Synopsis: Sent as cheap bait to the wolf in his tower, a pawn to be traded for favor and power. He saw through the trap, but his holy restraint fell fast to a desire no scripture could taint. Now tangled in velvet, the plotting must cease—she wakes clad in green, and the fox is at peace.
Warnings: SMUT 18+, Unprotected Vaginal Sex, Emotional/Psychological Manipulation, implied Child Abuse, Dubcon, Pressure, implied Age Gap, Objectification, Pious/Religious Conflict, slight Slut Shaming, Loss of Virginity, Praise, Roughness
Word Count: 2.9k
A/N: based on this request
The air in the Hightower was always thick with the scent of beeswax, sea salt, and old parchment, but tonight, it felt heavy enough to choke her.
Her mother had personally laced her into the gown. It was a slip of silk the color of a bruised plum, far too low in the bodice, far too thin for the cool ocean breeze sweeping off the Whispering Sound.
”House Florent was built on the blood of the Greenhand,“ her father had hissed, his fingers digging into her shoulder until she bruised.
”We are Kings by right, yet we beg for scraps at the table of these upstart beacons. Do not return to your chambers tonight unless you have lain with him. Do you understand me? If you fail, we will wed you to the first greybeard trader who offers a sack of grain for your hand.“
Now, she stood outside the heavy oak doors of Lord Ormund Hightower’s private solar. Her hands, usually steady when she was arranging dried bluebells or copying ledgers for her House, were shaking so violently she had to press them against the cold stone wall to stop the trembling.
For months, she had been his shadow. A gift of a companion from a desperate vassal House. She had washed his hair, scrubbed his shoulders in the steaming bath, read him histories of the Reach, and poured his wine. Her parents had designed it as a slow venom, a gradual eroding of his defenses.
But tonight, they wanted the kill.
She knocked.
”Enter,“ came the deep, gravelly voice from within.
Ormund sat by the hearth, his heavy velvet doublet half-unbuttoned, a cup of arbor gold resting loosely in his hand. He looked tired—the weight of ruling Oldtown during a brewing civil war etched deep into the lines around his eyes.
But when he looked up and saw her, his gaze sharpened.
Ormund Hightower was a man who knelt before the Seven, a lord who took the solemn virtues of modesty and righteousness to heart. He had a deep, ingrained disdain for the vulgarities of the flesh, and seeing a noble daughter of the Reach paraded in such a way made his stomach turn with a cold, righteous disgust.
His eyes swept over her, hardening at the sight of the dress. It was a cheap, vulgar slip of a thing, far too thin and far too low, designed solely to strip her of her dignity and tempt his worst instincts. He despised the garment.
Yet, as the firelight caught her, his pious restraint faltered.
He did not miss the way the silk clung to her hips. For all his devotion to the Gods, a dark, heavy hunger warred violently with his disgust. He did not miss the way her collarbones stood out, sharp and pale, or the sheer terror in her eyes. His gaze traced the line of her throat with a decidedly mortal craving, his faith screaming at him to look away even as his own blood demanded he pull her closer.
”You are late,“ Ormund said softly, setting his cup down.
”I had assumed you had retired for the evening.“
”I... I wished to ensure you were comfortable before the night grew too old, my Lord,“ she lied, her voice high and tight.
She walked toward him, every step feeling like a march to the scaffold. When she reached his chair, she did not reach for the pitcher of wine as she usually did.
Instead, she knelt before him on the plush rug.
”Let me help you with your doublet, Lord Ormund,“ she whispered.
She reached up. Her fingers, cold and damp with sweat, brushed against the warm column of his throat as she fumbled with the first silver button. She tried to smile, tried to look like the seductive, willing temptress her mother had instructed her to be, but her lip trembled.
She moved to the second button, her knuckles grazing the smooth skin of his chest.
Crack.
Before she could undo the next fastening, Ormund’s hand shot out. His fingers, thick and calloused from a lifetime of swordplay, wrapped around her wrist. His grip was iron—not painful, but utterly immovable.
She froze, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
”What are you doing?“ Ormund asked. His voice was not angry, but it possessed a terrifying, quiet gravity that made her want to shrink into the floorboards.
”I am... serving you, my Lord,“ she stammered, trying to pull her hand back, but his grip did not waver.
”You are a daughter of House Florent,“ he said, his eyes scanning her face, reading every line of her panic.
”You are not a tavern wench, nor are you my maidservant. And yet you come into my chambers dressed in a… rag that leaves nothing to the imagination, trembling like a doe in winter, trying to undo my clothes. Who put you up to this?“
”No one! I– I wanted to–“
”Do not lie to me,“ he growled, the rumble vibrating in his chest. He pulled her wrist slightly, forcing her closer, until she was looking directly into his dark, penetrating eyes.
”I have tolerated your family’s obvious schemes because I found your company... agreeable. But this is pathetic. Is this what you want? To barter your virtue to a man old enough to be your uncle, just so your father can boast of a Hightower alliance?“
Ormund Hightower was not a dense man.
He had ruled Oldtown long enough to recognize a trap the moment it stepped through his doors, and he had seen the Florent girl’s parents for exactly what they were the day they arrived: vultures draped in blue and gold, desperate to claw their way back into the light of relevance. He had known, from the very first night she was sent to his chambers with shaking hands and downcast eyes, that she was the bait.
He should have sent her back. He should have barred his doors, insulted her father, and put an end to the pathetic game before it ever began.
But then she had touched him. Gently. Carefully. She had looked at him not as a stepping stone or a name, but as a man carrying a weight too heavy for his shoulders. And Ormund, hardened by years of politics and duty, had found himself letting the trap snap shut around him, simply because he craved the quiet sanctuary of her presence.
But this—this desperate, clumsy seduction—was an insult to the womanly grace he had come to admire. He could see the stark terror vibrating beneath her skin, the utter lack of desire in her trembling hands. It angered him. Not because she had tried, but because her family had driven her to such an impious brink.
The harsh truth of his words hit her like a physical blow. The shame, the months of quiet humiliation, the suffocating fear of what awaited her if she went back to her family empty-handed—it all boiled over.
A sob tore from her throat, hot and violent.
”You think I have a choice?“ she cried, the tears finally spilling over her flushed cheeks. She stopped trying to pull away from his grip and instead let her forehead fall against his knee.
”They will ruin me, my Lord! If I go back to my chambers tonight and he asks me if you touched me, and I say no... he will send me away. They will wed me to some cruel, ancient merchant in the Free Cities to pay off their debts. I have no choice. I have nothing.“
The silence in the room was absolute, save for the crackle of the hearth and the sound of her ragged breathing.
Then, the iron grip on her wrist softened.
Ormund’s hand slid up her arm, his thumb wiping a tear from her cheek. He reached down, hook-shaping his fingers under her chin, and gently forced her head up. The anger was gone from his face, replaced by a dark, simmering heat that sent a different kind of shiver down her spine.
”You foolish, beautiful girl,“ Ormund murmured, his voice dropping to a low, possessive register.
”You think I only tolerate you here because of your family?“
She blinked through her tears.
”My Lord?“
”Your father is a greedy fool who cannot see past his own shadow,“ Ormund said, his thumb trailing down to press against the center of her lower lip.
”He thought he was sending a lamb to tempt a wolf. He did not realize I have wanted you since the very first night you bathed me. I wanted you when you read to me. I wanted you when you laughed at my dry jests. But I would not take you while you looked at me with fear. I am no man who forces himself upon defenseless women.“
He leaned down, his face inches from hers. The scent of him—leather, woodsmoke, and heavy spices—overwhelmed her senses.
”Do you fear me now?“ he whispered.
”No,“ she breathed, and for the first time all night, it was the absolute truth. The terror of her parents was gone, replaced by a sudden, dizzying rush of desire.
”Good.“
Ormund stood up, pulling her with him. Before she could catch her breath, his hands found her waist, lifting her effortlessly and setting her down on the edge of his heavy oak desk. The papers and maps scattered across it rustled and slid to the floor, but neither of them cared. He stepped directly between her thighs, his massive frame looming over her, blocking out the rest of the cold room.
When his mouth met hers, it was hungry, demanding, and utterly consuming. She let out a soft whimper into his mouth, her hands flying to his hair, pulling him closer as the last of her restraints snapped. He tasted of sweet wine and raw warmth.
His hands moved down her body, bunching the thin plum silk of her gown, the rough skin of his palms dragging up the bare, sensitive skin of her outer thighs. The contrast was electric, a stark jolt of heat to her senses.
”You are mine,“ Ormund growled against her neck, his teeth gently nipping the sensitive juncture where her shoulder met her throat. He left a trail of burning, wet kisses down her collarbone.
”Not your father’s. Not House Florent’s. Mine.“
”Yes,“ she gasped, her hands slipping beneath his heavy velvet doublet, desperate to feel the warmth of his skin. Her fingers dug into his broad, muscular shoulders.
”Yours, my Lord. Please.“
His hands found the laces of her bodice. With a fierce, impatient tug, he loosened the silk, peeling the flimsy fabric down to her waist and exposing her breasts to the warm firelight. Ormund let out a low, ragged breath at the sight of her, his gaze possessive and heavy. He cupped her breast in his large hand, his thumb rubbing over her tight nipple before leaning down to take her into his mouth. She arched off the desk with a breathy sob, her fingers tangling desperately in his hair as his tongue swirled and teased her, sending sharp, deep aches straight to her core.
The thick plum silk was completely stripped from her now, cast onto the floor along with his heavy doublet. Ormund’s hands were everywhere—bruisingly tight on her hips, smoothing over the curve of her waist, parting her thighs further until she was completely open to him. He slid two fingers down, finding her already slick and aching for him.
When he touched her, she gasped, her legs wrapping instinctively around his waist to pull him closer. Ormund growled, his fingers moving inside her with a torturously slow, curling rhythm that made her hips twist in desperate search of friction. He watched her face, drinking in the flushed cheeks, her parted lips, and the soft, pleading whimpers she was unable to hold back.
”Look at me,“ Ormund commanded, his voice thick and rough with desire.
She forced her heavy eyes open, staring into his dark, burning gaze. He reached down, undoing his breeches and freeing his thick, aching length. He pressed the hot crown of his member against her dripping entrance, teasing her slowly until she was crying out, begging him to end the sweet torture.
”My Lord, please...“
He did not make her beg any longer. With a slow, deliberate thrust, he began to sink himself inside her.
He caught the sudden, sharp hitch in her breath, the way her fingers clawed into his shoulders not just with desire, but with a sudden, rigid shock. As he met the thin, unmistakable barrier of her innocence, Ormund froze.
His dark eyes went wide, his breathing stopping entirely as he looked down at her flushed, tear-stained face. A virgin. The realization hit him like a physical blow. Her parents had not just sent a daughter to tempt him; they had been willing to throw her entire virtue into the dirt for a scrap of influence—a poor, untainted maiden used as bait for influence.
”Ormund,“ she whimpered, her hips trembling beneath his hands.
”Hush,“ he murmured softly, his voice thick with a sudden, reverent tenderness. He did not pull back. Instead, he leaned down, pressing his forehead against hers, his large hands anchoring her hips so she was unable to retreat.
”I have you. Look at me. Just look at me.“
With a single, deep, and heavy push, he broke through, sealing their bodies completely. She let out a high, breathless cry against his lips, but Ormund caught it, soothing the sharp sting with deep, consuming kisses until the tension in her thighs began to melt, yielding entirely to him.
When he began to move, it was with a heavy, driving rhythm that echoed in the quiet solar. Every thrust was deep and unhurried, a relentless reclamation of her body. The friction of their bodies, the heat radiating from his skin, and the wet, slick sounds of their union filled the space between them. She was entirely undone, her head rolling back against the dark wood of his desk as he drove deeper and faster, his large hands anchoring her hips to meet every powerful stroke.
”You feel perfect,“ Ormund groaned against her ear, his breathing ragged, his chest slick with sweat as it pressed against her breasts.
”So drenched... so sweet.“
The pleasure built rapidly, a coiled spring tightening in her lower abdomen. She clung to him, her muscles clamping tightly around him with every thrust, pushing them both closer to the edge.
Ormund’s pace turned fierce, almost desperate, his movements losing their careful control as he chased his own release. He hit her deepest spot again and again until she convulsed around him, her vision blurring as a shattering, breathless climax overtook her, her voice crying his name into the rafters.
Hearing her come undone broke his last hold on his restraint. With a couple of heavy, deep thrusts, Ormund threw his head back, a low, guttural roar tearing from his chest as he came deep inside her, his body shuddering violently with the force of his release.
The pale, grey light of dawn was just beginning to peek through the heavy velvet drapes when she opened her eyes.
There was no sudden panic. No frantic urge to scramble out of the bed and gather her ruined plum dress.
For the first time in months, the suffocating weight in her chest was entirely gone, replaced by the deep, heavy warmth of the goose-down mattress and the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of the chest beneath her cheek.
She lay perfectly still, listening to the quiet of the Hightower and the breathing of its lord.
She felt safe. Protected.
A calloused thumb gently brushed against her temple, smoothing back a stray lock of hair. She turned her head to find Ormund already awake behind her, propped up on one elbow.
”You look beautiful in my bed,“ he murmured, his voice deep and raspy with early morning sleep.
He slid his hand down to the nape of her neck, his fingers tangling in her hair to gently tilt her head further back.
She did not ask what would happen now. She did not have to. The unspoken understanding of last night hung heavy in the warm air between them—or maybe it was just the naive part of her that hoped so.
”Your father is likely awake by now,“ Ormund said, his thumb trailing down to trace the line of her jaw, his expression hardening slightly into something cold and calculating.
”No doubt pacing his chambers, waiting for you to return with a report of your... success.“
He leaned down, pressing a soft, lingering kiss to her forehead, then to the tip of her nose, before looking her dead in the eye.
”But you are not going back to those quarters,“ he declared, his voice carrying the absolute, unshakeable authority of the Lord of Oldtown.
”And you are never wearing that cheap plum silk again. You will wear green. From this morning on, you belong in the High Tower—in my bed. With me.“
He sat up, the heavy furs slipping down to his waist as he looked toward the heavy oak doors of his chamber. A dangerous, victorious smile played on his lips.
”Let your father wonder where you are. By midday, I will summon him here to negotiate the price of his silence—and your permanent stay.“
Everyone's talking about Artemis II, the first humans to travel to the moon in 50 years
Historic, right? BUT nobody's talking about the Deaf people who made it possible.
In the late 1950's, NASA had a problem.
They needed to understand what weightlessness did to the human body but every test subject kept getting violently motion sick
NASA needed to figure out FAST during the space race!
So, they went to Gallaudet University. They recruited 11 Deaf people.
Because a number of Deaf people had lost their hearing to spinal meningitis as children which also damaged their vestibular system.
Their inner ears couldn't be overwhelmed. They were immune to motion sickness.
NASA put them in centrifuges. Put them on zero gravity flights. A room for 12 straight days.
(All caps) It rotated the entire time.
One experiment on a ferry in choppy Nova Scotia waters, the researchers got so seasick they had to cancel it. The Gallaudet Eleven? They were playing cards.
Their bodies gave NASA the data and research it needed to send humans into space.
No Gallaudet Eleven? No Mercury. No Apollo. No Artemis II.
They stood on the shoulders of 11 Deaf people most people have never heard of.
Ormund "I am going to wed a Targaryen and my seed with purify the wickiness of their tainted blood," Hightower, ends up having a wife and kids that look like they just arrived straight from Valyria
I find it so funny that Aegon and Aemond both resent each other because they each think the other was Alicent’s favourite when she was going to sacrifice Aegon to Rhaenyra, manipulated Aemond to leave and let Rhaenyra take the throne, sent Daeron away practically at birth and tried to force an abortion on Helaena. If she has a favourite among Viserys’s children it ain’t any of her own four.
ormund arrives in king's landing expecting to witness the corruption of daeron's siblings, just to find you---a shy, sweet-smelling targaryen.
obsessive!ormund and afab!reader, scent kink, imaginations of grooming, mentions of ormund dubconing you, good ol hightower sexism, male masturbation, no descriptions of reader are used, this is kinda giving frollo tf, // wc: 2.6K // drabble idea post // @cursed-carmine as credit for the divider // may turn this into a full-on fic idk but hope u enjoy
When Ormund is invited to King's Landing, he comes expecting a vile decadence that he will mislike and mislike only. He knows himself so. The court, he finds, is loud and gaudy. King Viserys is much weaker than Alicent's letters suggested. There was, unfortunately, no expectation that the man would reek of disease as much as he does.
But he expected Aegon to be exactly as...undisciplined as the rumors claim, and that's him being as munificent as he can. Aemond, on the other hand, Ormund can sense the boy's chaotic resentment without him speaking a word. This is no surprise.
He expected to find his cousin's children thoroughly spoiled by their father’s weakness and their own blasphemous blood, and although it is not in his right to crowly boast, he's sure all the effort he's put into raising Daeron has been a triumph.
That is true enough, looking at his brothers. This, again, he had all expected.
But Ormund does not think to expect you.
You are the youngest daughter of Alicent and Viserys, a soft-spoken princess hidden between your unabashed, strange siblings. He is more than aware of your letters to Daeron, ones he used to personally oversee earlier in the boy's youth until the scribbled nonsense of childhood conversation began to bore him.
It was unassuming enough that he didn't think much of you in concept, and that seems to be the same for the rest of your family.
Have you been overlooked often enough that gentleness somehow settles in you?
He watches you lower your gaze when others address you. You thank servants for the most meager of mandatory tasks. And Ormund is sure, when he makes the mistake of having his attention linger too long on you, that your cheeks warm without you helping it.
It lingers solely due to curiosity, really, because it is your scent that creeps around the corner before you do.
The first breath of you, through the stale smells of the Red Keep, seizes him.
Ormund would be right to claim that you smell of devilish temptation. Temptation has been given a body...of immense beauty. My, he has to keep hold of himself upright before you even curtsy.
What is this fucking nonsense that he has been met with?
"My lord."
He finds you to be a quiet, shy, gracious thing. Quiet, shy, gracious, presumably drenched in lavender and vanilla.
…Possibly something hazel-esque, something floral, but it's a pleasant feminine oil, he tells himself. Nothing more than an indulgence that any disciplined man like himself could withstand. He has dealt with the likes of common whores throwing himself at him. Your scent, your beauty. No fucking matter.
But...you bow your head, eyes lowered. Is he the first man of the day to make you timid?
The thought soothes Ormund from the way your scent seeps into his throat as you do.
What had seemed floral grows intimate on your skin, as if the sweetness rises from the pulse at your throat and escapes your lips! It clings, clings, clings to the inside of his nose. He can even still smell you after you leave the room, this isolent savor of a Targaryen girl. Have you left it to linger to test him? Must be.
Ormund's resentment of you grows quickly. Quiet, shy, gracious. He'd rather you be brazen, but no, no---you are what he deduces to be silently deceptive. How else would the Gods challenge him?
"I praise you for your propriety, princess."
A Targaryen princess cannot simply be gentle. If there is gentleness in such blood, it must be a lure. It could very well be that your Valyrian instinct has been only made subtle by Alicent's upbringing. In his time in the Red Keep, he witnesses all the signs of your mother's influence.
There is your careful words, reverence for the Seven...
Alicent has done commendable work. At the very least, she has managed to raise one dragon properly. You laugh when he tells you so.
"Your mother’s influence is apparent. She did well in caring for one Targaryen. As have I."
Well enough that the boy is more Hightower than anything.
"I presume my little brother is perfect?"
You humor Ormund with your tease behind your fingers, shyly. Do you think even your amusement requires apology? How intolerable.
How good.
The conversation delves into your wonder about your brother. Beneath all your courtly restraint is a painful hunger to know the boy. Ormund does not know what to make of your questions. Is he happy? Does he have friends? Why has he stopped drawing dragons and swords in his letters to you?
It is a mutually beneficial talk, as he answers with more pride than the questions warrant. He'd ask for forgiveness in the light of the Seven if his claims weren't true.
Daeron is very diligent. Courteous and devout. Well with a sword, regardless of the humble lies within his correspondence with you.
He speaks of you more than he speaks of his other siblings. Yes, that's not saying much, but it's as if he could possibly have any memories to miss you by.
"Oh, good! I'm glad he has had your love and care to bear, Lord Ormund."
At that, Ormund begins imagining what might have happened had you been sent to Oldtown too.
...He could have raised you more than properly.
The guardian he could've been to you, a firm hand set upon a promising but dark flower. The girl he imagines, rising in the Starry Sept and repeating prayers after him.
You'd learn his approval is a priority...
And that his displeasure demands the occasional punishment. He could've cut away every filthified tendency inherited from your father’s blood before it bloomed, even though he has not seen much of it from you, saved for the cunning scent.
By womanhood, obedience would come so naturally that you would never think to call it surrender or suffering, as young women who deny the natural order of things so often do. His voice might have lived inside your currently unknowable mind.
These thoughts horrify him, but only because they are a fucking waste. They are nothing more than fantasy, and it is fantasy that makes him feel cheated of the opportunity of taming you to be rewarded until pleasing him feels no different from virtue itself, if your mother did well enough to teach you virtue's importance.
Nevermind, to the bane of his being here.
"Might I ask what perfume it is that you wear, princess?"
You place a palm on your chest, and Ormund's gaze follows in a way he will never name as helpless.
"I do not know the exact mixture, my lord. My handmaid prepares it differently every other morning. Sometimes I think it is lavender, but I believe she will use vanilla. Do you...mislike it?"
"I find it pleasant, but excessive." He nearly slaps your hand when you reach for your neck, where you must've applied it earlier. "But there is no need to apologize or to alter your habits on my account."
You nod.
"...As you wish, my lord."
Those words follow him into the night. Your scent does too, along with the dangerous, indulgent thought that, perhaps, you are not beyond salvage.
Your soul, despite the dark of your blood, might still be trained into something as lovely as the way you smell.
It lingers in galleries after you have left and blooms in halls where you passed an hour before. He swears on it! It is through no fault of his own that he can scent your movements through the Red Keep like a fucking hound dog---which chair the princess has occupied at supper, that the flight of stairs he walks upon just had her in its grasp.
No. It is not his fault. You linger, and if this is all done with sneaked intention, Ormund would have every right to call you a cunning whore. To lead the overseer of Oldtown astray with some perfumed concoction, to play sweet and innocent to have him believe you good. Yes, every right indeed.
It gets to the very point that Ormund could also have every right to claim he is merely observing a threat. Temptation should be studied before it can be mastered, yes?
Yes, he shall lecture Daeron on this when he arrives home.
"You are the princess's handmaid, yes? I require a favor of you. She has informed me that you mix her oils yourself. What does it contain?"
The need to find the exact ingredients that cause him to bear this dangerous curiosity is great enough that he corners---happens upon your handmaid in a quiet passage.
She lists them. Ormund smiles.
"I require a vial. Just one."
"...A vial?"
"For examination only."
He certainly does not appreciate the cautious look that grows on the young woman's face. She blinks in confusion. "...My lord?"
"Do you require me to repeat everything? The fragrance is unusually strong, and I only wish to determine whether it may affect those sensitive to such things. I will compensate you for your efforts...as long as you do not trouble the princess with the matter."
The maid agrees. And how funny is it that a successfully coerced cooperation of a young bitch maid who can't keep her expressions to herself makes him fear the possibility that he was...diminished by said conversation.
No matter, he was not, even a scholar such as himself bears insecurities. The vial arrives that evening, carried by a servant in a cloth.
Ormund opens it and brings it to his nose. It is, up close, a wonderful scent.
...And utterly fucking lifeless!
Every ingredient is present, yes, yet it does not seize him nor make his blood simmer hot beneath his divine flesh as it did when you first bowed to him, and he to you.
There is no instant thought, with the vial to his nose, of your neck against his tongue or your skirts pushed above your thighs that he has yet to see. Where is it, sweet whore? That ravenous need to bury his face in your bosom and how deeply your perfume seeps?
The missing ingredient is you. Is it your warmth that causes your scent to thrive? Your skin? May the Seven forbid that it might be your filthy, ancient blood he has spent his life regarding as savage.
The irony in the thought is strong when Ormund knows you pass his chamber.
He is only rubbing the oil into his wrist with force just before you do, damning the thing to take him whole as you did, sniffing the---alright, pathetic attempt to reconstruct you from its lifeless ingredients while the fantasies worsen and turn his temper to frustration.
The laugh he hears you give as you pass follows your true scent.
It somehow floods the room and puts the counterfeit oil to shame. It upon his nose, his wrists...his elbows, it all turns offensive, to the point where Ormund rises from his chair so quickly that it screeches against the stoney floor as the life of your lush, warm savor burns itself into the back of his throat.
The moment when he nearly makes the weak mistake of opening the door is wild. The only moments a somewhat untrained Targaryen can produce, it seems.
He has half a tempted mind to call you inside under some pretense concerning your little brother. He imagines your eyes of startled confusion when you find the vial in his hand, your stammer when you realize he has obtained the scent you wear on your skin?
Would it give you a fright? Would it flatter you? Would sweat deepen the scent as blood rushed to your cheeks?
...And, hopefully, untouched cunt?
Ormund's cock hardens painfully at the thought.
He braces himself against the desk, breathing the last traces of you from the corridor. Cruelly, barely...it is enough to turn your slightest corruption of him into bodily need.
Ormund thinks it fair, he has given you the satisfaction of his temporary ruin, as well as happy thoughts of the brother you can only remember as a babe.
It is just enough.
He opens his breeches by the laces, yanking them and letting his cock spring free. He's already leaking at the tip when he turns the vial down to slather the thick oil over the length of his shaft. It's slick, warm, how he imagines the glide of your cunt would be.
He wraps his fist around himself and strokes at a brutal pace. His eyes close, and there is only the picture of you beneath him---shy no longer, your knees parted with force, your mouth trembling those little my lords until you are brave enough to say his name.
As he pumps with friction, the skin of his cock pulling in the twist of his sticky palm, there you are, arching your back as he claims you in fantasy. He would be gentle at first, you have to be with a woman in the beginning. He's sure he must convince you that there is no shame in yielding to a man better equipped to govern you.
The whole of you.
Ormund presses his scented wrist against his mouth. The oil is bitter upon his lips. Still wrong, and the inadequacy only drives him to pump faster, near frantic---he humps his own stroking, precum-covered hand.
Imagination is what he must make do with to supply your warm skin where there is only his own. The man can almost feel your cunt, tight, dripping the way the oil does against his thighs. Oh, how you would welcome his thickness while he whispers filth into your ear. Filth that will be forgiven.
Or easily justified. Well, welcomed? Welcomed...that Ormund cannot be too sure of.
Even with the mother of bastards leading the line to the throne as your half-sister, which is why he cannot also be sure of your own virtue...would you welcome him so easily? Seems unfathomable that you wouldn't, but...
...Once again, a firm hand comes to mind.
Only as his hips begin to jerk, boots sounding out against stone as he hunches over the desk.
Ormund would have to make you acknowledge what your scent has done to him, make you hold his gaze while your breath against the leftover mess you leave upon his aching cock, and if you were good enough, he would tell you how wickedly sweet you must taste, and that you must try you for yourself.
Firmness would do well enough to make you understand that kindness does not leave you harmless, nor does it mean you can move through any hall he paces, leaving your scent for him to find, and expect him to think you honorable of wholesome fucking thought!
...But there can be redemption if you confess what you have done.
Ormund's breath turns harsher, the tight knot in his balls demanding release. The thrusts into his fist burn violent, and he can only bite his lip and groan against his teeth. The oil fills his nostrils fully, and it brings him to the brink of his own pleasure.
"Gods!"
Past the point of no return, you bring him.
With one final, squeezing stroke, Ormund lets out a calmorous groan as his body shudders. His breaths come in quickened hitches, but his ropes of cum splattered across stone and wood in long ropes, long enough that he can pump himself through the mess.
He milks his cock and leaves himself completely spent once finished. If sin had a smell, it would be what he has to wash his shaft of. His wrist. His lips. He looks at the vial with disgust. He must be rid of the rest, surely...
The matter requires further thought, at least until morning---where, in your own chambers of the Red Keep, you wake without the faintest fucking idea that Lord Ormund Hightower has begun resenting...
Dreaming of how beautifully you will bloom under his hand.
Lady Arianwyn Targaryen of Runestone, was not born of love. Nor passion. Nor even a sense of duty. She was seeded by her father, the Rogue Prince Daemon Targaryen, in an act of unbridled hatred, and borne of her mother, the late Lady Rhea Royce, as a desperate grasp at revenge.
But even a child born of such darkness can find her way to the light.
With her mother dead, and father flown across the Narrow Sea with a new wife, the girl is taken in by her Aunt, the Queen Alicent Hightower, to be raised among the little family she has left. There, she finds her cousin, Prince Aemond Targaryen.
As they grow, the two find themselves indelibly bonded. The two spend long nights in the palace library together, studying the histories of both Old Valyria and the First Men, seeking to understand who they are and where they fit in the world.
But finding that place proves more difficult than in the fairy tales they read. The seeds of disaster were laid long before they were born, and as tensions in the family rise, it seems as though their places may begin to diverge.
Will they let themselves be pulled apart as the dragons dance?
Chapter 1: The Bronze Bitch's Daughter
Prince Daemon Targaryen has grown tired of his Lady wife, the “Bronze Bitch” Rhea Royce. But he is not so easily rid of her. She survives not only his brutal attack, but his cruel violation of her. Though she remains broken and weak, she endures just long enough to deliver a child: a girl of silver hair and steely eyes.
Archived Version
Chapter 2: Youth
Arianwyn and Aemond grow side-by-side.
Chapter 3: The Bench
On Arianwyn’s tenth nameday, a grand reception is held in her honor. Though most guests are not in attendance for the Lady of Runestone, but rather the Princess Rhaenyra, who is mere weeks away from giving birth. But Arianwyn does not care, for Aemond is there. And he has a present for her.
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Chapter 4: The Book
Though Arianwyn wants nothing more than to devour the book Aemond gifted her, she finds herself tear her mind from Aegon’s taunting words. But as she recalls a difficult conversation with her cousin and lady’s maid from the night before, she decides that perhaps she does not want to be married – ever.
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Chapter 5: Rune of Endurance
Over the next few months, the young scholars begin to make their own translations of the Runes of the First Men. However, the lives of a Prince and a Lady are not all leisure. After a harrowing encounter in the Dragonpit, Aemond needs Arianwyn to comfort him.
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Chapter 6: The Funeral
As the Targaryen and Velaryon households gather on Driftmark to mourn the late Lady Laena, Arianwyn is anxious about meeting not only her half-sisters, but her father for the very first time.
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Chapter 7: Cold Fire
Having been worse than ignored by Daemon at the funeral, Arianwyn finally comes face to face with her father.
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Chapter 8: The Beach
After overhearing a conversation between Prince Daemon and Corlys Velaryon at dinner, Aemond recruits Arianwyn to help him achieve a lifelong dream.
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Chapter 9: The Tunnel
On their way back from the beach, Aemond and Arianwyn are confronted by their four furious cousins.
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Chapter 10: The Decisions of Fathers
Aemond is permanently maimed, Arianwyn wounded. As their family quarrels over how to deal with the aftermath of the fight, all they can do is cling to each other.
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Chapter 11: Prayer
Faced with the possibility of their separation, Aemond joins Arianwyn in prayer.
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Chapter 12: Dearest Friend
As Arianwyn adapts to her new surroundings, and Aemond heals from his wound, the pair take comfort in the letters they exchange.
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Chapter 13: The Girl in the Tower
With the knowledge that she will not soon be released from her father’s control, Arianwyn finds what comforts she can on Dragonstone, and receives a gift from Aemond.
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Chapter 14: The Sapphire
Aemond struggles to adjust to Arianwyn’s absence. But on his fifteenth nameday, Ser Gerold Royce arrives with a bronze-wrapped present.
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Chapter 15: The Garden
For the first time in the long years she’s been on Dragonstone, Princess Rhaenyra asks for Arianwyn to join her for a walk in the gardens.
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Chapter 16: A Holy Sight
At long last, Arianwyn returns to King’s Landing.
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Chapter 17: The Legend of Gahaelon and Aeremys
After being reunited after so long, Aemond has one request of Arianwyn: to read him a story.
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Chapter 18: Families
Arianwyn is joyfully greeted by Queen Alicent, Princess Helaena, and her young children. But the happy reunion is soon ended as she is called to attend dinner with her Daemon, Rhaenyra, and their children.
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Chapter 19: The Petition
When Vaemond Velaryon petitions the Crown to grant him succession of Driftmark, Arianwyn is faced with her worst fears.
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Chapter 20: Final Tribute
Arianwyn delays her escape to attend the King’s family dinner to say goodbye to Aemond. But emotions run high, and a final toast may jeopardize her plans.
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Chapter 21: The Library
Daemon confronts his daughter.
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Chapter 22: Beneath the Weirwood Tree
Arianwyn meets Aemond in the Godswood.
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Chapter 23: The Bedding
To prevent Daemon from contesting their marriage, Aemond and Arianwyn proceed with the Bedding Ceremony.
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Art by @lonelymagpies
Chapter 24: The Shears
The following morning, Aemond and Arianwyn tell the Queen of what happened. But they soon realize an important figure is missing.
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Chapter 25: The Trial of Brynna Taler
Aemond, Arianwyn, and Queen Alicent race to find Brynna.
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Chapter 26: The Aftermath
With their marriage blessed by Daemon himself, Aemond and Arianwyn enjoy their first day of marriage despite its tumultuous beginning.
Was originally made up of three chapters: The Breakfast, The Women, and Pillow Talk.
Chapter 27: Vhagar & Emrys
Aemond & Arianwyn take both their first dragonflight and bath together.
Was originally made up of two chapters: Vhagar & Emrys & The Bath
Chapter 28: The Red Wolf and the King
Arianwyn is called away to fulfill a promise she made to Prince Jaehaerys. After, she has an audience with her uncle Viserys.
Was originally made up of two chapters: Storytime and The King
Chapter 29: The Sound of His Voice
After her visit with the King, Arianwyn returns to her husband.
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Chapter 3: The Search
Aemond and Arianwyn awake with grand plans of spending another day together. But they are met with the news that the King has died in the night, leaving not only their plans unsure, but the fate of the realm.
Was originally made up of two chapters: The First Death and The Search
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Chapter 31: Hearths
While waiting for Aemond, Arianwyn visits Princess Rhaenys. When Aemond returns, his mind races. As he descends deeper and deeper into the darkest recesses of his mind, Arianwyn finally learns what secrets he has been keeping from her.
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Chapter 32: The Coronation
Aemond wakes from a vivid dream. The family gathers at the Dragonpit to crown Aegon.
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Chapter 33: The Beast Beneath the Boards
Chaos erupts at the coronation and Princess Rhaenys, mounted on her dragon, Meleys, bursts from beneath the floor of the Dragonpit.
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Chapter 34: The Feast
Though the events of the coronation cast a dark cloud, a feast is held at the Red Keep in celebration. Aemond makes a decision, and Arianwyn dances with the new King.
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Chapter 35: The Small Council
A plan is made to secure the support of the kingdoms. Unfortunately for Aemond, that plan involves sending Arianwyn on a diplomatic mission. Alone.
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Chapter 36: The Long Goodbye
Aemond and Arianwyn mount their dragons to fly in separate directions. But not before saying goodbye.
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Chapter 37: Three Days, Part I
On the first day they have spent apart since they were wed, Aemond and Arianwyn fly far away from each other on missions for the new King.
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Chapter 38: Three Days, Part II
In the Vale, Arianwyn receives a wedding present from Ser Gerold and has a candid discussion with her Godsmother. At Storm's End, Aemond goes on a tumultuous hunt with Borros Baratheon. Both are met with unpleasant interruptions to their missions.
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Chapter 39: Three Days, Part III
Aemond returns to King's Landing. Arianwyn tells the Vale the truth.
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Chapter 40: The Curse of the Kinslayer
Arianwyn returns to King’s Landing triumphant, having not only won the support of the Vale, but by striking a great political blow to Daemon. But her feeling of triumph is quickly shattered when she learns that Aemond has already returned – with blood on his hands.
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Chapter 41: The Silence
Arianwyn wakes in Aemond's arms and faces the fact that her world has changed irrevocably.
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Chapter 42: The Truth
Now that Aemond has broken his silence, what truths will he reveal?
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Chapter 43: The Brothers' Lament
Arianwyn hides something from her husband and ends up encountering his brother, King Aegon. Aemond wakes alone.
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Companion Stories
Daemon POV
Lord Flea Bottom's Heir
Daemon had expected to be welcomed with the news of his wife's demise when he returned to King's Landing. Instead, he is greeted with the decidedly unwelcome news that the Bitch was to give him an heir. His plans to finally take Rhaenyra to wife thoroughly dashed, he leaves the Red Keep behind to wallow in his own domain: Flea Bottom.
summary: the seventh day approaches, and you test ormund's restraint.
pairing: ormund hightower x targtower!reader
content/warnings: 18+ (mdni), SMUT, dubcon, pussy inspection, fingering, edging, orgasm denial, spanking with belt, male masturbation, forced bathing, nudity, voyeurism, slut-shaming, jealousy, aftercare (...i think?), physical intimidation/rough handling, DADDY ISSUES!!, emotional manipulation, religious abuse and religious guilt, canon-typical incest (cousins), age gap (~20 years), icky guardian/ward relationship, canon-typical misogyny, canon-divergent, no use of y/n
word count: 12k (i blacked out around 5k tbh)
A/N: surprise!! got this chapter out a bit early! guys...what has this man done to my psyche. i'm writing shit i am not even into but since it's him i'm WET!!! this is a long one and i tried my best to proofread, but i'm sure i've missed some things so apologies if it's a lil wonky! sooo thankful for all the love on part I and i hope part II meets your expectations! mr. roxxmo and i are moving houses (yay!) this weekend so that's why the final part of the series will be a bit later. will try to do headcannons or short oneshots if i have the time, and as usual, if i can get part III out before schedule i absolutely will! <3
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MASTERLIST
finale → (COMING 7/31)
The feast unfolded as such evenings always did.
Like the rest of the ancient tower, the Great Hall of the Hightower was composed of whitewashed limestone, its vaulted ceiling rising so high that you sometimes wondered where it ended. As children, you and the Hightower boys would race beneath it, shouting up to hear your voices echo through the chamber. Great tapestries of Hightower green adorned the walls, each depicting the house’s victories in battle alongside scenes devoted to the Faith of the Seven. No matter where you went in the Hightower, the Seven followed.
Tonight, the hall was filled with noble houses from across the Reach. Lords and ladies moved between the long oak tables, drinking, laughing, and otherwise partaking in every sort of merriment before the coming days of tiresome discussions of taxes, grains, and preparations for the season’s harvest.
You sat where you always did: at the head table, on Ormund’s right. In the very place once occupied by the late Lady Hightower. You had done everything he asked after the solar. Your women had pressed damp cloths to your tear-swollen eyes and pinched color back into your cheeks. They had laced you into the embroidered sky-blue gown Ormund preferred, its neckline high enough to preserve modesty, yet low enough that anyone seated too near might glimpse the suggestion of your bosom. You had been washed, gathered, and arranged once more into the woman he had made of you, with every trace of your momentary lapse carefully hidden away.
Ormund had been pleased. He spoke none of Lord Godric Ashford or the excitement in the solar. He simply conducted himself as he usually did at such feasts, discussing philosophy and politics with the visiting lords, occasionally asking for your thoughts and praising you to anyone who would listen– commending how wise his ward was, how faithfully you attended the sept. All the while, his hand remained on your thigh beneath the table, squeezing gently as his thumb moved back and forth over the silk. Just as he usually did.
This should have pleased you. His touch always did. Tonight, though, your mind was muddled with flashes of memories.
The conversation with Lord Ashford you were not meant to hear. Ormund’s rings cutting into your face as he gripped your chin. The cool sheets of his bed twisted in your fists. His hand at your waist, his voice low as he hushed you and told you to be still.
The seventh day.
Following Lady Hightower in the Citadel, your small hand tucked in hers. Playing in the gardens with the Hightower boys. The letter from your queen mother coldly explaining why you could not visit the Red Keep on your sixteenth nameday. The burning pressure. Entering. Stretching. Confessing.
The seventh day.
Ser Joldwin Mormont and the ashes of his fur-trimmed cloak. Lying across Ormund’s bare chest afterward, listening to the rhythmic beat of his heart. His lips against yours, tasting faintly of wine. Watching one of your siblings’ dragons fly overhead, its giant shadow blackening the earth.
The seventh day.
Being held. The knowledge you were never truly wanted.
The seventh day.
“You are fidgeting.”
Ormund’s voice broke whatever spell your thoughts had cast over you.
You lowered your head. “I am sorry, my lord.”
Ormund hummed. Beneath the table, his hand shifted higher on your thigh, pressing into the soft flesh through the silk of your gown. The feast carried on around you, laughter mingling with the chords of lyres and flutes as they echoed through the Great Hall. No one could see the way their host groped you in plain sight. “Are you thinking of tonight?”
Yes, you were. And of so much more. “No, my lord.”
“You appear sad.” He leaned closer, his mouth brushing the shell of your ear, and you shivered. “Have you a reason to be?”
You shook your head quickly. “None, my lord.”
“Good,” he murmured. “Then stop pouting so unbecomingly before our guests and smile.”
You obeyed, because you always did. You arranged your lips into something soft and pleasant, as he liked. Ormund grinned in return and squeezed your thigh once more, hard. “Much better, my dear.”
“Lord Hightower! I do hope we are not intruding, but I simply had to introduce myself properly to your esteemed ward.”
Ormund’s hand stilled upon you, though he had not yet removed it.
A broad, heavyset man stood before the head table, clad in a fine orange doublet. The wine cup in his hand was filled to the brim, sloshing around as he gestured. Drink had reddened his round, bearded face, and a crooked grin seemed fixed upon it. Behind him stood a tall young man with dark curly hair, fine features, and bright brown eyes. Those eyes were fixed entirely upon you. Something in his look sent warmth rushing into your cheeks.
“Lord Ashford,” Ormund greeted tensely. As the man drew nearer, Ormund briefly brushed one finger beneath his nose, the faintest crease appearing between his brows. “I was under the impression that only your son would attend the harvest feast this season. It is a… surprise to see you here as well.”
“And miss the finest wine in the Reach?” Lord Ashford chortled, lifting his cup so enthusiastically that a little spilled over the rim and onto the marble floor. Ormund’s eye twitched as he looked at the puddle. “Of course I had to come.”
Lord Robert Ashford. You knew of him, if not the man himself. He was said to be kind, if somewhat silly, with a particular weakness for feasts and fine drink, but there was not one wicked thing about him. Which meant the young man standing behind him must be…
“And this is my son, Godric,” Lord Ashford continued, stepping to the side with a proud flourish to the young man behind him. “Though I understand the two of you require little introduction. He spoke with you earlier about a certain…someone, did he not, Lord Hightower?”
Godric coughed. “Father–”
“Oh, the boy has heard such wonderful things about the princess,” Lord Ashford went on, tipsy enough he was either failing to notice his son’s embarrassment or actively choosing to ignore it. “Her grace, her devotion to the Seven, and of course I would be remiss not to mention her beauty. I fear he has scarcely spoken of anything else since the prospect of betrothal was–”
“Father, please,” Godric interrupted him, a flush creeping above the collar of his doublet. “I am certain the princess has no wish to hear you recite every private conversation we have shared.”
Lord Ashford chuckled and clapped a broad hand against his son’s shoulder. “There is no shame in admiring a fine young lady. Nor, surely, in allowing two young people the opportunity to become better acquainted.”
Ormund’s fingers pressed so deeply into your thigh that you were certain they would leave marks. You did not dare look at him, though you imagined his face had gone terrifyingly blank.
Oblivious to the storm gathering beside you, Godric bowed. “It is an honor to meet you properly, Princess.”
Remembering Ormund’s warning in the solar– and with his hand still gripping you beneath the table– you offered Godric only the smallest inclination of your head before lowering your eyes once more.
“The honor is mine, my lord,” you murmured.
Godric smiled. Ormund, however, did not.
“Lord Ashford, I am not sure if your son made you aware of the extent of our earlier discussion,” Ormund moved the hand that was on your thigh to the back of your chair. “He made his intentions sufficiently clear. As did I with him.”
Lord Ashford’s crooked smile lowered. “Well, yes…Godric did tell me some of the conversation. But I had hoped that perhaps, upon further reflection–”
“There is nothing upon which to reflect.”
Silence quickly consumed the small gathering at the head table. Ormund smiled urbanely, one hand still gripping the back of your chair. You felt caged.
“Your admiration for my ward is noted, Lord Ashford,” Ormund said coolly. “You are certainly not the first to admire her, and I doubt you will be the last. But this match will not be considered.”
Humiliation ravaged you like a wildfire. You fixed your gaze on the grain of the table, afraid that if you looked up, the Ashfords would see the tears stinging your eyes. You wished– prayed– that they would go away.
Ormund sighed and leaned back in his chair. At last, he released your chair and reached for his cup, lifting it with an air of studied levity. “Now then, I would hate to keep you from the wine you traveled so far to enjoy, Lord Ashford.”
“I– well, of course, Lord Hightower,” Robert stammered, plainly attempting to smooth over the moment. He summoned an easy smile, though it came out strained, and bowed low. “Thank you again for your gracious hospitality.”
Godric’s eyes shifted between you and Ormund before he followed suit. “Lord Hightower. Princess.”
And then, finally, they were gone.
You exhaled shakily, blinking back tears. Ormund had already retrieved the pomander from his breeches and lifted it beneath his nose, breathing deeply.
“Lord Ashford reeks of cheap wine and horse shit,” he grimaced, keeping the pomander close. “You should thank the Seven that you will not be sent away to live among such people.”
You had smelled neither cheap wine nor horse shit when the Ashfords stood before you. You wanted to tell him so. You wanted to tell him it was cruel to speak of them with such contempt when they had done nothing more than ask for your hand. Instead, you lowered your head. “Yes, my lord.”
Ormund’s eyes narrowed as he studied you over the silver pomander. His gaze moved from the wet shine of your eyes to the stiffness of your pouted lips to your quivering chin. He knew you more than anyone had or would ever know. He could see right through you. You knew it. For a second, it looked as if he was about to say something.
A steward suddenly appeared at his shoulder.
“My lord, Lord Uffering requests a private word regarding the grain levies before tomorrow’s council.”
“Lord Uffering can wait,” Ormund replied swiftly, eyes never leaving you.
The steward shifted uneasily, wringing his hands. “Yes, my lord, but, erm…Lord Orme has joined him in the western gallery…and now they are disputing with each other. Quite loudly, I may add.”
Ormund exhaled hard through his nose. “If you could use your eyes, you would see that I am currently occupied.”
“Yes, my lord. But the matter is drawing attention, and…”
Ormund’s fingers tightened around the pomander before he finally lowered it. “Fine.”
He turned back to you, regarding you with such intensity that the clamor of the feast seemed to ebb around you. “You will remain seated here until I return.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“I will not be long.” His hand settled briefly at the nape of your neck, thumb pressing into the divot beneath your ear. “When I come back, we will retire for the evening.”
Your stomach churned. The seventh day.
“Y-yes, my lord,” you whispered.
Ormund held your gaze for another moment, as though searching for the truth only he could uncover. Then he withdrew his hand and rose from the table. You watched him follow the steward toward the western gallery and disappear beneath the archway.
The moment he was out of sight, the stiffness in your bones left you. You slumped in your chair and looked across the crowded Great Hall. The feast continued all around you– lords and ladies mingling, eating, drinking, laughing without a care. Without any knowledge of what these walls truly held.
Why did Ormund restrain you so? Why did he keep you from everyone? Why did he refuse to do the one thing expected of him as your guardian? You were of age. You were a woman in every sense. Would it not serve his interests as your kin to arrange a marriage for you? His sons had gone, and he had been widowed for years. Would it not suit him to be rid of you at last, free to take another wife of his own?
The thought made bile turn in your throat the moment it formed.
Why?
Why did the idea of Ormund with a wife make something sick and vicious twist inside you? Why was any of this happening?
Why was he so cruel? Why did you want him to be?
You understood, at least, his refusal of Aemond. Ormund had told you often enough what such a match meant: brother wed to sister, blood folded endlessly back into itself. Targaryen wickedness in its truest form. He would not permit you to remember that such customs belonged to your heritage as well.
But what of the others? Ser Joldwin, all those years ago, broad and steady and strong. The Martell boy. Every lord and heir who had been dismissed for some fault Ormund alone had deemed unforgivable. Perhaps each of them had shortcomings, that might have been true. But Godric seemed precisely the sort of man Ormund should have wanted for you– young, courteous, well-born, heir to a respectable house.
So what did Ormund want? To keep you as his ward forever? To hold you in his bed one night, kiss your mouth, and tell you how good you were, only to admonish you hours later for whatever sin he had decided lived inside you?
The ceaseless shifting in reality left you dizzy.
“Princess?”
So lost were you in thought that you had not noticed Lord Godric Ashford return to the head table and lower himself into the empty seat beside you.
You startled, and he immediately raised both hands in apology. “Forgive me, Princess. I did not mean to frighten you. I only hoped for a moment to speak with you, if I may?”
Your eyes flitted from Godric to the archway through which Ormund had disappeared. At any moment, he might return and find you speaking to the very man he had forbidden you to entertain. He would punish you, surely. The thought made something low in your belly begin to warm like embers. “Lord Godric, I…I am not certain it is proper for us to be speaking without a chaperone.”
Godric hesitated, glanced out over the crowded Great Hall, then looked back at you with a small, playful smile. “Surely a chaperone of a hundred feast guests would suffice?”
Ormund would not think so. You bit your lip. You knew precisely what he would have you do. Turn up your nose at Godric and tell him you obeyed your guardian in all things. Then scurry obediently to Ormund and confess what had happened, so he might find some reason to bring about the end of House Ashford.
But you always did what Ormund wanted. When had you last considered what you wanted?
The answer should have been simple. Godric was young, kind, and handsome. He wished to marry you. Surely this was what any young woman would want: to be admired by a good man and offered a life beyond the walls that had confined her.
Did you want to speak with him? Perhaps.
Or perhaps you only believed you ought to want it.
“I promise you, my lady, I shall do nothing to scandalize your reputation– aside from perhaps subjecting you to a few poor jokes.” Godric placed a hand solemnly over his heart. “I swear it upon my life.”
You could not help but giggle. You could scarcely remember the last time someone had been so light with you. Years ago, perhaps. “I believe you, Lord Godric.”
“Now my father, on the other hand…” Godric glanced towards the table where Lord Robert was engaging in a loud and animated recounting of some story, wine cup spilling with every exaggerated hand movement. Godric sighed. “He seems to be on the precipice of a scandal every time he steps foot out of Ashford. I am certain you could guess that from his earlier…revelations…which I should apologize again for.”
“There is no need to apologize. Your father was very kind.”
“Ah, you are being lenient with him. He can be a fool, but he is also my father, so I suppose that makes me one as well,” Godric chuckled, and his grin widened when you laughed with him.
For a few moments, the two of you sat together and watched as Lord Robert continued his tale. Then Godric’s expression softened.
“Did…Lord Hightower tell you anything of our conversation earlier?”
Your smile faltered. You remembered every word, pressed against the boarded door in that forgotten corridor. But you could hardly admit you listened to a conversation never intended for your ears. Or that Ormund refused you any true explanation of what happened.
You chose your words carefully. “He told me only that you had spoken with him.”
“I see.”
“I do hope he was not unkind to you.”
“No more than might be expected of a man guarding something very precious to him.”
The words flooded you with warmth. Your gaze dropped to your hands, pressed into the sky-blue silk of your gown. The one Ormund chose for you.
Godric continued, voice genuine. “Lord Hightower seems very protective of you, Princess.”
“He has always been so. Ormund is like a…a father to me.” You felt bile briefly rise in your throat. You swallowed it. “He took me in when I was just a girl. Oldtown is all I have ever known.”
“There is much virtue in that, my lady. A guardian should be concerned for his ward’s safety and reputation. Truly, I would think poorly of him if he were not. But…” He hesitated, glancing toward the western gallery before leaning nearer, his face suddenly gone serious. “You are no longer a child, Princess. And marriage, as you know, is not some minor matter to be settled without your input. A guardian may offer counsel, certainly, but I do not believe any woman should be forced into a marriage she does not desire…or denied one she might.”
You blinked at him, stunned. Ormund spoke of unsuitable bloodlines, weak heirs, vulgar fathers, and men whose intentions he did not trust. He spoke endlessly of what he would permit and what he would prevent. Never once had he asked what you desired. The concept was as foreign to you as Dothraki.
Godric cleared his throat after a few seconds of silence. “Forgive me. I do not mean to speak against Lord Hightower.”
“N-no, no,” you stammered quickly. “You have said nothing wrong.”
He nodded, though concern lingered in his eyes. “Then may I ask you something else?”
You should have refused. You should have told him it was time to retire. You should have found Ormund. Instead, you found yourself nodding.
“Are you…happy here?”
The question struck you like a slap to the face.
Happy?
You had never considered it. Happiness was not a concept widely spoken of in the Hightower. Maybe there were moments. As a child, playing with the Hightower boys in the gardens. When Lady Hightower would sing you lullabies to sleep. Ormund’s bed, warm beneath you in the darkness. His lips against your brow when you memorized all your scripture.
Moments that were fleeting. But moments that stuck.
Then you thought of locked doors. Of punishments. Of Ormund’s voice, loud and raging, his mood shifting at the drop of a pin. Of the seventh day. Of sin.
“I…” Your fingers tightened together in your lap. Would you confess? “I am…content.”
Godric did not appear shocked. Nor did he demand an explanation. He merely regarded you with a quiet sadness that made you feel more exposed than Ormund’s scrutiny ever had.
“I hope you will not think me forward, Princess, but I meant what I told Lord Hightower,” he said. There was a sincerity to him more pure than anything you knew possible. “I have heard nothing but good things of you, and what little time I have spent in your company has only made me wish to know you better.”
Warmth rose into your cheeks.
“I cannot pretend to know whether you might ever desire such a match,” he continued. “But if you were willing, I would still like the opportunity to…entertain the prospect. If that is what you wished, of course.”
Surely you should wish that. Surely you ought not to be thinking of Ormund’s hand gripping your thigh beneath the table. Surely you ought not to wonder what it would feel like if Ormund were the one offering you such a choice.
If he were asking you to be his.
Before you could respond, the musicians reached the end of their song. A livelier tune began almost at once, the beat of the drums rising above the conversations as couples moved toward the center of the hall. Godric glanced toward them, then stood.
“Now, this may embarrass me so thoroughly that you decide to be rid of me altogether, but I must ask regardless.” He turned back to you and held out his hand. “Would you dance with me, Princess?”
You looked once more towards the archway. Ormund would return any second now. He would see you, dancing with Godric in front of the entire feast. He would see you being held by another man. If he did not kill you, he would surely kill Godric.
“Yes,” you whispered, heart beating violently against your ribcage. You placed your hand in Godric’s. “I would.”
Godric led you into the center of the hall crowded with dancing bodies, one hand holding yours while the other hovered near your waist, as though he feared even the smallest impropriety might send you fleeing back to the head table.
“You should know,” he spoke loudly over the music as he guided you into the first turn, “that I was once declared the finest dancer in Ashford.”
“Oh, really?”
“Well…I was seven,” he admitted. “And the only competition was my sister, who could not yet walk. And the judge was my mother.”
Your laughter rang through the hall as he spun you beneath his arm and guided you back into step.
You should have been happy. You were dancing with a handsome young man who had made his interest in you plain. Godric was courteous. He kept his hands precisely where they belonged and made no attempt to grope or possess you. He complimented your dancing, whispered jokes near your ear, knew every step, and led you well.
Yet all you did was look over his shoulder, searching for Ormund.
Your gaze swept over every face, every couple, every archway. He was nowhere to be seen. Something inside you deflated and the realization came with a flush of shame: perhaps you were doing all of this for him. You wanted him to see you. You wanted him to want you.
When the final notes rang through the hall, Godric drew you gently to a stop. Around you, the other dancers bowed and separated, their laughter mingling with the applause.
“I must say, my lady,” Godric was still slightly breathless from the dance, his hand holding yours lightly, “I think we make quite a fine pair of dancers.”
You blushed and lifted your free hand to smooth a few stray hairs from your face. You were about to say something, what exactly you could not remember, when a familiar, low voice spoke directly behind you.
“Lord Godric.”
You turned.
Ormund stood only a few paces away, the crowd having parted around him. Conversations nearby were already quieting. His eyes, blue and still as a frozen pond, were fixed upon your intertwined hands. His face was empty. Terrifyingly, completely empty.
With sudden, perfect clarity, you knew you had gotten what you wished for. And you knew you had made the worst mistake of your life.
“Lord Hightower,” Godric said, his voice turning cautious. He followed Ormund’s gaze and untangled his fingers from yours. “I was only telling the princess that she is an excellent dancer. Whatever lessons you must have arranged for her–”
“Do you make a habit,” Ormund uttered, his voice carrying loudly enough to silence those nearest you, “of disrespecting your hosts?”
Godric blinked and glanced at the confused faces gathering around you. “...My lord?”
“Do you take me for a fool?”
“I– of course not, Lord Hightower.” Godric gave a nervous, uncertain laugh. “We were only dancing.”
“Dancing? Only dancing?” With slow, imposing steps, Ormund advanced into the center of the hall, closer to you. “No, Lord Godric, I think not. I think what you have done is force yourself upon my ward after being expressly forbidden to do so.”
Panic overtook Godric’s expression. “Lord Hightower, I-I did no such thing–”
“But you did, did you not?” Ormund continued, his composure making every word more horrible to endure. “I made my refusal perfectly clear. You pretended to accept my authority, and then, the moment my back was turned, you disregarded my wishes. You disrespected my house. You disrespected her.”
You wanted to interject and defend Godric. You wanted to cower behind Ormund. You did neither.
“You took advantage of her,” Ormund declared, gesturing toward you as though you were evidence to be presented before the hall. “You knew the princess to be quiet and kind. You knew she was too gently raised to humiliate you with a refusal before half the Reach. And so you waited until I was absent and imposed upon her courtesy.”
Godric’s face reddened with the pressure of the entire Great Hall watching this encounter unfold. “The princess agreed to dance with me. She wanted to.”
Ormund’s eyes shifted to you and the hall seemed to contract. Something sharp flickered in his gaze as he tilted his head.
“Did she now?” he asked, so softly it was barely a whisper.
Godric turned to you, an obvious plea in his expression for you to absolve him of whatever crime Ormund had laid at his feet before the assembled houses of the Reach. You felt as though you had committed treason against the Crown itself. No– worse than that. As though you had sinned beneath the very eyes of the Seven.
Contrition flooded you so completely that you could scarcely bear Ormund’s gaze. Instead, you fixed your eyes down at the marble floor of the Great Hall– the same floor you had once raced across as a child.
“Is it true?” He stepped closer until the polished leather of his shoes entered your lowered vision. “Did you wish to dance with him?”
Your voice trembled when you finally answered. “...yes.”
Tears blurred the marble beneath you. Still, you forced yourself to lift your head. Ormund’s face had gone flat once more.
He regarded you for what seemed like minutes, then gave a single, measured nod, as though you had confirmed something he had already known. “I see.”
Ormund’s gaze lingered upon you for another awful moment before he turned toward the watching hall, putting his hand on your arm. His grip was tight. “The princess is plainly unwell,” he announced, his voice once again smooth and measured. “I fear the excitement of the evening has overtaken her.”
A few sympathetic murmurs moved through the crowd. You were unwell, but not for whatever reason Ormund was claiming. You simply kept your eyes fixed above the crowd and willed yourself not to start crying.
“Please,” Ormund continued, offering the gathered guests his courteous, practiced smile that did not reach his eyes, “return to your dancing. There is no reason our feast should be interrupted.”
Then he looked to Godric. “You may rejoin your father.”
Godric’s mouth parted as though he might object, but whatever he saw in Ormund’s face silenced him. He bowed stiffly instead. “Of course, Lord Hightower.”
Ormund moved his hand from your arm to the small of your back. “Come, my dear. I believe it is time to retire for the night.”
You allowed him to steer you through the parting crowd and out of the Great Hall. By the time the noise of the feast had faded behind you, you were sniveling like a pathetic child. Nothing remained but the sharp echo of Ormund’s footsteps and the hurried patter of your own as you struggled to match his long strides through the stone corridor.
Perhaps you should apologize. Perhaps you should explain yourself. If you could only make him understand, then perhaps he would–
Your head snapped backward.
A cry tore from your throat as Ormund seized a fistful of your hair and wrenched you toward him. You stumbled helplessly beneath his grip, dragged backward until your spine struck the stone wall.
“You fucking insolent slut,” he hissed. His fist tightened against your scalp, wrenching your head back until tears sprang anew to your eyes. “I cannot leave you out of my sight for a single minute before you whore yourself before a hall full of lords?”
He yanked again and the back of your head struck the stone with a dull crack. You clawed at his wrist, desperate to relieve the searing pull at your roots, but he twisted easily beyond your grasp.
“O-Ormund, I am– I did not–” you sobbed, reaching for him again.
His grip only tightened. You felt strands of hair pull and snap beneath his fingers.
“Please,” you cried. “It hurts–!”
“I have given everything to raise you. Everything.” Ormund spat the words, flecks of spittle striking your cheeks. “My house. My food. My protection. My own bed. All I have ever asked of you is obedience and respect.” He wrenched your head farther back. “And this is how I am repaid? You make a cuckold of me before half the Reach, shamelessly flaunting yourself for some boy?”
“It was only– we only danced–”
“You might as well have sucked his cock in the Great Hall.” His body crushed yours against the wall until you were flattened beneath his weight, the scabbard of his sword digging painfully into your hip. “Is that what you wanted to do? Hmm? You accomplished so much in the little while I was gone. Perhaps you did that as well.”
Your face flushed in shame as you gasped at his words. “No, Ormund! No–”
He leaned closer until his face hovered mere inches from yours, pure vitriol burning in his eyes. Ormund’s fist remained tangled in your hair, holding you helplessly in place. Then, suddenly, he froze. The fury in him shifted as he lowered his head, the bridge of his nose grazing your jaw.
He breathed in. Ormund’s face twisted at once with disgust, as though he were suppressing the urge to gag. “You smell of him.”
A broken sob escaped you, your scalp still burning beneath his grip. There was no reasoning with him. Still, your heart twisted, and you tried. “I b-barely touched him, my lord. Please. You must believe me!”
The muscle in Ormund’s jaw flexed. Without warning, he wrenched you away from the wall and dragged you after him. His pace quickened as he marched you through the corridor, forcing you to stumble in order to keep from being pulled from your feet. Servants flattened themselves against the walls at the sight of him– the master of the Hightower hauling a princess of the realm by her hair while she sniveled and sobbed behind him. None dared intervene. They only lowered their eyes and stepped aside.
“You are an ungrateful, treacherous brat,” Ormund growled. “You may lie to me. You may lie before every lord in that hall. You may even kneel in the sept and lie beneath the faces of the Seven.” He shoved open the door to his bedchamber and pulled you inside. “But the Father sees what is hidden.”
The door slammed shut behind you. Ormund released your hair only to seize the back of your neck. Though the force of his grip kept your head fixed, your eyes shifted toward the bed, already knowing what would come next.
Instead, he steered you toward the adjoining bathing chamber and threw open the door. Heat and steam billowed from within. Servants still moved around the claw-footed tub, pouring steaming, scented water from brass ewers. At the sight of Ormund storming inside with you trapped beneath his hand, they startled and pressed themselves against the tiled walls.
“The Father judges every falsehood,” Ormund continued, his mouth close to your ear. “Every wicked thought. Every secret desire.”
“I did not–”
“Do not lie to me again.” His fingers dug harder into your neck. “You may deny it until your tongue rots in your mouth, but your body has already betrayed you.”
Ormund lowered his face once more, breathing against your hair, your cheek, the bare skin above your collar. A shudder of revulsion passed through him. “His stink is everywhere.”
He dragged you toward the filled tub. “You will wash it off.”
One of the servants, an older woman with a weathered face, hesitantly stepped forward. “My lord, we were not expecting the princess until later. The water is still too hot–”
Ormund’s head snapped toward her, his gaze blazing. “Leave. At once.”
The servants did not argue. They bowed hurriedly, abandoned the remaining ewers, and fled from the chamber. You did not blame them. For who would want to defend you, who had so obviously sinned before your lord?
Ormund pushed you towards the tub. “Undress.”
You did not move. You could not. Perhaps Ormund had seen glimpses of you before, the shape of your body beneath the sheer nightgowns he often gifted you, the outline of your breasts when candlelight illuminated the fabric. But those moments belonged to the night, in the darkness, when you could tell yourself his eyes were closed or turned elsewhere.
You had never stood naked before your guardian.
Your hair hung tangled around your face, scalp still throbbing where he had pulled. Tears and snot wetted the cupid’s bow of your lip, and you were shaking so violently that your teeth had begun to chatter. You had been diminished to nothing.
“M-my lord,” you whispered, turning towards Ormund. “I can call the women back, they will help me–”
“No.” Ormund stared at you with open contempt. “You will not. You were comfortable enough flaunting yourself for that boy. Now, you discover modesty?”
Your cheeks burned and you hung your head. “Please, my lord…”
Ormund stepped nearer, hands twitching at his side. “You behaved like a harlot in my hall. You may undress like one here.”
Humiliation rippled through you like a wave. You began to believe he was right. You had disobeyed Ormund. You had accepted Godric’s hand. Why? Because you wanted a reaction from Ormund. And now, you had one.
Your fingers fumbled for the ribbons at the back of your gown. They would not obey you. Each time you caught one, it slipped from your trembling grasp.
“You are moving too slowly.”
“I-I am trying…” you sputtered. “But my hands…they will not cease trembling…”
The faint rasp of metal leaving leather made you freeze. Ormund drew the small dagger he carried at his belt.
“My lord, please don’t–”
Ormund caught the back of your gown in one fist, and with one swift movement, he cut through the ribbons. The bodice split open with a series of sharp snaps, the ruined ties falling loose around you. Ormund dragged the blade downward, severing embroidery and silk without care until the gown sagged from your shoulders and exposed your breasts. You gasped and tried to catch the fabric, but Ormund had already sheathed the dagger. He seized the torn gown and wrenched it down over your hips, leaving you naked in a pool of shredded blue silk.
Feebly, you crossed your arms over yourself. Ormund was quicker. He grabbed you by the upper arm and hauled you toward the steaming tub, his chest rising and falling with each furious breath.
“In.”
You lifted one trembling foot over the rim. The instant your toes touched the water, scalding heat shot through you. You recoiled with a yelp. “Ormund, it is too hot–”
“Good.” His hands closed around your shoulders. “Perhaps it will burn his stink from you.”
He forced you down. You cried as the searing water engulfed your body. You tried to rise, but Ormund held you beneath the surface of the bath, his fingers biting into your shoulders. Before you could catch your breath, he had dropped to his knees beside the tub and seized a sponge from the tray.
He caught your wrist and began scrubbing your arm. The rough sponge dragged over your skin again and again, leaving it flushed pink and burning. Ormund’s eyes were wild, his movements frantic. Beneath the fury, there was a panic, a desperation you had witnessed only a handful of times before. It terrified you.
“Men bow to their lords,” he muttered, dragging the sponge from your wrist to your shoulder as though he meant to strip away the skin itself and uncover something clean beneath it.
You recognized the words at once. Scripture, recited in the sept while you knelt beside Lady Hightower. Now Ormund spoke them in the bathing chamber she had once shared with her husband– only she was dead and rotting somewhere in a crypt, and you were grown and naked beneath his hands.
“Repeat it,” he hissed. “As I taught you.”
“M-men bow to their lords.”
“Lords bow to their kings.” The sponge moved across your collarbone, then up the side of your neck.
“Lords bow to their k-kings…”
“And kings and queens bow before the Seven Who Are One.” He scrubbed the tender skin beneath your jaw. The same place where, in the darkness of night, he so often buried his face.
Your voice shook. “Kings and queens bow before the S-seven Who Are One...”
The sponge dragged down your other arm. “All sins may be forgiven.”
“All sins may be forgiven...”
Ormund seized your knee and yanked your leg toward him, scrubbing harshly over your calf. “But crimes must still be punished.”
You swallowed a sob. “But crimes must still be…punished.”
At last, the sponge slipped from his hand and struck the tiled floor with a wet slap. Your entire body was rubbed pink and raw from his touch. Ormund remained kneeling by the tub, chest heaving as though he had just come from hours in the training yard. The water had finally cooled in the tub around you, though your tears had never once ceased.
Men bow to their lords. Kings and queens bow before the Seven Who Are One. Crimes must still be punished.
The words could not cease circling your mind.
Crimes must still be punished. Crimes must still be punished. Crimes must still be punished.
Steam from the bath had loosened Ormund’s brown curls, leaving them wild around his face. The sleeves and front of his doublet were soaked through. His collar sat crooked. Strands of hair had fallen across his brow.
You had never seen him so disordered. Ormund was particular about every detail of his appearance. Now he looked just about as ruined as you felt.
He rose and reached into the tub. You flinched, but his hands closed around your waist and lifted you to your feet. Water streamed from your body, droplets tracing the curves of your breasts and the softness of your stomach before falling back into the bath. The cooler air tightened your skin, your nipples pebbling as you shivered beneath his hands.
Ormund held you there, naked and trembling before him. Then he bent toward you. His nose brushed the wet skin beneath your ear. He inhaled once before moving lower to breathe against your neck and shoulder. You scarcely dared move.
At last, the terrible tension in his body eased.
“Clean,” he murmured. His hands tightened possessively around your waist. “You are clean again.”
Seemingly satisfied with his work, Ormund stepped back and surveyed you. His gaze traveled from your wet hair to your breasts, then lower still, lingering over the glistening curls at the apex of your thighs.
He drew a slow breath, steadying himself, before turning away to restore some measure of order to his appearance. He straightened his collar and smoothed a hand over his damp curls, though the soaked fabric of his doublet clung stubbornly to him. Then he reached into the tub and took your hand. “Out.”
Water streamed from your body and pooled across the tiles as you stepped over the rim. Ormund kept one hand around yours and the other at your waist. Then he retrieved the linen nightgown the servants had left folded over a nearby chair and tossed it toward you without looking. “Dress yourself.”
You clutched it against your chest, relieved merely to have something with which to cover yourself. “Y-yes, my lord.”
With shaking hands, you pulled it over your head. The fabric caught against your wet skin, clinging to your breasts and thighs despite your efforts to tug it loose.
When you had finished, Ormund turned back. For a moment, the two of you merely stared at one another. Then he lifted a hand and brushed a wet tendril of hair from your face, his touch impossibly gentle after the same hand had scrubbed your skin raw only moments before. “Do you understand why I do this for you?”
You nodded slowly.
“Then tell me.”
You swallowed. “To…purge me?”
“Yes.” He stepped nearer, cupping your cheek. “I have told you before, and I will continue to tell you. At your core, you are a wicked creature. However earnestly you may struggle against it, the sins of your forefathers live within you. That is why you disobey. Why you cannot always recognize the corruption in your own desires.”
Your breathing grew shallow at his words.
“It is my duty to purge it from you, to discipline what is wicked and preserve what may yet be made good.” Ormund’s hand settled more firmly against your cheek, holding your face toward his. He studied you expectantly. “Do you understand me?”
“I understand you, Ormund.”
“Good girl.” His hand fell away. He turned and left the bathing chamber without another word. You remained where you were for a moment, waiting until you trusted your legs not to collapse beneath you, then wobbled after him.
The bedchamber had grown dim behind the closed shutters, illuminated only by the wavering glow of candlelight and slivers of moonlight. Ormund stood beside the wardrobe, peeling the soaked doublet from his body and revealing the muscled planes of his back. Though he so often slept without a shirt, you turned away bashfully.
When Ormund faced you again, you kept your gaze fixed upon the ornate rug beneath your bare feet.
“Right,” he said. He dragged a hand over his jaw and glanced from you to the bed. Then he inclined his head toward it. “On the bed, then. Ready yourself.”
Your heart seemed to stop. Your gaze snapped up to him, your brows drawing together. “M-my lord?”
He scoffed as though you were a fool for questioning him. “It is the seventh day. Surely you did not imagine yourself excused…particularly after tonight. I have all the more reason now to question your purity.”
Your mouth opened, then closed again. “B-but, my lord…the bath–”
“The bath did nothing but remove the taint of horse shit from you,” Ormund spat. He advanced upon you. “As I told you before, you managed a great deal in the few minutes I was gone. How am I to know you did not give yourself to Lord Ashford?”
The accusation was absurd. Ormund had been absent for perhaps ten minutes. The hall had been filled with half the Reach. Surely he could not truly believe that you had…
“I said, on the bed,” Ormund repeated, each word sharpened by warning. “Do not make me say it again.”
You hurried toward the bed and crawled onto it. You had done this so many times that the motions should have come as second nature. Yet each time, every part of you trembled with the same terrible mixture of dread and anticipation…and something hotter beneath them both that you could never bring yourself to name.
You shuffled backward until your head met the pillows, then lowered yourself flat against the mattress. Ormund remained at the foot of the bed, the pale skin of his bare chest almost luminous in the candlelight. He looked at your position with a scowl, then closed his hands around your ankles. With one sharp pull, he dragged you toward him until your ass rested at the very edge of the mattress.
He tapped the outsides of your quivering thighs. You parted them, allowing him to step between your legs.
Ormund looked down at you. Your breasts rose and fell beneath the damp nightgown, each breath shallow and unsteady. “You are nervous tonight.”
You began to shake your head, but he clicked his tongue. “Remember what I told you. Do not lie to me.”
Your throat tightened. “I-I am nervous, my lord.”
“Why?” The question was edged with mockery. Ormund reached down and caught the hem of your nightgown between his fingers. “This should hardly surprise you by now. Or…is there something you are trying to hide from me tonight?”
“No, my lord. I swear, I have nothing to hide–”
“We shall see.” He began to draw the nightgown upward. Higher and higher, until the cool air brushed over your calves and thighs, raising gooseflesh in its wake. Higher still, until the fabric gathered around your waist and your sex lay completely exposed beneath his gaze.
Ormund inhaled, and you could have sworn his breath trembled. His thumbs pressed against your puffy pussy lips, parting you beneath the candlelight. You were unbearably sensitive after the scalding bath, and the sudden touch of cool air on your exposed flesh drew a helpless whimper from your throat.
Ormund stilled. His hands remained firmly in place, holding you open as his narrowed eyes lifted to your face. “What was that?”
You swallowed. “N-nothing, my lord.”
“Nothing?” he repeated softly. “Have you learned nothing tonight?”
“I did not mean–”
“Your mouth lies,” Ormund murmured. “But your body confesses so readily.”
Humiliation burned through you. You turned your face toward the pillows, but his voice sharpened.
“Look at me.”
You obeyed. Ormund studied you with a feverish focus. Without speaking, he prodded your entrance with the tip of his middle finger. The sensation made you jolt. He steadied you with a hand pressed firmly upon your hip. “Stay still.”
You tried, desperately. You fixed your eyes upon his face and willed every muscle to quiet, though your breath came shallow and uneven.
Ormund paused, the tip of his finger still pressing against your hole. “What shall I find tonight, hmm? That you have been faithful to the Seven above? Faithful to me? Or shall I find you have let Lord Ashford fuck this pretty little cunt?”
You squirmed beneath his gaze, feeling as though you had been scalded again by his brazen words. “N-no, my lord.”
Ormund hummed in response. Then, once again, he used his other thumb to spread your pussy lips open, his gaze transfixed on where his finger rested.
“Look at you…” His voice was hushed, contemplative. “I have barely touched you, and your pussy is already fluttering.”
You whined, horrifically embarrassed, but he shushed you before you could protest.
“You are thinking of that Ashford boy, aren’t you?”
You shook your head immediately, adamant. You could hardly remember Godric’s face now.
Ormund tutted. “Words.”
“No! No, I am not.”
“Then why,” he asked, his gaze never leaving you, “is your cunt weeping?”
You had no answer, other than your body had answered before your mind.
“It is no matter,” Ormund sighed, thumb still holding you open. “You are a deceitful bitch who will learn her lesson regardless.”
Slowly, Ormund began to push his fingertip into you. A broken moan tore through you at the burning intrusion, though you had felt this so many times before. The walls of your pussy clenched around him, and you tried to will yourself to relax your muscles. Breathe, you commanded yourself. Obey.
His hand stilled, the tip of his finger seated inside you. He did not look away.
“If you are not wet for Lord Godric,” Ormund whispered, finally lifting his gaze to yours, “then who is it for?”
For a moment, you were no longer in Ormund’s chambers. You remembered attending the sept with Lady Hightower, kneeling beside her before the bejeweled statue of the Father. You remembered her lessons, her gentle voice, the certainty with which she had spoken.
“You must always tell the truth,” she had taught you. “For the Father sees all.”
The words echoed now, impossible to ignore. You were compelled. You had to confess.
“You.”
Ormund groaned at the confession, his hand tightening at your waist.
“Do you hear yourself, you harlot?” His voice rattled maniacally, the rings on his fingers pressing into the soft flesh of you. “Do you not hear the lewdness of your own words? Lusting after me, your own guardian?”
Shame flooded through you. You should have lowered your eyes. You should have taken back the confession. But there was something in his voice that told you he was not reprimanding you. Ormund wanted you to say it. He wanted you to confess.
Before you could even think of a response, Ormund’s mouth twisted. Then he spat.
A hot, wet glob landed directly on the swollen pearl at the top of your cunt, obscene and shocking enough that your whole body shuddered. The sensation was like nothing you had ever felt before. Vulgar in a way that made humiliation burn through you even as a moan slipped from your throat.
Ormund saw it, because just as the Father did, he saw everything. A wicked, knowing grin spread across his face.
“Theeere it is,” he murmured, voice low and rough with satisfaction. “Moaning like a bitch in heat. Acting like the whore you are.”
Your face burned and you turned back into the pillows, trying to stifle the whimpering sounds that were attempting to escape you.
Ormund leaned closer, caging your body in with his, the tip of his finger still inserted into you. “You think I do not know you? I raised you. I made you.”
Your thighs twitched instinctively, as if you could push him away. For a moment, he withdrew slightly, as if it were finished. As if Ormund would simply wipe his hand on the handkerchief he always kept on him and declare the matter settled. It had always been that way before.
The ritual– the inspection that occurred every seventh day– always ended the same. Ormund would stop at the first knuckle, claiming only to feel enough to confirm that your maidenhead was still intact. Then he would withdraw, disappear into the bathing chamber for a few moments while you caught your breath alone on the bed, and return composed once more.
Afterward was the part you cherished most. Perhaps it was the only reason you endured the ritual at all. Ormund would take you into his arms. He would press his lips to your brow, your cheek, sometimes even your mouth, and tell you how good you had been. How faithful. How untouched. He would allow you to rest against him, your head upon his chest, while he kissed the top of your head and held you as though you were something precious.
And for a little while, you no longer felt like a ward. No longer like an unwanted addition to his household. For a little while, you felt like a wife would.
You felt wanted.
But this time, Ormund did none of that. Instead, he pushed forward.
You gasped at the invasion, hands tightening around the sheets as his finger slid deeper than it ever had before. It was only one finger, and still you felt stretched open by it, your body struggling to make sense of the unfamiliar pressure. Pain mixed with pleasure, a strange concoction that was better than anything you had ever known.
Ormund watched the reaction move across your face.
“She is so tight,” he whispered, almost in a trance as he looked down at where his finger disappeared inside you. “So untouched. So desperate for more.”
Your stomach twisted at his words. Of course you were untouched. You could not imagine ever being touched by anyone other than Ormund.
“So obedient for your lord,” Ormund added, voice husky. “And still you asked me not to stop.”
His thumb moved slowly, the pad of it pressing against your aching clit right above where his finger held you open. The sensation struck through you so sharply your thighs closed his hand, though he pried them back open with ease.
Ormund’s thumb began to circle your clit, slow and deliberate, while his finger remained seated inside you. The two sensations seemed to pull against one another: the deep stretch of him, the slick pressure of his thumb, the unbearable intimacy of being watched while your body answered him so honestly.
“Do not be so quiet now, my sweet girl,” Ormund commanded you. “Not when your body is finally telling the truth.”
His finger began to move. Slowly at first, dragging almost to the tip before pressing back in. The stretch came easier now, slicker with your growing arousal. His thumb kept circling with maddening precision, steady enough that something began to gather low in your belly.
A coil. A warning. A want. It was overwhelming. It was maddening. It was completely and utterly terrifying.
“Ormund…”
His finger curled slightly inside you, pressing against a soft place that made you see stars, and you cried out, back arching.
“There we are,” Ormund breathed. “That is what you have been trying to tell me.”
“N-no,” you said, though the denial sounded weak even to your own ears.
Ormund leaned closer, mouth skimming your jaw. “You want this. You have wanted this every time I stopped.”
Your lips parted, but no answer came.
The coil inside you wound tighter and tighter, every pass of his thumb dragging you closer to some precipice you did not understand. Your thighs began to tremble. Your breath broke into small, helpless whimpers. Panic and pleasure tangled together until you could no longer tell which one made you shake.
“Ormund, please,” you gasped. “S-something…something is happening!”
“Is it?” His voice was calm, almost cruelly so, his eyes fixed on your face. Then, just as the feeling rose so sharply it frightened you, Ormund withdrew completely. His finger slipped out of you, and his thumb left your clit all at once.
The loss was immediate. You whined, hips lifting after him before you could stop yourself, your cunt clenching around nothing.
Ormund stepped back from the bed, composed and distant, as though whatever had existed between you moments before had vanished entirely. He reached for the handkerchief he kept in his back pocket, and cleaned your glistening arousal off of his finger with a maddening calmness.
You propped yourself up on your elbows, chest heaving. Sweat had beaded on your forehead from the intense pleasure that was there just moments before. When you spoke, your voice was small and confused. “...My lord?”
Ormund did not look at you. “I have confirmed what I needed to know. You are untouched. That has not changed. But you still disobeyed me.”
You stared at him, searching his face for some sign that he did not mean it. Some indication that this was a test, that Ormund would relent as he always did. That he would gather you in his arms, kiss your face, and fall asleep.
He did not.
“You are not forgiven,” Ormund said matter-of-factly. Then came the words you never expected to hear. “You will return to your own chambers tonight.”
Your own chambers. You had not slept there in years. Not since before Lady Hightower had died.
The feast, the bath, the feeling of something coiling in you as Ormund used his fingers upon you like an instrument– it all came crashing down at once. You were unsteady, disoriented. Lost.
He was sending you away from the only place where you knew how to exist. The only place where you had ever felt wanted.
You scrambled from the bed, your feet landing unevenly against the rug. Before you could think better of it, you reached for his arm.
“My lord, please.” Your voice shook. “I-I cannot sleep there.”
Ormund did not move.
“Please,” you whispered. “I can only sleep here. I have only ever slept here.”
He refused to answer. He remained focused on the handkerchief, wiping the finger that had been inside you moments ago.
“Please, Ormund. I-I love you.”
He always liked hearing that. You lifted yourself onto your toes and pressed a desperate, open-mouthed kiss to his cheek, waiting for the familiar response. Waiting for his hand to come to your face, for his voice to soften, for him to tell you that everything was all right.
Ormund did not.
Your heart seemed to collapse inside your chest. You could not understand how he could stand there so calmly when you felt as though you were breaking apart.
“I was so ungrateful,” you sobbed. “I was t-treasonous, my lord. I was wicked.” Your hands tightened around him. “I should have rebuked Lord Godric. I should have listened. I was an insolent fool.”
Not knowing what else to do, you sank to your knees before him, head bowed as though you were kneeling before the altar in the sept. The posture came instinctively from years beneath Ormund’s instruction, a familiar act of surrender and supplication.
“Please forgive me,” you whispered. “I will do anything you ask of me. Please.”
You remained there before him, the room silent save for your trembling breaths and quiet sobs. Your forehead stayed bowed, your hands clutching the fabric of his breeches as though letting go would mean losing him entirely.
Finally, Ormund looked down upon you. “You hear yourself, do you not?”
You lifted your swollen eyes toward him.
“You beg for forgiveness, but you do not yet understand what it is you are asking forgiveness for.” Ormund crouched until he was level with you, hands on your shoulders. “This is not about Godric or a dance or a foolish mistake. It is about what lies beneath it, the thing I have warned you of for years.”
You shivered beneath his touch, the words chilling you.
“The dragon within you.”
It felt as though the entire world had narrowed to this room, to this moment, to you kneeling before him. As though every lesson in the sept, every warning, every correction had led you here.
“I have spent years trying to protect you from the worst parts of yourself,” he continued. “And still, when temptation came, you reached for it. That is why an apology is not enough.”
Your breath caught in your throat.
“You must learn that your impulses do not rule you. Your desires, your pride, they do not rule you. Not even the dragon that plagues your soul.”
“What rules you is none of those.” Ormund leaned closer, his nose brushing yours. “It is me.”
With that, Ormund rose to his feet, though you remained kneeling. His hand went to the leather belt at his waist, the same belt from which his sword scabbard hung. Slowly, he unfastened it and set the scabbard aside on the chest near the bed. He turned to you and gestured for you to stand.
You obeyed instantly, rising on shaky legs.
“If you want forgiveness, you will listen to me,” Ormund said, undoing the belt until it came loose in his hand. “You will disrobe. You will set yourself upon the bed. And you will take the strokes of my belt in penance for your sins. Will you do that for your lord?”
You nodded. You would do anything he asked of you. Hands trembling, you reached for the hem of your nightgown and pulled it over your head. You were bare, naked as the day you were born. It felt different from the bath. This time, there was no steam to soften the room. This time, you could clearly see Ormund take all of you in: the line of your calves, the curve of your hips, the plane of your stomach, the weight of your breasts. His eyes moved over your body shamelessly, intense and hungry.
“Onto the bed,” he ordered. “Face away from me.”
You complied, turning from him and crawling onto the mattress. Before you could move too far, Ormund caught your calf in one hand, signaling for you to stop once you were on all fours near the edge of the bed. His touch lingered there for a moment, and then his hand slid upward, palm dragging from your calf to your thigh, then higher still, until it settled over the soft curve of your ass. His fingers squeezed once, firm and possessive, before dropping lower.
You heard the soft whisper of leather as Ormund folded the belt in his hand. You could not see his face from where you knelt, turned away from him, but you could feel his gaze moving over you. The back of your neck, your trembling spine. Your exposed cunt, surely glistening now with arousal though you could not understand why. And then your ass, presented bare and vulnerable to him, where he intended to mark you.
“You will pray the Seven’s lesson as you were taught,” he said, though his voice had gone strained.
A familiar molten heat, like what you felt just a few minutes earlier, had begun to unwind in your belly. You nodded, eyes on the bed below you. “Yes, my lord.”
Leather cracked across your skin. The sound came before you could even register the pain, sharp and booming like thunder. You cried out as a bright line of heat bloomed over your ass, fingers clutching uselessly at the sheets.
“The Father,” Ormund breathed, voice low. “Tell me His vow.”
You remembered learning your lessons. It was Ormund who taught you when you were just a girl. Before you knew what you would become. What he would become.
“I-I submit to all judgement,” you recited shakily.
The belt came down again, landing just below the first one.
You jolted forward, a broken sound spilling from your mouth as the second stroke landed just below the first. Heat spread through you in terrible waves and your knees trembled, but Ormund’s free hand caught your hip to hold you up.
“The Mother.”
“I seek mercy.”
The third stroke fell harder.
You sobbed again, and shame burned through you at the sound, but Ormund only stepped closer. You could feel him now, the heat of his body just behind yours, the roughness creeping into his breathing.
“The Warrior.”
You pressed your forehead into the sheets, squeezing your eyes shut, willing yourself to submit. “I will have c-courage.”
The fourth stroke cracked across you, closer to your wet sex. The sound that came from you this time was not a sob, but a moan. You heard Ormund utter a low curse under his breath from behind you.
“The Maiden, now, girl. You should know this one by heart.”
“I will guard my innocence.”
Next, the fifth stroke. You cried out, smothering your sounds in the sheet, but this time Ormund made no attempt to hide the rough, ruined exhale he made in response.
You realized there, completely naked on his bed, the bed you had shared with him for years, that Ormund was enjoying this.
“The Smith,” he ordered you.
“I will be remade.”
The sixth stroke landed and pain sparked through you, body sagging slightly before Ormund caught you with his hand. His wide palm moved from your waist to the punished, red flesh of your ass.
“Ormund,” you whispered, though you didn’t know what you wanted of him.
His breath shuddered. “The Crone.”
“I will s-seek wisdom.”
You could hear how close he was. Hear it in the uneven pull of air through his teeth, in the way his hands trembled against your skin.
“Now, the last,” he said.
Like a final judgement, the seventh stroke came down. Hard.
Your cry broke open, high and helpless, your body finally collapsing forward into the sheets as the hurt bloomed through you in a final, burning wave. Ormund followed you down at once, his body bowing over yours from behind.
“The Stranger,” he panted into your ear, bare chest pressed against your back. “Tell me His vow.”
“I will leave behind what I was.”
The belt slipped from his hand and hit the floor. You heard the unmistakable frantic tug of laces being loosened, the rustle of breeches as Ormund shoved them down with no patience at all.
You did not understand what was happening at first. You only knew he was behind you, breathing hard, one hand gripping your hip so hard it bruised while the other was moving between your bodies with a frenzied desperation.
Then you felt him. The hard length of his cock, pressed against the swollen skin of your ass. You gasped at the silky, heavy, throbbing sensation. Perhaps you had felt it before, but between sheets, between linen, pressed against your back in the dead of night. You did not know, or did not want to know, or even fully understand what it was. But you knew now.
You heard movement, skin rubbing skin. Ormund’s fist worked himself in quick, uneven strokes, the leaking head of him pressed against the raw flesh.
Ormund groaned low in his throat, the sound muffled against your shoulder as he bent over you.
“Do you feel that, Princess?” he rasped. His hips jerked forward, the stiff length of him dragging on your ass. The contact made him shudder violently against you. “Do you feel me on you? This is what you do to me. You have bewitched me, heart and flesh alike.”
Your face burned so hot you thought you might cry from the humiliation of it. Bent beneath him in the bed he once shared with his wife. Marked by him. Listening to the rough, wet sound of his hand moving over himself while his body trembled against yours.
You turned your head instinctively, trying to look back. To see the reality of what was happening to your innocence. Ormund’s palm came down between your shoulders, forcing your face down into the sheets.
“No,” he ordered, voice ragged. “Do not l-look at me. Stay down.”
You obeyed. A broken sound left him at that, like a laugh.
“My good girl,” Ormund breathed. “My sweet, good girl.”
His hand moved faster. From behind, you could feel every frantic pull of his fist in the rhythm of his body: the way his hips twitched, the way his thighs pressed against the backs of yours, the way his hot breath puffed against your neck. Ormund dragged the head of himself lower, close enough that you could feel the swollen head of his cock brush your cunt.
“Do you want it?” he asked. “Do you want your guardian to finally take you? Do you want me to give you my cock and fill you with my seed so everyone will know who you belong to?”
You did. You wanted it so badly. You wanted Ormund to fuck you, to finally take the virginity he treasured so much.
“Do you want it, my darling girl?” Ormund repeated shakily, dragging his cock up and down your slick folds, the leaking head of it bumping against your swollen clit. “If I pushed in right now, would you open for me? Would you let me take what is rightfully mine?”
Your fingers twisted into the sheets. You did not even know what you were asking for. You only felt the compulsion of the Father move through you. “Yes, my lord! M-make me yours…”
Ormund groaned. But, to your dismay, he did not push himself into you. Instead, he drew himself back, dragging his cock against your skin as his fist resumed its desperate rhythm.
His mouth found your shoulder, open and trembling. His teeth grazed you once, biting down lightly.
“You are mine,” he said against your skin. “Whether I fuck you tonight or keep you untouched for the rest of your life, you are mine.”
Ormund’s hips stuttered hard against you. “Tell me whose you are, Princess.”
“Y-yours…”
“Say it properly for your lord.”
“I am yours, Ormund!”
With a final, low groan, Ormund collapsed over you, body shaking. You felt something hot and wet spurt across the marks of your ass. His hand kept moving through the violent pulses, dragging every last wave out of himself while he panted your name into the back of your shoulder.
Finally, the spasming of his cock subsided, and his weight softened over you. Ormund remained bowed over your body, trembling as he pressed his forehead between your shoulder blades. His lips moved slowly along your spine. His palm, sticky with release, spread tenderly over your waist, drawing you more firmly beneath him.
“My precious girl,” he whispered, pressing another damp kiss to your back. “My beautiful, perfect princess. You did so well for me.”
You could do nothing but lie there beneath him, overwhelmed and exhausted, your body aching everywhere he had touched you.
Ormund wrapped both arms around you, rolling onto his side and bringing you with him. He gathered your naked body so tightly against his own it felt like he had never intended to let you go. His release remained warm upon your skin, trapped between you as he fitted himself along your back. One arm circled your waist and the other slipped beneath your head, drawing you into the shelter of his bare chest. Ormund kissed the hairs at the nape of your neck, then your shoulder, his mouth lingering over every place it touched.
“Come here,” he murmured. “My pretty little thing.”
Ormund turned you carefully within his arms until you faced him. His hand moved slowly through your hair, smoothing it back from your flushing, tear-streaked face as he pressed kisses across your cheeks. He did not seem to care that you were both disordered and sweaty, that his breeches remained tangled around his thighs, or that his seed still clung to your body.
Your eyes burned. “I-I thought you hated me… That you would send me away forever.”
“No.” Ormund cupped the back of your head, keeping you against him. “No, my love. Never that.”
A sob escaped, and you buried your face against him, clutching at him as though the Hightower itself were crumbling around you.
Ormund drew you fully atop him, arranging your body over his with practiced intimacy. Your cheek rested above his thumping heart. One of your legs slipped between his, your naked bodies fitting together beneath the rumpled sheets as naturally as though you had been made by the Seven for this.
“You frightened yourself tonight,” he murmured, rocking you gently against him. “You forgot what I taught you. But you remember now, do you not?”
You nodded silently. Ormund tipped your face upward. His gaze moved over your swollen eyes and trembling mouth with such devotion it hurt.
“I forgive you.”
Finally.
Finally, the words you had spent the entire night longing to hear. The words you had wanted since the moment you realized your Valyrian blood was something impure.
The weight of it all overwhelmed you, his forgiveness, his naked body beneath yours, the certainty that he was not sending you from his bed. It all crashed over you at once, and your body shook with the force of your tears. Ormund gathered you closer, shushing softly as he kissed your forehead, your temple, your quivering lips.
“I love you,” he murmured. “I love you. Must I say it a thousand times? I love you.”
You pushed yourself further into him and sobbed harder. You believed Ormund. You always did. For he always told the truth.
“I-I am sorry for the wickedness in me, Ormund,” you stuttered, tears wetting his chest. “I should have been better for you.”
“Oh, my sweet girl.” His fingers combed gently through your hair, the same hair he so often praised for lacking the silver-gold of your blood. “You are not the first woman to struggle against the wretchedness within her.”
Ormund shifted beneath the covers, drawing you higher upon his chest until your face rested within the curve of his neck. His lips brushed your brow again and again as though he could not bear to stop kissing you.
“The Seven have blessed you, though,” he continued. “They did not leave you among your diseased kin who would encourage that fire. They did not leave you in the Red Keep. They did not leave you to dragons.”
You lifted your face from his chest. The candles had long since sputtered out, leaving only moonlight to illuminate the handsome angles of his face. The face you loved, the face you worshipped so dearly. Ormund cupped your cheek and brought your mouth to his.
The kiss was slow and delicate, nothing like the frenzy whose presence still marked your bodies: the angry welts left by his belt, his seed drying against your thighs. Ormund kissed you with the solemnity of a husband sealing a vow before the gods. When he pulled away, he did not allow even an inch of space to form between you.
“You were given to me,” he whispered against your mouth. “To raise. To correct when you wandered. And to cherish when you returned.”
A smile spread across Ormund’s face, full of such love and adoration that your soul ached with it. “And you will always return to me.”
Ormund took your hand in his and pressed it flat over the steady beating of his heart. Then he brought your fingers to his lips and kissed each tip one by one. “The Seven knew you needed something greater than blood or the Iron Throne. Greater even than dragons.”
Your eyes grew heavy as the last of your terror loosened beneath his attention. Ormund drew the covers more closely around your entwined bodies and tucked your head beneath his chin. “They knew you needed a home. A father.”
You nestled deeper into his chest, lulled by the heart beating beneath your ear. Sleep had nearly claimed you when his arms tightened around you.
When Ormund spoke again, his voice was so hushed that you thought perhaps you had dreamed it.
