soaked in snow. "It's yours."
As long as you want it. As long as he has you.
But suddenly you lower your eyes and shake your head violently, resistance filling your voice.
"No⊠I don't want it."
You struggle to escape his arms as Zayne's dark eyes turn cold. His arms tighten like iron clamps, pressing you firmly against his knees. You pound against his chest, sobbing desperately.
"I don't want anything!"
That desperate rejection strikes him like a hammer blow, the veins in his neck throbbing. A thunderous roar erupts inside him. He seizes your wrist and finally forces out the question he has suppressed for so long:
"You don't even want me anymore?"
15.
The air seems to freeze.
You instinctively avoid Zayne's gaze. However, just that miniscule movement sends ripples through his heart like like a pebble thrown into still water. His eyes darken instantly. His fingers clamp around your chin, forcing you to look at him. The spacious room suddenly feels suffocatingly cramped, falling into chilling silence as the rain pounding against the roof like thunder.
Zayne's gaze narrows slightly.
A simple yes-or-no answer that used to be so easy for you to say now feels like a jammed bullet lodged in your throat, and stuck in his heart. He desperately needs your answer to fill the hollow void you create inside him.
The contradiction tears at his nerves.
Until he sees your eyelashes trembling violently in the shadows. You're so close, like a butterfly drenched in rain, fragile enough to tear his heart apart.
If he asks one more question, will you shatter completely?
In the end, he gives in to you.
Zayne laughs bitterly at himself. The decisive general admired by the public is nothing more than a coward who can't even face an answer.
So be it.
He closes his eyes with quiet resignation and seals your lips with his before you can speak the words that might destroy everything. The kiss carries a heavy apology and overwhelming love, gentle to the point of reverence. His hand strokes the back of your neck, the warmth both a comfort and a silent plea.
16.
Zayne carries your exhausted, sleeping form out of the carriage and back into the house. This is the first time in his life that Zayne hated his inherent taciturnity so deeply.
A sudden, indescribable tightness wells up in his heart, like fine threads binding his soul, making even breathing painful. These past few days, he has done everything in his power to temporarily set aside his demanding military duties, just to spend more time by your side, to make up for the six months he had missed.
He carefully cherished you, paying attention to every subtle change in your expression, awkwardly trying to speak tender words, desperately trying to recapture the intimacy you once shared. Sometimes, just when he feels that the distance between you has narrowed, he would helplessly realize that the invisible barrier was actually deepening, little bit little.
In the dressing mirror, Zayne's taut jawline is clearly reflected.
He knew it was bad, maybe a little twisted, but when presented with the opportunity to ask for something, anything after his years of hard-fought battles and his drive to prove himself, he couldn't stop himself from taking it; taking you, the person he's always wanted. He selfishly took you away from the warm, temperate capital to the snowy Anlan, all to himself. He wanted to keep you far, far, away from the danger at the borders, settled you and let you do your business to your heart's content. Associating too close with him would bring you unnecessary enemies, whether it be rival merchant houses or even worse, political enemies trying to use you as a bargaining chip, he reasoned. You were a strong girl, have always been. You knew how to take care of yourself and your affairs; sometimes it pained him to think it, but he knew you'd be fine, by his side or not.Â
But oh he was wrong.Â
Countless times he's asked himself, where did things go wrong? What did he overlook?Â
But he couldn't find the crux of the matter, no matter how hard he searched his memory, until he saw first-hand today what you had to endure on a regular basis.
At this moment, watching the last leaves fall off the now barren magnolia tree in the courtyard, a thought suddenly pierces his heart with a chilling coldness.
Perhaps, the reason is simple, so simple it's almost cruel.
When you loved him before, he could always see right through you⊠the undisguised expectation in your eyes when you were being affectionate, the pouting lips when you were throwing a tantrum, even your frown hinted at a desire to be coaxed.
But now he can't understand you, can't read your expressions anymore, simply because...
You're tired of the burden that came with being the Lady of Anlan.
Tired of this city that traps you.
Tired of him.
That's all.
17.
Old Liu has been waiting quietly outside the study for a long time. Hearing approaching footsteps, he immediately bows.
"General Li."
Zayne strides in calmly, his sharp profile illuminated by lamplight.
He sits behind the desk, long fingers tapping lightly on its surface.
"I want to hear every trouble my wife faced while I was away from Anlan," he says, his voice cold as ice. "Explain them one by one."
18.
Old Liu begins recounting the events of the past six months.
The day you assumed full authority in the Chamber of Commerce, someone presented a brocade box containing a bloodstained dead sparrow as a "congratulatory gift."
Before a major shipment, a veteran merchant deliberately delayed the delivery under a rival company's instigation, attempting to embarrass you. On a stormy night, you personally rushed to the remote warehouse and argued fiercely until the merchant finally delivered the goods.
An elder publicly accused your accounts of fraud and tried to force you from office using guild rules. You demanded that an entire chest of account books be brought in, checking them page by page, and refuted him with razor precision until the man is purple in the face and bows in apology.
An ocean cargo ship is seized by the Navy docks for suspected contraband. You inspected every crate on the damp deck late at night. The ship is saved, but you caught a chill from the cold.
Old Liu's voice carries suppressed resentment as he recounts each scene vividly.
Zayne listens without interruption. His expression remains calm as a still lake, but darkness gathers in his eyes.
When the horseman reaches the story of dockworkers being secretly incited to strike, and you, already ill with fever, worked through the night and eventually collapsed from exhaustion, Zayne finally raises his hand.
He cannot listen any further.
"General⊠it is my fault. I did not protect Madam properly." Old Liu lowers his head. "Please punish me."
Silence fills the study.
After a long time, Zayne finally speaks.
"My wife says these matters are hers alone and have nothing to do with you."
Old Liu's throat tightens. "Madam only worries that you are exhausted from the war and does not want trivial matters disturbing your peace of mindâŠ"
The study falls silent again. Moonlight spills through the window.
Zayne slowly strokes the armrest.
"The list," he says quietly.
Old Liu immediately presents the prepared roster.
Zayne flips through it, each name and scheme reflected in his icy gaze.
Suddenly he looks up.
"Has Madam been sending someone to buy pastries from her favorite bakery recently?"
"Yes. Madam likes them very much."
Zayne closes the register calmly.
"From now on, report every single one of her movements to me immediately."
19.
Later that night, Zayne opens the bedroom door.
Moonlight falls through gauze curtains, casting a pale glow onto the sleeping figure in the bed.
You lie curled up in the brocade quilt, looking like a small animal.
Zayne kneels beside the bed, silently studying your face.
You sleep uneasily, brows faintly furrowed.
His fingers hover between your brows before slowly withdrawing into a fist.
The horseman's report echoes endlessly in his mind.
For more than two hundred days, you faced the storms of business alone; attacks, doubts, conspiracies, but never retreating. Meanwhile, he commands armies thousands of miles away, yet unable to shield you from even a single falling leaf.
Guilt gnaws at him relentlessly.
He once imagined you as a rose in a greenhouse, forever protected beneath his wings. If he could, he'd even keep the snow of Anlan from ever touching your shoulders.
But he knows better.Â
The more carefully a flower is protected, the less it can endure wind and rain. So he teaches you to shoot, to fish, to survive.
He hoped to watch you grow into a tree strong enough to withstand any storm, even without him.
Yet now that you truly stand strong, you no longer cling to his post.
Back then you'd smile gently and say,
"Zayne, don't worry. I'll be fine. I'll wait for you."
He believed you.
Now he realizes the truth: He is the one who forced you to become independent.
And he is also the one who forced you to swallow your pain alone.
A bitter taste rises in his throat. Perhaps⊠he has never been a good husband. You resent him. Your distance is understandable.
The night breeze stirs the curtains.
After a long time, Zayne leans down. His cool breath brushes your lips before settling into a feather-light kiss on your forehead.
Gentle. Careful. As if afraid of waking you from a fragile dream.
You may grow strong enough to soar freely someday, but he will always remain the mountain behind you, the place you can return to when your wings grow tired.
No matter how far you fly, he will wait.
His love will not change.
Not until death.
20.
It's before dawn. A bluish-gray morning mist shrouds the entire Li residence in a hazy glow.
You wake up from a hazy dream. Beside you, Zayne's brows are relaxed, his long eyelashes lowered, his thin lips slightly pursed, the sharpness of the day gone, replaced by a gentle tenderness. His even breathing is exceptionally clear in the quiet bedroom, his warm breath brushing against your hair.
You instinctively wanted to curl up in his arms, but freeze the moment the thought crosses your mind. The tears from last night's breakdown still leave a burning mark on your face, a memory that sends a chill of humiliation down your spine.
You force yourself to calm down and carefully lift Zayne's arm from around your waist.
His arms are long and strong, bearing the weight of years of training, holding you close even in your sleep, as if if you were to dissolve into the morning mist the moment you let go.
A soft rustling sound comes from the bedding. You've barely moved an inch before he unconsciously pulls you back into his arms, startling you so much your heart skips a beat. Only after confirming he is still fast asleep do you dare to hold your breath and deftly pull yourself out of bed, tiptoeing out of the room.
You throw on a coat, pushing open the door, and go downstairs to the courtyard. The damp mist, carrying the chill of late autumn, seeps over your ankles. Morning dew condenses into tiny droplets on the stone steps.
You stand underneath the magnolia tree, its branches laden with red leaves. The autumn wind brushes past your ears, scattering and gathering your jumbled thoughts in waves.
In a daze, time seemed to rewind to that dusky evening two hundred and nineteen days ago: on an evening that was supposed to be like any other, you narrowly grazed past death for the first time.
You have experienced your fair share of troubles since coming to Anlan, but the precision of the thin blade that pierced through the paper covering of your office window at the municipal building, so fast and silent that none of your attendants outside the door noticed anything out of the ordinary, left you stunned. Not until it stuck to the wall behind you that your heart started thundering like a drum, your hand rising to touch the single drop of blood drawn from right above your clavicle. A single scrap of paper is attached with two characters scrawled across: é»æ·± (Zayne Li). Your heart plummets into ice cold water, but you don't scream, or shout, or even call for help. You've been too careless; someone already caught on to your secret. Â
That night, the magnolias were in full bloom, the bright moonlight cascading down like a silver waterfall, coating the blossoms with a layer of crystalline snow.
Amidst the fragrance of the flowers, Zayne came up from behind, his steady frame silent as he watched the flowers by your side. The perpetual two-feet distance he keeps from you taunted your mind as you mulled over how to address the incident that happened earlier.
To your surprise, he spoke first. âTomorrow I will lead the army north.â His voice was so calm, betraying no emotion whatsoever.
You remember being surprised for a moment, your heart stopping abruptly. Moonlight filtered through the branches, flowing over the gold thread on Zayne's military uniform, casting dappled shadows on his sharply defined face. He gazed silently at you.
You wanted to ask what you should do, when he would return, to beg him to stay. A thousand words swirled between your lips, but in the end, you simply lowered your eyelashes and reached out to smooth the non-existent wrinkle on his uniform collar.
"Please take care."
Your thoughts, hesitant and brewing for so long, originally intended to be admitted all in one go, ultimately dissipated with the night breeze and the fragrance of magnolia blossoms.
On many lonely nights after Zayne left, you loved to stand here, watching the moonlight illuminate the shadows of the flowers, from lush to sparse, until the last petal fell.
Your shadow, stretched and shortened by the moonlight, mirrored the constantly weighing and struggling emotions in your heart. In the end, you made your choice.
You let out a long, pent-up sigh.
Why did you suddenly lose control of your emotions last night?
For the past six months, you were successful in single-handedly managing the Chamber of Commerce, smoothing the elders' overt and covert difficulties, avoiding the malicious probing of competitors, and withstanding even blatant harassment.
But when Zayne witnessed firsthand your embarrassing moment of being humiliated in public, all your carefully constructed walls seemed to crumble instantly.
How could you bear to question his departure? You know better than anyone that he did nothing wrong. Zayne bore the immense responsibility of protecting Anlan; every military order is tied to the safety of countless people, and he cannot allow himself to waver for personal feelings. You couldn't bear to see him torn between responsibility and affection. You thought you were understanding enough, but unexpectedly, a hidden resentment still managed to quietly sprout in your heart.
Resentful that he left you, resentful that he returned too soon, and even more resentful of yourself⊠for not being able to hide even this small grievance.
How could you not know that Zayne left you in Anlan only to protect you?
Besides, even if he wanted to take you with him, you couldn't follow him all the way to the front lines anyways, due to your duty to your family business. If you really have to blame someone, you could only blame fate.
That night, when you heard Yvonne's cheerful announcement that the General had returned early, you practically fled to your dressing room in a panic.
Reflected in the mirror was a bloodless face and slightly trembling lips. You hadn't felt so helpless in a long time. How could you face him?
You gripped the edge of the dressing table tightly, your nails scratching fine lines on the lacquered surface, like the cracks in your heart.
21.
You need to find out what changed on Zayne's end. Something must have happened at the front lines that caused him to return early, starting this chain effect.
At the sound of your voice, Greyson immediately stops and turns, standing respectfully before you.
âWhat are your orders, Madam?â
A cool morning breeze drifts through the courtyard, stirring a few brittle leaves across the stone path. You pull your coat tighter around yourself. The soft cashmere brushes your palms, but it does nothing to warm your cold fingertips.
After a momentâs hesitation, you speak.
âGreyson⊠thereâs something I want to ask. Is that alright?â
âOf course, Madam.â
The question youâve been holding back slips out before anything else.
âAfter heading north⊠has Zayne been injured?â
âRest assured,â Greyson replies immediately. âGeneral Zayne has not been harmed on the battlefield.â
Your shoulders loosen at once, tension draining from your body. But as you take another breath, another question follows, rough and uncertain. âAnd the situation in Tong county⊠how is it?â
âThe enemy is cunning and resisting fiercely.â Greyson's posture remains rigid, his voice steady and solemn. âHowever, General Zayneâs strategy has given us a decisive advantage.â
âWhen will the war be over?â
âIf everything proceeds normallyâŠâ He pauses, choosing his words carefully. âBy the end of the year. At the latest, early next spring. But battlefield conditions change constantly. No one can predict the exact timing.â
The question that has haunted you for days finally escapes.
âThen⊠why did Zayne come back now?â
The wind in the courtyard suddenly feels sharp.
Greyson's expression stiffens.
22.
He still remembers the day he walked into the command post carrying old Liu's mail:Â Madam is safe.
âStill no news?â the voice from behind the desk asked calmly.
ââŠNo.â
Zayne remained bent over his desk, reviewing battle reports. At the answer, he simply lifts his eyes slightly. His knuckles tap once against the paper.
His expression reveals nothing.
That nightâs operations meeting is heavy with tension.
A baton sweeps across the war map of Tong county.
When Zayne suddenly announced that the night raid will be moved up to tomorrowâand that he will personally lead the assaultâCommander Chen knocks over his teacup in shock.
âGeneral Li, please reconsider!â Chen exclaims. âTwo artillery regiments have just been stationed east of the cityâtheyâre on full alert!â
Zayneâs face remained calm.
His finger taps a single point on the map.
âFrontline scouts have located the enemy ammunition depot.â
His voice is cold.
âThis opportunity wonât last. We strike immediately.â
The plan is revised within minutes. The arrow on the map now points directly toward Shanwan's most dangerous core fortress.
Next to the primary assault mission is a single name:
Zayne.
The room falls silent.
No one dares ask why.
23.
Greyson's silence tightens something in your chest.
âItâs alright,â you say with a strained smile. âIf itâs not appropriate to tell meââ
âForgive my bluntness, Madam," Greyson lowers his voice.
âGeneral Li changed the battle plan because he was worried about you.â
Your breath catches.
âHe personally led the elite unit in the night raid on Shanwan's fortress.â
 Greyson finally meets your eyes.
âThe battle was moved forward⊠by twenty days.â
24.
Cold shoots up your spine. Shock, fear, and crushing guilt twist together inside your chest.
Was it your silence? Your deliberate distance? Did that drive Zayne to such a reckless decision?
You always knew he would eventually notice something was wrong, but you never imagined that his concern would weigh so heavily that he would risk his life just to return sooner.
In the end, you forced him into an impossible choice.
And he never once told you.
25.
After answering the rest of your questions, Greyson salutes sharply and leaves. His boots echo against the stone path until the sound fades.
You remain standing in the courtyard.
Magnolia branches cast shifting shadows over the blue bricks beneath your feet.
You tilt your head toward the sky. Clouds swallow the moon.
Your thoughts drift back to the first time you ever saw Zayne.
He had just returned from the western campaign. A parade filled the streets in celebration of the youngest man ever promoted to general.
You remember watching him ride past in dark armor atop a warhorse.
Back then, he seemed almost unreal.
Untouchable.
Invincible.
Something more than human.
Only later did realize the truth:Â He is just a man.
A man of flesh and blood.
And somewhere in the ordinary days you spent together in Anlan, something quiet and burning grew inside him.
A love strong enough to make him cross battlefields.
Strong enough to rush into danger for you.
But you are only a merchantâs daughter.
Someone who was never meant to carry the weight of a generalâs life.
If something happens to him because of youâŠ
You would never forgive yourself.
Your fingers tighten around the hem of your coat.
And what about next time?
What will he risk for you then?
âŠIt shouldnât be like this.
Before you appeared, Zayne's life followed a steady, predictable path.
Was meeting you his lifeâs greatest gift, or its cruelest curse?
The cold deepens, and the familiar ache returns. The same ache that haunted you very lonely night after Zayne left.
It never truly disappeared.
26.Â
Greyson's words haunt your mind. While you know you should be better than this, that you're no better than Zayne right now, a pair of ostriches' sticking their heads into the sand, you escape to work anyhow, praying (with very little expectations) that you'll be distracted enough to stop spiraling. You send old Liu and your maid home early, despite their insistence; you've got one more place to go, alone.
Arriving at the glistening entrance of the largest hotel in the red-light district, you take a deep breath as you put on a butterfly mask and step through the doors. The grand hall is lined with dozens of lanterns. You give a pseudonym to the front desk, and the attendant leads you to a quiet, private room on the seventh floor.Â
You paid a hefty amount of money for a trustworthy informant. You needed to know if there was anything else Greyson left out, and exactly how fast word has spread (if it did already) about the identity of the General's wife.Â
You breath a sigh of relief as you dismiss the hooded man. Nothing too shocking. The rebels stirring trouble are sponsored by Governer Li Cui, no doubt just itching to make Zayne's role harder. As for the identity of the General's wife... he asked for an extra 200 liang of silver for any leads onto that topic. Seems like the Mayor kept his mouth shut.Â
Two young girls enter the room, nervously asking if their "esteemed patron" would like any entertainment or accompaniment tonight.Â
You waive your hand, catching the younger one's expression drop. Feeling bad, you call for her to play the zither for you, and order some food. You'll have dinner here.Â
You nurse the tea in your hands as the music ends, its lingering notes echoing. You give the girl a generous tip, instructing to be left alone for now.Â
Finally. Some peace and quiet.Â
You sit back down, wondering why your food hadn't arrived yet, when a fine sweat suddenly breaks out on your back.
At first, it feels like just a slight damp heat, but quickly turns into a strange, itchy sensation, creeping up your spine to the back of your neck, spreading across your body with alarming speed. When you take off your coat, your silk robe is already soaked and clinging to your back. The feeling of the fabric rubbing against your skin is amplified, bringing a wave of unsettling premonition.
Your gaze falls on the almost empty drink in your glass, and it dawns on you.
You'd been drugged!
Grabbing your handbag, you bolt towards the door. But the moment you try to stand up, your legs go weak; the soft carpet feels like walking on a sponge. With each step, your temples throb and your ears ring. The corridor is eerily silent; the waiter who should have been waiting outside is nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly, you hear light footsteps behind you. Is it a hallucination, or the approach of a watchful eye lurking in the shadows?
Out of the corner of your eye, you catch a glimpse of a dark figure moving in the shadows of a pillar. With a nauseating laugh, Li Sheng strolls out slowly. "My Lady, where are you going in such a hurry?"
His gaze, sticky like a snake's tongue, slithers over your neck, already damp with a thin layer of sweat, finally settling on your slightly heaving chest.
"Sweating so much must be uncomfortable," he says, each word dripping with malice. "I'll take you to change your clothes."
"Li Sheng! How dare you! Aren't you afraid of being exposed?" you shout, but even you could hear the bluff in your weak tone.
"I have no idea what you're talking about, Lady Y/N," Li Sheng's face twists into a smug smile, "this is clearly consensual!"
The lamps on the corridor walls cast hazy, indistinct glows. Your body feels heavy, as if filled with lead, every inch of your skin burning. The heat intensifies, threatening to engulf you.
You grip the wall tightly with trembling fingers, your nails leaving shallow marks on the wallpaper. You force yourself to continue speaking, "If the Director knew you're out here ruining his career for amusementâŠ"
"You think you can threaten me with my old man's future?" Li Sheng's laughter grows increasingly manic. "Don't you know who my uncle is?"
In the past, he had repeatedly hinted that he wanted the title of chairman for the Chamber of Commerce, but you had always deftly shot the idea down.
Now, seeing your flushed cheeks and dazed eyes, the prey he had long coveted was finally about to be obtained! The desire in his eyes are almost bursting forth.
You slowly retreat against the cold wall, your trembling fingers fumbling haphazardly in your bag. The moment your fingertips touch the cool metal, Zayne's deep voice echoes in your mind:
"If you ever encounter an unkind situation, just attack. No need to hold back."
You abruptly pull out the dagger he'd given you for self-defense, shouting, "Come any closer, and I'll kill you!"
Li Sheng is startled by this sudden turn of events, stumbling backwards and knocking over a vase stand. Amidst the crisp sound of shattering porcelain, he stares at your trembling wrist and your misty, unfocused eyes, licking his dry lips.
"Don't get excited. Who are you trying to scare with a little knife? Come on, I'll take you to have some fun..."
"Get lost!" Your senses are overwhelmed. Your fingers grip the handle tightly, but your vision begins to blur. In the split second your field of vision fades, you see Li Sheng's oily face suddenly contort into a familiar expression.
"Zayne...?" A murmur escapes your lips as your hand holding the dagger suddenly goes limp, the blade making a crisp sound as it falls lifelessly to the ground.
The lanterns cast an eerie light on Li Sheng's face. Seizing your momentary lapse in concentration, he lunges forward with a sinister grin, "Good little sister, let your brother pamper you..."
At the critical momentâ
"Thunkâ!" The sound of metal piercing through flesh cuts through the haze.
"Ahhhâ!" Li Sheng lets out a piercing scream, two blades bursting through the front of his thighs. He collapses to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, his legs convulsing and twitching.
The stench of blood fills the hall.
You struggle to open your leaden eyelids, your vision blurred.
At the end of the corridor, black military boots tread across the wreckage.
A tall, slender figure approaches you against the light, the gold on his belt ornaments gleaming with a chilling light. His cold, sharp features are accentuated by the interplay of light and shadow, a heavy, chilling aura surrounding him.
Only when his face, etched deep into your soul, gradually becomes clear does your anxious heart finally calmâ
It's Zayne.
He's arrived.
27.Â
The night is thick.
The sound of the hooves of a dozen or so war horses nearly drown out the music and commotion along the roads of the red light district, screeching to a halt in front of the grand hotel.Â
The manager bows as he rushes forward, his obsequious smile freezing the moment he sees the uniform of the person in the lead.
The burning lanterns reflect Zayne's sharply defined jaw. His black cloak billows in the night wind, rustling like a dark cloud, radiating a suffocating sense of oppression.
Seeing a group of well-trained, heavily armed guards surrounding him, the manager's legs go weak as he realizes with shock that the man he had mistaken for a noble young master was actually a high-ranking military officerâ
"General Li! what brings you here..." the manager's voice trembles.
Zayne's expression is indifferent, his gaze sharp enough to cut ice. "Where is the Lady of Y/N Trading Company?"
"She's...she's in the private room on the seventh floor..." any last consideration for the protection of customer privacy immediately went out the window. The manager can't help but wonder: Is the General here for revenge, or for love?
Before he even finishes speaking, Zayne is already stepping towards the back staircase.
The numbers on the stairwell keep changing, the lights reflecting Zayne's tense jawline. In the steady sound of his footsteps, he can nearly hear his own heartbeat. He hasn't experienced this foreboding feeling, the sense of losing control in many years.Â
He pushes open the gliding door to the seventh floor, his guards rushing out from both sides, pinning down any lookouts before they could react.Â
A lewd laugh, a weak shout, and the sound of shattering porcelain pierces Zayne's eardrums. His brows furrow slightly, his right hand already on his scabbard.
His pace suddenly increases as he turns the corner, and the scene under the warm yellow wall lamp makes his blood freeze instantlyâ
You lean weakly against the wall, your sweat-dampened hair clinging to your pale cheeks. Across from you, a man in rich garments grins maliciously, about to grab your wrist.
His hands reach for his throwing daggers on autopilot, aiming, releasing.
Two loud sounds, the entire sequence of movements fluid and swift.
Zayne's face remains calm, only the bulging veins on his neck silently betraying his overwhelming rage.
Your back slides slowly down the wall, his heart tightening at the sound of your weak call, "Zayne..."
He casually tosses his sword to Greyson behind him, arriving beside you in two strides, and kneeling down to gently pull you into his arms. His eyes darken as he touches your burning forehead and unusually flushed cheeks.
It's obvious you'd been drugged.
"It's alright, I'm here." Zayne lowers his head, kissing the top of your head, his usually cold voice filled with reassurance.
"Murder! Help!" Li Sheng collapses to the ground, clutching his bleeding knees and screaming. His expensive robes are soaked with cold sweat and blood, his once slick face now a pale gray.
Even as guards restrain him, the spoiled brat still dares to shout defiantly, "Youâyou dare touch me?! My uncle is the Governor of Anlan!"
Zayne lowers his gaze, the chill in his eyes like an unyielding glacier. The chilling, condescending gaze is almost tangible, its terrifying pressure making Li Sheng's chest tighten, forcing him to choke on the rest of his words .
Greyson's military boots grind against the bloody wound at just the right moment. Amid Li Sheng's screams, Zayne is already carrying you down the stairs.
The commotion alerts everyone downstairs. Private room doors open one after another, and those who curiously peek out are quickly pulled back by security guards.
The manager stands frozen, staring at the shattered porcelain and winding trails of blood on the floor. His shirt, soaked with cold sweat, cling to his back, his mind blank.
He never would have dreamed that one of his wealthy and mysterious VIPs was actually the wife of the General! And that General Li actually dared to openly stab the Governor's nephew without any regard for the consequences, all for your sake.
The sound of the convoy's harness bells ring through the night, the powerful sounds of hooves clearing a path through the streets as it speeds towards the residence of the city's best-known doctor.
Your cheeks flush a sickly red in the dim light of the carriage, fine beads of sweat trickling down your neck and into your disheveled collar. You tremble as you climbed onto Zayne's lap, the rough texture of his military outerwear brushing against your burning skin sends a shiver down your spine. Your fingertips grip the crisp collar of his robe, pulling at the creases. Zayne's breathing remains steady, his left arm encircling your waist like iron, his right hand firmly supporting your limp knees.
"So hot..." Your hazy eyelashes tremble, your hot breath spraying onto his neck, "Zayne, kiss me..."
The aphrodisiac courses through your veins like a thousand ants gnawing at your nerves, making every inch of your skin unbearably hot.
"Mmm." Zayne's adam's apple bobs slightly, a fleeting emotion flashing through his eyes. Cool, thin lips gently cover yours, like a handful of snow in a cold night.
The kiss is too brief to quell the heat within you. You instinctively follow him, your teeth brushing against his lower lip in your haste, the metallic taste spreading between your intertwined breaths. Your tongue, without warning, fiercely entwines with his.
A moment later, Zayne pulls back slightly, calmly gripping your wrist as your hands begin unraveling his military uniform.
"Stop."
Your palm slides inside his shirt, tracing the firm, undulating muscles of his chest. The next second, your lips press against his Adam's apple, your tongue lightly sweeping across the prominent curve, the warm, wet lick causing a suppressed gasp to escape his throat.
Zayne quickly leans back against the plush seat. "Sit still, listen to me." He pulls your restless hands away.
All your senses are amplified by the drug. The touch of skin against skin, the friction of the military uniform fabric, all transform into a fine electric current, coursing along your spine to every limb.
"I want Zayne..." Every nerve screams, burning reason to ashes.
You bite his collarbone, rubbing against him, your legs unconsciously twisting beneath your skirt, wrinkling his trousers in varying depths.
"Don't move," Zayne warns, his hand firmly supporting your hips, stopping your dangerous movement.
He watches you intently, a turbulent worry hidden beneath his calm eyes, his gaze frequently glancing at the street scene outside the window.
Time stretches endlessly in his anxiety.
Unable to find relief, you collapse into his arms, tears falling like pearls, splashing onto the front of his uniform, leaving dark ripples on the fabric.
"Waaah... Zaynie doesn't love me anymore..."
This tearful accusation makes Zayne stiffen. He looks down at you trembling in his arms. His embrace suddenly tightens, the force almost crushing you into his bones.
"Don't speak recklessly." His voice is cold and deep, but his fingertips gently wipe at your moist eyes, only causing more tears to burst out like a broken dam.
You sob in his arms, your burning forehead pressed against his neck, your trembling lips opening and closing, your voice filled with a wronged, pitiful tone: "But Zayne... he's never... never said he loves me."
Zayne's breath hitches.
In this world where trust is few and far between, you stood up for him time and time again, backing him with all your trust and vulnerability without reservation.
He was never the most eloquent nor outspoken person, believing that daily companionship, meticulous care, and quiet, profound protection were more powerful than a thousand words.
Only now does he realize that the love he thought was self-evident had always been shrouded in a hazy mist in your eyes.Â
In the moment, he can't discern whether this heart-wrenching accusation is the delirious rambling of someone under the influence of drugs, or a long-buried bewilderment finally being poured out from your heart. Perhaps his long-held belief that "silence speaks louder than words," his self-righteous form of protection, was precisely the thing that suspends his hard-won love above an invisible abyss.
Gently cradling your tear-streaked face, Zayne calls your name softly, finally uttering the words he's long been hiding in his heart:
"I love you."
The three words are as light as snowflakes falling on pine branches, yet the trembling tone carries a surging emotion, weighing a hundred tons.
How he longs to look into your eyes, to let you see this long-held affection.
But your eyes are blurred with tears, your consciousness shrouded in chaos, making this belated confession seem so pale.
The fire in you burns - you feel like you're dying. Your consciousness is quickly fading as a surge of emotions well up in your chest, fearful you'll never have the chance to tell him anything again. âI neverâŠwanted to leave the Generalâ
Life is short, and every second in the inferno reminds you that an accident could happen in an instant. How can you bear to keep these words hidden in your heart?
A bitter pang of guilt surges through his chest. Zayne can only hold you tighter, letting the heartache gnaw at him inside. âI know,â his clear voice piercing through the haze and night wind.
Driven completely by desire now, you indeed disregard his confession, only crying even more bitterly, "If you love me, why won't you give it to me!"
"Let's go see the doctor first, wait until you're better..."
"No, I want it now! It hurts so much, Zayne, help me..."
Zayne's military trousers beneath your skirt are already soaked through. Your trembling fingertips touch his belt, groping for the taut, burning heat through the fabric.
He forces himself to tear his eyes away from you, instead focusing on the passing road signs, estimating you'd arrive in five minutes at most.
"Hang in there, we're almost there," he says calmly, gently pressing down on your flailing hands.
"No!" you cry out, struggling even more fiercely, your nails scratching the back of his hands until they bleed. "He's rejecting me even now; Zayne definitely likes someone else, he doesn't want me anymore!"
Your uncontrollable cries pierce his ears, but the dull pain rising in his chest was even more suffocating. Zayne looks down at you, his eyes as clear as a frozen lake, reflecting your swaying figure. Since the night of your wedding back at the capital, he had promised to love you "until death do us apart". How could he betray the vow etched into his very bones?
âAbsolutely impossible.â Zayne holds your struggling wrists with one hand, gently stroking your tear-streaked cheek with the other. His thin lips lightly brush against the corner of your reddened eyes, kissing away the tears.
As your noses touch, the words he uttered are cold yet resolute: âIn this life, I have only ever loved you.â
From beginning to end, he was a clumsy loverâ Stubbornly using actions instead of words, trying to offer you the best of everything, but forgetting that words are the most direct way to convey one's feelings. You used to laugh on his shoulder, playfully complaining that his indulgence had made you increasingly spoiled and unruly.
But haven't you also been tolerating his unyielding silence and distance day after day, accommodating his reticent nature? Was there ever a moment when you felt a touch of weariness in the face of his taciturnity? He should have told you long ago that he loved you more than anything in the world.
"You're lying to me!" You abruptly turn your face away, tears streaming down your cheeks and into the corners of your lips. "Zayne just... doesn't want me anymore!"
This impromptu rebuttal pierces Zayne's heart like a needle. He grasps your chin, his thumb gently tracing your moist lips.
"Every word comes from the bottom of my heart. I've never uttered a single falsehood in front of you." The emotions surging in his chest condense into a sigh from his throat. Zayne calls you by your full name, "Y/N, I can't live without you."
How could he make you understand that you were the one who added vibrant color to his otherwise monochromatic life?
You are his most precious surprise.
His life, which had been following a set path, only became alive, colorful, and complete with your arrival. It must be the thought that you haven't done enough, wasn't been good enough, that trapped you in a quagmire of self-pity and doubt.
He's never imagined that he would repeatedly express his feelings to you in a situation like this. How much of this confession in this broken moment will you remember once you regain your senses?
Doesn't matter now.
Whether it be a hundred mistakes, a thousand mistakes, no matter what, the blame lies with him. After all, he was the one who failed to protect you, who failed to be honest with you in time.
He won't complain; he'll only be grateful that you're still by his side
28.
A warm yellow flame shines in the room.
You open your eyes, your eyelashes fluttering. Your vision is still blurry when a joyful whisper reaches your ears: "Madam, you're finally awake!"
You recognize the voice to be Yvonne's despite still being somewhat dazed. Just as you try to clear your groggy thoughts, a sudden dry, burning pain wells up in your throat. Hearing your dry cough, Yvonne immediately calls for the handmaid to fetch water.
You try to sit up, supporting yourself on your arms, but before you can even process what was happening, you blurt out, "Where's Zayne?"
Old Liu comes up behind Yvonne, "General Li, he..." his lips move, doesn't finish the sentence.Â
Yvonne steps in, gently bringing a cup of warm water to your lips. "Madam, do you know how much you scared us when the General brought you home? Thank heavens you're awake, or else the General would be on the verge of changing dynasties instead simply the Governor."
A sinking feeling rises in your stomach. "How long was I out for?"
Yvonne looks at old Liu nervously, gently patting your back as she slowly says, "it's been eight days."
"What happened to Zayne?" Your heart tightens, your fingers unconsciously gripping the sheets as you ask urgently, "Where is he?"
"General Li is... he's..."
Old Liu's reaction is strange; why is he hesitating?
Anxiety courses through your veins, you couldn't wait any longer. You throw back the thin blanket and try to get out of bed, but the moment your feet touch the cold floor, your legs nearly give out, causing you to sway. "Madam, be careful!" Yvonne rushes forward, her voice filled with worry.
"If you won't tell me, I'll go find him myself!" You brush away the hand that tries to support you. Even though your legs are weak, all you wanted was to find Zayne immediately to confirm his safety.
"Madam, the General went to the Governor's residence!" Old Liu finally shouts.Â
You turn your head in shock.Â
Old Liu remembers the early hours of the morning that Zayne brought you home. He had carried you in his arms the entire time since bringing you to the doctor, now carefully setting your fully unconscious figure into bed, gently, as if putting down an ancient relic. He continued to stay by your side the entire night, only instructing that the brewing of medicine brought back was not to be stopped, and wiping away beads of sweat on your forehead from the high fever.Â
When the door finally opened, all the high ranking officials and commanding officers who had been waiting in the corridor stand up in unison.Â
Zayne walks out, his military uniform crumpled to the point of nearly being unpresentable, but his brows are furrowed with a chilling aura that drops the temperature of the hall several degrees.Â
Greyson and the others feel their throats tighten, unconsciously holding their breath.Â
"It's been a day and night. Why hasn't the Madam woken up yet?" Zayne hisses through clenched teeth.Â
Mayor Jiang's back instantly breaks out into a cold sweat. He hurriedly turns around and orders several attendants behind him, "Quick! Send notice to the imperial physician! Immediately!"Â
Taking advantage of the brief pause, Greyson cautiously takes a half step forward. "Reporting to General Li, everyone involved in yesterday's incident has been apprehended. Four different entertainment venues throughout the city have been shut down for rectification. The source of the drug used has been traced, and several suspicious channels have been identified..."
The report is concise and clear, but Zayne doesn't even lift his eyelids, his expression completely unchanged.
Just as Greyson begins to wonder if Zayne even cared about the follow-up actions, Zayne suddenly turns his head, an icy gaze falling upon the crowd.
"Only investigate the city?"
The casual question sends a chill down Greyson's spine. He quickly bows and replies, "I will immediately order a special investigation across the entire Anlan area! A detailed report will be presented to you in three days!"
Zayne's aura grows even colder. "I've only been gone for six months, and Anlan's security has deteriorated to this extent."
Mayor Jiang lowers his head even further, tripping over his words, "...I have failed in my duty."
"On the third morning when you still didn't wake up, the General led a troop of soldiers to surround the residence of Governor Li Cui... They were greeted with a fierce offense..."
Gasping, you stumble over the doorstep, tears welling up in your eyes as you make a beeline towards Zayne's quarters. You barely register Greyson standing guard outside the door and Old Liu's cry of "the Lady is here!" from behind you.
With a "whoosh," the sliding doors are abruptly pulled open and you turn your head in the dim lighting to lookâ
On the makeshift bed, Zayne leans against the headboard. His dark eyes, gazing at you, are as deep as the night, with a faint, gentle light in their depths.
Your pupils constrict, all your worry and lingering fear instantly overwhelming any reason. Ignoring the presence of the servants and subordinates outside the door, forgetting the pain in your body, you instinctively rush towards him, throwing yourself into his arms, tears streaming down your face.
Seeing this, Greyson gently closes the door behind him, leaving space for the two of you to be alone.
The sound of your weeping fills the quiet room.
29.
You press your forehead tightly against Zayne's neck, the familiar scent of cedar filling your breath, but tears stream down your cheeks like broken beads, each drop landing on his collarbone, leaving a damp patch.
His arms tighten around your waist, his other hand gently resting on your trembling back. The warmth of his palm seeps through the thin fabric, stroking you softly and slowly, silently comforting you.
After a long while, your sobbing subsides.
You sniff, nose red, and slowly raise your tear-streaked face, looking at him through blurry eyes: "Zayne, do you know... I was so scared?"
He lowers his gaze, silently watching you. His olive eyes are deep and undecipherable, yet he does not immediately respond.
"What if... what if you didn't find me..." You clutch his sleeve, a lump in your throat. "What if I couldn't find you after all of this... what would I do?"
"It's all in the past." He raises his hand, his cool fingertips gently wiping away the tears from your eyes.
"You were so hasty! Going to take down the Governor?! My life isn't worth the General risking everything like this..." Your voice trembles, tears streaming down your face even more fiercely this time. "What will happen to Anlan if something happens to you?!"
As soon as you finish speaking, Zayne's face darkens.
His fingertips remain on your cheek, but his tone grows cold. "So, according to you, knowing you're being unfairly targeted and trapped, I should stand idly by, watch your ruin, become a widower, and live the rest of my life alone?"
Seeing an unprecedented surge of ferocity in his eyes, you frantically shake your head, the oppressive atmosphere around him suffocating. Grabbing his collar, you sniffle as you protest,  "No, Zayne, I didn't mean that⊠I'm just afraid, I'm afraid the sacrifices were not worth it."
In an unusually impatient manner, Zayne abruptly interrupts you. "You seem to think I will always remain calm, make judgments without a trace of personal feelings, and make the so-called right choicesâŠ"
His voice is as deep as a frozen pool: "But what if I told you, there are times when I can't?"
"âŠ" You stare at him in shock, words stuck in your throat, only letting helpless tears silently stream down your cheeks.
The meaning of "I can't" in Zayne's words is self-evident. His words precisely pierce the deepest, most hidden thought in your heart. Because he is Zayne Li, a towering, unshakeable snow-capped mountain, someone born to sit firmly on a high platform. Therefore, even if the sky were to fall, he could bear it all without flinching. You naturally assumed that no matter how great the storms of life blew, whether you were by his side or not, he could control all his emotions, slowly digest everything, and then continue on his path with composure.
But now, he gazes steadily at you, laying bare, word by word, the words he has never spoken before. When it comes to "losing you," Zayne is utterly incapable of remaining calm and composed.
His eyes lock onto your gaze without allowing you even the slightest hesitation. "If I were in danger, would you have stood by and done nothing?"
You shake your head, biting your lower lip tightly until you taste the faint metallic flavor of blood.
"In that case, why belittle yourself?" He sighs softly, a barely perceptible tenderness hidden in his voice.
His fingertips slowly cover your reddened lips, gently caressing them, forcing you to loosen your grip.
You raise a hand to wipe away your tears as you hear Zayne speak slowly, his voice low and calm. "I've said it before, even without me, Anlan's well-established military and political system is sufficient to maintain normal operations."
His tone is unwavering, revealing his usual certainty as if everything is under control, as if he had already considered everything thoroughly.
But your concerns go beyond just his reassurance.
As far as you know, no one else can protect the vast Northern Territories as firmly as Zayne, allowing the people to live and work in peace and without worries. Countless times you've prayed that there would never be a day when he would be forced to choose between Anlan and you. However, the moment Zayne rushed into the hotel without hesitation, he had already given you his answer with his actions.
Only you can melt his heart, through glaciers and towering peaks.Â
30.
Your heart skips a beat as you finally understand his intentions. As the initial shock subsides, a lingering sense of melancholy rises from your understanding his desperate, all-or-nothing resolve. Previously, you had naively believed that continued indifference would eventually drive the two of you apart, leading to a natural separation. You thought time would be the best healer, capable of smoothing all wounds. You were convinced that he would gradually let go of this relationship and eventually move on to new lives.
But now, you're sure.
He will never let go of you.
Just as your heart will never let go of him.
"I'm sorry Zayne... I misspoke." Your emotions are still raw, and you hiccup, fiercely trying to wipe the tears away from your eyes. "I'll never say that again."
"It's alright." Zayne gently places his hand on the back of your head, pulling you close to his chest, letting you press against his warm embrace. "If you encounter any danger again in the future, you must discuss it with me. You're not allowed to venture into it alone, understand?"
"Yes... I understand." You look up at him, your voice muffled. "Actually, after you left Anlan, I thought about you every single day..."
The weariness is getting to you, your words becoming increasingly incoherent as you try to pour your heart to him. "No, actually, even when you were in Anlan, I thought about you every single day too..."
Zayne gazes at you intently, listening quietly to your murmurs.
"It's all my fault, Zayne, I'm so sorry..." Before you can finish, his cool fingertips gently press against your lips, stopping your words.
He calls your name softly, his voice calm and deep: "...Never say those three words to me."
How could it be your fault? It was clearly all his fault.
The night before heading north, he clearly sensed something was wrong with you, yet he didn't ask a single question. For over two hundred days and nights, he let you suffer alone.
Zayne doesn't rush to comfort you, simply raising his hand to stroke your back gently, offering silent support. He lets you pour out all the pent-up anxiety and grievances you had been suppressing into his arms.Â
âAt the hotel, when you suddenly appearedâŠâ Your voice is hoarse, âI was scared, scared that you wouldnât want me anymoreâŠâ
Before you finished speaking, the tears you had been barely holding back surged and rolled down your cheeks again.
A bitter sigh sweeps through Zayne's heart.
He's never seen you like this before.
The you he knew was innocent, carefree, and confident.
Even when you let your guard down in front of him, you've never been so completely out of control.
Zayne suddenly recalls in past, whenever he was preparing to leave Anlan, you would occasionally reveal a sorrowful expression in a hidden corner, yet you always forced a smile in front of him, secretly hiding the bitterness of separation, afraid of hurting him or adding to his worries.
A warm hand gently touches your cheek, his thumb softly tracing your tear-streaked face. His expression is soft enough to melt glass, his words slow and deep as they reach your ears: "Me too."
You're stunned, tears instantly welling in your eyes.
You understand what Zayne is referring to.Â
He, too, feared that one day, you would let go of his hand for once and for all. Feared that you would no longer need him, feared that you would walk alone into a future without him. The General who had always hidden his emotions so deeply, was revealing to you the fear and concern he had buried deep within his heart for so long.
You reach out, pressing your cheek against the palm of his hand, gently rubbing your face against his palm. "I never want to leave you again."
"Then don't" Zayne replies, a chuckle leaving his throat.
The next second, his lips gently cover yours, as soft as a cloud.
Zayne doesn't move, only letting your lips brush against his, leaving a faint, memorable scent.
He lowers his head, and a very light kiss lands on your brow, silently conveying a thousand unspoken words: Thank you for overcoming all obstacles to stay by his side. He'll make sure you never feel lonely again.
- pairing: zayne, caleb x afab!reader
- synopsis: sunburns are caused by too much exposure, too much closeness, too much lingering heat. it hurts after the warmth fades. what happens when two men are inevitably obsessed with you?
- tags: nsfw content, childhood friends, coming of age, neighbors au, modern au, love triangle, angst, emotional repression, yearning so bad it makes everyone stupid, jealousy-driven, repressed obsession, suburban summer vibes, malewife zayne, golden retriever caleb, slowburn, possessiveness, rivalry, âwho do you like more?â, sexual tension, worshiping, dubcon, touch-starvation, dense!reader, codependency themes, heavy makeouts, m!masturbating, mfm, strictly 18+
- a/n: hi! i'm finally back. i worked on this for over a month and it's pretty damn heavy + plot-driven, so i advise reading this when you're fully free! this is also going to be a two-parter, so stay tuned. (the image is not mine. credits to the rightful owner. would appreciate it if someone tags the artist.)
- wordcount: 23.6k
when you were eleven years old, friday nights always smelled the same.
you always caught scent of soy sauce simmering in the kitchen, charcoal smoke curling into the air from the backyard grill, and somebodyâs perfume lingering near the doorway where all the mothers stood talking too loudly over each other while the fathers argued about basketball games and neighborhood gossip.
your parents called it a âsmall gathering,â even though there were always too many slippers by the front door and too many soda cans sweating on every table. you liked those nights anyway, mostly because they never changed. and especially because you get to hear your aunties and uncles dousing you with compliments about how cute your eyes are.
but they also stayed in their own circles like planets orbiting each other, carrying paper plates and stories they had already told before. meanwhile, all the other younger children drifted wherever they wanted, forming temporary little worlds in corners of the house.
tonight, your world sat cross-legged on the living room carpet. or ratherâtwo boys your age did. you watched them from the armchair nearest the staircase, your chin resting against the cushion while your legs dangled over the edge.
caleb and zayne were sitting side by side beneath the warm yellow glow of the standing lamp, completely absorbed in a puzzle game spread across the floor between them.
they looked nothing alike even back then.
the brown-haired one sat carelessly sprawled on his stomach with his socks mismatched and knees bent in the air as he kicked his feet behind him. he kept stealing pieces from the wrong pile just because he was impatient, humming nonsense under his breath while his hair stuck out in every direction.
âthat one doesnât even go there,â the one with round glasses says for the fifth time.
and the other could only grin at him without shame. âit could though."
âit literally cannot.â
âyou wouldn't know that until we try!"
the black-haired one stared at him with the exhausted disappointment of a tired old man trapped inside a ten-year-oldâs body. even as a kid, he already had that look about him.
neat posture... neatly combed dark hair... neatly folded sleeves.... he handled puzzle pieces like fragile scientific discoveries, turning each one carefully beneath the light before placing it down with precise certainty.Â
you thought they were funny together. caleb was all sunlight, and zayne was all winter mornings. they truly were polar opposites, and yet somehow, they understood each other the most. somehow they still fit beside each other naturally, like they had always been arranged that way from the start.
âyou skipped the steps again,â zayne muttered.
âbecause your steps are booooring.â
âor theyâre efficient.â
âsame thing.â
zayne sighed the kind of sigh adults usually made after paying bills, and it made you laugh quietly into the couch cushion. both boys looked up immediately at the sound you accidentally let out. it was strange, looking back on it now, how quickly they always noticed you.
caleb brightened first, he always did. âhey!" he called, pushing himself upright so fast the puzzle pieces scattered a little. âcome help us!"
âare you losing?â you asked, eyebrows raising.
âweâre winning,âÂ
âyou are objectively losing though,â zayne said, returning his eyes at caleb, as if he couldn't handle the eye-contact with you.Â
you slid off the chair and padded toward them then, stepping carefully around abandoned shoes and empty juice boxes. the carpet felt warm beneath your feet from the heat of too many people inside your house.
up close, you could see the difference between them even clearer. calebâs cheeks looked pink from running around outside earlier, and there was a grass stain near the knee of his jeans with a bandaid on his elbow from some accident nobody had witnessed, but everybody expected. zayne, meanwhile, looked untouched by chaos itself. except for one thing, as there was a tiny pencil mark on the side of his hand.
you pointed at it with a smug look. âhey, you might want to clean that off.â
zayne looked down at his hand like he hadnât noticed, and caleb bursted out laughing. âwow, didn't know the genius makes mistakes too.â
zayne frowned. âitâs not a mistake, pencils transfer residue naturally.â
âthat sounds so made up.â
âitâs literally science, you idiot.â
âbetter than a nerd.â
you sat between them, eyes following the rhythm of their voices. caleb shifted first to make space for you, all easy warmth and careless movement. your shoulder bumped against his accidentally and he froze for half a second before pretending nothing happened. zayne noticed, he always seemed to notice every single thing. his eyes flickered down once before returning to the puzzle board with suspicious concentration.
you, entirely unaware, picked up a random piece. "where does this go?â both boys leaned in immediately, and for one brief second, their heads nearly knocked together over your shoulder.
those friday gatherings still happened every month, or every other week, like clockwork. same houses. same families. same folding tables lined with food nobody waited long enough to cool down before eating. but growing up was sneaky like that. one day you were all sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the carpet arguing over puzzle pieces, and then everybody started drifting into different corners of the house without meaning to.
especially the three of you.
â
you woke up to the sound of chairs scraping against the floor.
for a few seconds, everything felt soft around the edges. sunlight spilled lazily through the classroom windows, warm and golden against your cheek where you had fallen asleep on top of your folded arms. your vision blurred slightly as you blinked awake, eyelashes sticking together from sleep.
reality returned slowly after that. you're in your classroom, and it's a friday afternoon. you lifted your head with a sleepy frown, hair flattened embarrassingly on one side. there was a faint imprint of notebook rings pressed against your skin.
âseriously?â your voice came out hoarse. âyou guys couldnât wake me up?â
âyou looked really dead,â one of your classmates answered from across the room.
another pointed a broom at you accusingly. âplus i didn't know you drool when you sleep. yikes.â
âi do not.â you rubbed your eyes with the sleeve of your uniform, still too drowsy to defend yourself properly. the classroom smelled like dusty chalk, floor cleaner, and afternoon heat trapped between old walls.
outside the windows, the sky had already started turning honey-colored. the prettiest part of school days. you slowly sat upright, stretching your arms above your head until your joints cracked. you pulled out the compact mirror from your bag with a sigh, and you see your hair looking freakingly terrible. one side puffed outward from sleeping while the other remained stubbornly flat against your cheek. you tried fixing it using only your fingers, but it somehow made things worse.
âwow,â it's ridiculous to think how you still look like this at the ripe age of eighteen. after gathering your things, you slipped your bag over your shoulder and stepped outside the classroom into the corridor.
you see students drifting through the pathways in clusters, as their laughter echo faintly between buildings while teachers carried stacks of papers toward the faculty rooms. somewhere in the distance, a whistle blew from the soccer field.
fridays always carried a different kind of tiredness, the kind wrapped in anticipation. normally, friday nights meant the gatherings. the usual routine. your parents dressing up slightly nicer than necessary with trays of food balanced carefully in the car.Â
you exhaled quietly through your nose. for some reason, the thought exhausted you today. maybe it was because your body feeling strangely heavy, maybe it was the headache blooming faintly behind your eyes from sleeping awkwardly at your desk, or maybe it was simply one of those days where existing around too many people sounded unbearable.
you descended the school steps slowly, your fingers tracing absentmindedly along the strap of your bag. honestly, locking yourself inside your bedroom sounded much better tonight. and maybe a movie playing quietly in the background while the sounds of the gathering muffled themselves downstairs. you could already picture it perfectly.
a breeze passed through the campus grounds then, carrying the scent of cut grass and approaching evening. you tucked loose strands of hair behind your ear and kept walking toward the school gates, still half-lost in thought.
âi swear, caleb and zayne are literally impossible to approach.â the words floated past you casually, lightly. like paper airplanes tossed through the air. you almost didnât react at first.
campus gossip traveled fast enough that hearing their names wasnât exactly unusual anymore. still, something about the sudden shift in voices nearby tugged gently at your attention, and before you could stop yourself, your gaze wandered toward the right wing of the campus.
and there they were. caleb and zayne, walking side by side beneath the amber wash of the afternoon sun.
unsurprising.Â
youâd spent nearly your entire life seeing them like this. same neighborhoods, same gatherings, same schools. always somewhere within the same orbit as each other. and yet, every time you looked at them lately, it still startled you a little how much older theyâd become. the boys from your childhood memories now had stretched into something sharper and more defined.Â
caleb predictably moved through crowds without effort, the way sunlight slips through open curtains without asking permission. taller nowâmuch taller than he used to beâwith broad shoulders that filled out the blue-and-white varsity jacket hanging loosely over his basketball jersey, as he smiled at nearly everyone who greeted him along the pathway.
people really greeted him everywhere. a classmate waved, and caleb would grin immediately. someone from the lower years calls his name, and he would point at them in recognition with an easy laugh. even from far away, you could tell how naturally people gravitated toward him. he carried attention like he didnât even realize he had it.
then there was zayne beside him, quieter. where caleb moved like warmth, zayne moved like still water.
he carried several books tucked neatly against one arm while balancing his phone in the other hand, his attention split somewhere between reading messages and listening to whatever caleb was talking about. his glasses rested low against the bridge of his nose, slightly crooked like heâd adjusted them too many times throughout the day.
his sleeves were rolled neatly to his forearms, posture straight despite the weight of the books. everything about him looked composed in that effortless way that somehow made him even more intimidating. still, girls glance at him when he passed, teachers greet him with visible approval, and underclassmen would straighten instinctively whenever he looked their way.
the smartest student in school and the athlete everyone adoredâthe popular duo.
honestly, it made sense. they looked unfairly perfect walking across campus beneath the falling afternoon light, like characters somebody specifically designed to make ordinary people feel underdressed.
you stared for maybe three seconds longer than necessary. you weren't exactly mesmerized, it's just that familiarity sometimes makes people pause. despite growing up beside them your entire life, you still didnât really know them at all. you looked away first, adjusting your bag higher onto your shoulder and continued toward the school gates.
it didnât matter anyway. the three of you were never actually close.
the evening breeze brushed lightly against your face as you quickened your pace down the sidewalk, already thinking about home, about your bedroom, about escaping tonightâs gathering before anyone noticed your mood.
â
by the time you got home, you went straight to your bedroom.Â
downstairs, the gathering slowly came alive piece by piece. you heard doors opening, voices arriving, and laughter swelling louder. you could practically predict the entire night without looking.
you rolled onto your back and stared sleepily at the ceiling. honestly, staying hidden up here sounded perfect. your eyelids slowly began growing heavier. you were just about to fall asleep whenâ
*buzzzzz!*
your phone vibrated beside your pillow, making you abruptly open your eyes. with sleepy reluctance, you reached for it blindly.
the screen glowed against the dim room, and immediately, your eyebrows pulled together in confusion. because the notification said: a text message from caleb!
for a second, you genuinely thought maybe you opened the wrong chat somehow. caleb didn't really text you. sure, you had each otherâs numbers. everybody did after years of family gatherings and school projects and parents insisting on âstaying connected.â
but your conversations mostly lived in the realm of accidental politeness. text messages like... "happy birthday!", "can you send the assignment?", "your mom said dinner starts at seven." that kind of thing... which made the message sitting on your screen feel oddly out of place.
[18:49] caleb: "hey, wya?"
you blinked. your phone remained warm in your hand while you stared at the message. for some reason, your heartbeat suddenly felt embarrassingly loud in the quiet of your bedroom.
why would he message you that? it felt wrong, so you stared at the message again alongside his icon.
more laughter downstairs rose faintly through the floorboards, followed by the distant clinking of plates and someone calling for extra ice.
you hesitated, then typed back anyway.
[18:50] you: "in my bedroom."
you didnât expect anything after that. you were already setting your phone down whenâ
*buzzzzz!*
your eyes flicked back to the screen so fast it almost startled you.
[18:50] caleb: "on my way."
ââŠon my way?â you whispered to yourself, sitting up so quickly your blanket slid off your lap.
what did that even mean? why would he come up?Â
you swung your legs off the bed, already moving. you werenât sure what you were doing, exactly. you just knew you were doing something. your hands started fixing things instinctivelyâpushing stray clothes deeper into the laundry basket, straightening a book on your desk that was already straight, and then shoving your charger under the pillow.
what does caleb even want right now?
a knock on your door sounded.
for a second, your brain refused to process it as anything important. it was as if your body had decided to pretend it didnât hear it at all.
then, another knock, louder this time.
so you had no choice but to slowly reach for the door handle. still hesitating, you twist the doorknob, pulling the barrier open.Â
"hey," and there he was standing in your doorway.Â
he was taller up closeâso much more obvious now than in passing. the hallway light framed him from behind, softening the edges of his varsity jacket and casting a faint glow around his hair. his arms crossed loosely over his chest, smiling. that easy, boyish smile that always made him look like he was about to laugh at something the world hadnât said yet.
âwhy'd it take you so long to open?" he casually remarked, like this was the most normal thing in the world.
you didnât respond. instead, you stared at him. "does mom know youâre up here?âÂ
caleb blinked once, before letting out a short chuckle, shifting his weight slightly in the doorway. "yeah, of course she does."Â
you exhaled. "anyway,â you stepped back into your room, crossing your arms. "what even brings you here?âÂ
caleb followed you in without hesitation, not even a pause. his hand went straight to your light switch and flipped it fully on, bathing everything in warm brightness.
you turned your head sharply. âwhy did you do that?â
âuh, so i can see you.â
âyou couldâve seen with the hallway light."Â
you stared at him, but he wasnât looking at you anymore. he's already walking further in and glancing around your room. you sat down on the edge of your bed with a controlled sigh. âokay, talk. why are you here?"
caleb held up two fingers immediately, like heâd been rehearsing this. "actually, i'm here for two things.â
you narrowed your eyes. âwhy are there always âtwo thingsâ with you.â
âbecause life is balanced,âÂ
âthatâs not evenâ never mind. go.â
he leaned back against your desk, shifting comfortably. "firstly, about the sports day fest.â
you blinked. "...thatâs it?â
âyup."
you stared at him. "you came upstairs, into my bedroom, during a family gathering, just to ask me about sports day fest?"
âwell, youâre on the committee, so why not personally ask you?" he grins.Â
you leaned back, processing that for a moment. âokay, then, what about sports day fest?"
caleb immediately straightened, interest sharpening. "okay so,â he moves away from your desk and paced your room, âare we doing the same relay setup as last year?â
âprobably revised,â you grabbed your phone from the bed, scrolling through your notes. âthe committeeâs still finalizingââ
âwill we not get those ridiculous team shirts anymore?â
âyea, probably.â
âgood,â he said instantly. âlast yearâs were damn tight.â
you looked up. âthey were your size though?"
âway too tight,â he corrected confidently, stopping near your bookshelf and casually picking up one of your notebooks.
your eyes snapped up. âhey, donât touch that.â
he already opened it. "hmm, why not?â
âbecause itâs mine.â
âso?â
you stood up again, walking over to him. "don't touch that, i said!"
he didnât even look guilty. he was flipping through it like it was entertainment. "but this is just your committee notes,âÂ
âexactly.â
âhuh, itâs very organized, i'll give you that,â he whistles.Â
you reached for the notebook and took it back. âthank you, now stop touching things that arenât yours.â
caleb shrugged, unbothered, and wandered toward your window instead. "anyway,â he continued, âare we still doing the obstacle course? because last time someone tripped on the tire thing and it was kind ofââ
âcaleb,â you cut in and pointed at him. âfocus.â
âi am focused.â
âyouâre touching my curtains.â
he glanced down, realized his hand was indeed messing with your curtain tie, and let it drop casually. âokay,â he said, stepping back. âiâm focused now.â
you returned to your bed slowly, sitting down again with a tired expression. "sports day is basically the same structure,â you explained more firmly this time. ârelay, obstacle course, mixed games, but weâre adjusting the scoring this year though.â
caleb nodded, listening intently. you added, âand no, you canât âfixâ anything last minute like you did last year.â
âthat wasnât fixing though,â he combed his hair back with his fingers. âthat was improving morale!"
âby bribing your team with snacks?" you snorted. and he just smiles back, eventually he stopped pacing. which, in your experience, usually meant one of two things: either he was done being chaotic for now, or he had found a new kind of chaos to settle into.
this time, it was the former. he walked over and sat down on the edge of your bed across from you, causing the mattress to dip slightly under his weight. caleb leaned back on his hands, studying you for a moment in a way that made you suddenly aware of your posture, your hair, the fact that you were still wearing your slightly wrinkled shirt from earlier. âhuh,âÂ
you frowned. âwhat?"
he tilted his head a little. âitâs been a while since iâve seen you this close.â
you blinked once. "but you saw me earlier at school.â
âyeah,â he said easily. âbut not like this.â
you didnât ask what âlike thisâ meant. you already didnât like where it sounded like it was going. caleb squinted slightly, like he was comparing something only he could see. "youâve really gotten shorter, it's like you're growing backwards.â
your face went flat at that. âi have not.â
âyou have,â he insisted. âor maybe i got taller. either way, something changed.â
you cleared your throat, trying to avoid the tension in the air. you wonder if he's doing this on purpose, or if he could be a victim to it as well. "so whatâs the second thing you're here for?"
caleb straightened himself, resting his elbows on his knees now instead of leaning back. "oh right,"
you waited as he glanced at you, then away, then back again, deciding how casual to make it sound. "well, iâm having a house party next week.â
"of course you are.â
he ignored that. "and a lot of people are coming, literally anyone you could think of, including zayne's clones."Â
âalso of course.â
caleb watched you for a second, waiting. but you didnât say anything immediately. it wasnât surprising, really. not for him. not for caleb. he was the kind of person who collected people without even trying, just by using his charm and looks.
you adjusted your position on the bed, fingers resting on your blanket. "i see,"Â
calebâs eyebrows lifted a little at that.
you met his eyes briefly. âiâll think about it.âthere was a pause, as if he was reading your answer and deciding what to do with it.
then caleb smiled, not the usual one, but smaller. he shifted forward and reached out before you could react, pinching your cheek like it was an automatic reflex he didnât even question. "then... i'll be happy if you come,"Â
you immediately recoiled. âahââ
"think about it, okay?"
you rubbed your cheek consciously. âyou didnât have to pinch me.â
âi did,â he stood up now like the conversation was naturally ending. "it was necess-uh-ry, so think about it hard. if you aren't there, i'll burn my house and mom will blame you."Â
"is my presence really that important?" you chuckled offhandedly, but the next thing that comes out of caleb's mouth was something you didn't see coming.Â
"it is," he glances at you over his shoulder with a cheeky smile. "rest well and drink your meds, pipsqueak."Â
and then, just like that, he leaves your room.
â
calebâs house looked completely different at night, like somebody had taken the familiar shape of it and dipped it into glittering lights and loud music until it became something unreal.
you stood near the front gate for half a second too long, staring at the amount of cars lining up the street. you suddenly understood what caleb meant by âa lot of people.â apparently, âa lotâ meant half the school population.
âcome on,â one of your classmates laughed beside you, tugging your sleeve. âdonât freeze nowâyou're the one who dragged us here,"
when you followed them inside, just as instantly, warmth crashed into you. warm lights, warm air, warm noise. and lots of people everywhere! students crowded the living room shoulder-to-shoulder, conversations overlapping into one giant buzzing blur while music echoed through the walls loud enough to rattle your ribs. somebody cheered from somewhere near the kitchen, somebody else was already filming videos with flash on.
you stepped carefully through the chaos, trying not to bump into anyone.
honestly, it was kind of overwhelming. you adjusted the hem of your outfit nervously. you had spent way too long deciding what to wear tonight only to immediately regret every clothing decision the second you walked in. still, your classmates kept talking excitedly around you, so you tried to relax. somewhere in the back of your mind, one thought repeated quietly: whereâs caleb?
you hadnât seen him once since arriving. which, honestly, made sense. this was his environment anyway. of course he was busy.
you glanced around again, seeing unfamiliar faces moving endlessly beneath colored lights. then suddenlyâyour classmates disappeared on you. one moment they were beside you, the next moment somebody had pulled one of them toward the dance floor while another vanished into the kitchen crowd, and somehow the current of the party separated you from all of them without warning.
you came to a halt. fuck, where are they?
all you could see were moving shoulders, flashing lights, strangers laughing too loudly over music that kept swallowing every thought whole. panic flickered in your chest, enough to make your stomach tighten.
great. now you were alone.
you pulled your phone from your bag, already considering texting caleb, but then immediately paused.
no, he's absolutely unreliable right now. he was probably halfway across the house entertaining fifty different people at once.
you sighed quietly and slipped your phone back away. okay, fine, you could handle this.
you tried moving forward again, weaving carefully through the crowd while searching for somewhere quieter to stand. except every direction somehow looked louder than the last. you attempted squeezing past them, and immediately somebody bumped your shoulder, now another person nearly stepped on your shoe.
the crowd swallowed space way too quickly, pushing and shifting around you like waves. âsorryâ excuse meââ your voice disappeared instantly beneath the music. you tried moving faster, and then suddenlyâyou feel a hand wrap around your wrist.Â
you turned, already halfway prepared to elbow some random stranger out of self-defenseâonly to freeze.
oh, of all people.Â
for a second, your brain genuinely forgot how to function properly. because seeing zayne at school and seeing zayne at a house party were apparently two completely different experiences.
first of allâthe black shirt. it fit too well, sleeves hugging the shape of his arms in a way that looked unfairly distracting beneath the dim party lights. no rolled-up uniform sleeves tonight nor a neatly buttoned school attireâjust dark fabric stretched across broad shoulders that had definitely gotten wider since high school started, whether you noticed gradually or all at once.
he looked taller somehow too... or maybe the crowd just made him stand out more. either way, he looked painfully out of place against the chaos of the party.Â
you're only brought back to reality when zayne glanced briefly toward the crowd, letting go of your wrist, the sudden movement startling you out of your dazeâhe must've been staring at you that long too. his gaze pressed around the two of you before looking back down at you.
then, without saying a word, he motioned lightly with two fingers for you to follow him. and you could only nod.
he stepped ahead first, guiding a path through the crowd while you followed closely behind him. people shifted instinctively when they noticed him approaching, parting easier somehow compared to when you had tried surviving the dance floor alone thirty seconds ago. you noticed the looks too, how most of the girls glanced at him openly. some even whispered things to each other after he passed.
it's annoyingly understandable. especially tonight. especially with that shirt.
you were still internally judging him for the shirt when suddenly, you feel his hand hovering lightly near the small of your back, guiding you in the quietest possible way.
your entire spine immediately became aware of itself, which was ridiculous because technically he wasnât even touching you. except every now and then, when the crowd tightened too closely, his palm would briefly brush against your back to steer you forward before disappearing again.
you focused very hard on walking normally.
eventually, the music softened as zayne led you toward the corner of the house near the back hallway. the lights here were dimmer and calmer with fewer people crowding the space.
gosh, you could finally breathe again.
you turned toward him at the exact same moment he turned toward you.
âwhy are youââ âdid calebââ both of you spoke simultaneously, and then meeting at the exact same pause.
a tiny silence settled between you, before you waved awkwardly toward him first. âyou go ahead.â
zayne blinked once. and for one brief second, you caught the almost-smile forming in his features. the faintest crack in his usual composed expression, like he was stopping himself from chuckling. unfairly handsome beneath the warm hallway lighting.
âdo your parents know youâre here?â he asked.
you stared at him. ââŠthatâs your question?â
âitâs an important question.â you remained silent though, trying to read through zayne's expression. âanswer it.â
you crossed your arms. âyes, they know.â
zayne studied your face for half a second longer, like he was checking if you were lying, before nodding once. âi see.â
you narrowed your eyes. âwhy are you.. acting like my probation officer?"
âbecause,â he said calmly, âyou looked one inconvenience away from getting kidnapped out there.â
you opened your mouth in immediate offense. "i was handling it just fine.â
zayne glanced toward the crowded living room where you had very visibly been fighting for survival thirty seconds ago, then back at you. ââŠwere you?â
you pressed your lips together, which, unfortunately, was basically an admission of defeat. zayne noticed, he had always been annoyingly observant like that. his gaze lingered on your face for a second longer, calm and unreadable, while the music from the other room pulsed faintly through the walls behind him.
you cleared your throat first, mostly because you refused to let him win this interaction. "anyway,â you said quickly, âwhat brings you here?â
zayne leaned one shoulder against the wall beside you. âcaleb invited me.â typical zayne. talking to him sometimes felt like trying to pry information out of a locked vault using emotional guesswork.
with a quiet sigh, you walked toward one of the empty tall chairs near the kitchen island and climbed onto it carefully, resting your elbows against the counter while observing the chaos happening from a safer distance. from here, the party looked less overwhelming. people moved beneath the colored lights like blurry scenes inside a movie montage.Â
zayne sat beside you a moment later, close enough that you could feel the quiet warmth of his presence beside your arm.
neither of you spoke for a while. surprisingly, it wasnât awkward. it was rather comfortable in that strange unfamiliar way silence sometimes becomes when shared with the right person. your eyes wandered idly around the kitchen island before stopping on something abandoned near the fruit bowl.
a deck of cards.
âyouâre into those?â
you hear zayne ask, in which you nodded to. âyeah, card games are kinda my thing.â
âhm.â
you tilted your head slightly. âwhat about you?â
zayne shook his head once. âno.â
âthen why do you sound interested?"
his expression shifted almost imperceptibly. "i know a few tricks,âÂ
ââŠooh, what kind of tricks?"
zayne didnât answer verbally. instead, he extended an open palm toward you. for some reason, the gesture alone made your stomach feel weirdly aware of itself.
you stared at his hand for a second, catching sight of the veins that were faintly visible beneath warm skin under the party lights. without speaking, you grabbed the deck and placed it onto his palm.
zayneâs fingers closed around it smoothly. his fingers flicked through the deck with practiced precision, cards cascading neatly between his knuckles in soft clicking sounds that somehow cut through the distant music around you.
you stared. âsince when can you do cardistry?â
zayne glanced at you briefly. âi get bored sometimes.â then his attention returned to the cards. his hands moved with quiet confidence, slender fingers guiding the deck through intricate motions like muscle memory lived in every tiny movement. cards flipped over his knuckles smoothly before disappearing into his palm again, edges brushing against each fingertip.
there was something oddly attractive about the way he handled them. you watched one card spin neatly between his fingers before snapping back into the deck again, making your mouth slightly part. âthat was kinda cool.â
âkinda?â
âdonât get arrogant.â
the faintest hint of amusement touched his face. zayne tilted the deck once more, cards fanning cleanly between his fingers like unfolding silk. you suddenly became hyperaware of everything at once. the low music, the warmth of the lights, the elegant movement of his hands.
without looking away from the cards, he asked calmly, âimpressed?â
you ignore him, too focused on what he was doing with his hands.
zayne glanced back down at the cards in his hands, calm and composed as ever, before performing another trickâas if elegance simply happened around him without effort. the deck split cleanly between his fingers. one card disappeared, then reappeared tucked neatly between two knuckles of his other hand before flipping itself back into place.
you blinked. "woah, that's shit.â
âlanguage,â zayne finally set the cards down onto the kitchen island, before looking at you properly. from this angle, the neon lights shifted faintly across his face in blue and pink streaks, and his glasses caught the colored light every now and then, reflecting small flashes whenever he tilted his head.
you stared back before you could stop yourself, narrowing your eyes suspiciously. "so do you know more party tricks?â
zayne leaned back against the counter. "a few.â
âseriously?â
âthereâs one involving drinks.â
you perked up. âshow me.â
"...i havenât actually tried it.â
your eyebrows lifted. âthen how do you know about it?â
âiâve seen it.â
you frowned instantly. that answer alone felt wrong coming from him. "wait,â you said slowly, âso you regularly go to parties?â
zayne looked almost offended by the accusation. ârarely.â
âbut you do.â
he sighed quietly through his nose. âcaleb bribes me.â
you nodded, â...that actually makes complete sense.â
âthank you.â
you laughed softly under your breath despite yourself, before leaning forward again. âokay, so whatâs the drink trick?â
zayneâs expression changed enough for you to notice. his fingers adjusted his glasses lightly against the bridge of his nose before he glanced away for a split second. âitâs not really appropriate.â he looked visibly reluctant now, which only made this infinitely more interesting. because zayne never got visibly reluctant.
you leaned closer across the counter, curiosity fully awake. "what kind of trick is it?â
âone your mother would disapprove of.â
âthat makes me want to know more!"
âthat is exactly the problem.â
you grinned, pressing further. "come on, tell me," zayne held your stare, silent and resisting. which only made you more determined. âyou canât just say mysterious things and not explain them.â
âi absolutely can.â
âyou coward.â
one of his eyebrows lifted slightly, then sighed once, slow and controlled, like he had finally accepted defeat. except instead of answeringâhe leans forward, far too close.
one second zayne was sitting beside you normallyâand the next he was hovering near enough that your entire brain short-circuited on instinct. his arm braced lightly beside you against the counter with his face inches away. close enough for you to notice the faint scent of clean cologne beneath the warmth of the room. close enough to see the tiny reflection of neon lights in his glasses. close enough that your heart immediately launched itself into full panic for absolutely no reason.
you jolted backward so fast you nearly lost balance off the chair.
zayne paused at that, blinking as he calmly reached past you to grab the beer bottle and empty glass sitting behind your shoulder.
silence. the realization alone nearly killed you.
ââŠrelax,â he said finally, leaning back. âyou shouldnât be that easily rattled, especially if youâre going to keep provoking me.â
you rolled your eyes playfully. "i was not provoking you.â
âyou called me a coward.â
âbecause, you were acting mysterious.â
âand now?â he poured himself a drink while speaking, amber liquid glinting beneath the lights. ânow i think you enjoy making me uncomfortable.â
you scoffed. âplease, you donât get uncomfortable.â
zayne only hummed quietly like he disagreed. you stayed suspiciously silent after that, watching him instead. which turned out to be a mistake. because observing zayne too carefully was becoming increasingly dangerous tonight.
he stretched one arm toward the nearby side dishes, long fingers reaching effortlessly for a slice of lemon resting beside the drinks. the movement pulled faint tension across the sleeves of his black shirt, subtle muscle shifting beneath dark fabric before he settled back beside you again. then he held the lemon slice between two fingers and said, very calmly, âopen your mouth.â
ââŠwhat.â
âhm.â zayne tilted his head. âcoward.â
your jaw dropped, "you cannot keep using that against me.â
âseems effective.â
you narrowed your eyes at him, but he only waited patiently. his composure somehow made refusing feel embarrassingly childish now.
you huffed quietly through your nose before finally leaning forward slightly and parting your lips just enough. immediately, warmth crept into your face the second zayne slid the lemon slice, carefully, between your lips.
his fingers brushed against the corner of your mouth for only a second, but your entire nervous system noticed. his gaze lingered there briefly before he looked away first, then he glanced around thoughtfully.
you frowned around the lemon. what is he looking for?Â
âone second.â he stood from the chair and walked toward the kitchen drawers nearby, leaving you sitting there in complete confusion holding a lemon slice in your mouth like somebodyâs deeply humiliated house cat.
you watched him pull open one drawer, then another. until finally, he grabbed a small glass jar of... salt? unscrewing the lid, he dipped two fingers lightly into the salt. and only then did realization begin crawling horrifyingly into your brain.
he returned to stand between your knees before you could escape properly. he's way too close like this.
"you said you wanted to know the trick,â and before you could argue again, his fingers brushed lightly against your collarboneâcool grains of salt scattered softly over warm skin.
you sucked in a tiny breath when his hand settled against your hip, steady enough to keep you still. and then he leaned down, licking the salt from your clavicleâhis warm tongue grazed along the surface of your skin, for a second longer than necessary, he sucked on it.Â
your breath caught instantly, a tiny sound escaping you before you could stop it, soft and startled and humiliatingly real.
zayne paused for the briefest second afterward. then slowlyâfar too slowlyâhe lifted his head again, his face close enough that the lemon scent mixed faintly with the warmth of his breath. without meeting your eyes, he leaned forward once more and carefully took the lemon slice from between your lips using his own.
zayne still refused to look directly at you. instead, he reached for the glass calmly, closed his eyes once, and drank the alcohol in one smooth swallow.
the music still played somewhere behind you, and people still laughed. but everything around you felt strangely muffled, as if your brain had wrapped itself in cotton after what just happened. your collarbone still tingled faintly, the memory of his saliva and tongue against the skin ghosting over it.
did that seriously just happen? you couldn't even focus on your own internal monologue, as you noticed the way zayne's brows pinched together ever so slightly as he swallowed hard after the drink, setting the glass down against the counter with a quiet clink. then he coughed once into his fist.
the image of calm, composed, terrifyingly smooth zayne abruptly cracking because of alcohol was so unexpected that your brain physically stalled trying to process it. âhey, are you okay?â
zayne straightened almost instantly. "iâm fine." except his voice sounded rougher now, the faintest flush spreading beneath the sharp line of his cheekbones.
you stared harder. â...are you used to drinking?â
there was a tiny pause, before zayne adjusted his glasses and answered with complete honesty, âthis is my first time.â
what?Â
he looked away briefly, clearing his throat once more. âi said iâd only seen the trick before.â
your eyes widened, "zayne!â he winced faintly at the volume of your voice. âyou made it sound like you knew what you were doing!â
âi did know what i was doing.â
you stared at him in disbelief, a course of guilt rushing down your face. now that you were really looking at him, he genuinely seemed affected. not drunk exactly, but definitely warmer around the edges than before. his composure still sat perfectly in place, yet there was something subtly looser about him now.
"sorry,â you started quietly. âi didnât know youâd neverââ
âzayne!â both of you looked up at the interruption.
a guy from the caleb's team was waving from the other side of the kitchen, already halfway approaching through the crowd. âthere you are,â he said breathlessly. âcalebâs looking for you.â
zayne blinked at him, composure slipping neatly back into place. âwhy?"
âsomething about the speakers. nobody else understands the setup except you.â
of course. even at parties, zayne somehow got assigned technical support duties against his will. he sighed through his nose before standing properly from the chair. for one second, his gaze flickered back toward you. and suddenly the air felt warm again. "donât disappear,â and, before you could answerâhe was already gone back into the crowd.
â
ever since then, for reasons you were oblivious to, both zayne and caleb started treating you like someone they actually knewâwhich was strange considering you had technically grown up together your entire lives. but before, there had always been distance, you know, the careful kind. now, somehow, they stayed.
you, meanwhile, remained catastrophically unaware. because in your mind, this was normal. right? they were childhood friends. technically. and childhood friends probably acted like this all the time.
unfortunately for you, everybody else at school possessed functioning pattern recognition, which became increasingly obvious.
but they had always bickered, hadnât they? except now the arguments felt oddly targeted. caleb would interrupt conversations just to steal your attention away from zayne, and then zayne would correct calebâs exaggerated stories while looking directly at you instead of him.
during the friday gatherings, caleb suddenly insisted you sit beside him during karaoke nights while zayne quietly occupied the chair on your other side before anybody else could. they acted normal individually. but together? strangely competitive. but somehow, you never really fully noticed.
until... the campus practically vibrated with excitement that morning.
music blasted through giant speakers across the field while students flooded the grounds wearing brightly colored team shirts beneath the hot sunlight. you could hear the whistles echoing from afar and how somebody was already yelling into a megaphone because everybody isn't exactly organized.
you, unfortunately, were suffering. committee duties meant running around with clipboards while surviving on pure stress and iced coffee.
âwhereâs the relay list?â
âwho moved the cones?â
directly in the center of it is caleb and zayne being on opposite teams. the universe found it hilarious, because the second the games started, things became unbearably obvious.
caleb played like a man personally offended by the thought of defeat itself, incredibly fast and competitive. he truly is all effortless athleticism beneath the glaring afternoon sun, his jersey clinging slightly from sweat while crowds screamed his name every five seconds.
on the other hand, zayne is somehow equally terrifying. it made no sense because zayne wasnât even the sporty one. yet there he was, calm and calculating beneath the heat, playing with the same frightening precision he approached everything else in life.
they kept watching each other, constantly, like two academically gifted wolves. every single time one of them scored, their eyes immediately searched for you afterward. you noticed that part eventually, mostly because it kept happening.
still, you remained mostly confused rather than enlightened, then came the foul that happened during one of the final basketball rounds, fast enough that everybody gasped at once.
caleb deliberately blocked zayne harder than necessary near the court line, the collision sharp enough for sneakers to screech loudly against polished flooring.
whistles exploded instantly. âfoul!â
âwatch it!â the committee members beside you stood up immediately, except neither caleb nor zayne looked at the referees.
they looked at you. both of them. like somehow your reaction mattered more than the actual game. you stood there clutching your clipboard in complete disbelief. "...what are they doing,âÂ
one of your friends beside you snorted loudly. "fighting over you, obviously.â
you turned so fast you nearly dropped the clipboard. "no they aren't?â
he stares at you for a long moment. âyou... actually donât know?"
after that, it became impossible to unsee. impossible for literally everyone else. once somebody pointed it out, the pattern started unfolding everywhere. in your defense, both boys behaved in ways that were just plausible enough to deny. maybeâ maybe âyou were simply unlucky enough to exist directly between both personalities at once.
â
summer is nearby.
the afternoons stretched longer, with the concrete outside shimmering faintly beneath the heat. even the trees beyond your backyard fence looked sleepy, their leaves barely moving whenever wind passed through.
your laundry basket sat beside you, half-empty now, while damp clothes hung heavily across the clothesline one by one. sunlight warmed the back of your neck as you clipped another shirt into place, fingers smelling faintly of detergent and fabric softener. somewhere nearby, a radio played old music from another house. you liked days like this, days where nobody expected anything from you except folded laundry and watered plants. except lately, your brain had refused to stay quiet.
you clipped another shirt onto the line harder than necessary.Â
the two guys werenât even trying to hide it anymore. and almost everybody seemed to notice it now. even your own mother noticed, judging by the increasingly suspicious smiles sheâd been giving you lately whenever either boy visited.
honestly, it stressed you out. because the problem was you didn't dislike them. rather, you cared about both of them too much to treat any of this lightly. which was exactly why you refused to bring it up first.
because if there truly was something thereâsomething realâthen it should come from them. right? and selfishly, you didnât want the burden of dragging confessions out into daylight only to ruin whatever fragile thing currently existed between all three of you.
you sighed and reached for another damp shirt. inside the house, your mother suddenly called your name.
âcoming!â you shouted back.
the screen door slid open as your parents peeked outside together, your mother already holding her purse while your father jingled car keys impatiently beside her. âweâre leaving for the whole day, okay?â your mother called out. âthereâs food in the fridge!â
you nodded. âokay!â
âdonât forget your laundry outside later!â
âi know!â
a few moments later, you watched their car disappear slowly down the street while cicadas buzzed lazily in the afternoon heat.
silence settled over the house afterward. so you returned to your laundry basket with another sigh. and, unfortunately, immediately started thinking again. about calebâs lingering touches, about zayneâs stares, about the sports day, about that stupid lemon trick.
your face warmed at the memory. âthis is so annoying,â and as if summoned directly from your thoughtsâ
the doorbell rang.
you froze, frowning suspiciously at the gate. you're pretty sure your parents didn't inform you earlier of anyone visiting at this hour...
you wiped your damp hands hurriedly against the sides of your shorts before making your way through the house and toward the front door. the second you opened it, you regretted everything instantly.
because standing outside your gate were caleb and zayne, together.
huh, talk about a coincidence.
your eyes flicked towards the two plastic bags filled with fruits hanging from caleb's arm while zayne carried another smaller bag beside him. sunlight poured over both of them harshly enough that you had to squint. âheya, pips," caleb greeted first, smiling easily the second he saw you.
zayne gave a small nod beside him. âgood afternoon.â you stared blankly for approximately three whole seconds before your brain suddenly remembered your current appearance.
oh, this was horrible.
you were wearing an old white tank top slightly wrinkled from heat, loose boy shorts, and your hair was tied messily on top of your head in the kind of rushed bun that made you resemble an exhausted suburban mother halfway through a sunday cleaning routine!
your entire body now became aware of itself, and judging by the brief silence afterwardâthey probably noticed too.
zayne adjusted his glasses lightly, gaze flickering away for one suspicious second before returning to your face with entirely too much composure. "we brought fruits,âÂ
caleb lifted the bags. âour parents bought too much again.â
âand your mom mentioned nobody would be home,â zayne added.
your eyebrows lifted slowly. ââŠmy mom told you that?â
âshe saw us outside earlier,â caleb answered. âthen she basically assigned us delivery duty.â
that sounded unfortunately believable. you glanced down at yourself again instinctively. big mistake. because when you looked back up, caleb was very visibly trying not to grin.
âwhat?â
ânothing.â
âyouâre smiling.â
âbecause you lookââ zayne elbowed him before he could finish, causing a cough out of caleb to correct himself instantly. ââbusy,âÂ
you stepped outside instead, the concrete warm beneath your slippers as you approached the gate. the metal latch clicked when you opened it halfway, enough for you to reach over and take the plastic bags from their hands. the fruits inside shifted heavily against your arms.
âthanks,â you said, avoiding eye-contact for a second because you were still painfully aware of your appearance.
caleb leaned against the fence immediately after handing the bags over, sunlight catching against his hair in uneven gold streaks. âthatâs it?â
you blinked. âwhat do you mean, thatâs it?"
âarenât you gonna let us in?â
you stared at him. âwhy would i let you in?"
âbecause we carried fruits all the way here under the tragic heat of the sun,â he pressed a hand against his chest. âweâre basically your heroes.â
âyou live just three houses away.â
before caleb could continue arguing, zayneâs gaze shifted past you toward the backyard. more specifically, toward the laundry lines swaying gently beneath the summer wind. he noticed the basket first, then the enormous remaining pile of unfolded clothes still waiting beside the basin.
âso youâre doing laundry,â he observed.
you looked over your shoulder, âobviously.â
there was a small pause before zayne adjusted his glasses and said, in the calmest voice possible, âwe can help you.â
you turned back around so quickly you nearly dropped the fruit bags. ââŠwhat? noâ"
âyeah,â caleb chimed in, straightening from the fence with alarming enthusiasm. âwe have nothing else to do anyway."
âyou do not need to help me with laundry.â
âwhy not?â
âbecause itâs laundry.â
caleb frowned. that wasnât a valid argument at all. zayne remained standing quietly beside him, somehow already looking committed to the task. you opened your mouth to refuse again, but when you glanced back toward the backyard, toward the mountain of clothes still waiting, your shoulders visibly deflated.
caleb noticed. âsee? she needs us.â
âdonât sound so happy about it.â
still, you found yourselves walking through the side path toward the backyard together while sunlight filtered warmly through the trees overhead. you set the fruit bags down onto the small outdoor table near the clothesline, pushing loose strands of hair away from your face as the boys surveyed the situation.
âthis is a ridiculous amount of laundry,â caleb commented.
âweâre entering summer,â you replied. âthe bedsheets multiply during summer somehow.â
âscientifically impossible,â zayne murmured.
âtell that to my mother."Â
caleb carries the heavier basin closer to the line while zayne organized the clothespins into neat little rows because apparently even laundry required structure in his mind. you couldnât help glancing at them every now and then in faint disbelief. it felt strange, domestic in the oddest way. it's the kind of scene that wouldâve looked completely normal if you were all ten years old again.
except now, both boys were taller than the clothesline poles and looked unfairly attractive beneath the afternoon sun.
âzayne!â water splashed suddenly across calebâs side.
zayne paused, one sleeve still damp from where heâd accidentally flicked water while wringing a shirt. âthat was unintentional,â
caleb looks down at himself. ââŠbro.â before you could even react properly, he lets out a troubled snicker and grabbed the hem of his shirt, pulling it off in one smooth motionâonly to show underneath was only a fitted white sleeveless undershirt clinging against his frame from the heat.
now you understand why almost the entire female population of your school acted clinically insane around him.
you turned your face away. far too late, unfortunately, as caleb definitely noticed your reaction. his grin widened. âwhy are you looking away?â
âiâm not.â
âmhm.â
you focused aggressively on clipping towels onto the line. surprisingly enough, the boys werenât fighting today.
zayne just sighed quietly and rolled his sleeves upward toward his elbows before eventually pushing them all the way near his shoulders. the motion revealed clean forearms lined faintly with veins beneath warm skin. he reached for another shirt. âif you keep teasing her, sheâll stop letting us help.â
caleb laughed. âshe likes us helping.â
âi never said that.â you cut in.
âwell, you didnât have to.â
you ignored the dog's remark and crouched over the basin with a tired sigh. things always had a different plan for you, though.
one second you were lifting it carefully from the ground, and the next, cold water came crashing against your front with a sharp splash that made you gasp aloud. the weight of it soaked through your tank top instantly, thin white fabric clinging embarrassingly fast against your skin.
âshitââ you completely froze as you felt itâthe damp cling of fabric, the cool air against exposed skin underneath, and the way your brassiere is now far more visible than it had any right to be.
slowly, you looked up, only to find both boys staring. caleb had gone unusually quiet. his easy smile disappeared somewhere between surprise and something else entirely, his gaze lingering for half a second too long before darting upward again. beside him, zayne looked equally caught off guard, though his reaction was quieter. his hand still held a clothespin loosely between slender fingers, unmoving, while his eyes flickered downward once before carefully returning to your face.
neither of them spoke. and the silence made heat rush violently into your cheeks.
you crossed your arms over yourself instinctively, suddenly aware of every inch of your body beneath the sunlight. the backyard no longer felt breezy or playful or safe. it felt small. âiâll just go get another shirt,â you muttered quickly, already turning toward the house before your embarrassment could fully consume you.
except zayne spoke first. âiâll come help you.â
your steps halted, turning to him. âhelp me⊠change?â the second the words left your mouth, caleb choked on air beside him.
zayne blinked once, gathering his words much more carefully. âthatâs obviously not what i meant.â
before you could answer, caleb suddenly stepped forward and grabbed the shirt heâd tossed aside earlier. his white undershirt stretched faintly against his chest as he walked to you. âor,â he holds the shirt out toward you, âyou can just wear mine.â
you stared at him, then unfortunately at his big arms for one treacherous second before forcing your eyes upward again. âcalebââ
âitâs clean,â he added quickly. âwell, mostly.â
zayneâs gaze shifted toward the shirt in calebâs hand, expression unreadable. then, without a word, he began unbuttoning his own overshirt.
your eyes widened. ââŠwhat are you doing?"
âoffering a better option.â
caleb let out a laugh of disbelief. âyouâre kidding.â
âhers is soaked,â zayne rolls his sleeves downward again before shrugging the dark overshirt from his shoulders. âmine actually covers properly.â
the air changed after that, just enough for you to feel it settle heavily between them. both boys met each other's eyes, and suddenly you felt less like a person and more like the center of a very polite war.
caleb returned his gaze towards you, shirt still held loosely in one hand while the other rested against his hip. âtake mine, itâll be more comfortable.â
before you could even process that, zayne moved too, closer to your other side. âmine is larger, youâll feel less exposed.â
your heartbeat stumbled stupidly, because now they were both standing close enough for you to feel heat radiating from either side of you. close enough that their voices dropped lower naturally beneath the summer stillness. somewhere above, the laundry fluttered softly in the wind while water continued dripping from the hem of your soaked shirt onto the concrete below.
you looked between them helplessly. it's really ridiculous how both of them were standing in your backyard wearing sleeveless undershirts, how your soaked tank top clung colder against your skin as you glanced between the two shirts again.
if you were choosing purely based on practicality... zayneâs was the obvious answer. it was larger, plus it wasn't damp. trying very hard not to think about the implications of literally wearing one of their clothes, you slowly reached toward zayneâs offered shirt.
*buzzzzz!*
all three of you paused.
zayne reaches into his pocket, already looking mildly irritated by the interruption. he checked the screen.
caleb leaned slightly. âwho is it?â
âmy tutor.â
you and caleb both stared at him. ââŠright now?âÂ
âtutor advance classes,â zayne answered flatly, âi forgot.â he really had always been terrifyingly academic. the type to voluntarily attend extra classes during the last few months of school while the rest of humanity tried surviving the heat without collapsing. still, there was the faintest tension in his expression. one of reluctant annoyance, subtle enough.
âis it important?â you asked.
zayne looked at the screen for another second too long before finally answering, âyes.â he didnât sound too happy about it.
caleb whistles, "that's brutal."
for one tiny moment, zayneâs eyes flickered back toward you, toward the hand that had almost reached for his shirt earlier. something unreadable crossed his face. quiet satisfaction, maybe. or maybe you imagined it.
without another word, he slowly slid his overshirt back on, rolling his shoulders once as the fabric settled neatly against him again. somehow, watching him button it back into place felt oddly intimate too. âyou should change before you catch a cold,â he said.
âin this scorching heat?â
âstill possible.â
typical zayne answer.
he adjusted his glasses before turning toward the side gate, but not before giving caleb one brief glance, meaningful enough that you instantly became suspicious. âiâll see you later.â
just like that, the genius left.
you watched him disappear past the front yard while warm wind stirred softly through the hanging laundry around you.
slowly... very slowly... you turned back toward calebâwho was already looking at you. who looked amused, deeply amused. you narrowed your eyes. âaren't you going to follow after zayne and have the courtesy to leave as well?"
caleb leaned casually against the outdoor table, arms crossing over his chest, the shirt that he had offered earlier dangling from one of his hands. âhave you always been this feisty since you were a kid, pips?â
âonly towards you.â
his grin widened. "you really were gonna pick his shirt, huh."
âbecause it was bigger!â you faced your back towards him, hanging the last batch of clothes.
âmhm.â
âand it covered more.â
âsure.â
you stared at him in offense while he laughed softly under his breath. the worst part was how unfairly pretty he looked doing it. summer sunlight caught against the loose strands of hair falling over his forehead while his shoulders shook lightly with amusement. and then, his gaze drifted downward for a split second toward your still-soaked shirt before immediately lifting back to your face. the shift was quick, respectful even, but you still caught it.
by the time the last batch of laundry was finally finished, the afternoon sun had softened into something warmer and slower. the backyard smelled faintly of detergent and sun-dried fabric now. bedsheets swayed overhead in lazy motions while the remaining drops of water glimmered along the concrete beneath the clotheslines.Â
you bent down with a small sigh, reaching for the empty basins stacked beside the faucet. your shoulders ached slightly from standing too long. âfinally,â you muttered. âiâm never washing clothes again...â you glanced back to find caleb watching you from beside the outdoor table, amusement tugging lazily at the corner of his mouth. his hair had dried messily beneath the heat.
you looked away immediately. before you could properly walk past him, caleb stepped into your path.
you look up at him with a curious gaze. âmove.â
âno.â
âcaleb.â
âyouâre still so soaked.â
you frowned down at the wet shirt sticking annoyingly to your frame. âiâll just change inside.â
âlet me do it for you.â
âno need, cay.â before you could sidestep him, caleb leaned closer, close enough to make your pulse trip over itself.
instinctively, you stepped backward, and he kept on trapping you until your back bumped lightly against the screendoor, the sound making both of you pause.
âsit down for a second.â he said. despite yourself, though, you glanced toward the small wooden chair nearby. caleb's grin softened into something quieter. âcâmon.â
you huffed softly through your nose before finally setting the basin aside and dropping onto the chair with reluctant defeat. âsuch a bossy old man,âÂ
âyou love it.â caleb laughed under his breath before crouching slightly in front of you. then his fingers caught the hem of your soaked tank top.
you freeze at the gesture, eyes widening at him.
âcan i?â the question shouldâve embarrassed you more than it did. maybe it was because this was caleb, or maybe it was because the summer heat had melted your common sense hours ago.
either way, after a second, you gave the smallest nod. almost awkwardly now, he guided the damp fabric upward while keeping his eyes shut tight like it physically pained him to peek. you helped tug the wet shirt free before quickly pulling his shirt over yourself afterward.
the fabric smelled like him. it made you warm.
âokay,â you mumbled weakly. âyou can look now.â
caleb opened his eyes slowly, smiling. he crouched lower until he was nearly eye-level with you, one knee pressed against the concrete while he wrung your soaked shirt carefully between both hands. water dripped steadily onto the ground beneath him.
out of the blue, caleb laughs under his breath, though it didnât sound entirely happy. âyou know,â he started, twisting the fabric tighter, âi donât really like how you are around zayne.â caleb kept his eyes lowered toward the shirt in his hands. there was still a smile on his face, but it looked strange now, thinner around the edges.
âwhatâs that supposed to mean?â you asked.
he shrugged one shoulder. âi don't know, you listen to him more.â
âno, i don't.â
âyes, you do.â his voice stayed light, casual almost, but something underneath it tugged too tightly. âwhen he tells you to sit still, you sit still. when he says something, you get all quiet and nice. you even looked so ready to wear his shirt earlier without arguing.â
he glanced up finally, brown eyes warmer than the afternoon sunlight spilling across the backyard. âbut with meâŠâ he smiled faintly. âyouâre really mean.â the smile on his face remained there stubbornly, but now it looked almost brittle. like he was trying very hard to keep things playful even while something heavier sat underneath every word.
the distant hum of cicadas still filled the spaces between words. for a while, caleb only stared at the fabric, listening to it. and then he laughed softly to himself. âyou know whatâs crazy? that party i threw a few weeks ago?â
your stomach immediately tightened. â...what about it?"
his fingers stilled against the shirt. âdid you really think i didnât see?â
âsee what?"
caleb stared at you for a long second, the smile disappearing from his face entirely. and suddenlyâsuddenly he didnât look playful anymore. he looked serious in a way that made your heartbeat stumble. âzayne,â he said quietly. âwith you.â
your breath caught.
caleb leaned back against his heels. âi saw him take you away from the crowd, and i saw him touch you. you think i didnât know what he was doing?â his jaw tightened faintly before he continued. âi went looking for you because you disappeared. then i found the two of you in the kitchen.â his gaze dropped briefly toward your neck. âand i saw him licking you off,âÂ
the bluntness of it made heat rush violently into your face. caleb looks away, running a hand through his hair roughly before laughing again under his breath. âgod, i was so pissed.â you stared at him, because you couldn't say anything. anything at all. what else is there to say? deny what he saw? you knew it was true. tell him it was an accident? both of you and zayne were fully sober. he looked hurt, really hurt. âi wanted to punch him.â
your eyes slightly widened at that.
âiâm serious,â he said, looking back at you. âbut i couldnât even bring it up because what was i supposed to say, huh? âhey, i saw the girl i like with my best friend and it made me feel insaneâ?â he exhaled sharply through his nose before leaning closer, close enough that your breath caught on instinct.
âdo you know how hard it was pretending i didnât care after that?â his eyebrows deeply furrowed, purple eyes holding yours. âwatching you act normal around him after he did something like that to you?â his voice lowered further. âand the worst part isâŠâ his fingers loosened from your shirt completely, dropping the damp fabric beside the chair before his left hand settled against your waist instead. âwould it be unfair if i wanted the same thing?â
your breath hitched when his grip tightened ever so slightly before he leaned in further, head tilting slowly toward the side of your neck. you could now feel the warmth of his breath against your skin, but apart from that, you also felt the hesitation. unlike zayne, caleb was expressive and emotional. you could practically hear the conflict happening inside him.
wanting. waiting. holding himself back.
his lips ghosted just barely against your skin, and your fingers instinctively caught against the edge of the chair beneath you. and then suddenlyâcaleb forms a crooked smile, and pulled away.
you blinked at him in stunned silence while he leaned back again, laughing quietly under his breath like he was mocking himself. âsee? i canât do it.â he murmured. âbecause iâm not like zayne.â his hands slid slowly from your waist, trailing down your arms with unbearable gentleness before settling briefly against your knee. âheâs calm when he wants something, he thinks first, plans first.â
his thumb brushed lightly against your skin, drawing lazy circles across the surface. âbut me? i just feel everything." you didnât know what expression you were making. maybe none at all. maybe that was the problem.
while caleb sat crouched in front of you with his hands still lingering against your knee, your face remained unreadable beneath the soft sunset light. your heartbeat was loud enough to make your chest ache, but outwardly, you only stared back at him. somehow, your silence seemed to unravel him more than rejection would have.
you could practically see the conflict worsening behind his eyes, messy and emotional and far too honest to hide. caleb had always been terrible at concealing feelings. even as a child, everything he felt used to spill out immediately through expressions, through gestures, through the way he hovered too close.
âsay something,â he murmured.
you swallowed softly but didnât answer fast enough, before calebâs hand tightened around your knee. âbecause i donât get it.â his other hand rose until it settled against your shoulder, fingers curling there with growing tension. âyou let zayne do things i canât even imagine doing to you, but then you look at me like iâm justâŠâ he shakes his head. âi donât know. easier?â
you frowned. âthatâs not true.â
âthen look at me.â his grip tightened slightly. âlook at me when iâm talking to you.â
you finally lifted your eyes fully toward him, and immediately wished you didn't. he looked vulnerable in the ugliest, rawest way possible. like jealousy had been eating at him quietly for weeks and heâd finally lost the ability to keep swallowing it down.
âiâm different from him, you know that, right?â his thumb pressed lightly against your shoulder as if trying to anchor you there with him. âzayne acts like heâs in control all the time. but me? iâve been trying so hard not to lose my mind over you lately."
âcaleb, you're..."
âiâm serious.â he leaned closer again, eyes searching yours desperately. âif youâd just give me somethingâ anything âi swear iâdââ
his hand around your knee tightened again unconsciously, but pain bloomed sharply this time. âcaleb, that hurts.â
and then, everything stopped. his expression changed so fast it almost startled you. the frustration disappeared first, followed by the desperation. then whatever reckless emotion had been pushing him forward moments ago.
caleb looked down at his own hand gripping your knee like he genuinely didnât recognize it. like he didnât recognize himself. and suddenly he let go so quickly it was almost panicked.
âshit.â
he pulled back, both hands dropping away from you entirely as though burned. horror crossed his face in slow motion while he stared at the faint pressure marks already beginning to form against your skin.
âshit,â he repeated quieter this time. âi didnât mean toââ he stopped speaking halfway through.
because what explanation was there? what excuse could possibly make that better?
you rubbed your knee instinctively while he stared at the motion with visible guilt twisting across his features.
âchrist,â the words sounded directed entirely at himself, as he stood up, fast enough that the wooden chair creaked faintly beneath the movement. caleb drags a hand down his face before stepping away from you altogether, embarrassment and self-disgust radiating off him so clearly it made your chest ache.
âiâm sorry,â he bent down immediately afterward and grabbed the abandoned basins near the faucet, almost too quickly, like he needed something physical to focus on. âi got carried away,â he muttered while stacking them together. âthat was shitty.â
you opened your mouth slightly, but no words came out. seeing caleb like this felt strangely awful. heâd gone from intense and overwhelming to withdrawn within seconds, every bit of earlier confidence collapsing inward now that he realized heâd frightened you.
he kept his back turned afterward while carrying the basins toward the side of the house. and for the first time since this strange complicated thing between the three of you beganâcaleb looked genuinely ashamed of wanting you so much.
â
the basins were stacked back into their corners, and the faucet had stopped dripping. the laundry danced beneath the evening breeze while the last traces of sunlight melted into warmer shades of orange across the neighborhood rooftops.
you stood quietly near the gate, fingers curled loosely around the metal bars as you watched caleb leave. he walked with his hands tucked into his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched beneath the fading sunlight as he made his way back toward his own street a few houses away. from behind, he looked strangely boyish again despite everything that had happened earlier. not the schoolâs golden athlete, not the loud charming boy everybody loved, but just caleb. your childhood neighbor.
you looked down afterward. the faint marks around your knee had already begun fading beneath your skin, barely visible now unless you focused on them carefully. you knew what happened earlier shouldâve unsettled you more. it shouldâve frightened youâthe way caleb lost control for a second there.
but strangely enough, fear never came, for all you could remember was the expression on his face afterward.Â
everything between the three of you had become so complicated lately. and somehow, you felt guilty too. guilty because part of you understood why caleb was unraveling. guilty because you kept letting both of them stay close while pretending not to notice the obvious. guilty because maybe you did treat zayne differently.
you groaned under your breath. âthis is so messy.â
that evening, normalcy returned little by little. your parents came home carrying grocery bags and stories from wherever theyâd spent the day while the house filled with the comforting smells of dinner cooking in the kitchen. you helped prepare the table while your mother talked endlessly about traffic and your father complained about the heat.
it felt ordinary and safe again.
the soft yellow lamp near your bedroom desk cast warm light across the walls while the curtains fluttered gently from the open window. outside, summer night hummed through the neighborhoodâdistant barking dogs, cicadas hidden somewhere in trees, and the faint sound of somebodyâs television drifting from another house.
you exhaled the second your bedroom door shut behind you. your body practically melted with exhaustion as you walked toward your bed, already reaching for your phone when suddenlyâ
*buzzzzz!*
your brows furrowed, glancing down at the screen.
you genuinely wondered if you were hallucinating, because zayne rarely called people, he barely even texted first unless it was academic or medically necessary. and more importantlyâhe had never called you before.
your thumb hovered uncertainly over the screen before curiosity won. you answered the call and lifted the phone toward your ear while sitting down onto your bed. âhello?â
for a moment, only soft static answered. then, zayneâs voice came through the line, low and slightly hoarse. âdid i wake you?â
you immediately sat straighter for absolutely no reason. âno, whatâs up?â
there was a brief pause on the other end before he spoke again. âi think i left my watch there.â
ââŠyour watch?â
âi took it off while helping earlier.â
your eyes drifted toward the window, as if the watch might magically appear outside in the dark backyard. it was probably still near the laundry areaâexcept the thought of going downstairs again felt genuinely devastating. you groaned softly and fell backward against your pillows. âcan i just give it back tomorrow morning?â
another quiet pause. then, âthatâs fine.â you could practically picture him nodding to himself on the other side of the call. âthanks,â he added afterward.
your fingers reached automatically toward the small nailcare basket sitting near your bedside table. absentmindedly, you pulled it onto your lap and started sorting through tiny bottles and nail files while balancing the phone against your shoulder. âsure, no probs,â
the silence afterward shouldâve ended the conversation. normally, zayne wouldâve hung up already. that was how he worked, oh so efficient and straightforward. except when you thought he already ended the call, you noticed his caller id still ongoing after several seconds passed.
you frowned. ââŠanything else?â
a soft sound came from the other end. a hum, maybe. âwhat are you doing?â your hand paused midair over the nail polish remover. for a second, you genuinely thought you misheard him. because this was not a zayne question, at all.
this was the kind of question normal teenage boys asked when they wanted conversations to keep going. meanwhile, zayne is a teenager, but he usually spoke like every sentence had been academically pre-approved beforehand.
ââŠiâm cleaning my nails,â you answered slowly.
another hum. you could also hear faint rustling on his side of the line too, like sheets shifting softly. and the image of zayne lying on his bed with his glasses slightly crooked nearly distracted you.
what a dangerous thought. you focused aggressively on your cuticles, before his voice came again.
âdid you eat already?â
your fingers stopped moving, staring blankly at your nail file. âuh, yeah, during dinner.â
âgood.âÂ
silence settled again afterward, but strangely enough, it didnât feel awkward. through the phone, you could hear the faint sound of his breathing every now and then. it was strangely calming beneath the soft nighttime sounds drifting through your bedroom window.
âyou sound tired,â you murmured.
âi am.â
âhow were your classes?â
zayne sighed on the other end, and the sound traveled straight through your chest for some unfair reason. âlong.â
you smiled faintly to yourself while pushing back your cuticles. âthat sounded miserable.â
âindeed it was.â
âpoor zayne.â
âdonât mock me.â
âiâm being supportive.â you laughed quietly before catching yourself. unbeknownst to you, miles away in the quiet dimness of his own bedroom, zayne had stopped doing work a long time ago.
his textbooks remained abandoned near the edge of his desk, untouched for the past twenty minutes while warm lamplight spilled across scattered papers and half-written notes. instead, he sat leaning back against the headboard of his bed in an oversized white shirt and dark sleeping pants, one knee drawn upward beneath the blankets.
his phone rested against his ear. and despite himselfâhe hadnât hung up yet. the pen between his fingers rolled habitually over his knuckles while he listened to the soft sounds on your side of the line. your quiet breathing, and the occasional rustling whenever you shifted against your bedsheets.
zayne liked you most in moments like this, in unguarded moments. âi should apologize.â zayne broke the silence.
your hand paused over your nails. âhm? for what?â
âthe party,â he answered. âfor how i acted.â
ah. the lemon trick. why would he apologize for that now?Â
your face warmed, âoh."
âi crossed a line.â despite the memory, his voice remained calm, but there was still something restrained underneath it. âif you felt uncomfortable, i can keep my distance from now on.â
your brows furrowed immediately. âwhat? no." the answer came out far too fast, and you realized it a second later. so did he.
still, you hurried onward before your embarrassment could consume you. âi meanâitâs fine. i was the one provoking you anyway."Â
ââŠso you werenât uncomfortable?â
you sat up straighter against your pillows. âthatâs notâ i meanââ a nervous laugh escaped you instantly, trying to dissolve the weight of your own words. âyouâre making it sound weird.â
âam i?â through the phone, you heard the faint sound of his pen stopping completely. somehow, that tiny detail made your heartbeat worsen.Â
the next words that come out of zayne's mouth were so out of place that it almost had you considering the end call button.Â
âyou should be more careful around caleb.â
âwhat?â
zayneâs tone remained even. âcaleb isnât who you think he is.â
"what does that even mean?â
another brief silence followed, like he was debating whether to continue. âyou think heâs harmless because he acts open about everything, but heâs not.â
your confusion only deepened. âzayne, youâre being really vague.â
âhe hides things better than people realize.â
âlike what?â
the pen clicked once between his fingers. âhe keeps photos of you.â
that made you still. "sorry?"
âi've seen them in his room.â your brain stalled completely, and all you could recognize is the familiar gush of mixed emotions piercing through your stomach. âphotos from school events, family gatherings, random pictures from his phone.â zayne paused briefly. â...sometimes printed.â
âthatâs notâŠâ you tried to find the right words, as if you're looking for a scapegoat to make sense of caleb. because right now, to you, he didn't seem like the boy you knew all along. âthatâs not weird, isn't it. weâve known each other forever.â
zayne hummed, not agreeing, and yet not disagreeing either. âhe looks at you differently when nobody notices, but you donât see it because caleb acts the way he is all the time.â
your fingers curled tighter around the nail file in your lap. for some reason, the image of caleb earlier that afternoon flashed into your head immediately. his hands gripping your waist, the jealousy in his voice, the look on his face after hurting you.
outside your window, summer wind began to stir harshly through the trees. you watch a few of the resting birds fly away.
âyouâre not slow, y/n,â zayne spoke once more over the phone. âi know you notice things quickly.â you sat frozen against your pillows, fingers still loosely holding your nail file. âso donât let caleb fool you, whatever he says about me.â
wait.
your brows slowly met. âwhat do you mean whatever he says about you?â
zayne ignored the question entirely. âi donât like how you are around him.â
there it is. the exact same words that was spoken under the summer heat and the swaying clotheslines were now spoken again into the tranquility of the summer's night.Â
âwith caleb, youâre different.â your grip tightened unconsciously around the phone. âyou laugh louder around him, and you say whatever comes into your head. because you're more comfortable around him. but with me,â the silence afterward lasted too long. âwith me, you act too polite. you're careful around me, like iâm not someone you grew up with.â
caleb had said the same thing earlier, almost exactly the same thing. you stared blankly at the wall across your bedroom while your thoughts slowly started connecting themselves together in horrifying little pieces. caleb saying he didnât like the way you acted around zayne. zayne now saying he didnât like the way you acted around caleb. both of them sounding bitter in nearly identical ways.
zayne had forgotten his watch, which meant he probably came back. your mind replayed the afternoon immediately. because if zayne returned for his watchâthen how much did he hear? did he hear caleb talking about the party? about jealousy? about wanting you? did he hear everything?
the silence on the call stretched longer and longer while realization settled heavily into your chest like stones sinking underwater. the worst part wasnât the possibility that zayne overheard. the worst part was realizing he sounded jealous enough to care.
you pressed your free hand against your forehead slowly. this was getting out of control.
everything between the three of you had started tangling together so tightly that you couldnât even breathe around it anymore. you suddenly missed when they were just boys playing puzzle games at family gatherings, before stares started lasting too long.
âzayne,â you finally said something, closing your eyes. your thoughts were too loud, your chest felt too crowded. and for the first time in a long while, you genuinely didnât know what to say anymore. so instead, you laughed weakly beneath your breath and murmured the only honest thing left in your head.
âyou two are seriously exhausting.â you ended the call.
â
ever since that night, you started keeping your distance, but not in a way that anyone can outright accuse you of avoiding them.
you just stopped lingering after conversations, replied later than usual in group chats. and during friday gatherings, you stayed closer to your parents or the younger children instead of wandering naturally toward wherever caleb and zayne happened to be. at school, you busied yourself with committee work or classmates before either of them could pull you aside into another strange emotionally loaded interaction.
it felt safer that way.Â
lately, everything around the three of you had begun feeling too intense for no reason at all. honestly, part of you still refused to believe it was really about you. you kept telling yourself there had to be another explanation.
maybe caleb and zayne were simply competitive by nature, or maybe years of growing up side by side had turned everything between them into some unconscious rivalry that eventually extended toward you too. after all, the three of you werenât even inseparable childhood best friends. you didnât grow up attached at the hip. they were always closer to each other than they ever were to you.
so maybe you were overthinking this entire thing. their jealousy wasnât really jealousy, you just happened to be standing in the middle of whatever strange tension existed between them. that explanation felt easier to carry, so you chose it. and gradually, over the next few weeks, the distance became noticeable.
caleb still waved at you across campus sometimes, but less brightly now. his texts became more occasional, more restrained, almost like he was forcing himself not to reach for you too often. while zayne returned to acting composed and unreadable, though every now and then, youâd still catch his eyes lingering toward you during class assemblies or committee meetings before calmly looking away again.
by the time june started creeping closer, summer heat had fully settled over the campus grounds. electric fans spun uselessly against the humid cafeteria air while students crowded noisily around tables with melting iced drinks.Â
you sat near the corner windows during lunch, quietly scrolling through your calendar app while picking lazily at your food.Â
you were halfway through reorganizing your weekend errands when suddenly somebody dropped into the seat across from you. âhey.â
you looked up from your phone.
an acquaintance from the sports committee leaned toward you with wide eyes already full of gossip.
ââŠhello, yes?" you said cautiously.
âhave you heard?â
your brows furrowed. âheard what?â
she lowers her voice despite the cafeteria already being loud enough to drown entire conversations. âthe sports committee funds went missing.â
your eyes widened at the news. âwhat?â
âthat's what everyoneâs talking about right now.â
you straightened in your seat so fast your spoon nearly clattered against the tray. âwait, seriously?â
she nodded quickly. âapparently a huge portion of the budgetâs gone.â
that's really bad, especially with sports fest preparations still ongoing. âno way, how does money just disappear?â
your acquaintance shrugged helplessly before leaning even closer. âthe last person who handled it was the committee auditor.â
âmace?â
âyeah. but sheâs saying somebody mustâve stolen it.â
your mind immediately started spinning. the sports committee funds werenât small amounts. there were receipts, records, signatures involved. things like this became messy incredibly fast. âis the faculty involved already?â you asked.
âprobably soon.â she grimaced. âpeople are already accusing each other.â
you stared down at your untouched lunch. somehow, deep in your chestâyou felt a strange sinking feeling already beginning to form.
the entire walk back to your classroom felt strange afterward.
students were already whispering about the missing funds in clusters along the hallway, their voices blending together. every now and then, you caught fragments of conversation drifting past.
ââheard it was stolenââ
ââsomeone from the committeeââ
by the time you reached your classroom, your mood had already soured completely. you slid into your seat near the windows with a quiet sigh before pulling out your notebook and reviewer for the next subject.
this didnât involve you anyway.
or at least, thatâs what you thought.
you had barely opened your notes when suddenly, the classroom door opened.Â
your brows furrowed as one of the sports committee members hurried inside, breathing hard like heâd sprinted across campus. you recognized him instantlyâmaceâs close friend and the current treasurer assistant. his face looked tense in a way that made your stomach twist.
before you could even greet him, he made a direct beeline toward your seat. âdo you have the committee funds?â
your confusion deepened. âwhat?â
âthe missing funds,â he said quickly. âare they with you?â
you blinked at him in disbelief. âno, it's not with me...â
his jaw tightened. âare you sure?â
your expression hardened a little at that. âobviously iâm sure.â around you, classmates had already started subtly turning in their seats. the atmosphere inside the room shifted almost instantly, curiosity spreading faster than fire.
the guy rubbed a hand over his face before lowering his voice slightly. âyou were one of the last people who handled the money.â
you frowned. âbecause i was helping audit it.â
âexactly.â
âthat doesnât mean i took it.â he looked unconvinced. suddenly, irritation started crawling up your spine.Â
sure, a few days ago, you had helped organize records with mace after committee hours, but that wasnât unusual. multiple officers handled budgeting paperwork all the time during sports fest season. âyou're reaching,â you said calmly, keeping your voice level despite the growing attention around you. âa lot of people had access to the funds.â
âbut you were there during the last audit.â
âand so were you.â
that made him pause, then his eyes dropped toward your bag beside the chair. ââŠcan i check your bag?â
the classroom went completely silent.
you stared at him. âyou're joking.â
âi just need to make sure.â his expression remained stubborn and tense, almost desperate beneath the pressure of the missing money situation. âif you didnât take it, then there shouldnât be a problem, right?â
whispers immediately started bubbling around the room. you could feel everyone staring now.
jesus.
your face burned slightly beneath the attention, but more than embarrassment, you felt offended. angry.
still, you knew refusing would only make things worse. so after a long second, you exhaled sharply through your nose and shoved your bag toward him. âfine, go ahead.â
your classmates then leaned forward openly.
the guy crouched beside your desk and started searching through your bag while you sat there stiffly, arms crossed tightly over your chest.Â
this entire thing felt really insulting.Â
you watch his movements stop, before slowly pulling out a thick white envelope from the bottom of your bag.
your brows furrowed immediately. wait, what?
the guy stared at it for one second before quickly opening the flap. âi knew it.â within a second, gasps erupted around the classroom, but you could only feel your heart dropping straight into your stomach.
âno way, y/nââ
âthatâs the envelopeââ
you stared at the money inside like your brain physically could not process what it was seeing. because that envelopeâthat envelope should not have been there.
âwhat the hell?â you muttered under your breath.
the guy stood up abruptly, clutching the envelope tightly in one hand while looking at you with outright disbelief. âyou're a liar and a thief, huh.â
you abruptly shot to your feet. âi am not!â
âthis is literally the missing funds!â
âthat's not mine!â the whispers around the room exploded louder now. some classmates were openly staring while others were already pulling out phones. your pulse thundered violently in your ears, but even through the panic rising inside you, one thought stayed terrifyingly clearâyou know someone put that there.Â
someone must've framed you.
you looked directly at him, jaw tightening. âi donât know how that got into my bag.â
âseriously?â he snapped. âyou expect people to believe that?â
âyes,â you shot back. âbecause i didnât steal anything.â
his expression only hardened further. âthen explain why it was inside your bag.â
âi canât explain something i didnât do!â your voice rose louder this time, frustration finally cracking through your composure while the entire classroom watched like spectators at a live show. âthis is insane, somebody obviously planted that there.â
but nobody looked convinced. not him. not your classmates. not anyone. oh how terrifyingly easy it was for people to turn against someone once suspicion had already settled in the room.
it didnât matter how firmly you defended yourself. eventually, the gossip spread anyway.
by the end of the afternoon, it already felt like the entire campus knew your name for all the wrong reasons. whispers followed you through hallways and conversations suddenly stopped when you passed by. even people you barely talked to were staring at you now with that same awful mixture of curiosity and judgment.
it hurt more than you expected it to, because you knew you were innocent.
you walked toward the faculty building with your jaw clenched tightly enough to ache, forcing yourself to keep your posture straight despite the heaviness building in your chest. students lingering outside the offices glanced at you openly as you passed, and you hated how conscious it made you feel.Â
inside the faculty room, the air-conditioning felt unbearably cold against your skin. your adviser sat across from you with a troubled expression while the sports committee moderator stood nearby flipping through paperwork and transaction records. the missing envelope rested on the desk between all of you like physical evidence in some crime investigation.
you stared at it with growing frustration. âsir, i promise, i didnât steal steal anything,â
your adviser sighed. âwe understand youâre upset, but you have to understand why this looks serious.â
âbecause someone put it in my bag.â
the moderator looked up. âdo you have any idea who would do that?â
â...n-no,â you answered. âbut, sir, why would i even steal committee funds in the first place?ânobody answered that. and somehow, that silence hurt.
they didnât fully believe you either.
you rubbed your hands together beneath the table, trying to steady yourself while the moderator continued asking questions. where was your bag during lunch? who had access to it? why didnât you notice the envelope sooner? were you struggling financially? did you owe anyone money?
each question felt more humiliating than the last, but you answered everything anyway. calmly at first, then desperately. little by little, you started realizing how terrifying this situation actually was.
this wasnât just rumors anymore. of course this was a disciplinary issue. a record.
your throat tightened painfully. âplease,â your voice cracking despite your efforts to keep composed. âiâm telling the truth.â your adviserâs expression softened a little at that. unfortunately, that kindness nearly made you cry harder. you werenât someone who got into trouble.
you followed rules. you worked hard. you stayed responsible. and now suddenly you were sitting here defending yourself against something you didnât even do while half the school probably already thought you were guilty.
your vision blurred, and you looked down immediately, embarrassed at yourself for tearing up in front of faculty members.
god this was awful.
âi would never do something like this,â you whispered, helplessly.
the room fell quiet for a moment.Â
but the faculty room door opening hard enough to make everyone look up broke the silence.Â
you wiped quickly at your eyes as someone stepped inside.
he looked like heâd come straight from running across campus. his usually neat hair had fallen slightly out of place while his tie hung loosened beneath his collar. in one hand, he carried his laptop bag and several printed papers.
your adviser blinked in surprise. âzayne?â
he barely acknowledged the room before looking directly at the moderator. âshe didnât steal the funds.â the certainty in his voice made you stare at him.
the moderator frowned. âand how exactly do you know that?â
without another word, zayne crossed the room and placed several printed screenshots onto the desk. âbecause the envelope was planted in her bag during lunch period.â
the moderator immediately picked up the papers while your adviser leaned closer in confusion. from where you sat, you recognized blurry still images from security camera footage near the cafeteria hallway.
zayne continued speaking calmly. âthere's a security camera outside the student council corridor,â he explained. âmost people forget it exists because it only records the lockers and hallway benches.â
your brows slowly knitted together.
âduring lunch,â he continued, âher bag was left unattended for several minutes while she bought food.â he tapped one of the screenshots. and there-there was maceâs friend. the same guy who accused you earlier, caught crouching near your bag.
âwhatâŠâ you whispered.
the moderatorâs expression darkened while flipping through the timestamps. another screenshot showed him slipping something white into the slightly opened zipper compartment before walking away casually.
âhe planted it himself,â zayne finished.
nobody spoke for several seconds.
your adviser looked completely stunned now while the moderatorâs face hardened with growing anger. meanwhile you sat frozen in your chair, staring at the evidence.
zayne found proof. he actually found proof.
âhow did you even get this?â your adviser asked.
zayne adjusted his glasses lightly, though you noticed how slightly out of breath he still seemed. âi checked the hallway footage after hearing what happened,â he answered simply. âthe timestamps matched the period before the accusation.â
simple. it's as if he hadnât just saved you from a disciplinary record.Â
the moderator stood up afterward, already calling for another faculty member while muttering angrily under his breath about suspension and investigations.
everything around you suddenly became blurry noise, because relief hit all at once. violent relief. your hands started trembling slightly in your lap while you stared down at the papers on the desk.
so you werenât crazy, you werenât guilty.
your eyes lifted toward zayne again. and he was already looking at you, quietly concerned in that restrained way of his.
for a long moment, you couldnât say anything at all.
the faculty room buzzed faintly around you with movement and conversationâthe moderator speaking urgently to another teacher, papers being gathered, chairs shifting against the floorâbut all of it blurred somewhere far into the background.
because your eyes remained fixed on zayne. and his stayed fixed on you. a quiet eye contact stretched impossibly long beneath fluorescent lights and cold air-conditioning. it felt more intimate than every charged conversation youâd ever had with him before.
you looked at him like you were trying to say thank you without words. and zayne looked back like he understood every single thing you couldnât bring yourself to say aloud.
his emerald eyes stayed steady against yours, meaningless and unreadable to most people. but after growing up beside him for years, you had slowly learned how to recognize the subtleties hiding underneath his composure. the way he watched you carefully, like he was quietly checking whether you were still holding yourself together.
it made your chest ache. but as always, you looked away first.
a little while later, after the faculty settled things enough for you to finally leave, you stepped out into the hallway alongside zayne. late afternoon sunlight poured through the corridor windows, warming the polished floors gold.
you walked side by side in silence.
the thoughts within your head still felt tangled from everything that happened earlier. from embarrassment, and relief, and anger to exhaustion. they all sat too heavily inside your chest to untangle properly.
âare you okay?â zayne's voice came out softer than usual. you nodded automatically, even though you knew you werenât okay yet. your throat still hurt from trying not to cry earlier. your hands still trembled slightly from adrenaline. and beneath all of that, there was still the lingering ache of realizing how quickly people turned against you.
you swallowed and kept your eyes ahead. for some reason, speaking suddenly felt impossible.
zayne noticed. but unlike most people, he didnât rush to fill the silence. he didnât push you to explain yourself or force comfort onto you just because the quiet felt heavy. instead, he simply slowed his pace to match yours better, and stayed there beside you.
the warmth of the afternoon sun filtered through the windows in soft stripes across the hallway, catching faintly against the edges of his dark hair and glasses. beside you, his hand shifted slightly at his side.
before it lifted.
for one brief second, it looked like zayne was going to touch you. his fingers hovered uncertainly near your shoulder, hesitant in a way that felt strangely unlike him.Â
but it paused midair, before slowly curling back toward himself instead.
the smallest flicker of restraint crossed his face before he adjusted his glasses, putting that careful composure back into place. âi should go,â he said. âi still have errands to finish.â
you looked at him finally.
up close like this, he looked tired. probably from running around campus gathering evidence for you all afternoon instead of resting or studying like he normally would. your chest tightened again. ââŠokay,âÂ
zayne gave a small nod, stepping back slightly. âi'll see you later,âÂ
you nodded once more and watched him walk away down the hallway.
â
you went home with an empty head and a heavy chest.
the entire walk back through the neighborhood felt muted somehow, you only listened to the way the world had lowered its volume without telling you. you also watched the children still playing outside, somebodyâs dog barking lazily down the street. life continued normally around you despite how strange the day had become.
you hated that.
you hated how quickly people looked at you differently over one accusation. even now, your stomach still twisted remembering it.a part of you wanted desperately to fix everythingâto stand in the middle of campus tomorrow and scream the truth until everyone finally believed you. but another part of you knew it wouldnât matter. once rumors spread, they stayed.
you learned that today.
so instead, you kept your expression blank and quietly entered your house like nothing happened at all.
your parents greeted you from the kitchen while evening news murmured from the television nearby. you answered absentmindedly, slipped out of your shoes, washed your hands, and wandered toward the counter where a bowl of apples sat waiting.
normal things. you needed normal things.
the knife moved carefully beneath your fingers as you peeled an apple in long curling strips, trying very hard not to think about school.
...or zayne.
except unfortunately, your thoughts circled back to him anyway, to the way he walked into the faculty room without hesitation and to the way he looked at you afterward. your chest tightened at the memory. he really went through all that effort for you; the same boy who acted quite distant for years despite growing up beside you. before you could overthink it further, you suddenly set the knife down onto the counter.
your mother looked up. âwhere are you going?â
âoutside for a bit,âÂ
âoutside whereââ
but you were already halfway out the front door.
warm evening air hit your face immediately as you hurried down the street, sandals slapping lightly against pavement while your heartbeat thudded strangely hard inside your chest. you werenât even entirely sure why you were rushing this much.
you justâyou needed to thank him properly.
the neighborhood blurred around you as you walked faster through familiar streets lined with glowing porch lights and flowering plants. eventually, the familiar houses came into view.
calebâs house first, then zayneâs right beside it.
you slowed near the gates. for some reason, your eyes drifted briefly toward calebâs house. the lights inside were dimmer than usual tonight.
strange. you hadnât really seen him around since the accusation incident started earlier. but before your thoughts could linger there too long, you shook your head lightly. that wasnât important right now.
you walked toward zayneâs front porch and pressed the doorbell.
your pulse suddenly felt ridiculous. why were you nervous?
after a few moments, footsteps approached from inside the house before the door finally opened.
zayne looked exactly the same as earlier. same loosened tie and same slightly tired eyes behind his glasses.
had he only just gotten home too?
you noticed the genuine surprise crossing his face upon seeing you standing there. you immediately felt awkward. âuh, hi.â
zayne blinked once, before stepping aside. âcome in.â
once you reluctantly entered, he shut the door gently behind you and turned back toward you again. âwhatâs wrong?â there it was again. that immediate concern. his first instinct was always checking whether you were okay.
âi didn't get to thank you properly earlier,â
and before you knew it, words started spilling out of you all at once.
âsorry, i justâ i really wanted to thank you properly because what you did earlier was really...,â your hands twisted together nervously. âyou saved me in there and i donât even understand how you managed to gather all that evidence so fast, and if you didnât show up i genuinely donât know what wouldâve happened to me because they were already looking at me like i was guilty andââ
you barely even paused to breathe.
âand i know you probably think itâs not a big deal, but it is to me because nobody else believed me and somehow you just... you just immediately knew i didnât do it. so thank you. seriously. i donât think you understand how much that meant to me.â
finally, your rambling slowedâmostly because zayne was faintly smiling at you and the sight completely stole the rest of your words.
you had seen zayne smile before, technically. small amused smirks and quiet little reactions hidden behind sarcasm. but this was different. soft and tender, almost. the kind of smile that made him look suddenly less untouchable somewhat.Â
âhush,â zayne stepped a little closer then, gaze gentler than youâd ever seen it before. âitâs okay,â the single word settled over you so gently it nearly melted every remaining ounce of tension still trapped inside your chest. âyou donât have to thank me that much,â he murmured. âi was going to help you either way.â
his words came to you like a pencil attempting to sketch the smile lines across your features, and you smiled the kind of smile that came naturally after somebody caught you before you shattered. it was small, tired around the edges after the terrible day youâd had, but genuine enough that it softened your whole face beneath the room's light.
and, for all that you are, zayne's expression changed so subtly most people would have missed it. but you didnât, not anymore.Â
the faint curve of his lips slowly disappeared as he looked at you, almost like the sight stunned him more than he expected. his emerald eyes lingered on your smile for a second too long, darkening with something quieter than surprise and far more dangerous.
affection, raw and unguarded.
it hit him hard enough that he actually had to look away. you watched his throat move in a slow gulp before his gaze drifted briefly toward the floor, one hand tightening faintly at his side like he was collecting himself.
zayne never lost composure. and yet here he was, undone by nothing more than your smile.
âthank you,â you said again softly, almost laughing beneath your breath now. âseriously.â
zayne exhaled through his nose before looking back at you. âitâs to make up for what i did.â
âwhat did you do?â
he gives you an uncertain stare. âthe call.â your heartbeat slowed strangely, as you remembered how the late-night conversation went, and the memory settled heavily into the room between you. zayneâs gaze flickered briefly over your face before dropping somewhere near your shoulder. âi pressured you that night.â
you opened your mouth. âzayne, iââ but the words never fully came out.
suddenly, his hands found your waist, warm and firm.
your breath caught at the sudden gesture, as zayne stepped forward until the space between your bodies disappeared entirely, his arms wrapping around you with a restraint that somehow made the intimacy worse. like he was holding himself back even now, like this was already more than heâd allowed himself to take.
you froze, you didnât know what to do with how badly your body reacted to it. he was so tall that your chin tipped upward instinctively, your fingers barely brushing his chest as he leaned down and buried his face against the curve of your neck. warm breath spread against your skin through the collar of your shirt, and the sensation made heat rush violently into your face.
his grip around your waist tightened almost imperceptibly, a telltale sign that he needed the contact more than he wanted to admit. âi didnât mean to make you uncomfortable,â he murmured near your ear. his voice sounded rougher from this close, much deeper.
it slid through you slowly, dangerously.
your fingers curled against the fabric of his shirt. ây-you didnât,âÂ
zayne inhaled at that, the sound brushed warm against your throat. âwith you, i donât really know how to act anymore.â you feel his forehead rested lightly near your shoulder now while his arms remained secure around your waist, and for one dizzy second, you let yourself melt into it, into the warmth of his body, into the quiet intimacy of being held so carefully by someone who spent years pretending not to want you this much.
your eyes slowly fluttered shut. everything felt so soft and close... and dangerously tender...
until the front door opened.
âzayne, whereâsââÂ
your eyes snapped open instantly.Â
and the sight of caleb, who stood by the doorway, hit you all at once.
caleb was there, there behind the man who's hugging you into an embrace. his uniform was half undone, white shirt wrinkled and untucked with dirt streaked faintly across the fabric, and bruises darkened visibly along his arm, his cheekbone, the corner of his lip.
he looked exhausted. beautifully, painfully exhausted. somebody who had finally reached his limit. but none of that compared to the expression on his face when he saw the two of you.
his hand remained wrapped tightly around the doorknob while his tired, lilac eyes locked onto zayneâs arms around your waist.
then... slowlyâto you.
you watched calebâs jaw tighten faintly beneath the bruising near his mouth as his heavy breathing slowed. his eyes dragged downward briefly to where zayne was still touching you before lifting back to your face again. and god, that look nearly hurt to survive through. caleb looked like he had walked into the exact thing he feared most.
his fingers tightened harder around the doorknob until the muscles in his forearm flexed visibly beneath bruised skin.
and when he finally spoke, his voice came low and rough around the edges. ââŠdidnât know you had company.â
immediately, you stepped away from zayne. the warmth of his arms disappeared from your waist too quickly, leaving behind a strange lingering heat against your skin as you stared at caleb standing by the doorway.
up close, he looked worse than you initially thought.
the bruises werenât small. one darkened the edge of his cheekbone while another bloomed faintly beneath the collar of his wrinkled uniform. his knuckles looked scraped raw, reddened skin stretched tight over bruised fingers that was surely caused by hitting something far too many times. even his lip had split slightly near the corner, dried blood staining against pale chapped skin. despite how rough he looked, caleb still looked devastatingly beautiful in that messy, ruined sort of way.
zayneâs brows furrowed beside you too, his expression sharpening the longer he examined calebâs condition.
âwhat happened to you?â you asked before you could stop yourself. worry flooded through your voice instantly as you walked toward him, brows pulled together while your eyes searched over every bruise scattered across his body. âcaleb, did you get into a fight?â
he didnât answer. he just stood there staring at you. his tired eyes dragged slowly across your face, memorizing something before losing it completely. the muscles in his jaw flexed beneath the fading blood near his lip.Â
âcaleb?âÂ
his throat bobbed once. before suddenly, his gaze dropped downward and the faintest broken sound escaped him.
almost a whine.
completely unlike the confident golden boy everyone else knew.
you blinked in surprise, waiting for him to finally explain himself. but instead, caleb lifted his eyes back toward you and asked quietly, âwhen are you gonna understand?â
you stilled. ââŠwhat?â
âwhen are you gonna understand,â he repeated, âthat i like you so fucking much it actually hurts?â
the room went completely silent behind you.
caleb laughed softly then, but the sound carried no humor at all. only exhaustion. only frustration stretched too thin after holding itself together for too long. âi beat him up. that asshole who framed you.â his jaw tightened sharply as he spoke. âhe made you cry, humiliated you in front of everyone when you didnât do anything wrong.â
you could only stare at him, because you couldn't bring yourself to believe it. caleb was capable of something like this? caleb was capable of harming someone just for your sake?Â
âand i couldnât stand it,â he admitted, biting his lip. âi couldnât stand hearing people talk about you like that.â you watch caleb look away briefly, running a bruised hand through his messy hair before sarcastically smiling again. âi was looking for you afterward, wanted to make sure you were okay.â his eyes flickered toward zayne, and the softness disappeared instantly.Â
âand then i walk in here and see this.â
the jealousy in his voice sliced through the room, but it was the kind that came from heartbreak instead of anger.Â
calebâs gaze returns to you, it looked even worse. you could practically see the years of suppression slowly rotting underneath all his teasing smiles and playful touches, how exhausted he mustâve been carrying all of this alone.
his lips parted slightly before he spoke again, quieter this time. âi donât know what else iâm supposed to do anymore.â
he stepped closer. just one step.
âi always look for you everywhere. and i get jealous over stupid things. and i literally beat somebody up because they made you cry.â his eyes searched yours desperately. âand you're still looking at me like you donât get it?â
his gaze flickered briefly toward your mouth before lifting back to your eyes again.
âdo i seriously have to kiss you before you understand how much i love you?â
no. no, you already understood. that was the worst part.
you stood between them, too warm beneath the dim yellow lights of zayneâs living room, too aware of every breath being taken around you. calebâs confession still echoed inside your head in painful waves, mixing together with the memory of zayneâs arms around your waist just moments ago.
everything made sense. every argument that carried hidden bitterness underneath it. every strange moment where the air between the three of you became too intimate for childhood friendship alone.
they loved you. both of them.
and you no longer can run away from it.
your lips pressed together, gaze dropped toward the floor. you couldnât look directly at caleb right now. not when his eyes were fixed on you like thatâdark and exhausted in a way that felt unbearable to witness.
you couldnât turn around either. because behind you stood zayne, silent.
you didnât know what expression he wore now. you didnât know if he looked angry or hurt or completely unreadable the way he usually did when emotions threatened to spill too close to the surface.
you were too afraid to find out, too afraid to face either of them fully. all you knew was this awful aching certainty sitting inside your chest: you couldnât choose. you didnât want to.
âi...â you started weakly, but the words dissolved before forming properly.
everything felt... tangled. so you stepped backward instinctively, because you always believed that distance might somehow save you from the intensity pressing in from both sides.
but caleb moved first.
the front door clicked shut behind him with a sound that made your pulse jump. then suddenly he was close again, towering over you with tired eyes and a face that looked heartbreakingly ruined from wanting too much.
his hands came up, one against your cheek, the other cradling your jaw. warm palms against burning skin.
from this proximity, you could see the tiny split near his lower lip more clearly now. dried blood swelling near his cheekbone. he looked really messy in a way caleb never usually allowed himself to be.
he whispers into your lips, âiâm sorry.â and before you could even process the apologyâ
he kissed you.
it was almost devastating how unsteady it felt.
caleb crashed into your mouth like a man depraved of everything he was supposed to have.
âmmph!â your eyes widened instantly as his lips pressed against yours with all the desperation heâd been holding back for years, roughened breaths shaking faintly between every second of contact. trembling, your fingers clutched at the front of his dirt-stained uniform, wrinkling the fabric tighter beneath your hands as your body struggled to catch up with what was happening.
he kissed you with his eyes shut tightly, brows pulled together like he physically could not bear the thought of you pulling away from him now. every ounce of restraint he usually carried so casually had disappeared, leaving behind something painfully naked underneath.
pure, humiliating desire.
you feel his hand tremble against your face as he deepened the kiss for one brief reckless second, breathing you in desperately like he was trying to memorize the feeling before it disappeared from him forever. and godâyou could feel every ugly, yearning emotion tangled inside him.
somewhere behind you, the room remained silent. way too silent.
the realization sent another rush of heat through your body so intense it almost hurt.
caleb mustâve thought about that too. because his grip tightened slightly against your jaw, and a broken sound escaped him into the kiss itselfâhalf sigh, half acheâas though even this moment didnât feel enough.Â
âungh...â he knew this was selfish, but he couldnât stop anyway. or maybe he just simply refused to.
you couldnât tell anymore.
all you knew was that your thoughts were dissolving frighteningly fast beneath the weight of his mouth against yours. his kiss carried none of the polished confidence people usually associated with him. it was too desperate for that.Â
and now that it was out, he was drowning in it.âmmgh- shit..â caleb whined against your lips, making your knees weaken embarrassingly beneath him.
the warmth of his body crowded closer while his hand stayed firm against your jaw, thumb brushing shakily along your cheek. your fingers remained tangled tightly in the front of his ruined uniform, wrinkling the already dirt-stained fabric further.
without realizing it, you kept stepping backward underneath the pressure of him. but caleb followed instantly every single time, taller and broader in a way that slowly consumed your sense of balance altogether. the room blurred behind your closed eyelids while his mouth moved against yours with aching urgency, it almost felt like there was nothing else left except him.
...almost.
you thought, as your back hit something solid, warm.
your breath caught sharply into the kiss itself.
caleb paused for the briefest second, enough for confusion to flicker weakly through your haze, but before you could fully pull away or understand what was happening, another hand rose slowly against the side of your neck from behind you.
long fingers, cooler skin.
they brushed your hair carefully over one shoulder, gathering the loose strands away from your nape with a touch so calm it contrasted painfully against calebâs desperate grip on your face.
your pulse stumbled violently, because you knew those hands.Â
your eyes remained shut instinctively, overwhelmed too quickly by warmth and the terrifying awareness of both of them surrounding you now.Â
you shouldâve stepped away. you shouldâve stopped this immediately. but instead, your body betrayed you by leaning further back into the warmth behind you.
a soft inhale brushed the back of your neck. then, another pair of lips touched your skin.
âhaa-â
zayne moved differently. his mouth barely grazed the sensitive curve of your nape at first, almost like he was testing your reaction before letting the warmth of his lips linger there properly. the restraint in it somehow made it worse.Â
a helpless sound escaped youââhmngh-ââa small whimper swallowed directly into calebâs mouth.
calebâs reaction to it was immediate, his entire body tensed against yours before a shaky breath left him, almost pained, almost wrecked by the sound you made for them. behind you, zayne stayed terrifyingly calmâthe way his teeth sunk into the supple flesh of the slope of your neck had you unconsciously pressing yourself against him.Â
zayne noticed. and it made him halt in his tracks. for a moment, his hands stilled on you and pulled away slightly, eyeing you from behind. "y/n,"
the mention of your name also had you woken up from the daze you were starting to get lost into, while caleb's eyes flickered towards his bestfriend who's behind you, slowly pulling away.Â
"y/n,"
the air between the three of you was strangely suffocating, charged with something that made the fine hairs on your arms stand on end. you felt a sudden, pulsing warmth beginning to bloom deep in your core, a heavy, liquid sensation that seemed to radiate outward from... there.Â
what was happening to you?Â
zayne's eyes narrowed, his gaze dropping from your face to the subtle, frantic rise and fall of your chest. he could see the way your pupils had dilated, swallowing the dark iris until your eyes looked like bottomless pools of desire.Â
âyou're flushed.â zayne murmured, he didn't pull his hand away from your arm; instead, his thumb began to trace slow, deliberate circles against your pulse point. caleb noticed it too, his gaze following zayne's. the raw, jagged pain in his expression smoothed out into something much more... predatory.Â
âyou're... burning up,â he didn't care about the fight or the blood on his lip anymore; all he could see was the way your lips were slightly parted, glistening and inviting.
the tension snapped like a taut wire. zayneâs fingers tightened around your shoulder, not enough to hurt, but enough to anchor you as he leaned in, his breath hot against the shell of your ear. "it's not just the fever of the moment, is it?" he whispered, and the implication hung in the air, as he let his gaze wander down the curve of your neck.Â
you can't help it. the heat was becoming too much to bear. âno,â you gasped, the word feeling small and fragile against the overwhelming intensity of their gazes.Â
you forced yourself to step back, stumbling away from the magnetic pull of their bodies. you could feel your heart hammering against your ribs like a trapped bird. âthis is... it's wrong. we can't. you're best friends, and this... this isn't right,â your voice trembled with a desperate attempt at denial.Â
you tried to wrap your arms around yourself, to shield the growing warmth in your core, but the logic felt flimsy in comparison to what was actually going on.Â
zayne and caleb both froze, the sudden distance between you feeling like a physical wound. they watched you with a look of profound, aching reverence. to them, you weren't just a girl; you were something sacred, a masterpiece of soft curves and delicate skin that they had spent years worshiping from afar.Â
the thought of bruising your skin or marring your perfection with their need sent a shiver of hesitation through them. they wanted to devour you, to just lose themselves in the heat of your body, but also, they were terrified that their very touch might ruin the precious thing they loved so much.
âis it wrong?â caleb whispered, his voice a ragged, broken thing. he took a tentative step toward you, his hands hovering in the air as if he were afraid to reach out and break a spell. âbecause it feels like the only thing that's ever been right.âÂ
he reached out, not to grab you, but to let the very tips of his fingers graze the underside of your jaw, a touch so light it was almost a ghost of a sensation. it made your breath hitch in a way that betrayed your protest.
zayne, seeing caleb's approach, felt a surge of competitive desperation. he didn't want to be the one who stayed in the shadows. so he moved to your side, yet there was still a visible tremor in his hands. he reached for your waist, his palms barely skimming the fabric of your clothes, tracing the curve of your hip with a reverence that felt like a prayer.Â
âif it's wrong, then let us be wrong together,â he murmured, his voice a low, seductive velvet. he leaned in, his lips not quite touching your skin, but the warmth of his breath against your neck was enough to make your toes curl in your shoes.Â
ugh, he's doing it again...
this is ridiculous. you tried to hold onto your denial, to tell them to stop and tell them that this was madness, but your body was a traitor.Â
every time caleb's lips teased your earlobe, a fresh wave of liquid heat flooded your thighs. and every time zayne's fingers traced the dip of your waist, an involuntary moan escaped your lips. you were being pulled apart by two different kinds of worship, one frantic and one deliberate, and the more you tried to resist, the more your body craved the very thing you claimed was wrong.
they were both so careful, so agonizingly hesitant, as if they were handling the finest porcelain. they watched your reactions with wide, hungry eyes, terrified of overstepping but unable to pull awayâlike caught in a loop of wanting to ruin you and wanting to preserve you.
but as you felt the weight of their worship, something shifted inside you. the vulnerability that had been making you tremble somewhat changed into a sharp, jagged spark of defiance.Â
maybe it's the insistent teasing, maybe it's something else entirely. you didn't know.Â
âstop,â you raise your hands.Â
you just found yourself stopping and instead forcing them to look you in the eye. âif... if you insist on going this far,â you tried, even though you knew deep down how much they affected you. âcan you even handle what comes with it?â the question hung in the air, heavy and loaded. you saw the flicker of confusion in calebâs eyes, the way his brow furrowed as he tried to parse your meaning.Â
you didn't stop there. you leaned in slightly, your gaze sweeping over both of them, challenging their masculinity. âi'm not just talking about the consequences of what we do to each other,â you punctuated. âi'm talking about you. if i stop being the girl you're so afraid to break... if i actually take what i want from you... could you even handle it? could you handle me?â
the effect was instantaneous.Â
the air seemed to vanish from the room as both boys froze, their hands hovering inches from your skin like statues.Â
was it just that easy?Â
they had been treating you like a fragile thing, but you had just reminded them that you were also a woman with a hunger that could rival their own.Â
zayne felt a tremor of genuine uncertainty ripple through his chest, his dark eyes squinting as he realized... you weren't just a recipient of their lust. because you were also capable of undoing them.
a nervous, triumphant smirk tugged at the corners of your lips as you forced it. you could see the doubt creeping into their expressions, the way their bravado was being replaced by a sudden, frantic rethinking of the entire situation.Â
âwell?â you prompted, your voice a teasing lilt that mocked their hesitation. âdon't just stand there looking like you've seen a ghost. you were so sure of yourselves a moment ago. you were so hungry.â you reached out, your fingers grazing the fabric of caleb's shirt, then zayne's wrist, a mocking reminder of the contact they had been so terrified to initiate.Â
âtouch me, then. if you're as brave as you're acting, prove it.â
the silence that followed was deafening.Â
caleb's frown remained deeply on his face, his eyes slowly moving down the swell of your breasts, gulping, but he couldn't even bring himself to extend his hands.Â
the boys, who had been so bold in their intentions, were now suddenly behaving like hesitating little boys. caleb snapped his eyes away from your chest, his face flushing a deep, embarrassed crimsonâwhile zayneâs gaze drifted away for a split second, his usual stoicism crumbling into a visible uncertainty.Â
all you could do was watch them, because the tension was no longer just about lust; it was about the exhilarating unknown of what would happen if you truly let go.Â
you had thrown down the gauntlet, and now, the ball was in their court.
it was already evident though. you already knew the answer.
they were sinful enough to want you, but not enough to touch where sin waited most.Â
ânever mind,â you whispered into the thickening silence. you made a reluctant, jerky movement, stepping back once more. before they could find their voices or their courage, you turned on your heel, your heart thundering a frantic rhythm against your ribs, and walked away.Â
you practically ran, your lungs burning as you navigated the familiar streets between zayne's house and your own. the cool night air hit your flushed skin, but it did nothing to dampen the fire still smoldering in your core.Â
you didn't stop until you had burst through your own front door, fumbling with the lock before slamming it shut behind you. leaning your back against the wood, you finally released the breath you realized you had been holding since the moment the tension had snapped. the house was silent, your parents are probably upstairs.Â
your heart was still a wild thing, drumming a frantic, uneven beat in your ears.Â
fuck.
you breathed, sliding down the door until you were curled on the floor. what would have happened if you hadn't walked away? if you had stayed, if you had let them touch you, there would have been no turning back. the boundary between friendship and something sinful would have been erased in a single, feverish moment.
a heavy sensation settled in your stomach, a feeling that was difficult to name.Â
you felt... dirty.Â
but as you sat there in the dim light of your hallway, you realized the sensation had nothing to do with the way they had looked at you or the way their hands had hovered near your skin. it wasn't because of them; it was because of yourself.Â
because you hadn't just been willing to let them touch you; you had been craving it.
the thought of indulging in both of them made a hot blush creep up your neck. the idea of being caught between them felt scandalous. you knew, with a terrifying certainty, that you would have enjoyed it. you would have relished the way they looked at you, the way they fought for your attention, and the way they would have worshipped your body.
âjesus christ,â you groaned, burying your face in your hands, your fingers digging into your scalp.Â
you hated it.Â
you hated how easily your resolve had crumbled, how quickly your mind had drifted toward the delicious, dark possibilities of what could have been. you were supposed to be the one in control, the one who kept the boundaries intact, yet here you were, trembling in the dark because you had realized how much you wanted to be ruined by them.
unbeknownst to you, that very same night, you had deeply embedded yourself within caleb and zayne's heads. and their wounds had only gotten deeper.Â
the silence of calebâs bedroom was a lie.Â
the air was thick with the sound of his own ragged, desperate breathing. he had practically stumbled through his front door, his mind a chaotic storm of your scent and the memory of your beautiful eyes.Â
he felt like he was drowning, the pressure in his chest so immense that he felt he might actually suffocate if he didn't find some way to release the tension coiling in his gut. he didn't even bother turning on the lights, moving through the shadows of his room like a man possessed until his hand found the hidden stash in his bedside drawer.
his fingers curled around the soft fabric of your underwear, the one that he had stolen and kept in his pocket when you were doing laundry together.Â
a silent, shameful theft that had become his most private ritual.Â
he pulled them out, the fabric feeling like a holy relic in his trembling hands. he brought them to his face, burying his nose in the material and inhaling deeply. he breaths you in, and a pained sound escaped his throat, a sob that was half moan. it felt like he was trying to pull your very soul into his lungs just to stop the ache.
âi should've...â slowly, he got onto his sheets, the friction of the fabric against his skin feeling like nothing compared to the phantom sensation of your body.Â
and he pressed the underwear against himself, pressing the stolen fabric against his hardening length. his movements were frantic and uncoordinated, driven by a desperation that bordered on madness. he was moaning, a series of broken, whimpering sounds that filled the dark room, each one a testament to the agony of his restraint.Â
"fuck... y/n..." he choked out, the name a prayer and a curse all at once. he was haunted by the memory of how close he had been to you, how he had felt the heat radiating from your skin, and the crushing weight of his own cowardice.Â
he should have reached out. his fingers tightened their grip around his dick, forcing the pre-cum out of the slit.Â
he should have grabbed your waist and pulled you into him before you could even think of running. he should have been the man you challenged, not the boy who stood paralyzed by the fear of ruining you. tears began to sting his eyes, blurring his vision as he worked himself toward a release that felt more like a surrender than a pleasure.Â
he felt pathetic, whining into the empty air of his bedroom, jerking himself off until his muscles ached. to keep from crying out too loudly, to keep from biting his lip until it bled like he had earlier, he reached for the silver dog tag hanging around his neck. he bit down on the metal, the cold, hard surface grounding him even as his mind drifted back to the curve of your hips and the defiant tilt of your chin.
every stroke was a reminder of what he had lost in that moment you turned away. the "should have's" looped in his mind like a mantra, and it only drove him to a fever pitch of frustration.Â
he wanted to be the one to consume you, to prove he could handle the fire you had promised, but instead, he was left alone in the dark, clinging to a piece of your clothing and the ghost of your scent.
calebâs hand was a blur of motion, his grip tight and demanding as he worked himself up. he pressed your underwear harder against the head of his cock, the soft lace and cotton teasing his most sensitive nerves.
he was lost in a fever dream of you, his mind conjuring the sensation of your soft thighs wrapping around his waist and the way your breath would feel hot against his neck. every slide of his palm, every desperate tug, was a frantic attempt to imagine you, to imagine what would have happened if he hadn't been a coward earlier.
âplease... y/n... please,â he whimpered, the words dissolving into a guttural, choked sound as the first wave of climax began to crash over him.Â
his body stiffened, his back arching off the sheets as he felt the sudden, violent surge of release. he came with a force that left him gasping, a heavy, pulsing eruption that felt like his very soul was being poured out of him. but instead of collapsing into the exhausted peace of a finished act, caleb found himself unable to stop. his hand, still slick and trembling, didn't fall away. he couldn't let it.Â
oh what would have happened if he touched your breasts? how would it feel against his hands?Â
âhmnnhg....â he began to stroke himself again. his dick was hypersensitive, but he didn't care about the slight ache or the overwhelming sensation. he was chasing the high, chasing the memory of your scent.
he kept going, his movements becoming slower, and even more desperate as he tried to force his body to find that peak again, his eyes squeezed shut as he fought to drown out the reality of his loneliness.
he bit down on his dog tag again, the metal clinking against his teeth as he let out a long, low whine.Â
would you unbutton yourself for him? so he could have better access inside? âahh... would you have....?â
no matter how many times he came, it would never be enough to fill the void you had left behind. he would keep stroking, he would keep yearning, until his muscles gave out or the sun rose to expose his shame.
but caleb wasn't the only one doing this. there was also somebody else.Â
zayne was a silent, simmering furnace of controlled agony. he didn't retreat to the comfort of his bed. instead, he found himself in the cold sanctuary of his bathroom, the moonlight filtering through the small window to cast long shadows across the tile.Â
he stood with his back pressed hard against the cool wall, his head tilted back so that his throat was exposed, a vulnerable line of pale skin in the dim light. his eyes were squeezed shut, his mouth slightly ajar as he fought to regulate the heavy, uneven rhythm of his breathing.
his hand was wrapped tightly around his thick cock, his movements precise and rhythmic, yet fueled by a simmering resentment. he wasn't just seeking release, he was punishing himself. every slide of his palm was a silent accusation, a tell of the regret that was eating him alive.Â
he should have been the one to bridge the gap. he should have ignored the logic and the caution that usually defined him, and instead, he should have reached out and claimed you. he should have pressed you against the wall and shut you up with a kiss so deep and so demanding that the very thought of running would have vanished from your mind.
the thought of your lips the way they had been parted, glistening and inviting, sent a jolt of desire through him. but as the thought deepened, it was tainted by a bitter, poisonous jealousy.Â
you hadn't even kissed him. you let caleb kiss you. you let him taste you. the memory of calebâs lips grazing your skin, of the way caleb had been the one to actually make contact, made zayneâs jaw tighten until it ached.Â
it made zayneâs strokes grow faster, more aggressive. the jealousy drove him to push himself harder than he ever had before, like he was stroking to erase the image of caleb's lips on you, to replace it with the sensation of his own.
his breathing became a series of manly gasps that echoed off the tiled walls. he imagined his hands gripping your hips with a firm, unyielding strength, pulling you flush against him until there was no space left for doubt or denial. he imagined the taste of you, the way you would moan his name if he finally broke his restraint and took what he so desperately craved.
the friction was becoming almost painful, a searing heat that centered in his groin and radiated outward, but he welcomed the sting. it was a distraction from the mental image of you running away, leaving him standing there like a fool, a spectator to his own desire. he needed to feel you.Â
as he neared the edge, his movements became frantic, his hand a blur of desperate motion. he let out a low, guttural groan, his head thumping back against the wall as the first wave of climax hit him.Â
and then he stood there, slumped against the wall, chest heaving, with the only thought of what could have been if he was brave enough to get rid of that tank top off of you.Â
for the rest of the night, they didn't stop thinking about you.Â
but the universe has a cruel way of turning a moment of into a fading echo, and for the three of you, that moment was the beginning of the end.Â
as the sun rose the next morning, neither caleb nor zayne knew that the feverish connection they had shared in the dark would be the last time your souls truly touched. the electricity that had crackled between you in that room didn't ignite a fire that burned forever. instead, it acted like a flash of lightning blinding, terrifying, and then gone, leaving only a lingering darkness in its wake.
the distance didn't happen all at once, though. it was a slow, agonizing erosion. myou were the one who initiated the retreat, driven by a cocktail of shame, confusion, and a desperate need to reclaim the pieces of yourself you felt you had lost that night. you began to build walls, brick by heavy brick.Â
you stopped answering the late night texts, and you became a ghost at the friday gatherings where they were present, and eventually, you simply stopped showing up altogether.Â
for caleb and zayne, the silence was a deafening weight. they both waited, hovering in the periphery of your life, hoping for a sign, a glance, a single word that would bridge the chasm you had created. they both felt the same hollow ache in their chests, but neither of them had the courage to chase a girl who was so clearly running away.Â
they could only watch you vanish from a distance, both of them wondering if they had been too slow, too scared, or too much of the âlittle boysâ you had mocked.
the inevitable arrived with graduation. the day should have been a celebration of beginnings, but for the three of you, it was a silent funeral for what might have been. as you walked across the stage, your eyes scanned the crowd, perhaps searching for a familiar face, but you found only strangers. there were no congratulatory texts, no flowers delivered to your door, no lingering glances exchanged in the hallway.Â
the three of you, who had once been so intimately entwined by desire and tension, had become nothing more than names in a yearbook, memories tucked away in the dusty corners of your minds.
you vanished into your own pathway, throwing yourself into studies, work, and new cities, trying to drown out the memory of the two boys who had once looked at you like you were a god. you told yourself you had forgotten. you told yourself that the heat, the sweat, and the desperate, lonely nights they spent thinking of you were just a fever dream of youth.
