a reminder about writing dark themes and fictional characters:
i’ve seen people getting harassed for the way they write or interpret certain characters (recently max hastings from a good girl’s guide to murder and others) and i want to say something clearly.
people write fiction for many different reasons. sometimes it’s because they’re interested in a character, sometimes it’s because they want to explore complex emotions or darker themes and sometimes it can even be a way of coping or processing personal experiences. none of that makes assumptions about who someone is in real life or what they’ve been through.
fiction is fiction. exploring difficult subjects in writing does not mean someone supports or condones them in reality.characters and stories are spaces where people can safely examine fear, trauma, morality,power and recovery without those things existing in the real world.
harassing people over how they choose to write or interpret fictional content doesn’t protect anyone it just creates unsafe spaces for expression and discourages honest storytelling. if something makes you uncomfortable, it’s okay to curate your own space, block tags or scroll past. but it’s not okay to target or shame people for exploring fictional themes in their writing.
people should be allowed to separate fiction from reality without being treated as though they cannot.
I just wanted to show you this TikTok, maybe it’ll spark something in you to write about modern Aerion being a girldad.
https://vt.tiktok.com/ZS95wT9R2/
you guys don't understand the damage those clips have done to my sanity. i can't stop thinking about girl dad!aerion, the thought of him having to learn how to be gentle with a daughter is just so endearing to me. soft and probably ooc aerion ahead!
the first time aerion holds his newborn daughter, there's no other word to describe how he looks at her except for baffled. the nurse hands the small, soft bundle to him and he immediately moves to bring it to his chest as if it's second nature, violet eyes locked to her tiny form with an intensity that suggests she might as well disappear if he dares looking away for a second.
you sit on the hospital bed with a kind of uncertainty sitting in your chest while you wait for a reaction. it doesn't come immediately, and you find yourself shifting nervously as you watch a slight furrow appear between aerion's pale eyebrows when the little thing stirs in his arms, the soft sound that comes from her barely audible in the vast room. he doesn't smile then, not right away, but you know exactly what your husband means when he shakes his head slightly and quietly mumbles something under his breath.
"i can't believe i made this."
you don't say anything, just lean back into your pillows and let him have this moment to himself. you know just what it means to him, know aerion will commit this to memory with the same sort of quiet devotion you've seen him treat you with for the past couple of years. you understand.
during the next few weeks after you bring her home, he'll watch her with a protectiveness that seems nearly exhausting. aerion sits up at three in the morning when he hears you bring your daughter to bed to feed her for the night, and the whole time he sits completely conscious beside you even as your eyelids start drooping and you keep startling out of sleep. you find him in the nursery in the middle of the night more often than not, and you stand by the doorway with an eye barely cracked open and watch him just stand there next to the crib like a dragon guarding his hoard.
"aerion, she's fine," you breathe tiredly. "come to bed."
aerion doesn't startle. he barely moves, just the slight movement of his pale head as he acknowledges your presence. "right, just making sure."
some nights, you don't say anything. you just linger by the door, not daring to make a sound as you listen to him cradle her crying form, pacing gently around the small room as he soothes her with a softness to his tone you've never heard aerion use with anyone before—not even you, definitely not his siblings either. the sheer absurdity of it makes you suddenly wide awake.
"shh, shh. don't cry, i'm here. daddy is here."
aerion carries his daughter everywhere and barely lets you hold her for more than a few minutes when you're out together. it's like he has this constant need to reassure himself that she's his, that he has something to hold and protect and guard for at least a couple of years now. he looks proud of it too, a smug little curl to his mouth when strangers that happen to pass by audible swoon over the litte thing and mumble that she looks just like him.
you scoff at the pleased smirk aerion sends you and give him a very deliberate roll of your eyes in response, grumbling something along the lines of "don't flatter yourself that much", but you wouldn't take that away from him for anything. you know just how much it means to aerion, even if he doesn't say it out loud.
The lords of the Seven Kingdoms had long memories, and pride that clung even longer.
Prince Maekar learned that slowly, one letter at a time. One refusal after another, each dressed in courtesy and sealed with finality. House Tarly sent a courteous refusal, all neat phrases and careful distance. House Rowan said nothing for three months, then finally replied with a claim that their daughter had been promised already. The lie was thin enough to show through the parchment. House Baratheon sent condolences. Condolences, as if a death had occurred instead of a proposal. House Hightower did not answer at all, and Maekar did not press them. Smaller houses followed suit, each with their own reason. A daughter too frail, a daughter already in love, a daughter too young, too old, too recently in mourning.
The reasons piled up, one over the other, until they blurred together.
A year had passed since Ashford Meadow. A year since his son dragged that puppeteer girl through the dirt by her hair and broke her finger. Since he called for a Trial of Seven over an insult most men would have swallowed with their wine and forgotten by sunrise. A year since Maekar stood in the field with a hammer in his hand and felt the weight of his own name shift into something people spoke of carefully, if they spoke of it at all.
Men who had never stood near a tourney field could recount it with certainty, as though they had been there themselves. They told it with small changes, but the shape remained. A prince undone in public.
He had tried threatening Aerion with sending him away, exile him to Lys, he wouldn’t be the last Targaryen to do so. He had tried locking him down. He had tried shame. But after all that, Aerion didn’t even flinch, he endured it too easily, quiet in a way that made Maekar uneasy.
So now he had turned to marriage.
At last, Maekar wrote to Dorne. Your father was not the ruling prince, but from Lord Orran Martell, his brother. Close enough to matter, far enough to manoeuvre. When the letter reached him, he read it once, then again, then a third time, slower. Only then did he allow himself a smile.
The carriage carried the scent of cedar and dust, and the road behind you stretched longer with each turn of the wheels.
Your father had spoken plainly. No softening, no illusions. He laid out the value of the match, the reach it offered, the place it would secure. He spoke as he would to a man he trusted with consequence. That was his way of showing regard.
He did not pretend the groom was good. He did not ask you to pretend either.
You are strong enough for this, he had said. I would not send you otherwise.
He had expected hesitation, perhaps fear, but he had not found it.
You watched the land shift through the narrow window, red stone fading into green, dry air thickening with damp. The world changing in slow increments.
You turned the name over again and again, testing it.
Aerion Brightflame.
You had heard the Ashford story, of course, everyone had. The mercy of the hedge knight that some called wisdom and others called weakness. What stayed with you was not the cruelty itself, cruelty was common enough among men with power and power made men careless with other people.
I am no man, he had reportedly said. I am a dragon.
You found this almost amusing.
Not because it was foolish, though it was. Because it told you something useful. A man who believed himself a dragon was a man who had built his entire self upon a story. And stories had seams, they could be read, they could, if one were careful, be rewritten.
Maekar thought he was sending you to tame his son. You could feel it in the careful tone of his words, you could feel the hope through the careful diplomacy of his acceptance letter, which your father had allowed you to read. The prince wanted a strong wife for his son. A steady hand. Something that might anchor Aerion to the earth before he burned everything around him.
But you intended to do something more interesting than that.
The journey north gave you time, and you used it well. The rhythm of the road settled into your bones, wheels creaking, hooves striking dirt, the quiet murmur of voices beyond the curtains. Long hours where nothing changed except the light.
You let your thoughts arrange themselves without forcing them. That was how it always worked best. Piece by piece.
By the time you reached the Crownlands, the structure of your plan had taken shape. You named it: Seven Steps to Tame a Beast.
King's Landing announced itself in smell before sight, woodsmoke, salt, something sour beneath both. Too many people, too little space, all of it pressed together and left to simmer. The Red Keep rose above it all, pale stone against a dull sky. It looked less like a crown and more like something grown in the wrong place.
The reception was brief, formal and efficient.
Maekar received you himself. He stood solid and broad, the years written into his face in hard lines. His hair had gone mostly to silver. His eyes were sharp, searching, measuring. You held his gaze just long enough, then gave him courtesy and nothing more.
Aerion was not there, you noticed.
STEPT 1. Keep Your Distance from the Wild.
A wild creature does not welcome approach. Every movement is weighed, every sound judged. You do not step into its space uninvited. You do not reach. You watch. You learn the rhythm first. Where it rests. What startles it. What draws its attention and what it ignores. Rush, and it turns. Wait, and it forgets you are there.
You did not seek Aerion in those first days, even if it took some effort.
There were servants willing to arrange a meeting. Courtiers who offered, curiosity thinly veiled. You declined each time, politely, with reasons that could not be pressed. Fatigue, settling in, amild headache.
In truth, you were mapping him. You began where he could not avoid being seen.
Meals.
He sat very straight, almost too straight, not relaxed. Every movement placed with care, hands set just so. Shoulders squared. The stillness was deliberate, the kind that came from control, not comfort. He ate little. Drank more than he should, though he kept it from showing. His eyes moved often. Not restless. A sweep, measured, taking stock of the room without drawing attention to it. He noted everything.
He laughed twice in three days, both times it was wrong. Too quick, it stopped at his mouth and went no further. The men around him laughed as well, they always did. You watched them more than him in those moments. Watched how easily they bent to it. Mirrors, all of them, they gave him back what he wanted to see.
On the second day, a steward stumbled over a name. A small mistake, barely worth notice. But Aerion noticed. His jaw tightened, just once. A brief pause before he spoke, a fraction longer than natural. Then it passed, the steward went on, unaware. You did not miss it, he disliked error. Disliked imprecision. The world, in his mind, should hold its shape. When it did not, something in him bristled.
On the third day, there was a gathering. Music, wine, low voices. People playing at ease.
You took a place near the edge, beside a column. Your handmaid stood with you, quiet, unobtrusive. You spoke when required, smiled when expected, nothing more.
Aerion crossed the room twice. The first time, he did not look at you. The second time, he did. A brief glance, flat and measuring. The kind given to something not yet worth attention. You were already looking elsewhere when it happened. Your focus set just past him, as though he were incidental.
Still, you saw enough. The slight tension at his mouth, the way his gaze held for a breath, then moved on. He knew you were there. Of course he did, and he was not interested.
Good.
Interest that comes too easily is useless. It has no weight; it does not last. Curiosity had to be earned.
That night, you sat by the window and let the city settle into silence beneath you.
He was proud, that was obvious, but there was something under it. Control, carefully maintained. He was not as unrestrained as the stories suggested. It meant the outbursts were not constant. They built. Pressure, then release.
He was intelligent. More than most around him allowed. That kind of mind, left without challenge, turns inward. Finds its own amusements, not always good ones. He had been told he was exceptional for too long. Ordinary things no longer held him.
Boredom, then. Boredom as a spark.
You suspected he had never been met with anything real. Only reflections and performance. That would have to change. You drew your braid over your shoulder, thinking.
You were not satisfied. You never were, this early. But you understood the ground beneath your feet now. Where it dipped, where it held. You had not spoken to him yet; you had barely shared a room. And still, you were closer than anyone here knew.
The ceremony took place at dawn.
Black candles burned low, their smoke thick and sweet, curling into the corners of the chamber. The maester spoke in High Valyrian, his voice steady as he shaped words that had existed long before the Conquest. Pale light slipped through a narrow window, thin and colourless. Maekar stood off to the side, his posture rigid, his expression set in that familiar way of a man who no longer expected much in return for doing what was required.
Aerion arrived on time.
He was dressed as expected, red and black, pale hair brushed to the side. He took his place beside you without hesitation, carrying himself like a man waiting out an obligation he could not avoid. He did not fidget; he was too controlled to do so. Instead, he held still, composed to the point of absence, his attention drifting toward the candles now and then as if searching for something that was not there.
When the maester's words required it, he took your hand. His grip was exact, dry and cold. It lingered only as long as custom demanded, then released at once, as if he had touched something hot and withdrawn before the burn could catch.
You kept your gaze forward and before you let your mind move forward, it was over.
The feast was small and slightly mournful. The kind of gathering where people ate and spoke because it was expected, not because they wished to. The food was well prepared, the wine even more so. Conversation moved carefully, never quite settling.
You were seated beside Aerion.
He spent the early portion of the meal demonstrating how effortlessly he could ignore you. He spoke across you, around you, treating the space you occupied as if it had always been empty. It was not for your benefit, it was for the others, for himself, for the quiet need to show that nothing had changed.
During the second course, he turned his head slightly in your direction, just enough to acknowledge you without granting you the full courtesy of attention.
"You are quieter than I expected. I was told Dornish women always had opinions about everything."
It was not the sharpest thing he could have said. You suspected he was holding the sharper things in reserve, testing whether blunt instruments would serve before reaching for finer ones. You let your fingers rest on the stem of your cup before answering.
"We do," you said. "We simply learn early which conversations are worth having."
Then you returned to your plate.
The silence stretched. You could feel it tighten, like cloth pulled just a little too far. You did not look at him; you did not need to. Beside you, he drank, then turned away, letting the moment dissolve.
Across the table, Maekar was watching. When the music began, it was him who moved first. You saw the decision before he acted. He crossed the room with purpose and spoke low to Aerion. You did not hear the words, but you did not need to. There was no request in the exchange.
Aerion turned toward you. He extended his hand with slow precision, making absolutely certain that every person in the room understood this was costing him something.
"Will you honour me, dear wife," he said, the words shaped correctly, the tone less so.
You placed your hand in his.
The floor was not crowded. The other couples kept their distance, leaving a space around you that felt exposed rather than open. He danced well, you noted without surprise, he had been trained to do everything.
This close, you could see the pale sweep of his eyelashes, lighter than his hair, catching the faint light when he blinked. The depth of his lilac eyes was clearer up close, not just colour but something layered beneath it. He had two scars under his cheek, but his skin still looked almost unreal in its smoothness.
His hand at your waist was the same as his grip during the ceremony, measured, controlled, with no warmth.
“Let us understand one another,” he said, his voice low enough to remain private, though there was nothing intimate in it. "I did not want this. I want you to know that I know what my father intends by it, and I want you to know that it will not work."
You let the music carry you through a turn before answering.
“I know you did not want it," you said. "I did not ask for your wanting. I asked for nothing at all, if you recall.”
"You will want things eventually. All wives do."
"Perhaps." You met his gaze briefly, then let it drift past him. "But I did not come here to want things from you, Aerion. I came because the arrangement was made, and I do not refuse an arrangement simply because it is inconvenient."
His hand tightened slightly at your waist, not painfully, but enough to notice.
"You think you can manage me." he said almost curious.
"I think, that they have been trying to manage you your whole life." you said. "And it has not served you much. I am not interested in managing you. I am interested in being your wife. That means I will keep this household in order, I will hold my place properly, and I will do what is required of me. Whether you choose to be part of that is yours to decide."
Another turn as the music continued.
"But I will be here," you added, quieter now. "That part is not negotiable."
He said nothing after that, but you did not mistake the silence for agreement.
Your chambers had been prepared with careful attention as expected. The fire lit, the bed done, everything arranged with quiet precision. You dressed for the night and sat near the hearth with a book open in your lap, though you were not reading.
You waited but he did not come.
The fire burned low. The sounds of the city shifted beyond the walls, settling into the deeper quiet of night. Somewhere, the watch called the hour and you closed the book.
You were not offended; you were not disappointed. You had already known Aerion would rather spend his wedding night in a brothel.
You extinguished the candle by the window and watched the room fall into shadow.
STEPT 2. Become a Familiar Shape.
Constant presence, always at the same distance, without sudden change. Given time, you stop being something to watch for. You become part of the world itself.
In the days that followed, you made yourself ordinary. It took more care than it appeared. True ordinariness had to be consistent. Too much absence would be noticed. Too much presence would draw the eye. You chose your places and kept to them. The great hall in the morning, a corridor near the training yard in the afternoon, a chair by the window in the library, once, where you read for two hours without lifting your head when he entered.
You did not seek him out and you did not avoid him. You were simply there. Aerion noticed.
At first, it was nothing clear. A pause when he entered a room and found you already in it. A shift in his attention, brief and controlled. The smallest recalculation. He had expected something from you. You could see it in what he did not find. No coldness, no wounded pride, no performance at all.
You gave him nothing to work with. Three days after the wedding, he passed you on the library and spoke to you for the first time since the feast.
“I trust you slept well. I confess I cannot say the same for the woman I spent the night with. She complained I kept her awake until dawn.”
You stopped reading and looked up at him.
“Kept her awake, or kept her waiting?” you asked, tilting your head slightly. “There is a difference, I find, between a man who exhausts a woman and a man who simply prevents her from sleeping. One leaves her satisfied. The other leaves her staring at the ceiling." A brief pause. “From what I have heard of you, I suspect she saw rather more of the ceiling than she would have liked.”
You walked away with your book before he could answer.
You had learned early that a voice could betray a person faster than any blade. Most people used it badly. They made it loud when they wanted to be heard, sharpened it when they wanted to cut. They filled it with weight and urgency, as if force alone could make something true. Your father had taught you otherwise. In his solar, he spoke with the same measured evenness whether he was discussing grain yields or deciding a man's fate. A voice that only rises when threatened, he had told you once, is a voice that teaches people when you can be threatened.
You remembered that.
STEP 3. Let It Hear You Before It Sees You.
A calm voice, used often, without command. No edge to it, no sudden movement tied to the sound. The creature learns the voice first, without reason to fear it. Given time, the sound settles into the background. Familiar, expected, something it turns toward without quite knowing why.
So, you began to speak.
The first time was nothing. A grey morning, the stone still holding the night’s cold. Aerion walked the corridor outside the great hall with two of his usual companions, and you were walking alone, and there was no reason to say anything, silence would have served just as well, would in fact have required less effort, but you spoke anyway.
“The easternmost courtyard is iced over this morning,” you said as you went by. “If you are riding, the south gate will be quicker.”
You did not look at him as you said it. You did not look back after.
Behind you, there was a brief silence, and then the low sound of his companions resuming their conversation. You could not tell if he had answered, it did not matter. The point was the sound itself, your voice, steady, offering something useful and nothing more, left behind in his morning like a small, ordinary fact.
You did this again two days later. And again, after that.
An observation about the kitchens. A remark about a particular courier who had been delayed. Once, on the stairs, a quiet comment about a book you carried, spoken into the space without asking for anything in return.
He said nothing the first time. The second time, he gave you a look, the same one you had seen before, sharp and narrow, weighing, deciding whether what it saw was worth the trouble of attention. The third time, he answered, briefly, as if the words had slipped out before he could stop them.
You counted this as exactly what it was, progress.
The friction came eventually. Midday meal, smaller than the evening gatherings, the kind where people allowed themselves to speak a little more freely. You were seated across from Aerion rather than beside him, which meant you had the less comfortable position of being visible to him rather than adjacent.
He had been in a particular mood all morning. You had seen it earlier, out in the courtyard. A tightness in the way he held himself, a coiled irritation that suggested some earlier conversation had not gone as he'd wished. He kept it contained, but it showed in small places. The set of his shoulders, the way his gaze lingered a fraction too long.
Halfway through the meal, he looked at you directly.
“I saw you speaking with the hedge knight this morning. The boy could barely look at you.”
“Ser Duncan,” You corrected, “Could barely look at anyone,” you said. “He has learned that drawing attention to himself is dangerous. A useful instinct, when one lives in a dangerous environment.”
Around the table, the shift was immediate. Eyes moved away, shoulders shifted, someone found their cup suddenly very interesting. No one wanted to be part of whatever this was.
Aerion's mouth curved, but not warmly.
“You say that as an observation. I wonder if you mean it as a criticism.”
“I mean it as neither.” You set down your knife. “A knight who flinches is a knight who has learned what happens when he does not. That tells you something about where he lives.” You looked at him steadily. “The more interesting question is what it tells you about yourself.”
“I am not in the habit of concerning myself with knights anymore.”
“No,” you said. “But you might concern yourself with the fact that a man who fears you will serve you only as long as he must. Fear is a short leash, and the moment it slackens, the moment you turn your back, a frightened man will not think of loyalty. He will think of himself.” You picked up your knife again. "Respect holds longer. It is less satisfying, I imagine, but considerably more reliable."
The table was very quiet.
Aerion's expression did not change, which was its own kind of change, in the vocabulary you had spent weeks building. The muscles around his jaw held with a precision that was not natural stillness. He was choosing his next words with more care than usual, which meant the previous ones had landed somewhere he had not expected them to reach.
“You speak as though I require your counsel,” he said almost thoughtful.
“I speak because the observation seemed worth making,” you said. “What you do with it is your own concern.”
You returned to your meal.
He said nothing more. But he did not look away for a longer moment than was comfortable, and when he finally did, it was not with a quick dismissal, it was with adjustment.
In the library, three days later, you found him already there when you arrived.
This was unusual. Aerion was not, in your observation, a man who spent mornings in libraries by preference. You entered anyways and took the chair you usually took, near the far window, which had the best light and a view of the inner yard, and opened the book you had brought.
For a time, neither of you spoke. The fire cracked softly. From outside came the steady rhythm of steel on steel, practice in the yard below.
“The Celtigar boy.”
You did not look up immediately. You marked your page, then lifted your eyes.
“The one my father is considering for a trade agreement,” he went on. “You spoke with him yesterday.”
“Briefly.” you said.
“He is not what he presents.” There was something restrained in the way he said it. Irritation, perhaps, or reluctance, as though the act of asking you something, or almost asking you something, cost him more than he was willing to fully account for.
You studied him for a moment. “No,” you agreed. “He is not. His family's debts are larger than they've admitted, and his uncle's position in the city has been weakening for two years. The trade agreement would favour him considerably more than it would favour the crown.
Aerion's eyes moved over your face, his gaze precise.
“You gathered that from a brief conversation.”
“From the conversation, and from the days before it,” you said. “People show where the pressure is, if you pay attention.”
A pause.
“My father should know,” he said.
“He should,” you agreed. “I thought you might be the appropriate person to tell him.”
You let that rest between you without elaboration, the implicit suggestion that this was a useful thing, that you were offering it to him rather than taking the credit for it, that you were treating him as someone worth offering useful things to. You did not dress it in sentiment. You did not soften it into a gesture. You simply left it there, plainly, for him to take or ignore as he chose.
He chose to take it. Not gratefully, not with any acknowledgment of the exchange's nature. He simply gave a short, almost inaudible sound of agreement and turned back to his book.
You had met, in your life, exactly three people who understood the particular discipline of the open hand.
Your father was one of them. A merchant woman in Sunspear who had built a trading empire from a single stall was another. The third was a maester who had served your household for eleven years and who had, in that time, quietly accumulated more influence over its workings than anyone with an official title. None of them had achieved what they achieved through force, or through the performance of authority. They had achieved it through the same mechanism, over and over, they gave things away, then let them go.
STEP 4. Offer Without Expectation.
Something of value left within reach, knowledge, advantage, ease. Then you step back. You do not insist. You do not demand. You do not watch too closely. The creature must come to the thing on its own terms, or the thing carries the smell of a trap. Patience here is not passive. It is the most active thing you can do, the discipline of the open hand, extended and then stilled, asking nothing, waiting without the tension of waiting.
You began small, that was where patterns took hold.
The first thing was almost accidental, simple enough to pass unnoticed.
Over weeks, you had seen how Aerion’s mornings turned. When his correspondence waited in disorder, something in him tightened. It was a small irritation, but it spread, it created a particular friction that compounded into the broader texture of his day. His steward handled it unevenly, some days careful, others careless.
You said nothing about this to anyone.
Instead, you mentioned to the steward’s assistant, a young man called Pell, anxious and observant. You mentioned once, that mornings that begin clean tend to stay that way, as though sharing a general philosophy, and then you moved on.
Next day, the letters were sorted before Aerion reached his study. You were nowhere near him when he noticed. You were in the eastern courtyard, the air sharp enough to sting your throat, walking slow circles over frost-hardened ground.
The second offering was more direct, and more deliberate.
The previous night, you had lingered in the great hall long enough to catch a conversation not meant for you. Two of Maekar’s advisors, careless in their angle, speaking of the Plumm family, a loan, a disputed inheritance, a claim that had the potential to become inconvenient for the crown if left unaddressed. The kind of thing that moved slowly until it did not.
You wrote it down, simply a single sheet of paper, placed beneath a volume you had observed Aerion taking from the library shelves twice in the past fortnight, angled just so, easily visible to someone reaching for the book.
You were gone before he arrived, you did not check if it had been taken. This was the discipline, the open hand, and then the stillness.
He found you in the corridor outside the great hall two days later. The way he approached told you enough, straight line, no hesitation, you knew the paper had been found and used.
“The Plumm family matter,” he said. “My father addressed it this morning. He mentioned information that reached him through unusual channels.”
“Did he.” you said.
“He did not know the source.” A pause. “I did.”
You met his gaze, nothing more. “Anyone listening could have heard it,” you said. “I assumed it was worth noting.”
“You assumed,” he repeated sceptical. “And the assumption led you to leave an unsigned document in a place you knew I would find it, rather than simply speaking to me, or to my father directly.”
“Speaking to your father directly would have made it mine to claim. It seemed more useful for it to be yours.” You said, you were well aware that he needed to slowly gain his father’s trusts again.
“You expect me to believe you want nothing in return.” He said.
“I expect nothing from you,” you replied. “I noticed something that seemed relevant to your interests. I noted it where you could find it. That is all.”
He studied you for a long moment, measuring again, then stepped past you without another word. You turned in the opposite direction and continued walking.
The pattern continued.
Days filled with small things, each one easy to miss on its own. A map left open to the right page before a meeting. A quiet word to a knight whose behaviour toward Aerion had been developing a particular insolence. Not a warning, only a reminder of how quickly favour could turn. The knight corrected himself. Aerion noticed the change; you were reasonably certain he had chosen not to address it directly.
During a meal he caught you refilling his cup before the servant reached it, an automatic gesture, barely conscious, and he watched your hand as you set the jug down.
“You do not behave like someone who dislikes me,” he said.
“I am not certain I dislike you,” you said, truthfully. “I have not yet seen enough of you to decide.”
“You have been living in the same castle for a month.”
“So, my husband has taken to keeping track now?” you said, a light note of teasing slipping in despite yourself. You lifted your cup and took a slow sip, letting the taste of the wine linger as a small, knowing smile curved at the corner of your mouth.
He exhaled through his nose, not quite a scoff he meant to share. He didn’t answer. His gaze lingered, a fraction too long to be careless, as if he were trying to smooth over something that had caught him off guard. There was a faint tension in his face, in the set of his jaw and the stillness of his shoulders, the sort of thing that suggested he was trying very hard not to let any hint of embarrassment show.
Later you noticed he took the map you left on his desk. Maekar’s manner afterward told you enough, less strain and more thought behind his words when he spoke to his son. Aerion did not mention it and you did not either.
The absence of acknowledgment said what it needed to. He would take what was useful, he would not name the source. Pride held that line, but still, he had used it. He had accepted the offering, even reluctantly, even silently. That mattered more.
Which meant the distance was slowly shrinking.
He came to your chambers late on a Thursday, when the castle had settled into its quieter rhythm and the corridors carried only the distant steps of the watch.
You sat at your vanity, drawing the brush through your hair in slow, even strokes, winding you down toward sleep. Your sleeping gown was light, meant for the warmth of the room and the privacy of it, nothing more. Your hair hung loose, longer than it appeared when pinned, falling across your shoulders in a way that belonged to a version of yourself you did not generally allow the castle to see.
The door opened without warning, but you did not turn.
You watched him through the mirror instead. It gave you a clearer view than facing him outright. He stepped inside, then paused when he saw you, or the version of you caught in the glass. Something flickered across his face, quick and unguarded, before he shut it down.
You kept brushing your hair.
He crossed the room at an unhurried pace. No sudden movement, no sign of haste, still, there was weight in it. He stopped behind your chair and rested both hands on its back. In the mirror, his eyes met yours directly, without the usual angle or distance.
You held his gaze and continued the brush stroke to its end.
The silence lasted several seconds. In the mirror you watched him watching you. The loose hair, the gown, the particular version of you that belonged to this room and this hour, and you watched him notice that he was watching, and tighten slightly around it.
“I have been really patient with you,” he said at last, his voice low. “I have watched you move through this household for weeks. The documents, the steward, the arrangements that appear before I ask for them.” A pause. “No one does this without a ledger. Show me yours.”
“I told you I keep no ledger,” you said.
“Everyone keeps a ledger.” The words came sharper now. “Whether they admit it or not.”
You set the brush down on the vanity and folded your hands in your lap, and looked at his reflection. The candle shifted, and for a moment the light caught him differently in the mirror. The closeness of him. The space between you that had narrowed without either of you naming it.
“You are angry,” you said. “Not because you think I want something from you. You are angry because you cannot determine what it is, and that distinction is troubling you more than you would like to admit.”
His grip tightened slightly on the chair, his frown deepened. “Do not tell me what troubles me.”
“Then tell me yourself.” You said. “You came here and opened that door without knocking. If you have something to say, say it plainly.”
“What you have offered me,” he said, and this time the control thinned, sharpened into something colder, “is the manner of a woman who wants something. The oldest trick there is. Every woman I have met wanted things. Every woman in this castle wants things. You-” and here something almost contemptuous entered his voice, directed less at you than at his own inability to solve you “-stand there with your quiet gestures and your useful information and expect me to believe it costs you nothing, that you want nothing from me.”
“I told you I expect nothing from you,” you said, for the second time in your acquaintance “Which is not the same as wanting nothing.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. For a moment, his gaze dipped, catching on the fall of your hair over your shoulder, the line of your neck in the candlelight, before returning to your reflection with more force than before.
“Then what do you want,” he said lowly, moving a strand of your hair behind your ear.
You watched him for a moment. The tension in his shoulders. The way he held himself still, as if movement might betray him. The closeness of him, the warmth of it at your back.
“To see you for what you truly are,” you said, now turning around to look up at him. “When no one is performing fear at you.”
The room went quiet.
He did not move at once. His hands remained on the chair, though you felt the subtle shift in them, the restraint in it. His breathing changed, barely, but enough to notice. His gaze stayed on yours, searching now in a way it had not before.
Then he straightened. His hands lifted from the chair with care, as if he had to think about the motion before making it. He held your gaze for a moment longer, something unreadable passing through it. Then he turned and left.
The door closed with a loud thud behind him.
You looked back at your reflection in the glass. The room holding a trace of him still, something unsettled in the air. You reached for the brush and finished what you had started.
A man like Aerion did not adjust. He did not take pressure and reshape himself around it. His world ran on confirmation, on power answered with submission, on a rhythm that reassured him of his place in it. You had been interfering with that rhythm since the morning you arrived. Quietly, consistently, without giving him anything he knew how to answer.
A disruption like that never passed without consequence.
STEP 5. Survive the First Test of Teeth.
Before any bond forms, there is a test. A feint of violence, a warning, a measure of what you are made of. Not always meant to hurt, but whether to see of you will break or bite back. If you do, is over.
You held this thought in the quiet of your morning as you dressed carefully and went about your day.
The argument started in the corridor outside his study, late in the afternoon, when the light came through the western windows, catching dust in the air, turning it gold. You had passed him with the usual moderate acknowledgment, not ignoring him, not seeking him, the same distance you had maintained for weeks, and he had stopped walking.
“You were in my father's solar this morning,” he said.
“I was,” you said. “He asked my opinion on a correspondence from the Arbor.”
“He asked your opinion on that matter,” Something tightened in his face. “Instead of asking me?”
“He did.”
“You have been very busy these days,” he said, “Making yourself useful, to my father, to every corner of this household except the one that is actually your concern.”
“You are my concern,” you said. “Which is precisely why I do not sit waiting for you to need something."
“I do not need anything from you.”
“No,” you agreed. “You have made that very clear last time we discussed. And yet here we are, having this conversation, which you initiated.”
He turned and walked into his study. Not an invitation, but not a dismissal either, and you followed because the conversation was unfinished.
“You think you are very clever,” he said, moving behind his desk, putting wood and distance between you, like it might help him sort what he could not name.
“I think I am.” you said defiantly.
“You think,” he said, and the voice had dropped into its most dangerous register. “That you can arrange yourself into something that suits you, move pieces across a board you were not invited to play on, smile at my father in his solar, look at me like that, and that none of it will have a cost.”
“I have never believed anything is without cost.” you said.
“Then if you are so clever, you should have calculated more carefully.” He stepped past you, toward the door. “You will remain in this room until I say otherwise.” The words came out with anger and the door shut behind him.
You stood in the centre of the room for a moment. Then you moved to his chair, behind his desk, and sat in it, and looked at the documents arranged across the surface, and began, with the unhurried attention, to read them.
Three days later, in the great hall. You had not sought Ser Duncan out specifically. You had spoken with him before, briefly, like with most people in the Keep, and found him to be earnest, possessing more native intelligence than his manner suggested. He was easy to be around. You were in the middle of an unremarkable conversation about the road conditions north of King's Landing, he had travelled them recently, and you had asked a practical question. You felt the shift before you saw him.
A hand settled at your waist. Firm, claiming, meant to be seen, his fingers pressing into the fabric of your dress. Ser Duncan's expression went still, not quite discomfort and not quite confusion.
“My wife,” Aerion said. “I was looking for you.”
Duncan inclined his head and stepped back. You kept your expression exactly as it had been. Aerion’s gaze lingered on you, then flicked once toward the knight, measuring, assembling something he did not like. The hall had gone quiet.
“Is this a game to you,” he said under his breath. An accusation that had the shape of a question.
“No,” you said.
“Then what is it.” He moved in front of you. “What are you doing with the hedge knight-” He stopped, jaw tightening. “Are you provoking me, deliberately.”
“I was having a conversation about road conditions,”
“Do not.” His voice dropped further. “Do not use that voice with me.”
“Which voice would you prefer then? One where I lie?”
“You know,” he said quietly, to you, only to you. “What he did to me.”
“I know what happened at Ashford,” you said, equally quietly. “As does most of the kingdom-”
The struck came fast. Mid-sentence, mid-breath, in front of the hall and the fire and Ser Duncan's suddenly rigid stillness. The back of his hand across your cheek with a force that turned your head and produced a sound that silenced the nearest conversations.
You straightened. You did not touch your face. You did not look at Duncan, who you could feel in your peripheral vision. You looked at Aerion, directly, steadily, with the same expression you had worn in the study, and you said nothing at all.
His jaw was tight and the hall was watching it all. He gripped your wrist, hard, the mark already beginning, and turned toward the corridor, and you went with him because the scene that would result from not going would cost you more.
In your chambers, he released you without a word and left. The door shut and the lock clicked.
You sat by the window. The light had shifted, pale now, moving slowly across the stone. You looked at your wrist, at the faint marks forming. You were not afraid and you were not angry, so you waited with patience.
Maekar went to Aerion that same evening, of course he did. No one told you outright, but you knew before a word reached you. The servant who came to open your chamber door avoided your eyes, her hands slower than usual on the latch. Raised voices, you guessed. Maekar did not shout often, but when he did, it carried. Aerion would have been made to stand there and take it. For the insult. For making a spectacle of his own wife. For stepping, once again, where he had been warned not to. You could almost hear it. The sharp edge of Maekar’s restraint, the threat beneath it.
You let out a slow breath. This would not help. It would tighten something in Aerion, push him further into himself before it loosened anything at all.
He did not return that night, or the next.
On the third, you woke to the sound of your door.
The room was dark, the fire long since reduced to coals and a faint red glow. The kind of hour when even the castle seemed to pause, caught between one watch and the next. You lay still for a moment, listening to the sounds that followed the door, unsteady footsteps, the sounds of a man navigating a familiar space with less precision than usual.
You had smelled the wine, thick and sour on the air, and something else beneath it, cheap perfume and sweat. You had passed enough doorways in this city to know it came from a brothel.
He moved through the dark toward the bed with care that bordered on effort. Not quite stumbling, but close. You lay still with your eyes not quite closed and your breathing steady and you watched him through your lashes.
He stopped at the bedside. For a moment, he only looked at you.
He was less put together than you had ever seen him, his hair dishevelled, collar open, his clothes carrying the evidence of hours spent in places this castle was not and had not bothered to hide it well. His gaze moved over you, slower than usual, lingering in places he would have ignored in daylight. There was anger in it. That much you knew. But there was something else tangled into it, something the drink had loosened.
Then his hand shot out and closed around your throat.
The force of it drove the breath from you before you could think. His grip was sure, fingers settling with a familiarity that made it worse. The ceiling tilted as your body reacted, instinct rising fast and sharp. His face was above yours, close, and it was not the face of a man in full command of himself. His eyes were bright, unfocused in a way that had nothing to do with the dark. His grip tightened.
You felt the tightness clearly, the pressure at your windpipe, the pulse hammering under his hand. The animal instinct toward struggle that rose in you like a tide and that you identified and still you did not move.
And then, quietly, helplessly, from somewhere underneath the shock and the constriction and the absolute clarity of your own danger, you laughed. Not loudly. Not mockingly. Not shaped for him, not meant for anything at all. It simply came, as if your body had found something in the moment that did not fit the rest of it. Simply absurd and honest and almost intimate in its desperation.
The sound of it, barely audible, stopped him completely.
His hand did not leave your throat, but it stopped tightening. His expression shifted, confusion cutting through whatever had driven him here.
“What are you-” he said. It came out raw, his voice rough, stripped of its usual control. “What are you doing, what are you doing to me.”
You said nothing. You held his eyes in the dark and did not struggle, you did not look away.
“I hate you,” he said. The words came out flat, almost tired, like a confession.“I hate what you do. I hate that I cannot-.” His voice broke across the unfinished sentence. “I cannot find the edges of you. I cannot-.”
His grip loosened, fractionally, and then fractionally more.
Something in his face gave way. The control slipped, not all at once, but enough. His shoulders dipped, the tension draining in uneven pieces. Something beneath the surface rising without permission. His forehead dropped, his weight shifted, and then, with the slow, helpless gravity of exhaustion, he leaned against your chest, his hands still loosely at your throat, his body giving what his pride would not. Choked sobs forming on the back of his throat as his shoulders trembled.
You lay still beneath him. The room held its silence. No voices in the corridor, no movement beyond the walls. Only the weight of him, and the strange, unguarded vulnerability he had not allowed himself before.
Carefully, you lifted your hand. Slow and measured. The way one moves around something that might startle.
He felt the motion before you completed it.
He pulled back at once. Your hand knocked aside, not gently, but not the way he had struck you before either, with less force and more reflex. He was off the bed and standing before you had fully processed the movement, and the reassembly was happening in real time, you could watch it, the walls going up stone by stone, the expression reorganizing, the posture recovering its usual architecture.
He did not look at you as he wiped his tears with the back of his hand, and left.
You lay in the dark for a long time after the door closed. Your throat ached. When you touched it, you could feel where his fingers had pressed, the marks already forming under the skin. You let your hand fall back to the bed. You had survived the teeth.
There is a particular kind of silence that follows a storm.
It is not peace, peace settles. This waits, it hangs over what is left, thin and watchful, as if the ground itself is deciding whether anything will take root again. You lived in that silence for six days. You ate in it, walked the corridors in it, spoke when required and otherwise let it sit around you, like weather that refused to move on.
Aerion was never where you were. Not once, not even by accident.
You noticed the pattern the way you noticed everything else. He left rooms when you entered them, not with obvious avoidance, but with quiet efficiency, but avoiding something nonetheless, something that he had not yet decided how to face. The corridors he had habitually used became corridors he did not use. The hours he had kept became hours he abandoned.
Like he was afraid of you. Not in the way people feared harm. In the way they feared being seen too clearly.
STEP 6. Allow Contact on Its Terms.
The first touch is not taken, it is allowed. A still hand. No pressure. No attempt to hold or redirect or claim. The creature must choose the contact, or the contact means nothing. It is the most fragile moment in the entire sequence the one where everything that has been built can collapse in a single wrong movement. Patience here is not strategy. It is something closer to faith, the belief that what has been established is enough to bear weight, if the weight is placed gently enough.
You dressed with care that seventh night, with a specific kind of nightgown your hair loose again, and went to him.
His chambers were deeper in the keep than yours, further from the outer walls, further from the sounds of the city, the kind of rooms that held heat and shadow in equal measure. The door was heavy. The light beneath it was the particular amber of firelight rather than candle, which meant he was awake and the hour was not the reason.
You did not knock.
The room was larger than you had expected, and sparser. There were maps on one wall, detailed ones, and a writing table covered with papers that had the disordered quality of work abandoned mid-thought. A shelf of books, several displaced at a specific angle with care. On a low table near the window, a cup and a flagon, mostly empty. The fire was high, built up more than the room's warmth required, the kind of fire you build when you want something to look at.
He was standing before it.
He turned when you entered, and the firelight caught his face in a way that daylight had never been permitted to. His eyes carried the particular redness that came not from drink but from something that had happened before the drink. His shoulders, which were always exact, held themselves with an effortful maintenance, but it took effort to keep it that way.
You closed the door behind you. The latch caught with a sound that was very small in the quiet.
“You should not be here,” he said.
“Probably,” you agreed. You did not move further into the room yet. You stood near the door and looked at him across the firelit space between you and said “What is wrong.”
“Nothing that concerns you.” He turned back to the fire. The set of his shoulders said the conversation was over, but the fact that he had not told you to leave said something else.
You crossed the room.
Slowly, without purpose written into the movement. You stopped beside him. Not close enough to require acknowledgment, not far enough to be a withdrawal, and you looked at the fire.
Neither of you spoke.
The fire crackled, wood settled with a low crack, and you waited.
A minute passed, then another. The fire shifted, settling lower in the grate, and in the new configuration of light you saw it, brief, barely visible. A single track of tears, catching firelight, at the corner of his jaw.
You did not look at it directly.
“Aerion,” you said.
“My father-.” he began, and then stopped, like the words had caught on something.
You let the silence hold.
“He saw,” he said with flatness. “The marks on your neck. He saw them. Someone spoke of what happened at the hall too.” His jaw tightened. “He made himself very clear.”
“How clear,” you said.
“In all his wisdom, has threatened me, again, to send me into exile.” The word sat between you. Heavy enough on its own. “He called it a last chance. He has called it that before.” Something crossed his voice that was not quite bitterness. “The words had begun to lose their meaning, but it felt too serious now”
You turned to look at him then.
He was still facing the fire, but the profile of him had changed. The structure of his expression had begun to crack. Not enough for others to notice but enough for you. He looked, in the firelight, less like the man who had locked you in his study and struck you in the great hall and more like something earlier than that, rawer and less certain and considerably more alone.
You reached out. Slowly, with the deliberateness you had promised yourself, no force, no urgency, no claim. Your hand found his and held it with the lightness of something offered rather than taken.
He looked down at it.
“I should have covered the marks better,” you said. “I misjudged the consequence. That was my error, and I am sorry for it.”
“That is not-.” He stopped; his hand had not moved. “That is not what this is about.”
And he pulled away fast. Almost startled by it. With the sudden, electric motion of something that has allowed contact and immediately regretted the allowing. He stepped back, something sharp and unsteady in his eyes.
“Do not,” he said, and the word came out wrong, cracked across the middle of it. “Do not do that. Do not stand there and apologize and take my hand and look at me like-.” He stopped again, breath uneven. “Like there is something worth-.” He stopped again. His hands had closed into fists at his sides and he was breathing with effort. “You do not know what I am.”
“I know what you have done,” you said.
“Then you know enough.” He turned away. “You know I hurt people. You know I cannot-.” His voice fractured. He pressed on through it. “I cannot stop myself… there is something wrong with me. There has always been something wrong with me and everyone who has come close enough to see it leaves or breaks. And you are here, in this room, at this hour, and I do not-.” He stopped.
The fire was the only sound.
“I am a beast,” he said, very quietly. Tears running free down his cheeks. “That is what I am. That is all I am.”
You looked at him for a long moment.
“You are a man,” you said, “who has been told a story about himself for so long that he has stopped questioning whether it is the only story available.”
“It is not a story. It is evidence of everything I have done.”
“Evidence can be read in more than one direction,” you said.
“Do not make me into something I am not.”
“I am not making you into anything.” You held his gaze. “I am telling you that what you are is not to be fixed. That the thing you have been, it is not the only version of you that exists. And that-.” You paused, because the next words required accuracy, and accuracy required care. “You matter to me. Not the prince, not the name. You. What is underneath all of this. That matters to me.”
The room was absolutely still.
He looked at you with an expression you had no entry for in the vocabulary you had built of him, something unguarded, almost frightened, like he has been handed something he does not know how to hold and is not certain he can afford to drop.
Then something gave way.
Not loudly. Not all at once. His breath shifted. His shoulders dropped. Whatever he had been holding together slipped. His breathing changed. You did not move toward him, but you did not need to.
He crossed the remaining distance himself without thinking about it, and then his forehead was against your shoulder and his hands were at your sides without grip, without force, simply present, and he was not making a sound but you could feel the shaking of him and the wetness against the fabric of your nightgown and the weight of him.
You stood very still.
You did not put your arms around him. You did not make any movement that could be felt as claiming. You simply held yourself and let him use it, and the fire burned lower as he came apart quietly against your shoulder without asking permission and without being asked to stop.
You did not know how long it lasted. Long enough.
You raised your hand slowly, slowly enough that he could have pulled away again, enough to be refused, and brought your fingers to his hair.
It was shorter than it looked. Silver-pale and fine, the kind of hair that carried light rather than colour, and beneath your fingertips it was softer than you had anticipated. You drew your hand through it once, carefully, from the crown of his head down to the nape of his neck, where the hair ended and the skin began, warm and taut over the column of his spine.
He did not move away.
He leans into your touch involuntarily, as if starved for contact. His eyes flutter shut, a shudder running through him at the simple gesture. It's a chink in his armour, a crack in the façade he has built around himself. He hates how good it feels, how desperately he craves your gentleness, like something that had been starved for so long it had forgotten the word for hunger until the smell of food arrived. He hates that it's you, a woman he has dismissed as a nuisance, a distraction.
You kept your hand still at the nape of his neck and waited until the tension in him eased, just a little, then you took his hand. He did not resist the guiding.
That told you more than anything else had. Aerion Brightflame, who resisted everything, who turned even small things into contests, let himself be guided across the room, no argument, no pause. Just the quiet, spent compliance of someone who had nothing left to push with.
You lay down and he lay beside you.
For a moment he remained on his back, staring upward, and you could feel the effort in him, his composure still running even now, still attempting to impose order on something that had moved past the reach of order.
Then, slowly, as if testing each inch of the movement, allowing himself permission one fraction at a time, he moved closer. His head found your chest. His arms came around your waist, and the grip that followed was not gentle exactly, it had too much need in it for gentleness, but it was not aggression either, it was anchoring.
“Don't mistake this for weakness,” he muttered, eyes fixed somewhere above you, studying something very far away. “Or tenderness.” A pause. “I merely refuse to let my father's words haunt me alone tonight.”
“All right,” you said.
You brought one hand up to his hair again. The same movement, slow, unhurried, from crown to nape and back, repeated with the consistency of something that asked nothing in return. Your other hand rested against his back, barely any pressure at all.
The fire had burned low and the room was mostly shadow.
“If you much as breathe a word of this to anyone,” he murmured into your chest, his voice rough but stripped of its usual edge, “I'll deny it until my last breath.” His arms tightened slightly, involuntarily. “Stay with me tonight… please.”
“I'm not going anywhere,” you said.
As the night went on, Aerion slowly succumbed to sleep. Something about being held, about your gentle touch, brought a peace he had rarely known. He did not dream of dragons or conquests, for once. His sleep was free of the constant restlessness that usually plagued him. He burrowed into your chest, unconsciously seeking more of your warmth, of your presence.
You lay awake longer than he did. Not from discomfort, too much to process, lying in the dark with their thoughts arranged in rows like objects after a flood.
His breathing had changed, his weight against you had changed. The man who had come apart was now simply sleeping. With his face against your chest and his silver hair tickling your collarbone and his arms loosely maintaining their hold even in sleep, the grip eased to something that felt closer to a choice rather than necessity.
You ran your hand through his hair one more time, very slowly. He made a small sound, low and entirely unconscious, and pressed closer.
You looked at the ceiling for a long time and eventually, sleep took you too.
The room was in the grey-dark of late night, not yet dawn, but the black had thinned to something softer. His breathing had changed again; he was watching you.
His breath caught as he took in the sight of you, soft, vulnerable, beautiful in the unguarded way of sleeping things. A strange warmth curled in his chest, foreign and unsettling. He hesitated. His fingers twitched toward your hair, as if to brush a stray lock from your face, then stopped. He scowled at himself, at this weakness. But the scowl faltered when his gaze lingered on the way your lashes rested against your cheeks, the rise and fall of your breath.
Slowly, carefully, he shifted closer, draping an arm over your waist as if claiming you, not with arrogance, but with something dangerously close to possessiveness. His lips pressed against your temple in a fleeting, uncharacteristically tender kiss.
You opened your eyes. The ceiling was grey above you. Beside you, or rather, around you, Aerion had stilled, as if caught in the act of something he had not meant to do.
“Is something wrong?” you asked quietly.
He cleared his throat, his thumb idly tracing circles on your skin, trying for normalcy, trying to ignore the way his stomach twisted at your proximity.
“Are you comfortable?”he asked.
“Yes,” you said. You turned your head slightly to look at him. “Are you?”
He gave a noncommittal hum, not meeting your gaze. The truth was he had slept better than he had in years, but he was not about to say so. That would imply weakness. He shifted slightly, the arm around your waist drawing you a fraction closer without him seeming to notice. His fingers continued their circles, almost absentmindedly, as though he were lost in thought and the touch was the only thing keeping him tethered.
The grey outside the window had begun its slow migration toward something lighter. The fire was entirely cold now, the room held only the warmth of the bed, of proximity, of the particular heat that accumulates between two bodies in the hours before dawn.
Then awareness settled in him fully. Of the closeness. Of the precise arrangement of you against him, the warmth of your body, the thin fabric of your sleeping gown, the way the hem had shifted in the night to lie differently against your skin. His hand tensed briefly.
He swallowed.
You felt it, the shift that moved through him, the awareness sharpening into something specific, something that did not belong entirely to the vulnerability of the preceding hours. His lips parted, but no words came. He looked at you with an expression caught precisely between irritation and something he could not arrange into anything controllable, frustrated by the evidence of his own body, by the want that had surfaced without authorization.
You could feel it, the warmth of him. The unmistakable pressure of his want against your hip, present and unambiguous, and the particular tension of a man who has noticed you noticing and does not know what to do with it.
Neither of you spoke.
His hand, which had stilled, began very slowly, as though testing whether the motion would be stopped, to move again. Not the idle circles of before. Something more deliberate, more aware of itself, tracing the line of fabric against skin, as if testing whether the moment would break.
You did not stop him.
Not passive, there was nothing passive in the attention you were giving to this moment, to his breathing, to the fractional shifts of his weight and the warmth of his mouth near your temple and the press of him against your hip that had not diminished. But still in the way you had always been still near him, present, available, making no demand and offering no resistance, letting the space between you be defined by what he chose to do with it.
He exhaled.
“You are-.” he began, and stopped, his jaw tightened. He tried again, and the words he found were not the ones he had started with, “This changes nothing.”
“I know,” you said.
“I mean it.”
“I know you do,” you said.
His hand moved again with less hesitation, no longer tentative, something with more intention behind it, and his body followed, shifting against you with the weight of a man who has been resisting something for weeks and has arrived, at last, at the particular exhaustion of wanting and the decision to stop pretending otherwise.
His mouth found your throat, the same throat he had gripped days ago in the dark. You brought your hand to his hair, fingers threading through silver.
Aerion exhales slowly, a controlled breath that does nothing to conceal the tension wound through his jaw, his shoulders, the deliberate stillness of his hands. He's beautiful in his conflict, you think. Unbearably so. That sharp face, that proud mouth, carved for cruelty or for this, and tonight the line between them seems very thin.
He opens his eyes again, his gaze locking with yours again. He looks almost pained, his pride warring with the desire that's quickly consuming him. He wants you. Gods, he wants you so much it hurts, and he hates that he can't bring himself to deny it any longer. He hates how powerless he feels at your touch, how he craves more despite his better judgment. His breathing is ragged as he leans over you, his eyes dropping to your lips. “Stop me. Say... say no.” The words come rough, almost like a plea.
You looked at him for one long moment, you take in the conflict laid bare for the first time, the stubborn pride, the hunger he can no longer hide, the exhaustion of holding both apart.
Then you kissed him first.
He kisses you back like a man drowning who has finally stopped fighting the current. His hands come up to grip your face, not gently, and the sound that escapes his throat is low, rough, barely human. The careful prince, the controlled and calculating Aerion Targaryen, dissolves in the space between one breath and the next. What replaces him is something rawer. Hungrier. Something he's kept caged behind violet eyes and cutting remarks for far too long.
The kiss deepens without hesitation, consuming. His mouth moves against yours with a kind of desperate precision, tasting, claiming, as if he's cataloguing every detail through touch alone. You feel the heat of him, radiating off his skin like fever, like fire, like something that has been burning in secret for too long and has finally found air.
His hands roam your body with a feverish desperation, as if trying to memorize every curve, every gasp, every shudder beneath his touch. His kisses trail from your lips down your neck, nipping and sucking at your skin, marking you as his, branding you in the only way he knows how. His hands grip your hips, pulling you flush against him, letting you feel just how badly he aches for you. He's lost in the sensation, in the fire between you both, consumed by it. He's not gentle about it. He leaves a trail of hot, open-mouthed kisses down your neck, his teeth grazing that sensitive point where your shoulder meets your throat. He wants to mark you, to make you scream his name, to make sure there's no doubt in your mind or anyone else's of who you belong to.
His free hand slides under your nightgown, his fingers trailing up your thigh, leaving trails of fire in their wake. His touch is possessive, demanding, as if he's making up for every minute he's denied himself this pleasure. Your breath hitches as his fingers trace higher, teasing, taunting, every brush of skin against skin sending sparks through you. His lips return to yours, swallowing your gasp as his touch grows bolder, more deliberate. He plays with your breasts, kneading them and pinching at your nipples until you arch into him, your back lifting from the mattress like a prayer. His hands clutch at you, clinging as if you're the only solid thing in the world. He's panting now, his control frayed to the breaking point.
“Gods,” he breathes against your collarbone, “I've been waiting-.” He cuts himself off and bites down instead of finishing the sentence, leaving a bruise.
He buries his face in that spot on your neck, his breath hot against your skin, his lips roaming feverishly as if he can't get enough. Then he kisses down your body, his mouth leaving a trail of hot, wet marks down your stomach, your hip, your inner thigh. His hands slide up your legs, his touch rough but reverent, the touch of a man who has never let himself experience something so wholly, so completely. He moves with the focus of someone who has thought about this, who has imagined and resented and wanted in equal measure.
He pauses for a moment, looking up at you, the desire in his eyes burning hotly as he takes in the sight of you, spread out before him like a feast.
“Gods, woman...” His voice comes out low, cracked at the edges. “You look exquisite.”
Your hand goes to his hair, gripping it, silver-pale between your fingers, and you guide him where the ache pulses hottest. He goes willingly, like a man possessed, his lips tracing a path to the very heart of you. He worships at your altar, exploring you with a fervour that borders on madness, his tongue drawing slow, deliberate strokes against your folds, lapping at the slick heat of you with a thoroughness that makes your thighs tremble. He kisses your core the way he kissed your mouth, thoroughly, hungrily, as if he intends to ruin you for anything else.
He slides one finger inside you, curling, exploring, while his tongue continues its work, finding the rhythm that makes your hips roll helplessly toward him. Then two fingers, stretching you slowly, his pace maddening, his silver head moving between your thighs while his free hand pins your hip to the mattress. He teases. He draws it out with the patience of a man who has denied himself too long and now intends to take his time about the undoing. Every time you feel yourself cresting toward the edge, he eases back, withdrawing just enough, slowing just enough, his eyes flicking up to watch your face with something that looks almost like satisfaction.
The third time he pulls back from the precipice, you take a fistful of his hair and drag him up.
“Now,” you tell him. “Take me now.”
A feral smirk curls his lips at your demand. He rises up over you, his chest heaving, his entire body taut with anticipation. He leans down to capture your lips in a bruising kiss, you taste yourself on his tongue, one hand gripping your thigh, the other cupping your face as if to brand the moment into your memory.
“As my lady commands,” he growls against your mouth.
He shifts his hips, pressing himself against your entrance. Then, with one sharp thrust, he buries himself inside you, filling you completely, claiming you in every way possible. The moment he's sheathed inside you, a ragged groan tears from his throat, half pleasure, half disbelief. His forehead drops against yours, his breathing ragged, his fingers digging into your hips as if he fears you'll vanish.
“Gods,” he chokes out. “You feel so- warm. So tight.”
He's barely coherent. That, more than anything, undoes you.
His hips roll against yours in slow, deliberate strokes, each one deeper, more possessive than the last. He watches your face, memorizing every gasp, every flutter of your lashes, as if this is the only thing that's ever truly mattered. His eyes, those violet eyes that have looked at you with contempt and hunger and everything in between by now, are dark, pupils blown wide, and he doesn't look away. He watches you as if watching you is a compulsion he can no longer afford to deny.
“Look at me,” he rasps, when your eyes begin to close. “Don't you dare-.”
And you do, you hold his gaze.
His jaw tightens. Something moves across his expression that he doesn't have the composure left to conceal, something raw and frightened and ferocious all at once. His strokes deepen; his grip hardens.
Then he flips you, without warning, rolling you onto your stomach with the ease of a man accustomed to taking what he wants. The mattress shifts beneath you. His hands find your hips and drag you up to meet him. One palm presses flat between your shoulder blades for a half-second, then slides up, fingers winding into your hair, pressing your face into the pillow.
His lips find your ear, his voice low and rough as he whispers, “I won't be gentle, sweetling.”
It sounds like a warning. It sounds like a promise.
“I don't want you to,” you answer.
The sound he makes at that is almost feral, something ripped from somewhere deep in his chest that he would never willingly give you in daylight. His fingers dig into your hips as he takes you with a force that borders on brutality, each thrust deeper, harder, driven by pure unrestrained need. His lips drag across your shoulder, teeth sinking into your skin to stifle his groan as he loses himself in the heat of you. He releases your hair so both hands can grip your hips, holding you in place, as if he fears you might slip away if he doesn't, his fingers leaving half-moon marks you will feel for days.
His pace is relentless. Desperate. Driven by a hunger that has been building since the first moment he looked at you and hated that he wanted to keep looking.
“I can't-.” you gasp, the pleasure coiling impossibly tight.
“Come for me,” he growls, the words bitten off, rough and low. “Come on- I want to feel you. All of you.”
And you do, you shatter. Your whole body arches into it, trembling beneath him, clenching around him, and you hear his sharp, broken exhale, feel the way his rhythm stutters.
His release hits him like a storm, violent, consuming, unstoppable. His body tenses, his fingers digging into your flesh as he spills inside you with a ragged groan, his forehead pressed between your shoulder blades. For a moment, he just breathes against your skin, his chest heaving, his muscles trembling with the aftershocks.
Then, slowly, he collapses over your back. His weight settles, heavy, present, real. His lips move against one of the bruises he's left on your shoulder. Then another. Not in apology, Aerion Targaryen does not apologize. But in something. Acknowledgment, perhaps.
Neither of you speaks.
His arm slides around you, not tenderly, but with a kind of quiet insistence, as if placing himself between you and something invisible. You feel his heartbeat against your back. Fast, still. Then slower. Then slower still.
The silence stretches. It does not demand anything from either of you. His breathing deepens, but his grip does not loosen. You close your eyes.
Sleep comes for you both like a tide, not gentle, not kind, but inevitable. The way all true things are.
STEP 7. Never Cage What You Cannot Break.
A beast is not tamed by taking away its fangs. That only makes it weaker, and weakness is not the same thing as trust. It is tamed, if it ever is, by giving it a reason not to use them. It stays because it chooses to. It stays… because it chooses to.
The manse Maekar had given you sat at the edge of a quieter part of the city, near enough to court to satisfy obligation and far enough to breathe in peace. It was smaller than the Red Keep, less grand, but that suited the both of you. No one had said so out loud, yet it was clear enough. The walls were warm stone. The windows faced east and caught the morning light instead of shutting it out. Lavender grew along the outer walk, planted by someone before your time, and it had survived the winter with a stubbornness that felt almost personal.
Inside, signs of a shared life had gathered in slow, ordinary ways. His books beside yours on the shelf. Your embroidery frame positioned near the best window, which he had moved without comment one afternoon when he noticed the light falling wrong. A second cup on the table by the fire, already poured.
None of it was dramatic, all of it mattered to you.
You settled deeper into the chair, adjusting your weight carefully. The pregnancy sat heavy in your lap, in your lower back, in the way you rose slowly from chairs and descended stairs with one hand trailing the wall. Seven months had left their mark. Your belly was full and round beneath the loose linen of your gown, warm to the touch, occasionally shifting with the insistence of someone who had not yet been born but already had opinions on its own.
You pressed a hand briefly to your side where the movement was. A flutter, a press. I know, you thought at it. I know you're there.
The fire crackled. Across the room, Aerion sat at the writing table with his back half-turned to you, working through correspondence with the focused quiet of a man who had learned, slowly, imperfectly, to channel his energy into something productive rather than destructive. Candles burned at either side of the table. His silver hair, longer now, caught their light and held it.
He had not spoken in some time. Neither had you.
The silence was not tense. That distinction still struck you sometimes, even now, the difference between his silences then and his silences now. Before, quiet had been the space between provocations, the held breath before a storm. Now it was simply the room at rest, two people existing in the same warmth, without the need to perform that fact.
Your needle moved through the embroidery. A branch. Leaves in pale green thread, stitched slowly because you no longer rushed things that deserved to be unhurried. You had learned that too, somewhere along the way, though you weren't certain when. Perhaps it had been a lesson you taught yourself while teaching him.
“You've been rubbing your back for the better part of an hour.”
His voice came without him turning. Your hand had drifted there without you noticing. You lowered it. “I'm fine.”
“I didn't say you weren't.”
You went back to the embroidery and the scratch of his quill resumed.
You looked at the back of his head for a moment, at the set of his shoulders, the long line of his spine. He was still proud in his posture. That had not changed, nor would it. But there was something different in it now. Less like a man braced for attack. More like a man who had simply grown comfortable inside his own frame.
Maekar had expressed quiet satisfaction, the last time you had attended court. Not in words, the prince was not a man for words where a look would suffice. But satisfaction nonetheless. You had understood it without needing it explained. So had Aerion, which had caused a complicated expression to move across his face, something between pride and the ghost of old resentment, before easing into something closer to acceptance.
He was still Aerion. He could still cut with a word when he chose to. His patience was a thing learned rather than natural, and it occasionally showed its seams. Two weeks prior, at a supper that had run overlong, he had said something to Lord Peake's second son that had made the table go briefly silent. But he had stopped there, he had not pursued it. He had reached instead for his wine and redirected the conversation with a deliberateness you recognized, because you had practiced that deliberateness in front of him, repeatedly, until he understood what it looked like.
He was not fixed, he was better. There was a meaningful difference.
The fire shifted, throwing new shadows. You set down the embroidery and pressed your palm flat against the side of your stomach, feeling the weight of it, the warmth. The child moved again, long, slow, like something turning in a dream. You breathed around it.
The scratch of the quill stopped.
You did not look up immediately. You felt, rather than saw, the moment his attention shifted, the feeling of being observed by Aerion, which you had long since learned to recognize. It was different now too.
You looked up.
When you looked up, he had already turned in his chair. He was watching you with those violet eyes of his, pale in the candlelight, and there was something in his face he had learned to hide less well over time. Not because he had grown careless. Because keeping it hidden had begun to cost him too much, and he had finally decided, with the quiet certainty he brought to every important thing, that it was no longer worth the price.
Then he rose from the table.
He crossed the room at an unhurried pace, the way a man walks when he has already made up his mind. When he stopped in front of you, his gaze dropped from your face to your hands, then to the rounded curve beneath the linen. Then he knelt.
Not in surrender. Not in show. One knee to the floor, steady and deliberate, bringing himself level with what he meant to honour. He reached out, and his hand, the same hand that had once gripped and demanded and taken, settled with impossible gentleness against the side of your stomach.
He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the fullest part of you.
He stayed there a moment, forehead resting lightly against you, his hand curved around the life you carried. His breathing evened out. His eyes were closed. He did not speak at once, and you did not ask him to.
Then, very quietly, without lifting his head, he said, “I love you.”
You looked down at the top of his silver head, at the broad line of his shoulders bent in a shape that was not quite defeat and not quite humility, but close enough to make your throat tighten. You thought of the man who had once watched you across a banquet table with cold, assessing eyes and found nothing in you worth his attention. You thought of all the months between then and now. The arguments. The patience. The slow, stubborn work of remaining.
You reached down and touched his face gently. He looked up at you. The candlelight made his eyes very bright.
You held his gaze and said, simply, “I love you as well.”
No strategy in it. Just the truth, spoken in the same quiet room where you had spent months learning each other's silences.
He turned his face and pressed one more kiss to your stomach, almost habitual, as if he had already developed the instinct, then rose slowly and settled himself on the arm of your chair. His hand remained at your side, warm and present. You returned to your embroidery. His shoulder rested against yours, and he did not move away.
The fire burned low. The night spread softly around the manse.
Later, when he had drifted into sleep beside you and his breathing had gone slow and even, you lay awake in the dark and thought about the whole path that had brought you here.
Seven steps, written out with the clean, measured certainty of someone who understood that hearts, even difficult ones, had their own structure. You had approached him with respect for what it was, patience for what it could become, and no illusions about the process between.
But somewhere in the long careful middle of it, something had shifted that no guide could have anticipated, or perhaps the guide had always known it and simply not named it. The method had worked. But the method had not been the point.
The point was that he had changed.
Not because you had fixed him. Not because you had caged him or diminished him or stripped away the things that made him difficult. He was still proud. Still sharp. Still capable of the particular cold cruelty that had earned him his reputation, though he used it less now, and never against you.
He had changed because he had chosen to. Because somewhere in the accumulated weight of all those quiet days and careful moments, something in him had found a reason.
And he, Aerion Targaryen, the Bright Prince, the man they called Brightflame for the way he burned, had stayed too.
His hand rested over yours in the dark, light and warm and present.
The beast doesn't need its fangs removed, you thought, closing your eyes. It just needs something worth protecting more than it needs to bite.
Sleep came, slow and complete, and took you both with it.
question about tt!aerion x ls x valarr. how do you think things would progress if valarr was the original ex and first to meet ls, and if aerion is endgame but met her later?
like, current ls = dark!valarr
but, ls as the one that got away from valarr? = dark!valarr x 100? = a valarr that's worse, more unhinged, and/or dangerous than aerion?
your writing has me falling into a rabbit hole and suddenly aerion is starting to look normal and not so unhinged that it may be concerning
This had me doing little laps around my kitchen like this this:
This is genuinely such a delicious thought experiment that I want to give it the analysis it deserves:
What Valarr is, right now (as of part 2):
He's in the transitional phase. He's always had darkness in him (the cataloguing, the possessiveness dressed as chivalry, the quiet removal of a man who flirted with you from the country) but he doesn't fully own it yet. He's still at the stage of discovering it. His own want startles him. He said so himself: "I'd never, in my entire life, wanted to hurt another person the way I wanted to hurt him in that moment. I hadn't known that feeling existed in me." That's a man who just found a room in his house he didn't know was there, and he's standing in the doorway, trying to decide what it is and what to do with it.
The current TT dynamic essentially lets you meet him in the middle of his becoming. You broke him open, yes, but you broke him open as an ex, as an almost, as the one who got away. His darkness is being shaped in direct reaction to losing you.
Now flip it.
If Valarr met you first:
You don't meet him at a mixer when you're still numb from Aerion. You just meet him. Pre-Aerion for whatever reason, and Valarr Targaryen works his way across a room for fifteen minutes letting you watch him come. He already does the thing in canon where he's patient, present, studying, but that patience has nowhere to put itself yet. He doesn't know what he's hungry for until he has it.
And in that sense, the difference is simple: he gets years with you first.
Years of you teaching him—not intentionally, not wilfully, but the way you always do it but by simply being exactly who you are. The way you'd push back on him. How you'd meet him eye-to-eye on every power play and make him rethink, refocus, lose. The way you'd accept his hunger and then exceed it, use it, redirect it, and he'd follow you like you were the only fixed point in his personal compass because you literally are.
You fold him over the years.
And I think the word fold is crucial here. Because I'm not saying broken. Not destroyed. Folded. The way good steel gets folded, the way it becomes stronger and sharper for having been heated and worked. What you do to Valarr isn't damage, really, it's completion. You take the dark tender thing that's currently somewhere under his golden-boy performance and you make it real, make it him.
By the time those years are up, there's no gap between Valarr the golden boy and Valarr the man who wants you with something not entirely civilised. They're one and the same. That's the character who shows up at your door when you end it.
Why it still ends && why it makes him worse:
This is the crucial point. You still cut it off.
Not because he's done something wrong, which is almost the problem, really. With Aerion, the endings happen in the wreckage of a specific fight, something to point at. There's a reason. With Valarr, I suspect the ending happens because of the accumulation of the thing itself. He gets too close. He knows too much. The devotion becomes its own kind of pressure, the way being studied that precisely starts to feel like being held.
You end it, and here is why he's now genuinely more dangerous than canon-Aerion:
Aerion doesn't know who he is. Aerion is a mess of compulsions and self-destruction and genuine wounds; his obsession with you is mostly about you but also partly about all the things he uses you to avoid feeling about himself. When he spirals it's because he's also spiralling about himself. There's volatility baked into his very existence in that sense.
Valarr-who-had-you-first knows exactly who he is. Years with you have finished that process for him. The golden boy is gone. Not dead or anything, not discarded, but integrated, weaponised. He knows his own hunger now. He knows how to use the charm and when the charm is a screen. He knows what he wants with the absolute clarity of a man who had it and lost it and now is busy doing nothing but thinking about it since.
Aerion is dangerous the way fire is dangerous: hot, unpredictable, capable of burning the wrong thing.
Valarr in this AU is dangerous the way someone who plays the long game is dangerous. He's still patient and he still remembers everything. But now he remembers you specifically, five years of you, every preference and pressure point and the exact way you laugh when something surprises you. And he has infinite resources and absolutely no unlearned impulses left. He's already past the phase of figuring it out.
He knows.
What "the one that got away" does to someone like Valarr:
Here's the thing about his character in this verse that makes this so tasty: Valarr's darkness has always been about control dressed as attention. He keeps score. He doesn't let things go. Even in canon!tt, six weeks after you leave, he shows up at your grandmother's house with a travel bag and lets himself back in. That's not a man processing a breakup. That's a man who decided the breakup didn't count yet.
Scale that up by five years and a completed arc.
He would be the most charming, most genuinely tender, most comprehensively dangerous person in any room you entered.
Because the thing about dark!valarr-who-had-you is that his darkness looks like devotion. It looks like someone who loves you so specifically, so entirely, that it reads as romantic until you realise there's no space in it.
When Aerion enters the picture the dynamic completely inverts from canon TT. In canon, Aerion is the chaotic destabilising element who belongs in a way Valarr doesn't. In this AU (of an au?😭)? Valarr has the history. Valarr has the years. Valarr looks at Aerion and sees a man who has something that belongs to him, and he has five years of intimate knowledge to work with and all the patience in the world to do so.
And he wouldn't put his fist through a wall about it. That's the terrifying part.
He would just smile, and remember, and wait.
The arc: complete corruption vs. genuine integration
The idea of Valarr in both verses was always the concept of "corrupted golden boy". Either he goes off the rails completely or he learns and adapts genuinely and the darkness becomes a part of him rather than him always playing at being golden.
I think the valarr-first AU is actually the version where both happen simultaneously. The years with you are the genuine integration. He's not performing anymore and he's not hiding the hunger or learning to work around it. He absorbed you into his understanding of himself completely, and he's entirely real in a way that the current transitional Valarr isn't yet.
But the "going off the rails" happens after the ending. Because what he integrated was built around your presence and what's left behind isnt pretty.
Aerion Targaryen x f!reader - modern AU (see part 1 here, part 2 here, part 3 here, part 4 here, part 5 here, part 6 here, part 7 here, part 8 here, part 9 here)
Kiera had been sprawled across your bed, scrolling aimlessly through listings while you sat cross-legged on the floor with your laptop balanced on a stack of textbooks.
“Look at this one,” she’d said, turning the screen toward you. “It’s small, but it’s five minutes from campus.”
You leaned closer. The photos showed a narrow galley kitchen and a window that faced brick. “It’s still too much,” you murmured. “Even split. And I don’t have anyone to split it with.”
“Ask around?”
“I have. Everyone either renewed their leases in May or already paired off.” You shut your laptop with a soft click. “I don’t want to be forty minutes out again. I wasted half my life on trams last semester.”
Kiera propped her chin in her hand. “You could always...”
“No,” you cut in gently, knowing exactly what she was about to say. “I’m not moving into his father’s townhouse indefinitely. That’s not a plan.”
Kiera studied you for a moment, then nodded once. “Fair.”
You hadn’t realized the door to the corridor had been ajar. Aerion had. He didn’t interrupt. He didn’t slam doors or demand explanations the way he might have a year ago. He waited until Kiera left, then he appeared in your doorway, leaning one shoulder against the frame like he’d been there all along.
“You’re apartment hunting,” he said.
It wasn’t accusatory. It was too even for that.
You closed the wardrobe you’d been rummaging through. “I’ve been looking.”
“For somewhere closer to the university.”
“Yes.”
“And it didn’t occur to you,” he went on, very carefully, “to discuss that with me before discussing it with Kiera.”
There it was, the sting, thinly concealed.
You sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. “I wasn’t hiding it from you. It’s just logistics.”
“Logistics,” he repeated, as though the word offended him personally. He stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. “You want to move because the commute is exhausting and the rent is unsustainable. That’s not logistics. That’s a problem. And I am, apparently, not part of the solution.”
You looked up at him. “I don’t want to live here forever.”
He blinked. “Neither do I.”
“That’s not what I mean.” You rubbed your temple. “I don’t want to be the girl who drifts from her parents’ house into her boyfriend’s family home and never actually stands on her own two feet. Your father is generous. Your house is enormous. But it isn’t mine.”
“I wasn’t suggesting you remain in my father’s house,” he said. “Gods forbid I remain in it.”
You frowned faintly. “Then what are you suggesting?”
“That I move out.” He said it as though it were obvious. “I’m graduating this year. I was planning to anyway.”
You stilled.
“My father has finally conceded,” Aerion continued, tone dry, “that I am not, in fact, an ornamental disaster. He’s offering me a position in one of the companies. Nothing ceremonial. Actual responsibility. He also believes...” his mouth twisted, “...that I should learn to function without three people anticipating my breakfast preferences.”
“That will be a shock,” you said lightly.
“It will be a liberation.” His gaze sharpened. “And I intended to ask you to come with me.”
“You…what?”
“I was waiting until I had something concrete,” he said. “An address. A lease. Something that didn’t sound like I’d improvised it five minutes prior. But apparently I’ve misjudged the timeline.”
You searched his face for flippancy and found none.
“Aerion,” you began carefully, “the kind of place you would choose and the kind of place I can afford are not the same.”
“I’m aware.”
“You would want space. Light. Something central.”
“And?” he asked.
“And I cannot contribute equally to something like that,” you said, more firmly now. “Not to the kind of apartment you’d consider livable. I don’t want to be carried.”
He stared at you for a long moment, and when he spoke again his voice had dropped, steadier, stripped of theatrics.
“I don’t want a roommate,” he said. “I don’t want a financial arrangement. I want to live with you.”
“That doesn’t negate the financial reality.”
“It does for me.”
You shook your head. “That’s easy to say when you’re the one with the salary.”
“It won’t be an allowance,” he said, irritation flickering through. “It will be my income. Earned. And I would be paying for an apartment whether you lived in it or not.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It is entirely the point,” he countered. “If I choose a larger place because I prefer space, that’s my preference. You are not obligated to subsidize my taste.”
“And if we argue one day?” you pressed. “If you get angry? I don’t ever want to wonder whether I owe you for the roof over my head.”
He looked hurt. “Do you think I would weaponize that against you?”
“No,” you said immediately. “But I don’t want the imbalance to exist in the first place.”
He exhaled slowly, as though recalibrating.
“You would contribute,” he said at last. “Just not in the way you’re measuring.”
“That’s vague.”
“You would bring your books and your half-finished essays and your impossible tea rituals and your tendency to occupy the center of my bed as though it’s a throne. You would bring yourself.” His jaw tightened faintly. “And I would bring the lease.”
You tried not to smile. “That’s not a financial plan.”
“It is my plan.”
You studied him, the set of his shoulders, the stubborn lift of his chin that had softened over the summer but not disappeared.
“And you refuse to let me split rent?”
“Yes.”
“Or utilities?”
“Yes.”
“At all?”
“At all.”
You leaned back on your hands, staring at the ceiling. “You’re infuriating.”
“I’ve been told.”
“You’re certain?” you asked finally.
“I am.”
“This isn’t just you being reactive because you overheard me complaining?”
He gave you a look. “If I were being reactive, we would be having a very different conversation.”
You believed him.
Your resistance wasn’t gone, but it had shifted, less about pride now, more about fear of stepping into something that felt very adult, very permanent.
“You’ll let me pay for groceries,” you said after a moment.
He considered it as though you’d proposed a treaty.
“You may,” he conceded, “occasionally.”
“And I choose the mugs.”
“That seems excessive.”
“I’m serious.”
He huffed a faint laugh. “Fine. You may curate the mugs.”
You held his gaze a second longer, then nodded once.
“All right,” you said.
The apartment was exactly what you had both pretended it wouldn’t be.
Too spacious. Too central. Too expensive.
It stood a fairly short walk from the university and even closer to the company offices where Aerion would begin working after graduation. High ceilings. Tall windows that let the city spill in through pale afternoon light. The kind of place estate agents described as tasteful in a voice that implied generational wealth.
You had to admit, it was quite elegant. The dining area held a long polished table neither of you truly needed. Aerion claimed it was for hosting. You suspected he liked the way it made him feel like a man who hosted.
One of the spare bedrooms disappeared almost immediately under garment racks and mirrored wardrobes.
“I refuse to compete with your dresses for space,” he’d declared, measuring the walls with the intensity of a military campaign. “It’s inefficient.”
“You’re turning an entire room into a closet.”
“Yes.”
“For both of us?”
“Obviously,” he threw over his shoulder, already directing movers where to place a full-length mirror. “I’m not a barbarian.”
The result was obscene. Floor-to-ceiling shelves. Shoes aligned with near-maniacal precision. His suits arranged by shade; your skirts and blouses hung with space to breathe. It felt less like a closet and more like a private boutique no one else was allowed to enter.
The rest of the apartment remained restrained: muted tones, polished surfaces, curated art.
And then there was the bedroom.
The bed itself was enormous, the bedside tables were dark oak, minimal. The lamps, warm and understated.
But at the head of the bed, arranged with suspicious neatness, sat a small army of plushies. A small bear he’d brought back from a business trip because it had reminded him, inexplicably, of you. Then a rabbit from a boutique you’d paused in front of for too long. Then a ridiculous velvet cat. They accumulated.
At the very center sat the build-a-dragon you’d given him at the beginning of your relationship, its wings slightly crooked from being hugged too often.
The rest of the apartment could have belonged to a restrained, dignified couple in a design magazine.
The bed belonged to you.
Aerion tolerated the plushies with a kind of long-suffering indulgence, right up until the moment he intended to touch you.
You were watching with open amusement as he gathered them briskly.
“Are you serious?”
“They’re observing,” he muttered, sweeping them into the top drawer of the dresser.
“They are stuffed.”
“They have eyes.”
He worked from home more often than he needed to.
Officially, it was because the company allowed flexibility. Unofficially, it was because he’d memorized your timetable and knew precisely which days you had only one afternoon lecture and would be home by noon.
On those mornings, he’d be seated at the dining table with his laptop open, sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms.
You’d pass behind him on your way to make tea, fingers brushing the back of his neck. He would not look up immediately, but his hand would catch your wrist and press a brief, absent kiss to your knuckles before releasing you.
Sometimes he forgot you were there and spoke under his breath at spreadsheets. Sometimes he noticed you watching him and leaned back in his chair, eyeing you with lazy appraisal until you felt warm under it.
When he returned from the office, though, there was nothing subtle about it.
The front door would open with a decisive click, the sound of shoes being set aside with far less care than the rest of the apartment received.
“Darling, I’m home!” he would call, voice carrying through the rooms with theatrical flourish.
You would appear from wherever you’d been, sofa, kitchen, bedroom, and he would stop in the entryway as though he had just returned from war.
“There’s my beautiful girl,” he’d say every single time, as though it were a revelation.
Even if you were in old leggings. Even if your hair was half-dried and frizzing around your shoulders.
He never crossed the room without expectation.
“Come here,” he’d demand softly.
“For what?”
“A kiss. Obviously.”
“As payment?”
“As tribute.”
You’d pretend reluctance for exactly three seconds before he cupped your jaw and kissed you properly, slow when he’d had a long day, impatient when he hadn’t. He tasted faintly of coffee and city air and something unmistakably him. Only after that did he relax.
You only cooked when time allowed it. On rare evenings when neither of you had deadlines or early meetings, you’d stand side by side in the kitchen attempting recipes neither of you had perfected. He approached cooking the way he approached negotiations: overconfident, meticulous, faintly disdainful of instruction manuals.
“You’re reading it wrong,” he’d say, peering over your shoulder at the recipe.
“I’m not.”
“You skipped a step.”
“I did not.”
He would reach around you to adjust the stove, breath warm against your temple, and you’d both forget what you were arguing about.
Half the time you ended up ordering food anyway, eating cross-legged on the living room floor carpet despite owning a perfectly respectable dining table.
At night, Aerion slept on his back at first, one arm thrown loosely over your waist. As the hours passed, he gravitated closer, until you were half tucked against him, his breath steady at your crown.
He talked sometimes. Not clearly. Not in coherent sentences. Low mumbles, fragments of words shaped against your hair. Once, when you’d been half-awake, you thought you heard your name threaded through the haze. Another time, something that sounded suspiciously like a reprimand delivered to an invisible colleague.
If you shifted or made a small sound, he would quiet instantly, as though sensing he’d been overheard.
In the mornings, he remembered none of it.
“You were arguing in your sleep,” you told him once.
“With whom?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
He frowned faintly. “Did I win?”
“Unclear.”
He accepted that with a nod, as though it were an acceptable outcome.
The city beyond your windows glowed in amber and glass, but your bedroom was warm and dim, the lamps turned low. The plushies still sat at the head of the bed, temporarily spared, because Aerion had been in an unusually gentle mood from the moment he’d come home.
He hadn’t made his usual theatrical entrance. He’d simply found you already in bed with a book, shed his jacket, and climbed in beside you with the quiet determination of someone seeking comfort.
Now he was half draped over you, pressing idle kisses along your shoulder, your collarbone, the underside of your jaw. His fingers traced slow paths over your waist as though memorizing terrain he already knew by heart.
“You’re clingy,” you murmured, eyes still on your book.
“I’m reflective,” he corrected against your skin, brushing his mouth over your throat.
He shifted, propping himself slightly on one elbow so he could look at you properly. His expression wasn’t sharp or mischievous tonight. It was thoughtful in a way that made you close the book and set it aside.
“I wish I’d met you sooner,” he said quietly.
You studied him. “You hated most people sooner.”
“Exactly.” His mouth curved faintly. “That’s the problem.”
He leaned down to kiss the corner of your mouth, then your cheek, then your temple, as though punctuating his own thoughts.
“If we’d met when I was seventeen,” he continued, “it would have been a catastrophe. I was intolerable.”
“You’re still intolerable.”
“Yes, but now it’s curated.”
You laughed softly, and he smiled at the sound before his gaze drifted somewhere more distant.
“You would have liked parts of it,” he went on. “The circles I grew up in. The events. The absurdity of it all. There’s a certain…theater to high society.”
“I can’t imagine you in theater.”
“Oh, it’s exactly that,” he said. “Everyone pretending not to be watching each other while watching obsessively. The dresses alone would have delighted you. Designers flown in, custom fittings, jewels that looked like they belonged in museums.”
You raised a brow. “Are you attempting to sell me on your adolescence?”
“I’m giving you the brochure,” he replied smoothly. “You would have enjoyed the music. The orchestras. The ridiculous string quartets tucked into corners of ballrooms.”
“And what would I have hated?”
He didn’t hesitate. “The scrutiny. The way conversations are layered with implication. The mothers evaluating you like a stock investment. The sons who believe charm is a personality.”
You grimaced faintly. “That does sound exhausting.”
“It was.”
He rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling, one hand still resting lazily at your hip.
“My first time was at a debutante ball,” he said, as though commenting on the weather.
You turned your head slowly. “Of course it was.”
He huffed a quiet laugh.
“They present us like show horses,” he continued. “All polished and trained. It was dreadfully boring. Speeches. Toasts. Fathers congratulating each other for producing viable heirs.”
“And you,” you prompted.
“I was seventeen. Arrogant. Restless.” His lips twitched faintly. “She was from the south. Daughter of some titled relic who’d reinvented himself as a CEO. Three years older. She looked at me like she was bored out of her mind.”
“That must have wounded you deeply.”
“It intrigued me,” he corrected. “We slipped away when our fathers were distracted. There was a guest wing no one was using.”
He said it plainly, without embellishment.
“It wasn’t romantic,” he added after a moment. “It was…opportunistic. We were curious. We were unsupervised.”
“How did it go?”
“She didn’t speak to me again that night.” His tone remained even. “Which I respected. Years later, when people began paying more attention to me for reasons unrelated to teenage novelty, she took great pleasure in informing certain circles that she’d had me first.”
You snorted. “How dignified.”
“Very.”
He turned his head toward you then, studying your expression carefully.
“Does that bother you?”
“No,” you said honestly. “It sounds like you.”
He smiled at that, unexpectedly grateful.
“You wouldn’t have liked her,” he mused.
“Is that your diplomatic way of calling me inexperienced?”
“It’s my way of saying you don’t perform for an audience.”
His thumb brushed your waist absently.
“Daeron vomited on the dance floor at that same ball,” he added, the corner of his mouth lifting.
You blinked. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not. Too much champagne, not enough food. It was catastrophic.”
You laughed, imagining it.
“And Egg,” Aerion continued, warming to his nostalgia, “decided the day before his first debutante event that he hated his hair. He found Maekar’s electronic beard shaver and shaved his head.”
“No.”
“Yes. Father considered pulling him from the presentation entirely.”
“What happened?”
“They slapped a beret on him and pretended it was avant-garde.”
You were fully laughing now, and Aerion watched you like he’d orchestrated the story solely for that outcome.
“It was ridiculous,” he said more softly. “All of it. The rules. The expectations. Who you’re seen with, how long you dance with them, what it implies.”
His hand drifted higher, brushing a slow path along your ribs.
“You would have hated that part,” he murmured. “The implication that proximity equals possession.”
You shifted closer to him instinctively.
His gaze dropped to your mouth.
“I was worse then,” he admitted. “More careless. I liked the attention. I liked knowing I could walk away and someone would still be waiting. It matters little now. I have you.”
Aerion disliked complete silence. But he liked a low, comfortable hum of existence, the faint clicking of keys beneath his fingers, the distant clatter of someone in the street outside, the soft rustle of pages when you turned them.
He sat at the table with his laptop, half-reclined in his chair like a bored king forced to do paperwork. One sleeve pushed up, the lamplight catching along the silver of the rings on his fingers. Every so often he spun one idly as he read something on the screen.
You watched him from the couch. At first without thinking about it. Then with a slow, creeping realization. You wanted him.
Not vaguely. Not later. Not the usual awareness that he might decide to pull you into his arms at some point that evening.
You wanted him now. Which was…a problem.
Because it occurred to you, with growing irritation, that you had absolutely no idea how to start something like that.
Before you had moved in together, intimacy with Aerion had always happened in one of two ways.
Either it was stolen: quick, reckless moments when no one was supposed to notice. Or you were somewhere completely alone and Aerion behaved like a man who had been starving for days.
He had never exactly waited for an invitation. After you moved in together, things had only escalated. The kitchen counter. The couch. Once, scandalously, the washing machine while it was still running. Aerion had approached it all with the enthusiasm of someone determined to test every available surface. You, meanwhile, had simply been…swept along.
Which meant that now: watching him sit there, sleeves rolled up, completely absorbed in his work, you realized you had never once actually initiated anything yourself.
You stared at him. Aerion scrolled through something on the screen, brow faintly furrowed. The ring on his index finger spun lazily. You shifted on the couch. He didn’t look up. You stood. Still nothing. You crossed the room slowly. Aerion noticed when your shadow fell over the keyboard.
He looked up immediately.
“Yes?” he asked.
You froze.
He tilted his head slightly, studying you.
“Did you need something?”
Your brain, which had been very determined two seconds ago, suddenly provided nothing helpful.
“…No.”
Aerion’s brow creased faintly. “No?”
You hovered awkwardly beside him.
His expression sharpened. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You look like something’s wrong.”
You opened your mouth. Closed it again.
Aerion leaned back in his chair, attention fully off the laptop now. “Did something happen today?”
“No.”
“Did someone say something to you?”
“No.”
“Then...”
You made a small, frustrated sound.
Aerion blinked. This was not the response he had expected.
“You’re hovering,” he said slowly. “Which you only do when you either want something or are trying not to tell me something.”
You stared at him. He waited. You looked at the laptop. Then at him. Then, very slowly, you closed the screen.
Aerion’s eyebrows lifted.
Your face was warm. This was already going terribly.
“Are you done working?” you asked.
“I was just about to be,” he said mildly, “until someone assaulted my computer.”
You hesitated again. Aerion’s gaze softened slightly. He reached for your wrist.
“Come here,” he said. “What is it?”
That did it. The frustration that had been building for the past five minutes snapped. You climbed straight into his lap. Aerion blinked. Once. Twice.
“Well,” he said after a beat. “That’s new.”
You ignored the heat crawling up your neck and leaned forward, pressing a kiss to his cheek. Aerion went very still. Then another, a little lower along his jaw. His hands automatically moved to your waist, steadying you.
“Sweetling,” he murmured slowly, “if you needed attention you could have simply...”
You kissed the corner of his mouth. Aerion stopped talking. Your lips brushed down to his neck. And very carefully, trying to be subtle about it, you shifted your hips against him.
There was a pause. A very long pause. Aerion looked down at you. Then back up again. His mouth slowly curved.
“Oh,” he said softly.
You wished the floor would swallow you. But Aerion’s hands tightened around your waist, drawing you a little closer.
“Is that what this is?” he murmured.
You did not answer. Instead you hid your face against his shoulder.
Aerion huffed out a quiet laugh. “Darling girl.”
One hand slid up your back, fingers warm through the fabric. “You could have said something.”
You mumbled something incoherent into his collar. He tilted your chin up with two fingers. Your expression was somewhere between determined and mortified. Aerion’s smile widened.
“You’re asking me,” he said slowly, “in the most roundabout way imaginable.”
“I’m not asking,” you muttered.
“Oh?”
You shifted slightly again in his lap. Aerion inhaled sharply. His thumb brushed under your chin, amused warmth in his gaze.
“Well,” he murmured. “This is certainly effective.”
You glared at him weakly. He leaned closer, voice dropping. “And here I thought you only came over because you had a question.”
Your hands grabbed his collar. “I did have a question.”
He raised a brow. “Yes?”
You leaned closer, nose brushing his. “Are you done working?”
Aerion laughed under his breath. “Yes,” he said.
His arms tightened around you, lifting you slightly so you settled more comfortably in his lap. “Very done.”
Then he pressed a slow kiss to your temple, voice low and teasing. “Next time, though…” His thumb traced lazily along your waist. “…you can simply ask.”
You gave him a look. Aerion grinned.
“Or,” he added, clearly delighted, “you can continue climbing into my lap like this. I certainly won’t complain.”
Aerion did not move to stand. Which, in hindsight, should have been your first warning.
Instead, he leaned back further in the chair, adjusting his grip on your waist as if settling in for something he intended to enjoy thoroughly.
You were still straddling him, embarrassed, stubbornly refusing to retreat now that you had started this.
Aerion watched you with open amusement. The expression slowly spreading across his face was absolutely insufferable.
“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “this is fascinating.”
You narrowed your eyes. “Oh?”
“Yes.” His thumbs traced small circles along your hips. “You’ve lived with me for months now.”
You shifted slightly. Aerion’s hands tightened, steadying you as he lazily rocked his hips upward once.
Your breath hitched.
“And yet,” he continued calmly, “you still seem to believe communication is optional.”
“Aerion...”
He rocked his hips again, just enough to interrupt the rest of the sentence.
That grin spread wider. There it was. The biggest, most self-satisfied expression imaginable.
“My girl,” he murmured, “climbs into my lap looking like she’s about to faint from embarrassment instead of simply asking for what she wants.”
“I did ask,” you muttered.
“That,” he said, “was not asking.”
Another slow upward roll of his hips. “You looked like you were attempting a burglary.”
You shoved lightly at his shoulder. “I am not burglarising you.”
Aerion laughed quietly. “You shut my laptop, climbed onto me, and started kissing my neck without explanation.”
“That was the explanation.”
“No,” he said patiently, “that was a hint.”
“And hints,” he added, rocking his hips again in a slow, unhurried rhythm, “are inefficient.”
You glared at him. Aerion looked completely delighted.
“So,” he continued conversationally, “we’re going to fix this.”
“We are not.”
“We are.”
“You’ve been with me long enough,” he said lazily, “that you should know how to express yourself properly.”
You tried to keep your expression neutral. It was not working.
Aerion leaned closer, voice dropping slightly. “So.” “How would you like to communicate from now on?”
“I was communicating.”
“No.” He shook his head, still smiling. “You were improvising.”
You opened your mouth to argue. He rocked his hips again. The words disappeared entirely.
“See?” he murmured. “You lose your train of thought immediately.”
“You’re distracting me on purpose.”
“Yes.”
No shame whatsoever. He settled deeper in the chair, clearly in no hurry. “So let’s try again.”
His tone was calm. Almost instructional. “How,” he asked lightly, “would you like to ask me?”
You stared at him. Aerion waited. His fingers tapped idly along your side. Then he nudged his hips upward once more.
“Use your words,” he said sweetly.
You buried your face briefly in his shoulder.
“Oh, no,” he murmured. “You started this. You don’t get to hide now.”
You stared at him. Aerion raised one expectant eyebrow.
“Go on,” he coaxed. “I’m listening.”
You exhaled slowly. “…Aerion.”
“Yes?”
Your fingers tightened in his shirt. “…can you stop being a smug prick for five seconds.”
Aerion burst into laughter. “Absolutely not.”
Aerion’s laughter took a moment to subside. You glared at him the entire time. When he finally caught his breath, he leaned back in the chair again, still holding your waist so you couldn’t escape.
“Well,” he said lightly, “that was certainly one attempt.”
“It was not an attempt.”
“Oh, it was,” he assured you. “Just not a successful one.”
You shifted on his lap, partly because you were annoyed and partly because the position was becoming increasingly distracting.
His hands tightened slightly as he helped guide the motion without even looking down, his attention fixed on your face.
“See?” he said with smug satisfaction. “You already know what you want.”
Aerion watched the entire internal battle unfold across your face like a man enjoying a theatre performance.
“Take your time,” he said pleasantly.
You leaned forward slightly, lowering your voice. “…Aerion.”
“Yes?”
“…can we go to bed?”
“Technically polite,” he admitted.
“But.” There was always a but.
“That’s still vague.”
You groaned. “How specific do you want me to be?”
“Well,” he said slowly, “if you’re asking me for something, it’s only fair that you actually ask.”
You finally muttered under your breath, “…Aerion, I want you.”
The words were quiet enough that someone standing two feet away probably wouldn’t have heard them.
Aerion heard them perfectly.
“That,” he said softly, “was much better.”
You immediately looked like you regretted everything. Aerion leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss to your cheek.
“See?” he murmured. “Not so difficult.”
You shoved lightly at his shoulder again. “Stop being pleased with yourself.”
“I can’t,” he said. “You’ve just made my entire evening. “Don’t worry,” he murmured. “You’ll get better at asking.” His grin turned wicked again. “I’m a very dedicated teacher.”
The soft click of the front door was the first sound to break the silence of the evening, a familiar, comforting noise that told you Aerion was finally home. You didn’t get up to go greet him, which was the indication that you could not look up from the book you were reading on the couch, a chunky fantasy novel you’d been trying to finish for weeks.
You simply called out, your voice carrying into the hallway, “You’re late. Daeron called, by the way. He wanted to know if we’d seen his spare set of cufflinks from the wedding.”
There was a pause, longer than usual for a simple question about cufflinks. You heard the jingle of keys being placed in the ceramic dish on the console table, the soft thud of his leather messenger bag hitting the floor, and then his footsteps on the hardwood.
“And what did you tell him?” Aerion’s voice was a smooth tenor, but there was a strange, tightly-wound quality to it.
“I told him the truth,” you said, still scanning the page, “that you probably stole them out of spite because he beat you at the groom’s pre-wedding go-kart race.”
Aerion appeared in the archway that led from the hall into the living room. He’d shed his suit jacket, leaving him in a crisp white shirt with the top button undone and his sleeves rolled to his elbows, revealing the sinewy forearms of a former championship fencer. His silver-gold hair, usually immaculately styled, was slightly disheveled, and his violet eyes, the most startling legacy of his ancient Valyrian bloodline, were fixed on you with an intensity that made you finally lower your book.
“That,” he said, a ghost of his characteristically sharp smile playing on his lips, “is a vicious and entirely accurate accusation.”
You laughed. After three years of dating and one year of sharing this sun-drenched apartment with its high ceilings and a view of the city’s bay, you knew his rhythms as well as your own. The past weekend had been a whirlwind: Kiera’s wedding to Valarr. As her best friend, you’d been a bridesmaid, a mediator, a last-minute seamstress, and a human shield against Kiera’s wonderfully overbearing mother. Aerion, as a cousin of the groom, had been swept up in the Targaryen family machine.
It was a grand, beautiful, and profoundly public affair, a union of two old families that had dominated local news and social media feeds for a solid week. You were both still recovering.
He walked over to the couch, but instead of collapsing next to you as he normally would, he stood there, looking down. His hands were in his pockets. This pensive stillness was unnerving.
“Are you going to just stand there and loom?” you asked, marking your page and setting the book aside. “It’s very off-brand. You’re an ‘immediately horizontal after work’ kind of guy. You’re being a ‘standing up’ guy. It’s weird.”
His smile flickered again, more genuine this time, but it didn’t reach his eyes, which were still searching your face. He was looking at you as if he was trying to memorize a piece of art, and he saw something everyone else had missed.
“I was just thinking,” he began, “about the wedding. About all of it.”
You pulled your legs up, making room for him. “It was a lot. Beautiful, but a lot. I think your father smiled exactly once, when he was checking the security detail’s perimeter sweep.” Maekar Targaryen, the former and famously formidable minister of defense, treated family weddings with the same strategic solemnity he’d once applied to national security briefings.
Aerion nodded. “He and Baelor have already started the debriefing process. A full post-mortem on the media coverage. They were on a call with the family’s PR firm for two hours today, analyzing the official photos. The reactions were ‘appropriately muted and respectful.’”
He recited the phrases with a mixture of dry amusement and genuine relief. Baelor, former mayor, was a master of public image. With him and Maekar running interference, the story of Kiera and Valarr’s wedding had been one of timeless romance, not a circus. There had been no social climbers selling stories to gossip sites, no shit-stirring distant cousins leaking unflattering anecdotes to the press. It was a fortress of good publicity.
“Well, mission accomplished,” you said. “It was a perfect day for them. And the most important part is that I’ve finally retired my chief bridesmaid hat. Now, come here. You’re hovering, and it’s making me anxious.”
Aerion didn’t move. He took a deep, centering breath, and his right hand shifted in his trouser pocket. The motion was subtle, but you saw it. He’d been doing this for weeks, a secretive, almost compulsive checking of his pocket, as if reassuring himself something was still there. You’d put it down to a new phone or a nervous habit related to a complicated case at work.
“I made a promise,” he said, the words tumbling out in a rush. “To myself. And to my father.” He let out a short, breathy laugh, shaking his head. “Gods, the number of times he’s caught me in his study this month…just staring at his desk drawer. He said I was like a dog waiting for a bone I wasn’t allowed to have yet. He locked it, eventually. To put me out of my misery.”
Your heart gave a sudden, hard kick against your ribs. Your mind raced back to a conversation from months ago, a careful, hypothetical-sounding inquiry he’d made one lazy Sunday morning. 'What do you think of big, splashy proposals versus something just for the two of us?' You’d scoffed, kissing his shoulder. 'A public spectacle is my literal nightmare. Anyone who needs an audience to ask the most important question of their life is asking for the wrong reasons.' You’d been half-asleep. You barely remembered saying it. But he had heard you. He had filed it away and built his plan around it.
“Aerion,” you whispered.
“I had to wait,” he continued, his voice gaining a desperate, confessional momentum. “I’ve been carrying this…this thing around for months. But you love Kiera. And I couldn’t, because you would never let your own happiness cast a single shadow on her day. You wouldn’t have wanted it, and it would have killed you to keep a secret like this from her. So I had to wait for the wedding to pass. And I gave it to my father because I knew, with every fibre of my being, that I’d ruin my own plan. I’d get impatient on a Tuesday morning over breakfast, or after a perfect dinner, and I’d just blurt it out. I couldn’t trust myself with it.”
He slowly pulled his hand from his pocket. It was a clenched fist. He knelt, right there, on the old Persian rug you’d bought together at a flea market. The silence was deafening, filled only with the distant sound of the city and the pounding of your own blood in your ears.
He opened his fist. A ring box, a deep red velvet, sat in his palm. It wasn't new. It was an heirloom, you could tell. His hands, usually so steady, trembled as he opened the lid.
Inside was a ring that stole your breath. A central, perfectly oval sapphire, the same deep, violet-blue as his eyes, was set in a delicate halo of diamonds on a band of what looked like platinum. It wasn't ostentatious. It was elegant and powerful and deeply, profoundly personal. It was a piece of his history, chosen for you.
“I had a whole speech prepared weeks ago,” he admitted, his voice cracking slightly. “It was brilliant. About patience, and family legacy, and how you, impossibly, saw a man worth loving when the world saw a headline for trouble. But it’s gone. All of it. It’s just…gone.”
He looked up at you, his violet eyes, the eyes of the dragon, were brimming with a vulnerability you’d only ever seen in your most private moments. “I don’t remember a single word of it. All I know is that I can’t wait another second. This morning, I walked to my father’s house at six a.m. and demanded he unlock the drawer. I couldn’t leave it there for one more day. It belongs here, with you.”
He took a ragged breath, his gaze never leaving yours.
“I don’t want the press. I don’t want the cameras. The announcement will be nothing but two lines from the family office, ‘Aerion is engaged. He’s happy. That’s all.’ I don’t speak for the man I was. I speak for the man I am, who loves you more than his own life, and who wants nothing more than to come home to you, just like this, every single day for the rest of forever. So…” He took the ring from the box and held it, a tiny, glittering promise. “This is it. This is my random, ordinary, perfect moment. Will you marry me?”
You moved to him, tears blurring the image of his beautiful, anxious face, And you reached for it, your thumb brushing the sharp line of his cheekbone.
"You're shaking," you whispered.
"I'm not," he lied, his voice a rasp. "It's just… cold in here."
"It's June," you said, a wet, choked laugh bubbling up from your chest.
"Well, then it's clearly a medical condition," he retorted, a flash of his old, prickly defensiveness appearing for a moment before dissolving again into raw, open hope. "You haven't answered. You're just sitting there, holding my face, and you haven't actually said..."
"Yes," you said.
It was a breath, a gift handed directly from your heart to his. It was the only word that had ever existed in this singular, suspended moment.
He blinked. "What?"
"Yes, Aerion. Yes, I will marry you."
The air in his lungs rushed out of him. His head dropped forward for just a second, his forehead pressing against your knees as he collected himself. When he looked up again, the fear was gone, replaced by a luminous, almost disbelieving joy.
"Okay," he said, as if affirming it to himself. "Okay. Good. Excellent decision."
The ring fit perfectly. He likely had it resized. The sapphire gleamed in the soft lamplight, catching hues of deep violet and ocean blue. It was heavy, a solid, tangible weight that felt instantly, inexplicably right, as if it had always belonged there. It had belonged to a Targaryen ancestor, a princess from a forgotten time, given to her by a dragonlord husband who had crossed the narrow sea. It was a piece of history you were now a part of.
Aerion held your hand in both of his, staring at the ring on your finger. Then he lifted your hand to his lips and pressed a long, fervent kiss to your knuckles, just above the band.
"I love you," he said against your skin. "I don't say it enough. I say it, but not enough. I should have a skywriter announce it. I should..."
"Absolutely not," you interrupted, laughing. "No skywriters. No press releases with eight paragraphs of florid prose. You promised me. Two lines."
He lifted his head, a mischievous glint entering his eyes, the smirk you knew and loved returning to its rightful place. "Three lines. 'Aerion is engaged. He's happy. He is, frankly, insufferable about it.'"
"That's the truth, at least," you conceded.
He surged upward then, his mouth finding yours in a kiss that was deep and desperate and tender all at once. He tasted of the spearmint gum he was always chewing to curb the old, lingering urge for a cigarette, a habit he'd kicked years ago. His hands slid from your face, one hand pressing flat against the small of your back, pulling you to the edge of the couch to be as close to him as possible. You were still perched on the cushion, he was still kneeling on the rug, and the position was awkward and his knees would probably ache later, but it was perfect. It was stunningly perfect.
"I love you," he repeated when you broke apart, the initial frantic energy settling into a deep, resonant calm. "I've loved you since the day you told me, after that disastrous family dinner my father made you attend, that I was a 'preening peacock with the intellect to back it up but absolutely no sense of self-preservation.' Do you remember that?"
"You insulted my sweater," you recalled. "You said the color made me look like an under-ripe orange."
"It was a terrible color," he said, unrepentant. "But you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I just didn't know how to say it then. I didn't know how to say anything then."
He finally stood, wincing slightly as he straightened his knees, and pulled you up with him. He didn't let go of your hand. He looked down at the ring on your finger once more, as if to reassure himself it was really there, then he looked around the apartment. The last of the sunset had faded, leaving the room in the soft, intimate glow of the single reading lamp you'd turned on. Your book was still splayed open on the couch cushion, your mug of tea had gone cold. It was, by any objective measure, an ordinary Friday night.
"I should tell my father," he said, but he made no move to get his phone. "And Baelor. They'll need to draft that statement. The concise one. The one that gives the press nothing but the truth they absolutely do not deserve to know." He paused, a thought striking him. "And Kiera. You'll want to tell Kiera yourself. Before the announcement. I know you will."
"Thank you," you said, squeezing his hand. "For waiting. For all of it. For making this ours before it becomes anyone else's."
He pulled you into his arms, wrapping you in a tight embrace. You could feel his heart hammering against your chest, still racing, still processing. He buried his face in the crook of your neck.
"I would have waited forever," he mumbled into your skin. "But I'm profoundly glad I didn't have to. My father's study was starting to feel like a second home."
You laughed, the sound muffled by his shoulder, and held him tighter.
a/n: Okay, we've reached the end, hope you enjoyed the series! I had to stop because I kept putting this modern AU Aerion into random situations and this fic series could go on to have 80 parts. This could come off a little choppy I fear because once again, I kept putting him in random situations.
You can donate on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: https://ko-fi.com/catbayunthestoryteller <3
Summary: Valarr is furious about the death of his father, if he can't take it out on his uncle or cousin, then he'll take it out on his wife...
word count: 2k
warnings: me attempting to write rough sex, name calling (it's "whore" btw), degrading, spanking, Aerion is mentioned, I likely missed something pls let me know
I couldn't stop thinking about this post from @nastyakotsk and I couldn't wait around for a kind soul to write it so here we go!! To the anon who sent in the commission, I hope you find this!
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Her blood ran hot, hotter than she thought possible, even with the natural dragon’s fire she was born with. But it wasn’t just her, it was the room itself. The hot air of King’s Landing drafted through the windows of the high tower of their personal chambers. The room was just high enough that nobody heard her cries and whimpers, the squishing sound of her husband’s fingers abusing her cunt.
She was sprawled along the sheets of the bed, arms above her head, not tied like their other adventurous nights together but simply placed and commanded to stay there. She didn’t dare move. Not with her sweet husband’s voice, normally so calm, soft, and rarely raised, barking at her to stay still under the threat of him stopping. She especially didn’t move since she physically couldn’t, not with her husband’s hand pinning her down by the throat. Not harsh enough to leave a bruise or hold her breath, but to hold her still and slightly squeezed to add more pleasure.
He was kneeling on the bed, slightly to her side, a hand on her neck and the other between her legs moving at a torturous pace. They’ve been at this for god’s know how long. Long enough that the sun was no longer visible beside the glow along the horizon, lighting up one part of the room while the other was darkened with shadow.
His movements were fast, two fingers knuckle deep and coated in her sweet arousal. Here and there he would lean down and connect his lips to her clit, sucking on it and swirling his tongue around it while her hips try to buck into his face, chasing her pleasure before he stopped and moved on to her breasts before removing his mouth entirely. He hit that spot in her that she could never describe, over and over, stopping every few minutes to take them out and slap her swollen clit once, twice, and three just to see her flinch and hear her yelp, and then repeat the process. His eyes moved from her heat to gaze the rest of her body. She was covered in sweat, her white hair clinging to her brow that was slightly furrowed in her concentration, her eyes closed. White puddles of his cum covered her body, mainly her face and breasts from when he had her on her knees for him earlier. There was some on her stomach from when he forced her to watch him touch himself while he held her down, marking her as his. This was different from their normal nights of pleasure. Those were soft, slow before leading to a faster pace until they reached their highs together and then lay in each other’s arms until morning came.
He didn’t, couldn’t even, look her in the eye. His eyes were locked in on her cunt, swollen, red, and soaked all over his fingers. He could tell from the movement of her hips, how little she could move, that she was close. A few moments as her noises grew louder once again, her legs twitching from the stimulation, he removed his hand from the warmth and gripped her thigh. She cried from the sudden stop of pleasure, tears falling slightly as she whined. “Fuck, please, Val please!” she cried softly, the phrase was broken slightly as she tried to speak as his hand was still at her throat. This was the fifth time he had done this, brought her to peak only to stop at the last second. He removed her hand from her throat and leaned back, his hand trailing from her neck down to squeeze her breast before getting up and moving to the end of the bed. He stood before her and grabbed her hips to pull her to the edge of the bed. As he kneeled down, she propped herself up on her elbows, their eyes caught for a second, her light purple to his purple and brown ones. She always thought he was the most handsome man in all the kingdoms, even before she knew what it meant. Dark hair with a silver stripe on his right side, his right eye purple and his left that same color but with brown covering the bottom of his iris. One would think he looked odd with such strange features, but when she looked at him, she saw the perfect mixture of the Valyrians of old and their Dornish heritage. She could even see a slight red in his brown hair akin to his mother, Jena of House Dondarion in the Stormlands and her red hair. He looked at her for a long second before pushing her back down onto the bed, grabbing her hands and placing them back above her head, his grip tight. He leaned in close enough to kiss her only to go past to her ear.
“Stay exactly like this, do not move, do not touch me. I will stop and leave the second you do, do you understand me?” he said in a deadly whisper. She had never seen him like this, it was as if he was possessed. Like a sadistic ghost took form of her husband and took his place. She shivered, she couldn’t tell if it was the tone of his voice as his breath touched her ear or the breeze on her sweat covered skin. “Y-yes” she said in a breathy voice, her voice a slightly strained from moaning and begging for so long. He nipped at her ear lobe and kissed just below it, “good girl, if you want to cum so bad, then fine” he said before going down to kiss her breasts, stomach, and then finally placing his mouth on her. His hands held her hips down as he ate her like a starving man. She twitched as he ran his tongue up and down her completely, sucking at her swollen clit as she whined. She couldn’t tell if it was from pain or pleasure, but she didn’t want him to stop either way. This was the most he had touched her at all in weeks, hells, he hasn’t even glanced her way since the accident with their fathers. She was just happy to feel his touch, even if it grew to overstimulation.
His head moved as he licked her, nodding and shaking, anything to be all over her and to get her all over him. He flattened his tongue and licked from her entrance to her clit, her hips bucking. Even she couldn’t tell if it was to chase or run away, but he held her hips and forced them still to the bed. He flicked her clit swiftly over and over as she whined. Tears ran down her face once again as she finally came on his tongue. Her entire body trembled as he kept going, it truly felt like fire was flowing through her. When she thought he was finished, she felt one of his fingers enter her, once again tracing that spot in her that brought her to ecstasy with the combination of clitoral and vaginal stimulation.
This continued until he had her cum four more times, it wasn’t new for him to finish her that many times, but this was different. Normally it was spaced out from their slow love making, but this…. this was him testing the limits of her body. He finally removed himself and kissed her lower stomach before going up to kiss her lips. She tasted like sweat as he tasted of her release. His hand gripped her hair and guided her to sit up as he kissed her, his tongue invading her mouth. If he hadn’t already conquered her body through torture, he certainly did through this.
He grabbed her and had her lay face down on the bed, he took one of the pillows and placed it under her hips, perfectly in place for him to ravish her further. He grabbed her hips once again and lined himself up to her entrance. He stroked his cock, erect and throbbing for her, before pushing himself inside her warm, drenched cunt. She moaned as he bottomed out, he stayed still for a beat and groaned at the feeling of her squeezing him. “Fuck”, he groaned as he dug his fingers into her ass, he felt her soft skin before slapping her ass, seeing the skin redden as he pulled out and slammed himself back in. His cock hitting that spot in her that made her moan and grip the sheets, her knuckles turning white as he repeated that motion over and over. His speed growing as his pleasure grew. He placed his palms on the bed to support his weight as he moved in and out of her, the slap of his hips meeting her ass filled the chamber along with her moans and his grunting. She shoved her face into the mattress, trying to silence herself as she grew to sound like a woman who walked the Streets of Silk in the night. When Valarr noticed this, he took one of his hands and gripped her hair again to pull her head back. “Don’t hide. If I fuck you like a whore, I expect you to sound like a whore” he growled into her ear. His tempo quickened as her noises grew louder. She didn’t know what to call the noises leaving her mouth, it was as if she had no control over her body. In truth, she didn’t, she was completely at his mercy. He lowered himself to his forearms, covering her wholly. He grabbed her hands and held them, entangling their fingers. It was a sweet gesture for how harsh he was fucking her. His mouth was near her ear again, all she could hear was him, his hips, his groans.
“Do you like it when I fuck you like this? Unable to move, just made to take what I give you?” He asked as he slammed his hips harder into her. She could barely respond, she couldn’t even think, she moaned and tried to whimper a “yes” to his question. “I see the way Aerion looks at you, how he’s always looked at you. I bet he imagines you when he fucks the girls in the whorehouses.” He grunts in between his sentence, “I know he went to Maekar to beg for you to be betrothed to him instead of me. I know he’s jealous that I’m the only one who can fuck you just like this. Perhaps when he comes back from Lys, I’ll bring him in here to force him to watch me fuck you like my personal toy. If I was a kinder man, I’d let him have you just once, just to see if it rids him of his madness” His pace had gone to where she thought she’d grow mad with want, she needed him more than she ever thought she could. “Please” she whimpered out, “please what?” he asked. “Please let me cum, please cum in me” she begged as she cried, she didn’t know it was possible, but he picked up speed. The chamber was filled with the noises of them together finding their high and the slapping of skin slowing to a stop.
They stayed there for a few minutes before Valarr moved them to lay on their sides as they tried to catch their breath. He pulled himself out of her, the both of them hissing from the loss. After a few minutes he had a bath drawn and they were both laying together in the hot water. They were quiet, it was the quietest they had ever been together since their first night wed. For the first time that night Valarr’s touch was light and soft, he placed kisses along her shoulders and the back of her neck as he held her against his chest.
After a while he spoke with his lips against her skin, “I’m going to ask the Maester to make some of the moon tea”. His wife shifted to look him in his eyes, he still wouldn’t look at her, his gaze fixed on the water. “And why would you do that?” she asked softly, they had been trying for a child for the past few months now, why would he want her to drink it after such a night? She saw his eyes turn glassy, his hold on her slightly tightening, “because I want our child to be conceived through our love, not through my rage and grief.” She reached back and ran her fingers through his hair before shifting to sit in his lap to face him. She held his face and forced him to look into her eyes, the first time he truly has in so long, and placed her forehead on his. “Do you want to discuss the cause of tonight?” she asked, her hand still in his hair, caressing the soft locks. He held her tightly against him, kissing her forehead before laying his head down onto her shoulder, sniffling as he tried to keep his tears at bay. “I just,” he paused before moving on, “I just have all this anger inside of me, and I have nowhere to put it. I can’t help but feel hopeless. My father is gone, and I still had so much to learn from him. All of a sudden, I’m heir to the throne and grandfather isn’t doing so well so who knows how soon I’ll be on the throne. I’m not ready, I’ll never be the man father was, and I can’t help but be so angry.” He was shamelessly crying now, his face in her neck as he trembled in her touch. “Just months ago, he was here, then the damned tourney, your fucking brother, the trial, and your father killing mine. I know he didn’t mean it, it was an accident in the heat of battle. But it still happened, and now I’m just…… lost. I look at you and I just see what happened, and I held it in too long.” He put his head back to look you in the eyes, “I’m sorry, you are not guilty of your father and brother’s misgivings, but I just lost it, I think. I’m sorry if I went too far tonight.” She looked at him with her soft gaze, running her hand through his hair with a small smile, wiping the tears from his face. “Never apologize for tonight, if anything I wouldn’t mind doing it again, perhaps even taking a turn” she whispered, pulling him closer to her and kissing him breathless.
author's note: I had a day off and literally spent the whole day writing this. I'm so sorry if this sucks, I haven't written in like three years, I never thought I would go back but Valarr has me in a CHOKEHOLD! For my Outer Range fans, don't worry, I'm not finished with Rhett ;)
please tell me if you want more!
tag list for those I knew were wanting this!: @raashluvsff @deertaur @you-need-namjesus @bluelightwrites @helpyourself-9 @kouzlocm
In the Shadows of the Red Keep - Chapter 3 (Baelor Targaryen x Reader)
Masterlist | Chapter 1 Chapter 2
Summary: When you come to serve Kiera of Tyrosh as a lady-in-waiting at the Red Keep, you know what awaits you: strict etiquette, political pressure and endless expectations. Instead you find a kind, watchful prince who sees you in a way no one else does.
Word count: 5.6K
Tags: 18+/MINORS DO NOT INTERACT, trigger warning!! mentions of miscarriage, she/her pronouns, AFAB reader, (reader is in her early 20s, Baelor is in his mid 30s), eldest daughter pressure, court politics, emotional intimacy before physical intimacy, gentle prince x anxious girl, anxiety induced rambling, quiet intimacy, courtly tension, English is my second language, proof read twice.
Will add more tags as the story progresses. Please let me know if I’ve missed anything!
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, setting, or story of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. This work is a fanfiction created for enjoyment and non-commercial purposes only.
A/N: I hope you all will enjoy this chapter! Thank you as always for all your likes, reblogs, comments and follows! I do appreciate each and every single one of them!!
The candle on the table burned low, its flame bowing and straightening in the faint drafts of the library.
Baelor remained there long after you fled. His hand rested against the edge of the table where you stood moments before. The sound of your running footsteps echoed in his ears like a bell that would not stop ringing.
Gods. By the Seven. He could still feel you.
Your soft lips pressed against his, the warmth of your cheek against his palm. The way your fingers clutched his shoulders with desperation that it shattered every careful wall he had built around himself. The breathless urgency of your kiss, reckless and earnest, everything he had not allowed himself to feel in years.
Baelor drew in a slow breath, closing his eyes for a moment. He had not been kissed like that in years. Not since before Jena died.
Jena… beloved in her own quiet way. Their marriage had been an arrangement, rather than born of love or desire. In the end, he had grown to love her, in his own dutiful and restrained way. But it had never been the kind of love that set his heart ablaze. The kind of love that made the world tilt with a single touch. Their bond had been steady and proper, and it produced two sons that meant the world to him. It was the kind of bond that left courtiers assume the quiet loneliness in his life became a habit rather than a wound. And perhaps it had, for a time.
His gaze drifted to the window where the night deepened beyond the glass.
He had buried himself in raising his sons, buried himself in councils and judgments, in treaties and endless petitions. Responsibility and duty filled every corner of his life until there was no space left for anything else.
Anything for the realm, for the King, for a semblance of peace. It was easier that way.
Until you arrived.
Baelor slowly looked down at his hands. Ink stained his fingers from the work he had abandoned long ago, yet the memory of your touch lingered more vividly than anything he had written that day.
Dōna riña.
The words slipped through his mind softly, almost involuntarily. His sweet girl, his kind lady. The High Valyrian words had risen from somewhere deep in his mind, carried from another life when he had allowed himself gentleness, when the world had not demanded duty and steel from every corner of his heart.
And it suited you. Too well, he thought.
You, who were so earnest in this treacherous court,who tried so carefully to find your place amongst the people who would devour weakness without hesitation.
Baelor exhaled slowly and sank onto the chair beside the table. He remembered the fear in your face tonight, the moment you realised what you did. The way your voice broke when you begged him to let you go.
My prince… please…
His chest tightened, his hand rubbing his face. Gods, you believed you made a terrible mistake. Perhaps you thought he would despise you now. Or worse, that he would think you were a reckless and foolish girl overcome by some passing infatuation. And the thought unsettled him deeply, for it was far from the truth. And the truth was far more complicated.
Baelor had kissed you back. He had kissed you back with a hunger that startled even him, a deep and urgent need that shattered the restraint he practiced for decades. He had leaned into you, his hands seeking you, pulling you closer, capturing the breathless urgency of your kiss as though he could never let it go.
He leaned onto the chair, eyes closed, a deep sigh escaping him.
For years he had been a man defined by restraint. A Crown Prince and a Hand of the King who served the realm above his own desires, who always chose duty. But tonight, with your memory burning against his senses, duty faltered. For one reckless, fleeting moment, he had wanted nothing more than to forget it all. He could still feel the way you had melted against him, the soft desperation in the way your hands clung to his shoulders.
Gods, he should let you go… that would be the simplest and most honourable answer. You were young, your life still ahead before you, a life unentangled by the burdens that defined his own. One day you would marry, have children, build a future not bound by the endless obligations of a Hand or a prince.
And yet…
His gaze drifted to the shadowed path through which you had fled.
How could he bring you back? Not to the library, but back to him, to the undeniable truth of what passed between you.
He rubbed his eyes wearily, imagining how he would find you tomorrow, your eyes lowered, your cheeks flushed with shame. He imagined how you would try to avoid him, pretending the kiss never happened.
And Baelor would have to decide whether to allow the distance to grow between you, or close it.
For the first time in many years, duty did not feel like a clear path to an answer. It felt like a wall between himself and the desire that bloomed painfully in him, a wall he wanted desperately to breach.
He rose slowly from the bench and extinguished the candle, shadows filling the place at once. For a moment he lingered in silence.
“I should let you go…” He whispered into the dark. “But I…”
Even as he spoke them, he knew the words held no truth. A part of him, the part he had ignored for years, was beginning to insist that, just this once, duty might not be the right answer.
He pressed his palm against the cold edge of the table, inhaling a deep breath. He let himself imagine your face, your eyes, your lips, your hands on his shoulders. And in that quiet, shadowed sanctuary, Baelor understood.
He could not, he would not walk away.
⚬ ⚬ ○ ⚬ ⚬
Sleep did not come easily to you that night.
Your chamber was quiet, the small hearth burning low. Beyond your walls, the castle was finally still, the clamour of preparations and servants fading into the deep hush of the night.
You lay on your side beneath the sheets, staring at the wavering candlelight by your bed. Your mind refused to rest.
Your lips still burned from the memory of his.
Every time you closed your eyes, it came rushing back. The warmth of his hand on your cheek, the firm press of his body against yours, the sudden fierceness in the way he kissed you back.
You pressed your palm against your mouth, as if you could wipe the memory, the feeling away.
What have I done? The questions circled endlessly in your mind.
You did not mean for it to happen. You only wanted to breathe for a moment in the quiet of the library, perhaps bask in his presence if he was there. But when you saw him… you were drawn to him like a moth to a flame. And the space between you vanished until there was nothing left but the undeniable truth of what you felt for him.
You chastised yourself, for you crossed a line that should never have been crossed in the first place.
Baelor was Hand of The King, a prince of the realm. A man revered for his honour, restraint and integrity.
And who were you? A foolish girl who had thrown herself into his arms like some lovesick maiden from a tale.
Your throat tightened. What must he think of me now?
You turned on your back, the sheets twisting with you, and you stared at the dim canopy.
Gods, he must think you to be a reckless girl, naive… or worse, manipulative, that you tried to trap him in some shameful way. The court was full of such stories, of girls who sought advantage through scandal. And what if he thought you had tried to do the same? The thought twisted your stomach violently.
You sat abruptly, pulling your knees to your chest.
“No…” You sobbed into the empty room. Tears burned your eyes.
You saw the shock on his face when you rushed to kiss him, the single heartbeat before he responded.
What if he only kissed me back because he did not know how else to stop me?
Tears spilled freely down your cheeks. Pressing your face to your knees, your sobs were barely muffled as they spilled out.
By the Seven, you had ruined everything, you thought.
The quiet kindness he always showed you, the gentle conversations in the garden and the library, the way he looked at you as though you mattered in a place where you felt invisible more times than not.
The way he called you something in High Valyrian, Dōna riña, the way his voice softened when he said it.
All of it, gone.
Tomorrow, he would avoid you and your chest ached at the thought.
“I am such a fool…” You whispered hoarsely, collapsing back to the bed.
If only you knew what those words meant. Perhaps they meant nothing, perhaps you imagined their tenderness entirely.
Outside your window, a night bird cried suddenly and its sound made the silence of your chamber feel even deeper. You curled to the side, pulling the sheets tight around yourself as though they could shield you from your own thoughts.
And eventually the tears slowed and your sobs softened, though your eyes still burned and your head throbbed with exhaustion. Yet, sleep did not come quickly.
Because beneath the shame, beneath the fear that you had destroyed everything, the memory of how he held you remained.
And the terrible, fragile hope that he did not want to let you go.
⚬ ⚬ ○ ⚬ ⚬
The feast never happened.
For days your thoughts circled around preparations endlessly. Flowers, musicians, seating charts, the delicate diplomacy of placing rival lords far apart that no quarrel would sour the celebration. Every detail mattered, every misstep could be noticed, remembered, used.
You had thrown yourself into the work almost desperately, telling yourself it was because of duty. That you would not fail the princess. That you would prove yourself worthy of the place you had been given.
But the truth followed you through every corridor, every chamber. It was easier to bury yourself in the work than to think of the library. Easier than remembering the warmth of Baelor’s hand on your cheek, or the way his voice softened when he spoke to you… or the way he kissed you.
After that night, you saw him.
In the long corridors, striding with purpose, a Kingsguard at his side. In the gardens, speaking quietly with a lord beneath the trees. Across the hall during supper, candlelight catching the silver in his hair.
And each time, your breath caught, your pulse raced, and your heart thundered.
And each time, you turned away.
But you felt it. The weight of his eyes finding you across the crowded rooms. The pause in his step, as though he might approach.
And sometimes, he did.
Once, in the outer gallery, you heard your name spoken low behind you. You knew his voice before you turned, and felt it like a pull in your chest. But you did not let him reach you. You curtsied too quickly, murmured something about duties waiting, and fled before he could say more.
Another time, in a narrow passage, you kept your eyes lowered as he approached. You felt him slow, felt the moment stretch. But you passed him by with a quiet greeting, not daring to stop.
And yet, every time you entered a room, some foolish, traitorous part of you searched for him.
It made no sense. You avoided him. You fled from him.
And still, you looked.
So you worked harder. You filled your days until there was no room left for thought. And when exhaustion threatened to drag your mind back to dangerous places, you found something else to occupy yourself with.
It was your duty, you told yourself. It was safer that way.
But the feast never came, for three days after your kiss with Baelor, three days before the celebration, the princess’s chambers erupted into chaos.
It began before dawn. You woke to the sound of hurried footsteps and voices raised in alarm. For a moment you laid still, listening to the noise swelling outside your chamber.
A servant ran through the corridor, footsteps frantic against the stone floor. Another voice followed, shouting urgently for the maester. Doors began opening along the hallway as startled ladies stepped out, hair loose and faces pale with confusion.
Something was terribly wrong.
You threw on a robe and slipped into the corridor, joining the stream of anxious women moving towards Kiera’s apartments.
“What has happened?” Someone whispered to you. You shook your head, for whatever it was, it was not good.
By the time you reached the outer chamber, the air was heavy. All ladies clustered together in worried knots, servants pressed themselves against the walls to make way as the Grand Maester hurried past, his heavy chains clinking softly as they disappeared through the princess’s door.
A Kingsguard stood by the entrance, barring passage with grim determination.
“What has happened?” Somebody asked again. No one answered.
From inside the chamber came the muffled sound of hurried voices, of orders given too quickly to understand. There was a clatter of something falling to the floor.
And then, you heard it, Kiera crying out, the sound sharp and full of pain.
Your stomach dropped and the ladies around you fell silent at once. One of the younger girls clasped her hands together and began whispering a prayer beneath her breath.
Time stretched unbearably. The corridor grew warmer as more people gathered, yet no one dared speak above a whisper. Every pair of eyes remained fixed on the closed door.
You tried not to think of the last time you had seen the princess, her hands resting lightly on her stomach as she laughed about the feast. You tried not to imagine what might be happening beyond the door.
Hours seemed to pass. The sky outside the narrow windows already began to pale with morning light when the chamber doors finally opened again.
The maester stepped out first. His expression told the truth before he spoke a word.
A murmur rippled through the gathered women.You felt the dread settle deep in your chest even before the words were spoken.
By morning the news had spread through the Red Keep like poison through a wound. The princess had miscarried.
And for a short time, grief silenced the castle. Servants quietly removed the already prepared decorations for the feast you and the other ladies spent weeks planning.
Prince Valarr did not leave his wife’s chambers. No one dared to speak loudly.
You moved through the keep in a strange daze, helping where you could. Comforting the other ladies when their quiet tears returned. Fetching water or cloths or herbs when the servants seemed too shaken to remember their tasks.
Work helped steady your mind. Every moment you were occupied, you could almost forget the ache still lingering somewhere deep in your chest.
Almost forget the library. Almost forget him.
But sometimes, when the corridors fell quiet and you found yourself alone, your back pressed to the cool wall, your thoughts drifted back to him despite your efforts.
Had Baelor heard the news yet? Of course he had. As Hand, he would have been among the first informed.
You wondered whether he thought of you at all. Whether he remembered the kiss the same way you did. You pushed the thought away quickly. This was not the time, nor the place you told yourself. For there were greater sorrows unfolding in the castle.
And for a short time, grief seemed to silence everything else.
But silence never lasted long in the Red Keep. And by midday, the whispers began.
At first they were soft. A servant speaking too quickly before noticing who stood nearby. A pair of knights murmuring to each other beside the courtyard fountain.
Then the word appeared.
Poison.
Not fate. Not misfortune. Not punishment by the Seven.
Poison.
Someone said the princess drank spiced wine before retiring. Another claimed the maesters discovered a bitter taste in the cup beside her bed.
No one could say where the rumor began, yet it spread with frightening speed.
And suddenly the castle felt different.
The Red Keep had grown dangerous overnight.
⚬ ⚬ ○ ⚬ ⚬
Baelor heard of the rumour during the next day’s morning session of the council. The chamber felt tense even before the matter was spoken aloud. Lords shifted in their seats. Papers were turned and turned again by restless hands. No one was able to settle.
“There is… speculation among the household staff…” A councilmember began carefully. “Unverified, of course. But the rumor spread quickly.”
Baelor said nothing, because he already suspected what word would follow.
“Poison.”
The word landed like a stone dropped into still water. Several of the councillors began speaking at once.
“Such rumors must be contained.” One insisted sharply.
“Contained?” Another scoffed. “If poison was involved, we must discover by whose hand!”
“Or risk the court devouring itself with suspicion.” Said another.
Voices overlapped, questions rose immediately. What did the princess eat? Who served her the night before? Which servants were present in her chambers?
Baelor barely listened, because his thoughts drifted elsewhere.
Poison meant suspicion, and suspicion meant questions. And questions at court rarely sought truth. Instead, they sought answers. Quick ones, convenient ones, the kind that satisfied fear before reason had time to speak.
His fingers tightened slightly over the armchair. His thoughts turned immediately to the princess’s household. To the servants who carried trays through her chambers. To the maids who helped her dress. To the ladies who attended her day after day since the pregnancy was announced.
And finally, to you.
The realisation struck him with sudden, chilling clarity. In a court where poison was whispered, innocence was often the first casualty. Young ladies without powerful allies and protectors made for easy targets. A jealous rival’s whispers, a careless glance, a misplaced word, those were enough to ruin a life.
And you… You stood at the edge of court politics, close enough to be noticed, yet not powerful enough to be shielded if suspicion turned its gaze toward you.
His jaw tightened.
The councillors were still arguing.
“If the wine was poisoned, we must question the servants who brought it!”
“And the ladies who attended the princess that evening.”
“Yes, yes, of course-”
The words blurred together.
Baelor pushed his chair back, The sound of it scraping across the floor cut through the conversation.
“Your Grace?” One of the lords called, startled.
But Baelor was already moving toward the door, offering no explanation as he left the chamber behind.
He did not lie to himself that this was caution, he did not cloak it in duty or concern for his good-daughter's ladies.
This was not about the court.
It was about you.
It was about the memory of you standing breathless in the library a few nights before. It was about the warmth of your lips against his. It was about the way your voice broke when you begged him to let you go.
And now the castle whispered of poison.
Baelor sighed slowly, forcing his shoulders into stillness, his expression into something composed and princely, the familiar mask of calm authority settling over his expression.
But beneath it all, a quiet unease stirred and took root.
His gaze swept over every passing face as he moved through the corridors, searching for you without pause. The truth wrapped around him, squeezing his heart tight.
What he felt for you was no longer mere concern, and it crossed the boundary of only kindness long ago. It became something far more dangerous.
Something the court might not forgive.
And something he was certain he no longer wished to escape.
⚬ ⚬ ○ ⚬ ⚬
The whispers did not remain whispers for long. And suspicion, once born, rarely remained gentle.
By the second day, names began to be whispered.
Kiera’s household was carefully chosen and big enough so that those who attended her most closely were well known to the court. And so, the whispers turned towards them. Towards the ladies who poured her wine, who sat beside her during meals, who helped her dress before retiring.
Towards you.
You first sensed when you entered the corridor outside the solar and two ladies abruptly fell silent while mid-conversation. Their eyes lingered on you a moment too long.
Later, a servant who once greeted you warmly now avoided meeting your gaze altogether.
By afternoon, you heard the rumor plainly.
“One of the ladies…” Someone whispered near the stairwell.
“They say she was often alone with the princess.”
Your chest tightened painfully, as you hurried past before they noticed you listening.
You spent weeks heeding Kiera's wishes, arranging the feast, bringing her fruits and sweet wine whenever she desired them, reading to her when she wanted.
Anyone who truly knew the household would understand that you did nothing wrong.
Would they not?
By late afternoon you walked more quickly through the corridors, as though you could outrun the growing unease curling in your chest. A voice stopped you just as you turned into the gallery overlooking the gardens.
“My lady.”
You froze. Reluctantly, you turned.
Lord Elric was leaning casually against one of the carved pillars, as if he was waiting for you. His expression could be described as sympathetic. But the look in his eyes made your stomach twist almost painfully.
“My lord.” You said, dipping your head in polite acknowledgment.
He pushed away from the pillar and approached, his boots echoing faintly across the stone floor.
“These are… unfortunate circumstances.” He said, stopping close to you.
You nodded, hands curled into fists below your sleeves. “Yes. The princess’s loss is deeply tragic.”
Edric studied your face with unsettling attentiveness.
“Yes…” He said slowly. “Tragic indeed.”
There was something in his tone that made your skin prickle. You shifted your weight slightly, preparing to excuse yourself.
“My apologies, Lord Elric, I must return-”
“You have heard the rumors, I imagine.”
Your breath caught, but you said nothing.
Edric sighed as though he was burdened by the unpleasantness of the situation.
“You must understand how these things appear.” He continued. “The council will naturally look closely at those nearest to her.”
“I have nothing to hide.” You said resolutely.
“Oh, I am sure you do not.” The words were meant to be reassuring, but they were far from it.
“But innocence…” Lord Elric continued thoughtfully. “Innocence is rarely enough at court.”
Your hands clenched inside the sleeves of your gown, your nails digging deep into the skin
“What are you implying, my lord?”
“I imply nothing.” He said easily. “Only that people are already talking.”
Your pulse pounded loudly in your ears.
“You need not concern yourself with such gossip.” You said stiffly.
“Oh, but I do.” He stepped closer, too close for comfort.
“Because I have a solution to your… predicament.”
Your stomach dropped.
“My father has already written to yours regarding a betrothal.” Edric said matter-of-factly. “Our houses would make an excellent match. And in times like these, alliances matter greatly.”
You stared at him, the meaning of his words slowly sinking into place.
“If you were formally promised to my house…” He continued calmly, “Any foolish suspicion would disappear overnight. No one questions the honour of my family.”
Your throat tightened. “You believe I would accept marriage simply to avoid a rumour? One that is untrue?”
“I believe you should consider the realities of your position.” His eyes gleamed with anger. “Without protection, accusations can grow dangerous very quickly.”
“You are threatening me.” You whispered, your heart pounding loud in your chest.
“Oh no, no. I am merely… advising you.”
You shook your head, backing away a step. “I will not marry you.”
His smile thinned. “You may not have that luxury for long.”
The words struck you, panic surging in your chest, hot and suffocating. You turned sharply and ran.
“Think carefully!” Edric called after you. “Before others decide your fate for you!”
Your feet carried you down the corridor and through the open archway leading toward the gardens, hurrying across the marble paths, barely noticing where you were going.
You did not stop, your thoughts spinning wildly, your vision blurred with tears.
You stumbled towards the shaded trellis where you had once sat with Baelor, your steps feeling unsteady as your breath. The marble bench came into view like a distant refuge. Once you reached it, you sank down without grace, your skirts spilling into the grass as you pressed forward, arms bracing against the cool stone.
You did not know what to do. If the rumours grew worse… if someone spoke your name too boldly… if someone truly accused you…
A sob rose in your throat and you did not try to stop it.
Your father’s letters about Lord Edric suddenly felt like chains tightening around your life. His expectations, your grandmother’s voice, your duty, felt like stones dragging you down a bottomless sea.
Lord Edric’s voice echoed cruelly in your mind. You may not have that luxury for long.
“Seven help me…” You whispered.
Suddenly and fiercely, you wished you could run somewhere else entirely. To run down the long corridors of the Red Keep, through the council chambers and past the watchful guards. Past every expectation and whispered judgment, until you reached the one person who might understand.
Until you found Baelor.
Your chest ached at the thought, and you hated yourself for it. You had no right to run to him at all, no right at all.
You buried your face in your arms, your shoulders trembling as the tears came again.
What you did not know was that Baelor was already searching for you. That some instinct, quiet and insistent, drew him toward the gardens to look for you.
And when he saw you there, beneath the trellis, hunched forward on the marble bench, your face buried in your arms, shoulders shaking from your sobs as though the world had grown too heavy to bear…
It struck him harder than he expected. You looked so small, so alone, folded in on yourself as though trying to disappear. For a moment he simply stood there, watching the rise and fall of your shoulders, the quiet sound of your sobs carrying through the stillness of the garden.
He approached carefully. “Dōna riña.”
Your head lifted instantly.
Your eyes were red, lashes damp with tears and your cheeks flushed. And for what felt like a lifetime you simply stared at him, as though you had conjured him from your thoughts.
“My prince-”
You rose too quickly, trying to compose yourself, but your voice trembled and betrayed you.
Baelor closed the remaining distance between you.
“There is no need to hide from me.” He said quietly, his voice gentler than you ever heard it.
You shook your head quickly, wiping your cheeks in a futile attempt to hide the tears.
“My apologies. I should not- I am aware there are far more serious matters in the castle and I-”
“What has happened?”
His voice was calm, but the concern beneath it undid you completely.
You drew in a shaky breath.
“They think I did it.” The words fell from your lips in a fragile rush.
Baelor stilled, something in his expression hardening, but he said nothing, waiting for you to speak.
“The whispers…” You continued, speaking faster than could control. “I heard them today... Some of the servants… and the ladies…”
You wrapped your arms around yourself, not daring to look at him, trying to hold yourself togehter.
“They say someone in the princess’s household must have done it. And I was there so often. I brought her wine sometimes, or fruit, or-”
“Stop.” Baelor said softly, his hands grasping your shoulders, his touch steady and grounding.
You looked up at him helplessly, tears clinging to your lashes.
“I did nothing…” You whispered brokenly.
“I know.”
His certainty struck you silent. His thumb brushed lightly against your shoulder, a small, steadying gesture that made your heart stutter. But the panic within you did not ease.
“And then… Lord Edric-”
The name slipped out before you could stop it.
Baelor’s expression sharpened slightly, shifting into something dark.
“What about him?”
You swallowed hard.
“He found me in the gallery. He said the rumors could become… dangerous.” Your voice trembled again. “He said if I accepted his betrothal, that no one would dare accuse a woman promised to his house.”
Baelor’s jaw tightened visibly.
Your lips quivered, but you forced the words out. “He said I might not have the luxury of refusing for long.”
Baelor felt a flicker of anger stir beneath his composed exterior. You did not notice, because your eyes were fixed on the marble beneath your feet.
“I do not know what to do…” You whispered. “If the rumors grow worse, my father may force the match simply to avoid scandal.”
Your breath hitched. “And it would be my fault.”
“No.”
The word came firm and immediate. Your tear-filled eyes lifted slowly to his mismatched ones.
“But I have already made everything worse!” You continued miserably. “I kissed you! I behaved shamefully and now-”
Your voice broke entirely. “By the Seven, I am so sorry.”
The apology came out in a desperate rush. “I should never have done that. I know you must regret it terribly and now I have placed you in such an awful position and-”
Baelor caught your wrists gently. “Enough.”
His gaze dropped briefly to your trembling lip, then returned to your eyes.
“Do you truly believe I regret it?” He asked softly.
You hesitated, your voice barely above a whisper. “You… do not?”
For a moment Baelor said nothing. He looked at you, at the fear and shame written plainly across your face. At the panic, at the emotions, the anxious unraveling you tried so desperately to hide. Then he lifted his hand and brushed a stray tear from your cheek.
“No.” he said softly. “I never would.”
Before you could respond, he leaned down and kissed you.
His hand remained at your cheek at first, steadying you, grounding you as though he feared you might disappear if he did not hold you there. The kiss was slower than before, deeper in its quiet certainty.
His hand slid to the back of your neck, fingers threading lightly into your hair, urging you nearer. And when your breath caught against his, he answered it, tilting your head and drawing you closer. Your freed hands rose without thought, clutching at his shoulders before slipping upward, wrapping around his neck as though you had found something solid at last.
You leaned into him, into the warmth of him, into the feeling you had tried so desperately to deny.
The world seemed to fall away. The whispers, the fear, the weight of expectation, gone, leaving only the steady press of him against you, the quiet certainty in the way he held you.
When he finally pulled back, you were left breathless and your thoughts scattered.
“My prince, your Grace-”
“Baelor.” He corrected quietly.
Your heart stumbled at the sound of his name spoken so simply. You shook your head. “I am sorry, should not-”
“You should stop apologizing.” His thumb brushed lightly across your cheek. “For you have done nothing wrong.”
“But-”
“Everything will be dealt with.”
You searched his face. “How?”
Baelor’s expression softened, but there was a quiet steel beneath his calm now.
“I am the Hand of the King.” He said. “And I will not allow innocent people to be sacrificed to satisfy frightened whispers.”
“And Lord Edric?” Your voice trembled.
A faint shadow crossed Baelor’s gaze. Something possessive and dark, that made warmth spread across your chest.
“Lord Edric will learn-” Baelor said quietly. “That intimidation is a poor strategy when directed at someone under my protection.”
The words made your heart race.
“You cannot mean-”
“I do.”
His hand slid gently to yours, enclosing it in a firm, reassuring hold.
“You are not alone in this.”
Your throat tightened again, though this time the tears that rose felt different.
“Why?” You whispered.
Baelor studied your face for a moment. Then he answered simply, softly.
“Because I care for you.”
The words settled between you, fragile and heavy all at once.
“I care for you dōna riña.” He continued, his voice low and intimate. “More than I should, more than is wise. You have found your way into my thoughts, into every quiet moment. You have bewitched me heart and soul and I cannot be parted from you.”
“My prince… Baelor…” You sighed, breathless, the words trembling on your lips, unable at first to say more.
Then, with a surge of courage, you lifted your hand and cupped his cheek. Baelor leaned into your touch, pressing softly against your palm.
“I care for you too…” Your voice was firm despite the new tears threatening to fall. “My heart… it has chosen you.”
His lips found yours again, this kiss slow, tender, and affirming. Each touch, each movement, was a promise that your hearts were no longer yours alone to guard. You leaned into him, allowing yourself to finally rest.
And for a while the weight of the world and the Red Keep’s intrigue faded away.
-whatever his girls want they get! after birthing a bunch of daughters he wouldn't change it for anything, basically a bunch of fluff and aerion trying to be a patient dad! ᥫ᭡
the moment she arrived, aerion’s world shrank to the size of her tiny body.
the midwife handed her to him after you had held the baby, and he barely breathed, eyes tracing every feature. she had your lips, your face, your hands—these tiny hands that curled around his finger—but that hair. silver as starlight, fine and soft, glinting even under the dim candlelight.
“she’s beautiful,” you whispered, exhausted and smiling.
aerion’s voice was a growl, quiet but edged with awe. “she is fire,” he said, pressing his forehead to hers. “a little dragon, born of you…and me.”
later, when the household slept, he would cradle her in private, rocking slowly, reading aloud from novels he had long since stored away.
the world outside could wait. she was all that mattered.
he read old valyrian lullabies, traced the gentle rise and fall of her chest, and patted her back until she drifted into peaceful sleep.
sometimes, he would just sit there for hours, watching, as though the gods themselves might try to steal her in the night. he muttered to the darkness, voice low and serious, “not while i breathe.”
months passed, and aerion noticed changes in you long before you did yourself.
he studied you from across the hall, silent and precise, reading the signs with an intensity that left you both unnerved and comforted. “another girl,” he said one night, almost to himself, watching you sleep. not a question. a certainty. and somehow, it didn’t matter to him now—no disappointment, no longing for a son. just…care.
he began to linger closer, offering teas or broth without asking, adjusting your pillow just so, brushing stray hair from your face. he never smiled in a way the servants could see, never softened for the world. but for you, in private, there was care in every gesture.
when the second daughter arrived, the house shifted again.
aerion’s eyes were everywhere, tracking their play, arranging the rooms, even ordering the trimming of sharp corners from tables and banisters. he corrected servants if they left toys strewn about, patrolled the nursery corridors like a silent sentinel.
he caught you watching him one day, hovering near the nursery doorway.
“come to bed, husband…they are only a door away…”
“they are safe,” he said, voice clipped, but when he glanced at the girls, his eyes softened imperceptibly. “and they will stay that way.”
by the time the second daughter toddled into her third year, and the first was old enough to sit in lessons, aerion’s protective streak extended to every corner of their lives. gardens, playrooms, even the castle corridors, he observed all of it with the careful scrutiny of a dragon guarding its hoard.
he patrolled outdoor play areas, silently calculating how to prevent scrapes and falls. he taught them sword practice, wooden, carefully supervised, of course.
and when one of the girls came to him, frustrated over a puzzle, he crouched to meet her gaze. “we do not give up,” he said firmly, voice calm but commanding. and then, softer, almost lost in thought, “not in anything, zaldrītsos.”
the girls learned quickly that aerion’s approval was rare, but when it came, it was a quiet, powerful gift. a nod. a small smile. a hand resting lightly on their heads. they treasured it like sunlight.
by the time the third daughter arrived, aerion’s need for a son had vanished entirely.
his silver-haired legacy would live through them.
three sparks of fire. three little dragons of his own making.
he held the newborn with the same intensity as the first, but now he no longer merely observed or protected. he reveled quietly in the fact that these girls- your daughters- were enough.
the girls were, quite simply, spoiled beyond measure, though never carelessly. they got what they wanted not just because aerion would not deny them, but because he delighted in their joy.
a new ribbon for the eldest’s hair? granted.
a painted wooden horse for the middle? delivered.
the youngest cried for a story by candlelight, and he stayed until the candle burned low, reading in that deep, steady voice that had lulled each of his daughters to sleep since birth.
“my love,” you would whisper, shaking your head as he presented yet another gift or indulgence, “you mustn’t spoil them so.”
aerion’s only response was to kneel beside you, his silver eyes soft but fierce, brushing a stray strand of hair from your face. “my girls deserve everything they desire, and i will not stand in their way.”
he would glance at you then, lingering longer than necessary, lips brushing your temple. “and as do you, my wife.”
when you became aware of another life growing within you, he was quieter than usual, but only in public. in private, he traced your belly with reverence.
“if it is another daughter,” you murmured one evening, almost teasing, “will you-”
“good,” he interrupted, voice firm but brimming with warmth. “my girls are strong. blessed. they will know love, strength, fire. and you…you are the heart of it all. i will not ask for more.”
he did ask for more, though not for himself, but for the family he had begun to treasure above all else.
another babe. another spark of light to fill the halls, to grow beneath his watchful gaze. he did not care whether it was boy or girl. but if it were another daughter, he would rejoice as though the gods had smiled upon him twice.
the household echoed with the laughter and chatter of his girls. they were sweet, clever, and bold- tiny mirrors of you in manner and mind, wrapped in the silver of his blood.
he taught them all high valyrian, their family history...they painted, read, practiced music, learned of the dragons, all under a father who never withheld praise when it was due and never allowed harm when it threatened them. he did not know how or why this newfound softness had found him, why he sometimes felt unworthy of such joy when he had once been so cruel. but he did not dwell on it. there was little time for dwelling.
sometimes he read to all four at once, though he was stern when they fidgeted or giggled.
the eldest perched solemnly on a high-backed chair, legs swinging, trying desperately to pay attention. the second squirmed in a cushion fort beside her, whispering jokes to the youngest. the third clutched her little dragon plush to her chest, wide-eyed, absorbing every word with a serious intensity that mirrored her father. and the fourth- tiny and insistent- kept trying to crawl into his lap, hands tugging at the book, squealing when she caught hold of a page.
aerion’s voice, deep and measured, cut through the chaos. “quiet,” he said sharply. “all of you. look at me. listen.”
there was a pause.
then he softened slightly, just enough to let them lean into the words. his hand rested lightly on the third daughter’s head, brushing a stray silver strand from her eyes. another settled on the back of the eldest, a silent anchor of approval.
the youngest, unable to contain herself, reached for the book again. aerion shifted, lifting her gently onto his knee, the weight of her small body grounding him as he continued to read. his tone remained firm, but his eyes were warm, filled with pride and quiet amusement.
“you will learn patience,” he said, turning the page with deliberate care. “as all dragons must.”
and you understood. he did not need a boy, not anymore. the girls were his legacy, his hope, and his fire.
and in the quiet moments, when the castle slept and the girls’ breaths were soft and even, aerion would sit with each one in his arms, humming old valyrian lullabies, watching their silver strands shimmer in the candlelight, thinking to himself that no one, not even the gods, could take them while he breathed.
there were times when he still lost his temper…
it had been a long afternoon. lessons, playing in the hall, and the endless chatter of four little girls had frayed even aerion’s legendary patience. he had tried to remain calm, pacing the hall with the eldest at his side as she recited her reading. the middle two were arguing over something, loudly enough to echo through the chambers. and the youngest…
well, the youngest had thrown her cup of water across the floor, giggling as it soaked the tapestry you had carefully placed earlier that morning.
aerion’s eyes, usually steady and controlled, flicked from one girl to the next.
no. enough.
“enough!” his voice rang out, sharp and commanding. the girls froze, eyes wide, as if the walls themselves had spoken. “all of you. this instant. stop.”
the eldest sat rigid in her chair, cheeks flushed, clutching her book. the second and third stared at each other, wide-eyed and guilty. the youngest looked up innocently, sensing the storm about to break.
aerion’s hands clenched at his sides. “i am your father, and you will respect this house, your lessons, and each other. do you understand me?” his voice carried the weight of authority rarely unleashed within these walls.
the girls murmured apologies, small and hesitant, but he was not finished.
he strode to the youngest and lifted her gently, though his eyes still held that intensity. “do you think i will tolerate chaos? do you think because i love you i will ignore your behavior? no. you will listen. you will act with care. you will act with respect.”
the baby did not understand his words, but she understood his tone. her eyes welled with tears, her little lip trembling.
the room fell silent. even the air seemed to hold its breath.
aerion’s chest rose and fell once more before he exhaled slowly. the tension eased, but the lesson remained. he lowered the youngest back into her chair, brushing a stray silver curl from her face.
“i will not repeat myself,” he said quietly now, voice steady.
the eldest nodded. the second sniffled. the third clutched her small blanket tightly. even the youngest sat subdued, aware that her father’s anger had weight.
with that, he straightened and left the room, leaving behind silence- and the lingering gravity of both his discipline and his devotion.
the next morning, the girls were unusually quiet.
aerion noticed it immediately as he entered the hall, his sharp gaze sweeping over them. the eldest sat cross-legged on the floor, arranging her books into neat stacks. the second and third were carefully straightening their puzzles and toys.
the youngest, entirely unbothered by the previous day’s storm, was tucked against your chest in the lounge chair by the window, nursing peacefully in the sunlight.
aerion raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms. “well?” he asked, voice even, though it carried enough weight to make all three older girls sit up straighter.
the eldest stepped forward first, holding out a small folded parchment. “father… i’m sorry for yesterday,” she said softly. “i’ll try to listen better.” her voice wavered, but her eyes were earnest.
aerion’s expression softened just a fraction. he nodded once. “good. i expect honesty, not excuses.”
the second and third followed. “we didn’t mean to upset you,” the second said. “we just… forgot ourselves.”
“you are forgiven,” he replied, voice steady but gentler now. “all of you. but remember- your actions have weight, even when you are little. that is all i ask.”
his gaze shifted then to you.
you sat comfortably by the window, sunlight spilling over your shoulders, the baby tucked securely against you. one tiny hand rested against your skin as she nursed, soft sighs escaping her.
aerion’s posture changed without him realizing it.
he uncrossed his arms and walked toward you.
the girls watched carefully. they knew this was the part where their father softened in ways he never did for anyone else.
he stopped beside your chair, looking down at the baby, then at you. his expression remained composed, but warmth moved unmistakably behind his eyes.
“she seems unaffected,” he murmured.
you smiled faintly. “she slept very well.”
the baby stretched lazily, one small foot pressing against your waist.
aerion’s hand rose almost unconsciously, brushing his knuckle over the crown of her head. slow. reverent. then his thumb drifted to your cheek, smoothing along your skin with the same quiet tenderness.
“you handled them gently,” you said.
“they required firmness,” he replied, though the edge from the night before was gone.
“they adore you,” you added.
at that, he glanced toward the other three girls, who were very obviously pretending not to listen.
four daughters.
a wife who steadied him.
“you see?” you teased softly. “you cannot stay angry at them.”
his mouth twitched. “i was not angry,” he said. “i was correcting them.”
you laughed quietly, and the sound settled something deep in his chest.
the baby finished nursing and shifted sleepily. aerion reached down and lifted her carefully from you, adjusting her against his shoulder with natural ease. he patted her back in slow, rhythmic motions, his gaze drifting toward the other three as they hovered nearby.
“breakfast,” he instructed calmly. “then lessons.”
the second groaned dramatically and his eyes flicked toward her.
“after breakfast,” he amended, “you may choose which lesson we begin with.”
all three girls gasped. “truly?” the third asked.
he gave a single nod.
you looked at him knowingly. “my love,” you murmured, amused, “you are spoiling them again.”
aerion adjusted the baby higher on his shoulder, perfectly composed.
“they apologized properly,” he said. “rewarding growth is not spoiling.”
the girls cheered softly and hurried toward the dining hall.
you rose slowly, stepping close enough that your shoulder brushed his arm. he leaned into the contact without thinking.
“you are a very devoted father,” you told him quietly, and you meant it.
in the years that followed, the kingdoms would hear of the daughters of the prince and princess targaryen. they were known to be strong, beautiful, intelligent- the perfect union of targaryen fire and their mother’s grace.
they inspired awe not through conquest, but through presence.
and at night, when you rested your head against aerion’s chest, listening to the steady thrum of his heart, you knew that in all the world there was no one who loved your daughters- or you- the way aerion targaryen did.
no boy could have carried what these girls would. no king, no heir, no sword could match their hearts, or the devotion their father poured into them.
they were his little dragons.
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