Synopsis: A peasantâs fist has bruised the crest, a furious fire inside his chest. With leaking blood and fractured grace, he seeks the comfort of her face. The linen tears, the canvas shakes, as in her arms his sanity breaks.
Warnings: SMUT 18+, Targcest, Toxic Dynamics, Oral Sex, Unprotected Vaginal Sex, Femdom/Malesub, Praise Play & Degradation, Graphic Depictions of Physical Violence, mentioned Alcoholism, Age Gap of 6 years (Aerion is nineteen, Reader twenty-five)
Word Count: 6.1k
The air inside the great solar of Ashford Castle was thick with the suffocating scent of tallow candles, burnt rosemary, and damp stoneâa stark contrast to the sprawling chaos of the tournament encampment outside.
A bruised twilight pressed against the high, leaded-glass windows, carrying with it the distant, rhythmic drumming of commoners turning their collective shock into a dark, low chant. The smallfolk had seen a Prince of the blood floored by a landless hedge knight, and that realization was rippling through the tents like wildfire.
Inside the keep, the heavy timbered doors had been slammed shut by two towering household guards, sealing in a tension so dense it felt like smoke.
âA disgrace! An absolute, unmitigated rot upon our House!â
Prince Maekarâs voice did not merely break the silence; it shattered it, rattling the silver chalices and heavy pewter platters resting on the long oak trestle table.
The Prince of Summerhall had only just returned from the northern roads, his heavy wool riding cloak still caked with dried, pale mud from the Reach. He stood towering over the room, a father utterly besieged by the failures of his own bloodline.
Fifteen years ago, on the Redgrass Field, he and his brother Baelor had stood as an unbreakable wall of iron against the Blackfyre traitors, winning a Realm through blood and unyielding duty.
Yet here, in the soft, decadent heart of the Reach, the dynasty was bleeding from self-inflicted wounds.
Maekar knew that the high lords of the RealmâLeo 'Longthorn' Tyrell, the Redwynes of the Arbor, the Hightowers of Oldtownâwere watching this spectacle from their silken pavilions, waiting for any sign that the Targaryen seed was rotting from within.
At Maekarâs right flank stood Daeron, looking disheveled, bleary-eyed, and thoroughly damp from a day spent dragging his feet through roadside taverns. Daeron leaned heavily against a carved stone pilaster, the smell of sour wine and stale ale radiating from his skin in sickly waves. His boots were untied, his doublet sat crookedly across his narrow shoulders, and his posture was the pathetic slink of a truant caught in the act of wasting his inheritance.
He had run from Summerhall because of his cursed Dragon Dreamsâhallucinations of a great red Dragon falling upon himâand had drowned his terror in the lowest pot-houses along the road, costing his father three broken wine casks and twenty exhausted outriders to track him down.
Near the great hearth, young Aegonânewly shorn of his long silver hair, looking small, raw, and defiant in his simple squireâs wool tunicâsat under the watchful, severe gaze of two of his fatherâs personal outriders. The boyâs chin was set high, his small fists clenched so tightly in his lap that his knuckles were white. He was entirely unrepentant, his bright violet eyes darting defensively around the room, shielding the identity of the hedge knight, Ser Duncan, who had taken him in as a mere beggar boy named Egg.
âI hunt for one son in the brush, breaking horses and exhausting my guards, only to find him drowned in wine casks at some nameless pot-house,â Maekar spat, his granite face flushing a dark, dangerous crimson as his furious gaze swung like a battering ram toward Aerion.
âWhile my other son behaves like a common butcher in the lanes! I gave you explicit commands before we left Summerhall, Aerion! I gave you my direct, royal word that you were not to enter these lists, lest your volatile pride bring an unnecessary spectacle upon our House. Yet you smile to my face, sneak behind my back to buy your way into the tourney anyway, and break your solemn vow the moment my back is turned!â
Maekar took a heavy, menacing step forward, the floorboards groaning beneath his boots.
âAnd for what? To butcher a poor horse? To slash through painted canvas puppets? To terrorize simple players who hold the Kingâs license? You are a Prince of the blood, Aerion! A Dragon of House Targaryen! And you let a landless hedge knight drag your dignity through the dirt, flattening you into the common manure before half the commoners because you could not control your petulant cruelty!â
âHe struck me, Father!â Aerion shrieked, his voice cracking into a ragged, desperate pitch that echoed sharply against the vaulted ceiling.
The Brightflame stood beneath the heavy iron chandelier. His lip was split, blood covering his plump lips; Ser Duncanâs massive fist had collided with the sharp line of his Valyrian jawline, leaving a thick, purple ridge that already leaked a steady line of dark crimson onto his high red collar.
His violet eyes were wide, rimmed with a manic, unhinged panic as his breathing came in short, wheezing gasps. He looked less like a Prince and more like a rabid animal cornered in a high lordâs parlor.
His expensive Myrish silk was ruined, coated in the very filth of the common lanes.
âHe laid hands upon royal blood! The law demands his hands be struck off! His feet! He should be flayed before the commons!â
âThe brute is a captive now,â Prince Valarr intervened smoothly, stepping forward from the shadow of the velvet tapestries with an aristocratic, effortless sneer.
Valarr, the eldest son of the Hand, looked immaculate. His black velvet doublet was stitched with silver thread, completely untouched by the dust of the meadows. He looked at his cousins with a mixture of pity and deep contempt.
Valarr was the golden heir, the favored cousin of Kingâs Landing, and his presence only exacerbated Maekarâs deep-seated resentment of his brotherâs superior lineage.
âHe sits in the castle cells beneath the east tower, awaiting the judgment of the marshals. But he did no more than any true knight would do, uncle. He protected the defenseless from a rabid hound. If the smallfolk believe we use our might merely to terrorize women and puppeteers, the Crownâs authority will bleed faster than Aerionâs face.â
Maekarâs chest heaved under his travel-stained doublet, his breath a low, dangerous rattle that signaled the absolute limit of his patience.
He looked from Daeronâs trembling, hungover hands to Aegonâs bald, stubborn head, and finally back to Aerionâs weeping, blood-smeared face.
The sheer weight of his sonsâ collective failures seemed to age him ten years in the span of a heartbeat. He had spent his life in the shadow of his eldest brother, trying to build a legacy of iron duty, only to watch his own seed rot in the fruit.
âYour cousin speaks the truth, though it burns my throat to admit it,â Maekar growled, his voice dropping into a register of profound, suffocating shame that silenced the entire room. He loomed over Aerion, his calloused, scarred finger pointing directly at the boyâs split lip.
âYou have violated the Kingâs peace before the Tyrells have even broken bread at the welcoming feast. You have made us a laughingstock before half the lords of the Realm. Get out of my sight. Go to your quarters and wash the filth from your face before I strip your golden spurs myself and cast you out into the high road.â
With a choked, animalistic sound of absolute betrayal, Aerion turned on his heel and strode out of the solar. The heavy oak door slammed shut behind his back with a concussive boom that rattled the iron sconces.
Valarr, sensing the heavy, suffocating silence left in his cousinâs wake, offered a stiff, polite bow to his father and uncle before turning to follow the exit, signaling the household guards to haul a protesting young Aegon and a stumbling Daeron out toward the eastern wing.
Within moments, the chaotic seed of Maekar cleared the room like shadows fleeing a rising flame, leaving the heavy timbered doors to slam shut once more.
The sudden emptiness of the great solar felt heavier than the shouting. The remaining threeâthe Hammer, the Anvil, and the Late-Born Princessâstood in the dimming twilight like vertices of a jagged, broken crown.
Prince Baelor finally stepped out from the deep window recess where he had observed the final moments of the judgment.
Unlike Maekarâs raw, iron fury, Baelor carried the quiet, immense gravity of the Realm on his shoulders. He looked down at the trestle table, his dark eyes clouded with a weary, profound sorrow.
âYou should not have struck him in that tent, Maekar,â Baelor said softly, his voice steady but carrying the unyielding weight of the Hand.
âThe Realm cannot see the Dragons tearing at their own wings. Not here. Not with half the Reach watching. The scars of the Blackfyre Pretender are still fresh in the South. If the lords believe the throne is unstable, secret loyalties will find new life.â
Maekar whirled, his heavy wool cloak whipping against his mud-caked boots.
âAnd what would you have me do, brother? Let him preen? He broke my explicit vow. He lied to my face, sneaked his way into the lists, and then butchered innocent smallfolk under our banners! A landless hedge knight had to teach my son what honor means because his own father could not hammer it into his bones!â
Maekar slammed a fist onto the oak table, the remaining silver chalices rattling violently.
âI am surrounded by rot. A drunkard who sleeps in ditches, a runaway child who plays at being a beggar, and a madman who thinks he is made of wildfire.â
She remained near the recessed archway, draped flawlessly in her charcoal Myrish lace shawl. Her face was a perfect, crystalline mask of elegant grief and feminine shock, playing the part of the flawless, silent sister to absolute perfection.
Internally, she looked upon both brothers with a cold, sharpening detachment. Baelor was too soft, a bleeding-heart statesman obsessed with the love of the common rabble; Maekar was a blunt iron hammer, blind to any strategy that did not involve breaking bones. Neither of them understood that power was not maintained by duty or justice, but by the absolute, terrifying projection of Targaryen supremacy.
âMaekar, peace,â she murmured, her voice a cool, velvety balm that cut through the brothersâ rising tension like silk over a blade. She stepped forward, her black skirts sweeping silently across the rushes as she placed a gentle, steadying hand upon Maekarâs trembling forearm.
âThe boys have brought shame, yes, but shouting will not patch the holes in the Dragonâs wing. We must look to what comes next. The lords are watching.â
Baelor looked at her, his sharp, calculating gaze lingering on her serene face for a long, quiet heartbeat. He recognized the sharp intellect behind her mourning veil, even if Maekar was too blinded by fury to see it.
âOur sister speaks the truth,â Baelor said, turning his focus back to his brother.
âThe hedge knight, Ser Duncan, sits in the east tower cells. Aerion is already screaming for his hands, and Valarr tells me the boy Aegon is defending the brute with every breath. This minor brawl is rapidly turning into a legal nightmare. If we execute the knight for protecting the innocent, we lose the commons. If we pardon him, we admit royal blood was rightfully spilled in the dirt.â
Maekar growled, a low, dangerous sound in his chest, but the presence of his sister and the pragmatic weight of Baelorâs words were finally pulling him back from the precipice of pure rage.
He looked at them bothâhis brother who held the Realm, and his sister who held the familyâs darkest secretsâand the sheer weight of his burden seemed to turn him into an old man.
âDo what you must as Hand, Baelor,â Maekar muttered, turning his back to them to stare out into the bruised twilight of the courtyard.
âBut keep that rabid boy of mine away from the courts until the marshals call the terms. I cannot look at him without wanting to finish what the hedge knight started.â
She offered a small, tragic nod of understanding, smoothly catching Baelorâs eye as she began her exit.
To both of them, she was merely the comforting sister, withdrawing to let the great men of the Realm decide the law. She begged her leave from the furious Prince and the brooding Hand, her exit seamless, a shadow melting from the room before either brother could think to question the dark, calculating thoughts spinning behind her amethyst eyes.
The walk back to the northern tower of the keep was an exercise in pure claustrophobia. Ashford Castle was bursting at the seams, its stone veins engorged with the nobility of Westeros; servants rushed past in frantic waves, carrying flagons of heavy arbor ale and platters of salted beef to the lower halls; and the sharp, toxic tang of courtly gossip hung thick and oppressive in the air.
As she moved through the torchlit stone galleries, the oppressive heat of the overcrowded fortress seemed to press against her chest. The air smelled of cheap tallow, roasting capons, and the rancid sweat of thousands of visitors. From the recessed window bays and the winding stone stairwells, she caught the whispered fragments of the courtâs low, malicious amusement.
The Brightflame.
The Dragon who fell in the dirt.
A commonerâs fist broke his jaw.
The news of Aerionâs public humiliation had outrun the speed of his own horses. Down in the outer meadows, the common foot-soldiers and smallfolk were already drinking to the health of 'the giant', celebrating a peasant knight who had dared to strike a Prince.
It was an intolerable stain, a crack in the myth of their divine right.
Knowing exactly where a wounded, humiliated predator would slink when its pride was completely shattered and its father had cast it out, she altered her course toward the southern wing, where the guest apartments of the royal sons were isolated from the rest of the keep.
She stepped lightly, her black skirts making no sound against the rushes. Approaching the heavy timbered entrance to Aerionâs private tower chambers, she did not knock; she simply turned the brass handle and slipped inside ahead of the gathering storm, immediately turning the heavy iron key in the lock behind her.
She wanted no prying eyes, no loose tongues that could report back to Maekarâs captains.
Aerion was already there, trapped in the dim, suffocating silence of his own quarters. He did not pace. He was collapsed back against the heavy timber of the bedpost, his chest heaving violently.
The single candlelight from the iron candelabra flickered across his face, throwing the gruesome reality of his physical humiliation into sharp, unyielding relief. His jaw was slightly swollen, with deep indigo, mottled yellow, and angry red starting to bloom on his pale skin. His silver hair stood in wild spikes, turning him into a rabid catâor a Dragon stripped of its scales.
She did not approach him immediately.
She did not offer words of sweet sympathy or gentle comfort.
Instead, moving with agonizingly slow, deliberate grace, her black Myrish lace skirts whispering softly against the cold stone floor, she walked over to his washing stand to prepare the stage for the animal before her methodically.
She set out his silver basin, filling it with cool well water from the earthenware pitcher, and uncorked a flagon of sharp, stinging wine vinegar, its acidic scent immediately cutting through the musty smell of the old stone walls.
Finally, she loosened the silk ties of her dark mourning gown, letting the heavy lace fall slightly away from her throat and shoulders, before turning back toward the center of the room where he watched her from the shadows.
âLook at the great Dragon,â she murmured, her voice a cool, velvety taunt that cut through his ragged breathing. She wrung out a linen cloth in the silver basin with practiced indifference, her eyes never leaving his face.
âDriven from the solar like a beaten cur by your own father. Bleeding onto your own velvet, while the commoners outside sing songs of the hedge knight who broke your jaw.â
âThey humiliated me!â Aerion roared, the sound catching violently in his raw, swollen throat, turning into a pathetic, wheezing choke that ended in a cough. He staggered away from the bed toward the table, his fingers clawing at the edge of the dark wood for balance as his knees trembled.
âMy father... Baelor... they look at me and they see a madman! They protect the filth from the gutters! They protect a landless vagrant while I bleed! I am the blood of Old Valyria! I have the fire of the Fourteen Flames in my veins, and they treat me like a common thief!â
âThen let us clean the royal blood,â she said, her smile sharp and cold as a razor blade.
She stepped into his space, her movements devoid of fear. She caught him by the chin, her fingers digging ruthlessly into the uninjured side of his jaw, forcing his face upward into the harsh candlelight.
Without a single hint of gentleness, without the slightest mercy, she pressed the vinegar-soaked cloth directly into the raw, split meat of his lip.
Aerion let out a ragged, strangled groan of absolute agony, his whole body violently jerking backward as the acid hit the open wound.
But she had anticipated the reaction. Dropping the cloth back into the basin, her hands flew into his tangled silver hair, her fingers twisting into the strands with a brutal, commanding force. She pulled his head forward and down, forcing him onto a chair.
âSit still,â she commanded before taking the washcloth again.
She leaned over him, her proximity intentional, a suffocating wall of dark lace and cool silk that trapped him in place. Aerionâs breathing was a frantic, wheezing rattle, his chest heaving, but the brutal grip in his hair left him no room to twist away from her. His eyes glared up at her with a volatile mix of manic fury and pathetic, childlike dependency.
With agonizing slowness, she dipped the linen cloth back into the vinegar-water, letting the harsh, medicinal sting saturate the fabric. She pressed it down a second time, directly against the split meat of his lip.
This time, Aerion did not shriek.
A low, pathetic whimper vibrated through his chest, his knuckles turning stark white as his hands clawed ruthlessly into the dark wood of the chairâs armrests for balance. He was trembling beneath her hands, the grand Prince completely hollowed out, reduced to a bleeding, broken thing in the dark of his own chambers.
âI have told you to enter the lists, not to slaughter the horse of your opponent. And then you went about and broke a poor girlâs finger as well?â her voice was scolding him for his little acts of violence to prove whatever he wished to prove.
She swiped the cloth along his cheek with a firm, punishing pressure, deliberately ignoring the way his jaw twitched in pain. Her mind flashed back to the tourney fieldâthe heavy, metallic smell of blood on the trampled grass as Aerion purposefully drove his lance into the throat of the knightâs mount, the collective, horrified gasp of the gathered lords as the beast collapsed in agony.
And then, the madness on the common grounds, where he had seized the simple puppeteer girlâs hand and snapped her fingers one by one because her wooden dragons offended his twisted, fragile pride.
She had not told him to do so.
It had all been on his own accord, and that was a dangerous warning.
Her hound might be loyal, but he still possessed a rabid, fractured mind that could just as easily slip its leash and snap at her own fingers if she miscalculated the depth of his delusion.
Aerion cast his gaze downward, unable to meet the freezing brilliance of her amethyst eyes.
âShe... she was mocking the Dragon,â he muttered, his voice thick and defensive, yet lacking any of the thunderous arrogance he had thrown at his father in the solar.
âThey all mock us. They do not understand the fire. I had to make them see.â
âAnd instead, you made them see a Prince dragged through the mud by a man with no name,â she countered coldly, dropping the blood-pinkened cloth back into the silver basin with a soft, definitive splash.
She stood over him, a dark, commanding silhouette against the candle flame, watching the manic fire in his chest slowly turn to ash beneath her disapproval.
Aerion slumped back into the carved wood of the chair, his head tilting back as he stared up at her through a veil of sweat-matted silver hair. The venom was draining from him, replaced by a desperate, hollow hunger.
âWe have to scrub it clean,â he muttered, his fingers clawing weakly at the lace of her cuffs.
âThe stain. The smallfolk are singing in the ditches. My father looks at me like I am a corpse. We need to kill the giant, but Baelor... Baelor will want a magistrateâs trial. He will want a display of royal mercy to appease the commons.â
âA magistrateâs trial gives the hedge knight a voice,â she murmured, her long fingers sliding from his hair down to his throat, her thumb pressing against his pulsing artery.
âIt gives the smallfolk a stage. If the Hand pardons him, the Crown bleeds. If the Hand hangs him, the commons riot.â
âThen we take the decision out of Baelorâs hands,â Aerion breathed, his hands moving down to his own leather breeches, his fingers trembling as he unfastened them. His voice grew thin, sharp, and frantic.
âA trial by combat. A traditional challenge. But the brute is massive. I saw him floor three knights at the barrier before he reached me. If I face him aloneââ
âYou will not face him alone,â she interrupted, her voice a cool, velvety whisper.
Slowly, deliberately, she sank to her knees before him. The lace of her skirts pooled around her on the cold stone floor like an ink stain.
Aerionâs breath hitched, his thighs tensing as she reached out, her cool fingers guiding his hot, rigid length out into the dim candlelight. He looked down at her, his eyes wide with a volatile mix of reverence and desperate pride.
She leaned forward, her gaze locked on his face, entirely unblinking, before she took him into the dark warmth of her mouth.
Aerion let out a ragged, strangled gasp, his head snapping back against the wooden frame of the chair. His fingers dug ruthlessly into the dark wood of the armrests as she began a slow, agonizingly deep rhythm, using her lips and tongue to draw out the frantic tension coiled tight within his marrow.
The contrast of her cool hands gripping his thighs and the intense, enveloping heat of her mouth made him tremble, his hips shifting in a desperate, uncoordinated pulse.
âA simple duel leaves too much to chance,â she murmured against his skin, pausing for a single, breathless heartbeat to look up at him, her lips glistening in the candlelight.
âWe need certainty. A display of ancient law that silences the courts and the commons entirely.â
âA... what?â Aerion wheezed, his mind splintering under the heavy, intoxicating friction as she closed her mouth around him once more, pulling him deeper, her throat clamping down with a punishing, rhythmic suction that stole his breath.
âA Trial of Seven,â she murmured, pulling back just enough to let her words sink into his unhinged mind while her thumbs stroked the sensitive skin at his base.
âThe ultimate judgment of the Faith. Seven against seven. Your father will be forced to stand with you to preserve Summerhallâs honor. We have three of the Kingsguard here. Who in all of Westeros would dare draw a sword for a nameless hedge knight against the white cloaks and Princes of the blood?â
âNobody,â Aerion gasped, the realization hitting him like a rush of wildfire as she resumed her pace, faster now, her tongue swirling ruthlessly around the crown of his length.
âHe will find... no champions... The law will deem him guilty... before a single shield is split...â
The sheer relief of the strategic trap broke the last of his restraint. Aerionâs hands flew into her tangled silver hair, his fingers twisting into the strands with a brutal, commanding force as he began to thrust blindly against her mouth.
She did not pull back; she tightened her grip on his thighs, absorbing his desperate, clumsy momentum, forcing him to take his comfort entirely on her terms.
The climax hit him like a physical blow to the chest. Aerionâs body went completely rigid in the chair, a muffled, animalistic groan caught in his throat as he shattered, spilling thick, burning streams of his seed deep into her throat.
She swallowed him down without a single flinch, her eyes remaining fixed on his face until the very last tremor left his thighs.
Slowly, she rose from her knees while Aerion remained slumped back, his chest heaving, his eyes half-closed in a daze of absolute exhaustion and relief.
Before he could sink fully into the lethargy, she leaned over him, trapping him against the high back of the carved chair. Straddling his lap, she gripped his jaw with a firm, unyielding hand, forcing his mouth open. She pressed her lips to his in a deep, bruising kiss, deliberately smearing the sharp, copper tang of his split lip with the hot, bitter taste of his own seed.
Aerion gasped into her mouth, a low, startled groan vibrating in his throat as he was forced to taste the raw reality of his own release.
The sharp jolt of intimacy seemed to ignite whatever manic energy remained in his veins. His hands flew to her hips, his fingers digging into her flesh through the silk layers as he returned the kiss with a sudden, desperate hunger.
The dynamic shifted instantly, turning primitive and urgent. Aerion lunged upward from the seat, his teeth catching her lower lip as his clumsy, frantic fingers tore at the bodice of her mourning gown, baring her pale breasts to the dim candlelight.
âAgain,â he muttered against her skin, his voice a ragged command, all the grand Prince illusions rushing back to mask his terror.
âI want you. The fire is still there.â
âThen let it burn you,â she whispered down into his silver hair.
Remaining firmly seated over his lap, she reached between them, her cool fingers guiding his rapidly recovering, rigid length to her opening. With a sharp, desperate gasp, Aerion drove himself deep within her velvet heat.
He did not ride her with the practiced, arrogant rhythm of a conqueror; he buried his face in the crook of her neck, his hips beginning a short, stabbing, frantic pulse.
Every time he tried to push harder, attempting to regain his dominance by forcing his weight upward, she tightened her inner wallsâa ruthless, clamping contraction that stole his breath and made his knees tremble.
âBehave, Aerion,â she hissed, her fingers twisting into his silver hair with agonizing force, pulling his face up from her neck.
He opened his eyes, his mouth hanging open as sweat and saliva dripped down onto her bare collarbone. He looked at her not as a mistress, but as an anchorâa terrifying, unhinged fixation.
She was the only woman to him, the only woman who matched the burning flames, a woman who was pure perfection in the eyes of a man who yearned for Valyrian beauty.
The second climax hit him harder than the first, triggered entirely by the suffocating depth of her hold. Aerionâs body went completely rigid, a muffled scream caught in his throat as she clamped her hand over his mouth, swallowing the sound.
He shattered inside her, his hips violently jerking in a final, disorganized frenzy as he spilled his warmth deep against her cervix, his hands digging so hard into her thighs that her skin would be black and blue by morning.
Yet, even as his strength utterly spent itself and his head fell back in exhaustion, she did not stop.
Driven by her own unyielding heat, she gripped his shoulders and continued to ride his softening length, her movements turning deliberate, grinding, and sharp.
Aerion let out a weak, bewildered groan, his hands limply resting on her waist as she used his body entirely for her own high. She arched her back against the dark room, twisting her hips with a punishing, relentless friction that paid no heed to his depletion.
She chased the cresting coil inside her until it finally broke, her body locking around him in a series of intense, breathless spasms that drew a sharp cry from her own lips.
When it was completely over, she finally stilled, collapsing forward slightly as her breathing slowed in the quiet of the tower room.
She sat back once she caught her breath, her long fingers slowly tracing the line of his spine beneath his loosened doublet.
Aerion remained completely motionless beneath her, his head buried in the dark, torn lace of her bodice, his shoulders hitching with small, pathetic tremors. The fierce, terrifying Prince who had terrorized the common grounds was completely gone, leaving only a hollowed-out boy weeping silently against her skin.
Sensing his absolute descent into despair, her cold, calculating gaze softened into a mask of pure, synthetic warmth. She shifted her weight, sliding gracefully from his lap to stand before him, though she did not push him away.
Instead, she leaned down, wrapping her arms around his trembling shoulders and pulling his head gently against her chest.
âShh, my sweet Dragon,â she murmured, her voice dropping into a gentle, cooing register, almost motherly in its soothing rhythm. She ran a soothing hand through his wild, spiked silver hair, smoothing the sweat-matted strands away from his face with maternal tenderness.
âQuiet now. The fire is quiet.â
Aerion choked back a sob, his arms wrapping tightly around her waist as he clung to her like a drowning child.
âThe songs...â he whispered, his voice muffled against her skin.
âThey are laughing at me. Father... Baelor... they want to leave me in the dirt.â
âLet them laugh for now,â she whispered against his ear, her breath a warm, comforting balm that cut through his panic. She kissed the crown of his head, her touch deliberate and fiercely protective.
âThey are blind to the Dragonâs blood, Aerion. They do not see the flame the way I do. Your father is an old man, weary of his own shadow, and Baelor is a Septon in a Crown. They do not matter. They think only of their fragile peace, but we think of the dynasty.â
She pulled back just enough to look down into his face, her thumbs gently wiping the tears and sweat from his high cheekbones.
Her expression was a flawless portrait of unconditional devotion, shielding the cold malice that spun behind her amethyst eyes. She knew exactly how deeply he craved his fatherâs elusive approval, how much he envied the immaculate, golden Prince Valarr. By reducing his judges to old, blind men, she severed his remaining tethers to their authority, binding his loyalty exclusively to her own hand.
âWe will clean the stain, little Prince,â she promised softly, her voice carrying the unyielding weight of a mother comforting a wounded child before a war.
âEvery single drop of muck they flung at you in the lanes, we will wash away with their own blood. The Trial of Seven will be your altar. We will trap the hedge knight in his own meager honor, and we will watch the Realm crush him for daring to touch you.â
Aerion looked up at her, his breathing finally slowing, his fractured mind drinking in her praise like wine.
âYou promise?â he whispered, desperate for the validation only she could provide.
âI promise,â she murmured, leaning down to press a soft, lingering kiss to his uninjured skin.
âYou are a Dragon. And Dragons do not stay in the dirt.â
The sharp jolt of intimacy had ignited whatever manic energy remained in his veins, but now, in the cooling quiet of the room, the reality of his position returned to mock him. Aerionâs eyes, heavy with exhaustion, fixed on the silver washbasin where his own blood swirled in the vinegar-tinted water.
âThey will write verses about this night,â he muttered, his voice a cracked whisper against her neck.
âThe singers. The rats who crawl through the taverns of the Reach. They will sing of how the Brightflame was broken by a man who owns nothing but a horse and a dented shield.â
âThen we shall rip their tongues out before they can find the rhyme,â she answered smoothly, her fingers tracing the sharp, tense ridge of his collarbone.
âLet the smallfolk have their hour of small victories. It is the only coin they will ever possess. But tomorrow, the lords of the Highgarden and the Arbor will look upon you and remember why they bend the knee.â
Walking back to the washstand, she picked up a fresh square of dry linen, using it to dab the remaining moisture from her own throat and breasts before fastening the silver stays of her dark Myrish bodice.
Every movement was slow, deliberate, a calculated display of absolute control that made Aerion feel small beneath her gaze.
âYou speak of the Kingsguard,â Aerion said, his mind catching on the thread of her strategy as he struggled to sit upright, his leather breeches still loosened around his thighs.
âThey protect the blood of Summerhall because they are sworn to the Crown. But Baelor... Baelor commands the Realmâs law. If the Hand forbids the Kingsguard from drawing steel in a private quarrel, what then?â
She turned back to him, the candle flame catching the wicked, knowing curve of her lips.
âA Trial of Seven is no private quarrel, Aerion. It is an appeal to the Gods themselves. Not even the Hand of the King can deny a Prince his right to seek the judgment of the Seven when his royal person has been defiled by a common hand. If Baelor attempts to shield the hedge knight from the ancient law, he will look as though he is shielding a traitor. The lords of the Reachâthose proud, ancient Houses who still remember the Dragonâs fireâwill see it as a weakness. They will see a Hand who values a beggarâs skin over his own familyâs honor.â
She walked back to him, her hand resting lightly on the carved wolfâs head of the chairâs armrest.
âAnd your father, Maekar... his pride is an iron cage. He may rage at you in the solar, he may call you a disgrace before family, but he will never allow the world to see his blood defeated by a landless vagabond. When the shields are brought out, when the horses are mounted under the shadow of the seven-pointed star, Maekar will stand at your right hand. He has no choice. To do otherwise would be to admit that his house is broken.â
Aerion reached out, his bruised fingers tangling in the dark lace of her skirts, his face lifting toward hers with a frantic, desperate hunger for the certainty she offered.
âSeven against seven,â he whispered, the manic light returning to his amethyst eyes like a guttering candle catching fresh oil.
âWe will have the white cloaks. We will have my fatherâs steel. And the giant will have nothing but the wind and the dirt.â
âHe will have his grave,â she murmured, leaning down to press one final, freezing kiss against his forehead.
âNow close your eyes, my Prince. Let the fire rest. Tomorrow, we give the Realm a show they will never forget.â
She caressed him until he was fully quieted down, her long fingers slowly tracing the line of his spine beneath his loosened doublet.
Once he had closed his eyes to doze, she walked slowly over to the narrow arched window of the tower, looking out into the pitch-black night toward the eastern wing where Ser Duncan the Tall lay in chains.
The trap was set.
The legal machinery of the Seven Kingdoms would grind the peasant knight into dust, and the authority of the bloodroyal would be reasserted in a spectacle of iron and blood.
Yet, as she turned her head back to look at Aerionâslumped in the chair, a dark, manic grin beginning to twitch at the corners of his mouth as he relished the thought of the coming slaughterâa cold, tightening dread settled deep within her belly.
The Trial of Seven would destroy their enemies, but the monster she had nurtured, the wildfire she had stoked to preserve their myth, was becoming too volatile, too unhinged to control.
If she were not careful, the flame she used to cleanse the stain would consume them all.
Pairings: Baelor Targaryen x wife!Reader, Maekar Targaryen x sister-in-law!Reader
Synopsis: Two Princes and a stolen wife marooned on Dragonstone, where Maekar chokes on guilt and lust beside his brotherâs throne. But mercy dies and futures fade beneath a black-wax sealâthe plague has swept the lineage clean, and left a crown to steel.
Warnings: SMUT 18+, Unprotected Vaginal Sex, Canon Character Death, Non-Consensual Kissing/Sexual Assault, Baelor survived AU, Heavy Angst/Emotional Trauma, Grief and Mourning, Child Loss, Physical Disability, Forbidden Desire, Unrequited Love, Love Triangle
Word Count: 10.3k
The crossing to Dragonstone was not a voyage; it was an internment.
The Black Betha cut through the choppy, black waters of the Gullet under a sky the color of dirty lead, her single mast groaning against the cold gale.
Below deck, the world had shrunk to a low-ceilinged cabin that smelled of vinegar-soaked rags, old grease, and the sharp brine of the sea.
The timber frames screamed against the pressure of the swells, throwing the small room into a rhythmic, nauseating tilt that made every breath feel heavy with the taste of rot. The lantern swinging from the central beam cast erratic, greasy shadows over the salt-crusted bulkheads, flickering like a dying mind.
For the four days of the journey, Maekar Targaryen did not sleep. He sat on an iron-bound chest by the cabin door, a massive, silent gargoyle whose great wool cloak remained pinned to his shoulders and whose leather-lined fists were locked over the pommel of his sword.
The skin across his knuckles was dry and cracked from the salt-spray, but he did not shift his grip.
He kept his eyes fixed strictly on the iron latch of the door, his jaw set so tight the muscle bunched like coiled rope beneath his silver-gold beard. He refused to look at the narrow berth where his brother lay wrapped in blankets that stained with the yellow grease of his ointments.
He refused to look at her.
Beside Baelor, she remained a quiet, unyielding presence in the dim, lantern-lit cabin. She had cast aside her courtly stays, her heavy velvet kirtles, and the Targaryen crimson silks of the Capital; she wore only a frayed linen shift that clung damply to her skin in the humid close of the hold, her hair tumbling loose and uncombed over her shoulders.
Every time the ship rolled heavily, her eyes would slide from her husbandâs slack, stitched head to track the fierce, protective tension in Maekarâs broad shoulders. She did not look at him with hatred, nor with love; she looked at him as a prisoner looks at the iron wall that keeps out the rising tide.
When the sea tossed the galley violently sideways, her small, bare foot braced against the deck timber, inches from the heavy leather of Maekarâs riding boot. Neither of them moved. Neither of them acknowledged the proximity, but the air between them grew thick and hot, competing with the chill brine seeping through the hull. The smallness of the room made his breathing heavy, matching her own slow exhales, until the cabin itself seemed to pulse with their mutual isolation.
Through the salt-filmed dark, she watched the heavy rise and fall of Maekarâs chest. He looked less like a Prince of the blood and more like a man buried alive under the sediment of his own actions.
There was a terrible, ungraceful density to his grief; where Baelorâs mind had been softened by the Maesterâs grey drops, Maekarâs lucidity was an open wound. Every tilt of the ship made his boots creak against the floorboards, a stubborn, flat sound that resisted the seaâs attempt to unsettle him.
She knew that look; she had seen it on him during the long years at Summerhall, when he would sit at the edge of the royal gatherings, a permanent shadow to Baelorâs midday sun.
But here, stripped of the grand halls and the distraction of courts, his secondary nature had become an aggressive thing.
He did not look at her because to look at her was to look at the living receipt of Ashford Meadow.
The galley finally groaned against the stone docks of Dragonstone after days on the sea. The Castle rose above them like a petrified beast, its dragon-carved towers clawing at the grey mist that rolled off the Narrow Sea. The sea-gate was a black maw, dripping with long icicles that looked like the teeth of the beasts carved into the masonry.
The shipâs captain stepped forward, his arms outstretched to help the Prince down the wet gangplank, but Maekarâs arm swung out, broad and hard as an oak beam, barring the manâs path.
âNo,â Maekar growled, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that tasted of brine and bile.
âNo one touches him but me.â
She watched in absolute silence as Maekar leaned over the low berth. He let his sword-belt clatter to the deck, stripping away the hierarchy of his rank to become nothing but muscle and bone. His massive arms slid beneath Baelorâs shoulders and the hollows of his knees. With a single, fluid surge of his back, Maekar lifted the heir to the Iron Throne against his chest.
Baelorâs head fell back against Maekarâs shoulder, his left hand weakly bunching the fabric of his brotherâs wool shirt for balance. The weight of him was immenseâthe dead weight of a giant whose body had forgotten how to hold itself up, the muscles of his right side entirely flaccid, dragging like wet clay.
Maekar did not stagger. He bore him down the gangplank and up the steep, wet stone paths of the Island, his riding boots crunching into the frozen gravel, his teeth grinding against each other with every step.
She walked just three steps behind them, her bare hands holding Baelorâs heavy fur cloak off the wet ground, her gaze fixed entirely on the broad, shifting landscape of Maekarâs back.
The hands that had delivered the shattering blow beneath the spring sun of Ashford Meadow were now the only hands strong enough, and reverent enough, to cradle the broken pieces.
The ride from the docks to the Castle gates took three hours, and neither of them spoke a word.
The wind had died down to a bitter, salt-rimed chill, smelling of old basalt and rotting kelp.
She rode, flanked by two guards whose iron plates were dull with sea-grease, her head tucked low into the high, stiff collar of her fox-fur mantle.
Maekar rode three paces ahead, his great shoulders hunched against the mist, a massive, unmoving shape on a black gelding that smelled of sour sweat. Every time the horsesâ hooves struck the wet shale of the path, the sound was too loudâflat and heavy, like coins dropped on wood.
When they reached the inner bailey, she did not wait for the stable-hands. She swung her leg over the cantle, her long wool skirts bunching around her knees, and dropped down into the gravel before the beast had even settled. Her heel caught an uneven flagstone; she stumbled forward, her hands striking the rough, moss-grown wood of the water trough to catch her balance.
Maekar was off his mount before her skirts hit the dirt. His large, leather-lined hand shot out, wrapping around her forearm with the same hard, impersonal force he used to check a shield-boss. He hauled her upright so violently that her shoulder sockets clicked beneath the fur.
Dyanna had been married to a brute. Maekar was incapable of a soft touch. No wonder his children turned out to be a bunch of chaos.
âI have you,â he growled.
He did not let go. For three seconds, four, the silence between them became something physicalâthick and sour, like the air in a cellar before a storm. His thumb was pressed directly against the small, blue vein on the inside of her wrist, so hard he could feel the frantic, rabbit-kick of her pulse. He was looking down at her hair, at the grey grease of the sea-salt that had dried into the strands near her temples, his jaw bunched until the skin under his beard went white.
She did not pull away. She stood perfectly still, her breath coming in short, shallow puffs that froze between them like small white feathers. Her eyesâdark and flat as the water in a wellâslid up from his chest to his mouth, then stayed there, fixed on the hard line of his lips with a cold, clear scrutiny that felt like a needle under the skin.
âYou have me,â she said. Her voice had no weight to it. It was just air passing over cold teeth.
âYou always have me, Maekar.â
He dropped his hand as if the leather had taken flame. He stepped back a full pace, his boot crunching into the gravel, his arms locking behind his back where she could no longer see the twitch in his fingers.
âThe Prince is waiting in the solar,â Maekar said to the space between her shoulder blades.
âThe Maester has already prepared the mustard-oil.â
She did not answer. She turned her back on him, her cloak sweeping a track through the wet grey dust of the yard, and walked toward the keep with her spine so straight it looked ready to snap.
In the weeks that followed, the Castle grew smallerâtoo small.
There were only three chambers on the second floor of the Sea Dragon Tower that were kept warm: the solar where Baelor sat by the fire, the small closet where the Maester kept his dried herbs and his jars of leeches, and the bedchamber with the great oak frame. To get from one to the other, one had to pass through the galleryâa narrow, drafty length of stone where the windows looked out over the western cliffs.
Whenever Maekar passed her in the gallery, he turned into a statue. He would halt three paces away, his back pressed against the damp masonry, his head bowed so low his chin touched his collar. He would wait until the hem of her gown had scraped past his boots before he took another breath.
There was no heat left in the way he looked at her. The hot, heavy hunger that had burned in his chest during the first few weeks had frozen into something stiff and brittleâa rigid, military compliance that was more insulting than any insult.
When he handed her a trencher of bread at the table, his fingers were extended straight, his palm flat, ensuring that not even the wool of his sleeve brushed the linen of her cuff. If her hand moved toward the salt-cellar, his hand went back into his lap instantly, his fork clattering against the pewter plate.
âShe has a cough,â Baelor said one evening. He was sitting in his high chair, his bad leg propped on a low stool covered in sheepskinsâhe was growing stronger now, his body now able to sit. His right hand was tucked into his belt, but his left hand was moving slowly, tracing the grain of the oak table.
âThe sea-damp is in her lungs, Mae. We should have the smith bring up another brazier from the lower yard.â
Maekar did not look up from his meat. He was cutting a piece of salt-beef into small, perfect squares, his grease-stained thumbs working the bone-handled knife with a terrifying, deliberate precision.
âThe smith has no charcoal,â Maekar said. His voice was flat, level as a carpenterâs rule.
âThe last of the oaks on the south point were cut three days ago. There is only driftwood left, and driftwood does not hold the heat.â
âSurely a turn in the yard would do her good,â Baelor muttered, his eyes sliding between them with a faint, puzzling squint. The sweetsleep had made his pupils small as pinpricks, but there were times when the old knightâs sharpness broke through the fog like a pike through leather.
âShe has not left the keep since the storm. You should take her down to the sea-gate, Brother. Show her the gulls.â
âThe path is slick,â Maekar said. He laid the knife down. It did not click against the plate; he placed it so carefully the steel made no sound at all.
âShe is small. If she slips, she breaks.â
Only a brute was able to say such things.
Small.
She did not look up from her needlework. She was mending a tear in one of Baelorâs old linen shirts, her pale fingers moving the bone needle in and out of the grey cloth with a small, rhythmic hiss.
âI shall stay by the fire,â she said to the linen.
âThe Prince is right. The paths are too narrow for two.â
Maekar stood up. He did not ask to be excused. He simply pulled his great cloak over his shoulders, pinned it with the iron dragon-claw at his throat, and walked out into the dark of the stairwell.
He did not look back to see if she watched him go, but as the heavy oak door thudded shut behind him, he heard the sharp, sudden snap of the bone needle breaking against her thumb.
Small. The only small thing was his empathy.
By the third moon on the Island, the initial stillness had settled into a grey, grinding purgatory. The world outside was a distant monster, reported only in the sparse, ink-smudged letters that managed to cross the Narrow Sea.
But on Dragonstone, the sickness was of a different kind.
It was a disease of silence and small movements.
In the outer courtyard, where the salt wind bit like a dull razor, Maekar had the masons construct a pair of parallel wooden rails, braced into the dirt with thick iron pins.
âAgain,â Maekar said.
He stood at the end of the rails, his chest broad as an anvil, his arms folded. His face was a stone facade, showing nothing of the hollow ache that had nested in his belly since they left the Capital.
Baelor stood between the beams, his left hand gripping the rough pine until his knuckles went grey. His right arm hung uselessly at his side, tucked into a sleeve pinned across his chest. He took a step. The left leg moved with the old, fluid grace of a knight; the right leg followed a second later, a stubborn, dragging dead weight that plowed a furrow through the black gravel. His breath came in ragged, whistling gasps, the sweat pouring down his temples despite the freezing sea spray.
âI cannot, Mae,â Baelor whispered.
The slackness in his jaw made the words thick, the consonants blurring together like melting ice. He took another half-step, his left hand slipped on the wood, and his knees buckled.
He did not hit the stones. Maekar was there before the Princeâs hip could touch the dirt. He caught Baelor beneath the armpits, lifting him back to his feet with a rough, wordless jerk.
âYou can,â Maekar said, his face inches from his brotherâs. He could see the tiny, broken red veins in the white of Baelorâs eyes.
âYou are the Prince of Dragonstone. You will walk back into the throne room on your own feet, or I will drag you there myself. Again.â
From the shadow of the portcullis, she watched them. She stood with her arms crossed over her ribs, a heavy fur mantle pulled tight against her throat.
Her gaze did not linger on her husbandâs trembling limbs; it stayed fixed on Maekarâs face, tracing the deep lines of self-loathing that carved his brow whenever Baelor was not looking.
She could see the meat of his shoulder-blades shifting under his boiled leather. It was the same heavy, joyless labor she had witnessed during their long youthâMaekar performing the duties Baelor left behind, clearing the brush from the borders while Baelor rode in the tourneys.
But here, the labor was macabre.
Maekar was trying to rebuild the machine he had shattered with his own mace. Every pound of flesh he lifted seemed to settle directly into his own spine, curving his neck forward until he looked like an ox under a wooden yoke.
When Baelor was finally settled in his chair back within the Great Hall, his breathing still shallow and wet, Maekar turned to find her blocking the entrance to the lower pantry. She held a basket of dried plums and tallow candles, her knuckles white against the wicker.
âYou are too hard on him,â she said, her voice dropping below the roar of the fire.
âHe is the Prince of Dragonstone,â Maekar replied, his body stiffening as he tried to pass her without his scabbard brushing her skirts.
âIf he does not walk, the Realm rots from the head down. Our father is old. A Kingdom cannot be governed by a man who must be turned in his sheets like a salted hog.â
The comparison was cruel, and she saw the small twitch in his own eyelid that proved he knew it.
âHe is your brother,â she said, her voice dropping into that quiet, venomous register that belonged only to women who had lost their courts.
âYou broke his crown at Ashford, Maekar. Must you break his shins on the gravel to prove you were the stronger of the two?â
Maekarâs hand flew to his side, his fingers wrapping around the hilt of his dagger before he realized what he was doing. He did not pull the steel, but his knuckles went the color of old lard.
âI did not mean to strike his head,â he whispered, the words tearing out of him like briars from clay.
âThe mace... the sun was in my eyes. The Gods chose the blow.â
âThe Gods did not hold the shaft. No matter how often you repeat it,â she said, âyou held it. You have always held it, because you wanted to know what his skull felt like under your hand. You wanted to know if the Kingâs favorite son was made of the same bone as the rest of us.â
Maekar did not strike her. He did not move. He stood there, his breath coming in hot, dry gasps that smelled of the vinegar-meat he had eaten at noon.
Through her eyes, he looked monstrously large in the narrow stone passagewayâa wall of dark iron and grey wool that could crush her with a single lean of his hips.
But behind the iron, she saw the hollow space where his pride used to live. His eyes were wide and yellowed at the rims, the pupils darting across her features as if searching for a sentence that could clear his name.
No matter how much he wept into her skirts while Baelor had been too weak to speak. No matter how much she tried to be the understanding woman.
She was unable to understand him. He did not want to be understood. Maekar was a grim man, and even more so after Ashford. They had only been able to function together as long as they had one shared duty to work forâthe protection of a weakened Baelor against the political dynamicsâbut out here? Out here they were only to themselves and she was unable to look beneath the layers of Maekarâs grimness.
The rumors that Bloodraven whispered bothered her even more so now. No man could ever replace her husband, above all Maekar.
âGo to your chambers,â he said, the words falling flat and dead between them.
âThe air is thin here.â
âThe air is thin everywhere you stand, Maekar,â she said, and left him alone in the dark of the buttery stairs.
Later that night, when the candles had run down to grey grease, she remained in the hall to gather the wools for her mending. Maekar was still there, sitting by the map, his large hand flat over the carved wood of Summerhall.
âWhy do you stay in the room when the Maester strips him?â she asked, her voice startling the silence of the rafters.
Maekar did not remove his palm from the table.
âHe is my charge.â
âHe is your brother, not your prisoner,â she said, walking toward him until she could see the salt-crust on the collar of his doublet.
âThe Maester says his skin is growing grey because you keep the shutters closed. You are burying him before his time, Maekar. Is it because you cannot bear to see him look at the sky you took from him?â
Maekarâs head came up slowly. In the dying light of the fire, his face looked like something turned up by a plowârough, dark, and full of stones.
âI keep the shutters closed because the wind from the sea carries the rot,â he said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, rhythmic cadence.
âI keep him in the room because if the smallfolk see him drag his leg across the wall, the murmurs will reach Kingâs Landing before the moon turns. Do you want the Realm to know that the Hand of the King cannot clear his own bladder without an iron pot? Do you want his sons to see him like this?â
The mention of the children was a low blow, and she took it with a sharp intake of breath.
âValarr is a knight grown. He is a young man and husband to a wife,â she said.
âHe knows his fatherâs heart.â
âHe knows his fatherâs name,â Maekar spat. He rose from his seat, his massive thighs throwing the heavy oak bench back against the stones with a sound like thunder.
âHe does not know what it takes to hold seven Kingdoms together when the King is a poet and the heir is an unstrung bow. I am the one who must answer the ravens from the Marches. I am the one who must tell the Ironborn that we still have teeth, while my brother sits by your fire and worries about the price of charcoal. Do not speak to me of what he has lost. I have lost my brother, and I am left with a ghost that I must carry on my back until the Stranger takes us both.â
âYou hate him because he loves you,â she said softly, almost to herself.
Maekar turned his back on her, his great wool cloak catching the draft from the door.
âI hate him because he forgave me,â he said.
âA true Prince would have had my head on a pike before the blood dried on the grass. He gave me my life, and every day I live it, I spit on his mercy.â
Maekar turned his back on her, his great wool cloak catching the draft from the door.
âThen you are a fool, Maekar,â she said, her voice dropping into that quiet, venomous register.
âYou think your guilt is a grand thing, a monument you built with your mace. It is nothing but cowardice. You want the pike because you are too weak to carry the man you broke.â
He spun on his heel so fast she had barely been able to blink. The absolute fury in his face was not the controlled, military coldness he wore in the yard; it was raw, red, and frantic, the rage of a wild animal cornered by its own shadow.
He crossed the distance between them in a single, massive stride, his shadow obliterating the light from the low candles until she was trapped against the rough stone of the pantry door.
âYou know nothing of my weakness,â he growled, his breath hot and smelling of the bitter ale he had drunk at noon.
His hand shot out, not to check a shield-boss this time, but catching her by the jaw, his heavy, thick fingers gripping her chin until her lips parted against her teeth. Before she could scream, he slammed his mouth down onto hers.
It was not a courtship; it was an assault of pure, desperate starvation.
His lips were dry and cracked with the salt-frost, grinding against hers with a heavy, brutal force that tasted of brine, iron, and old copper. He pressed his entire weight into her, his boiled leather chest crushing her ribs against the stone, his other hand coming up to lock behind her head, his fingers tangling viciously in her hair to force her face upward.
He kissed her as if he could tear the gold from her throat, as if by consuming Baelorâs wife he could finally take the midday sun for himself and burn out the grey hell he had lived in since Ashford.
For a second, the sheer mass of him paralyzed her. Then the horror turned to iron in her spine.
She did not submit. She brought her hands up between their chests, her fingers bunching into the rough grey wool of his tunic, and drove her elbows forward with all the leverage her small frame could find against the door.
With a fierce, guttural gasp, she shoved him away from her, her boots skidding through the grey dust of the floorboards as she threw her weight into his chest.
Maekar stumbled back two full paces, his heel catching on the low wooden step of the buttery stairs. He hit the stone jamb with a dull thud, his arms dropping to his sides, his breath coming in short, ragged wheezes.
She stood against the door, her chest heaving violently under her linen shift, her hair half-torn from its bone needles and falling wild over her shoulders. She raised the back of her hand to her mouth, wiping his spit and the taste of his sour mouth from her lips with a single, violent stroke that left a red smear across her pale cheek. Her eyes were no longer flat; they were wide and dark with a terrifying, absolute disgust.
âNever,â she whispered, her voice trembling but hard as basalt.
âNever touch me again, Maekar.â
He looked at her through the dark of the passageway, his broad chest rising and falling beneath his silk shirt, his mouth slightly open.
The fury had vanished, replaced by an immense, grey shame that seemed to shrink his great frame into the shadows.
He looked down at his own large handsâthe fingers still curved from the shape of her jawâwith a sudden, animal terror, as if he had just realized they were covered in blood.
âYou are a thief in your own brotherâs House,â she said, her spine straight as a lance as she stepped past him into the light of the corridor.
âAnd the Hand is waiting for his meat.â
The heavy thump of the oak door behind her did not silence the roaring of the wind outside, nor could it drown the sudden, frantic thrumming of her own blood.
She did not light the tallow candle on the dresser. She did not want the light; she wanted the grey, indifferent dark of her bedchamber to swallow the shape of her body. Her knees hit the floorboards before she reached the wash-basin, her silk skirts pooling around her in a tangled, heavy ring that smelled of the salt-damp and the grease of the buttery stairs.
Her hands shook so violently the pewter pitcher clattered against the lip of the bowl, a sharp, metallic ring that sounded like a dagger striking armor. She tipped it with a reckless, jerking motion, spilling the cold, brackish water over her knuckles and onto the dry rushes of the floor.
She did not use the linen cloth. She brought her bare, wet palms to her face, her fingers digging into the skin of her lips, her chin, her cheeks, scrubbing with a sudden, feral intensity that left her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
The taste of him remained under her tongueâcoarse ale and the iron tang of blood where his teeth had pressed too hard against her lip. It was the taste of a brute who had spent his life in the shadow of camps, a man who knew how to conquer a wall but had never learned how to ask for entry.
âA thief,â she whispered into the dark, her fingers dragging across her mouth until the skin went numb and red.
âA thief in his own House.â
She scrubbed until her lips burned, until the cold water felt like lye against her face, but the memory of his weight remained. For those three seconds against the wood of the pantry door, he had not been a Prince or a brother; he had been an avalanche of dark iron and grey wool, a creature of pure, desperate starvation that had threatened to flatten her into the very stone of the keep.
And yet, beneath the disgust that coiled hot and heavy in her stomach, there was a sharper, more terrifying realization. The fury in his face had not been the anger of a conqueror; it had been the panic of a man who was already under the dirt, reaching up to drag the living down into the grave with him.
He had looked at her jaw as if it were a ledge above a precipice, and his fingers had left bruises because he was falling.
She leaned her forehead against the cold rim of the pewter basin, her hair falling over her cheeks in wet, tangled ropes.
In the adjoining room, through the thick masonry, she could hear the low, rhythmic thud of the Maesterâs mortar as he ground the poppy seed for Baelorâs night-draught.
Baelor was twenty paces away, his mind soft with the sweetsleep, completely unaware that his own blood had just tried to strip the gold from his table. She would have to go back in there. She would have to sit by his side, wipe the wine from his chin, and look across the Painted Table at the monster who carried him.
Below, in the narrow dark of the stairs, Maekar had not moved.
He remained pinned against the stone jamb where her hands had thrown him, his massive shoulders hunched forward until his neck curved like an ox under a yoke. The iron ring of keys hung loose from his belt, clicking against his thigh with a small, mocking sound every time his chest heaved.
He was looking down at his hands. In the weak grey light that filtered through the arrow-slit, his fingers looked enormousâthick, scarred at the knuckles from the brass rivets of his gauntlets, the nails short and broken from the stone-work of the yard. The skin of his right palm still felt hot, retaining the memory of the sharp, delicate bone of her jaw.
A sudden, violent tremor went through his forearm, so hard the leather of his doublet creaked. He pulled his hand back, tucking it into his armpit as if he had just touched a hot iron, his teeth grinding together until his ears rang with the sound of his own bone.
âWhat have you done?â he muttered to the stones.
His voice did not sound like his own; it was a thin, dry scratch, the voice of a man who had been lost in the hills for days without water.
Maekar wondered what he must have done to anger the Gods. He must have done something. How much punishment did one man deserve, though? He had received the punishment for at least three men.
He had spent his whole life being the son who stayed behind, the one who counted the tallow rations and mended the walls while Baelor rode into the sunlight of the tourney grounds. Had it been the jealousy that deserved divine punishment?
He had accepted the scraps of Summerhall. He had accepted the silence of the court. He had even accepted the terrible, crushing weight of the mace at Ashford, believing that if he carried his brotherâs broken body for the rest of his days, the Gods might look down and see an honorable man.
But tonight, the alignment had snapped.
He had looked at herâat the small, pale column of her throat, at the eyes that looked through him as if he were nothing but a ditch-digger who had brought the wrong timberâand the hunger had risen from his belly like bile.
It had been a moment of weakness. All it took had been one weak moment to turn against his own morals.
He had not felt the soft touch of a sweet woman since the Stranger took his wife. And seeing the devotion of his brotherâs wife must have ignited that loneliness he felt ever since.
He had wanted to feel her teeth against his tongue, to hear her scream his name instead of his brotherâs, to know, just once, what it felt like to hold the prize.
He took a slow step forward, his boot heavy on the wooden riser, then stopped.
The shame that followed was a physical blow, hitting him in the ribs until he had to lean his face against the cold, damp stone of the wall. He could smell her hair on his wool cloakâthe faint, clean scent of lavender and lye-water that she used to clear the sea-rot from the linens.
It was an accusation that filled the narrow passage, thicker than the smoke from the kitchen fires.
If Baelor had been strong, Maekar could have drawn his sword and asked for a trial by combat.
He could have let his blood out on the gravel to wash the slate clean. But Baelor was upstairs, his leg dragging like a sack of turnips, his hand too weak to hold a spoon without Maekarâs thumb supporting the handle.
He could not leave. He could not die. He was the only thing standing between his brother and the sea, and every time he lifted that heavy, silver-speckled frame into the sheets, he would have to look at the woman whose mouth he had bruised in the dark.
Maekar pulled his cloak tight over his chest, pinning the iron dragon-claw into the wool until the metal bit into his skin, and began the long, silent climb back up to the gallery.
The geometry of their evenings in the Chamber of the Painted Table became an exercise in siege warfare. Baelor sat at the head, a fragile bridge between his brother and his wife.
Maekar sat to his right, his large, scarred hands performing the small, domestic tasks Baelor could no longer masterâcutting the salt-beef into small pieces, pouring the watered wine into a horn cup that would not shatter if Baelorâs left hand trembled.
âYou do too much for me, Brother,â Baelor said one evening, his left hand reaching out to touch Maekarâs wrist. The gesture was pure, unresentful, and heavy with the ancient affection of their youth.
âThe Realm... the Realm will need a Hand who can hold a sword, not a brother who must hold my spoon.â
Maekar did not look up from his plate. He pulled his wrist back, slowly but firmly, out from under Baelorâs fingers. This unblemished gratitude was a hot iron pressed against his conscience, burning deeper with every passing moon.
âThe Realm has a Hand,â Maekar said to his trencher.
âAnd I have my duty.â
As he spoke, she leaned forward to wipe a stray drop of wine from Baelorâs chin with a silk cloth. Her fingers were steady, her devotion absolute.
But as she drew the cloth away, her eyes met Maekarâs across the painted surface of the Reach. It was a glance that lasted no longer than a heartbeat, but in it was the weight of months of isolation: the terrible, mutual knowledge of her loneliness, his secret, devouring desire, and the invisible chasm of honor and duty that kept them both balanced on the edge of a blade.
When the Maester came to rub the Princeâs dead leg with the oil of cloves, they stood on opposite sides of the high bed like the two stone Kings that guarded the mouth of the Green Fork.
âLift him, Maekar,â she would say. Her voice was always the same now after the incidentâclear, thin, and dry as old parchment.
Maekar would step forward, his broad chest blocking the light from the narrow window. He would slide his massive arms beneath Baelorâs grey-skinned shoulders, his face turned strictly toward the timbered ceiling, his nostrils flaring as he breathed in the sharp, medicinal stench of the cloves to block out the scent of her skin.
She would reach across the mattress to pull the woolen sheets down, her hands moving within two inches of his scarred wrists. Her skin looked transparent against the dark grey wool, so thin he could see the small, green branches of her veins.
Once, as Baelor groaned and shifted his weight, her small finger brushed against the skin of Maekarâs forearm.
Neither of them jumped.
Neither of them looked up.
But Maekarâs chest gave a single, violent heave, his breath catching in his throat with a sound like a dry pump. He held his brother three inches higher than was necessary, his muscles bunched like oak roots, until her hands had moved back to the far side of the bed.
âIs that better, sweet?â she asked Baelor. She was kneeling now, her head resting against the Princeâs unmoving hip, her fingers smoothing the linen over his knee.
âAye,â Baelor whispered. His left hand came down to rest on her hair, his fingers tangling in the curls with a clumsy, heavy fondness.
âMae has the strength of four men. Have you not, Brother?â
Maekar walked back to the door. He took up his post by the stone jamb, his hands locked over the crossguard of his sword, his eyes fixed on the iron latch.
âI have the strength the heir requires,â Maekar said.
He stayed there until the candles had burned down to green grease in their saucers, his boots never shifting an inch from the threshold, a giant in an iron cage who knew that if he moved so much as a finger, the whole tower would come down upon their heads.
The storm that came in the time of the fifth moon was the worst the Island had seen in a decade. It arrived after sunset, a black, howling fury that turned the Narrow Sea into a wall of white water and shook the ancient Valyrian glass in the window frames of the Sea Dragon Tower.
Inside the royal bedchamber, the world had shrunk to the radius of a single hearth fire. The logs were green, spitting and hissing as the salt-damp crept through the chimney stones, casting long, monstrous shadows of carved dragons across the high ceiling.
Baelor lay in the great bed, his Dornish head propped against a mountain of down pillows. The rainy weather had stolen the last of his summer color, leaving his skin the shade of old parchment, but tonight there was a strange, feverish brightness in his eyes. The sweetsleep the Maester gave him to dull the phantom pains in his dragging leg had not yet taken hold.
âCome here,â Baelor said. The low crackle of the hearth softened the thick slurring of his words, but his voice possessed an unfamiliar, raw hunger.
She rose from her stool by the fire. She wore only a loose gown of pale ivory silk, her hair falling in a heavy, unbraided river down her bare back. When she sat on the edge of the mattress, the bed cords groaned loudly under her weight.
âYou should rest, my love,â she murmured, her hand reaching out to smooth the hair from his damp forehead.
âThe wind is high tonight.â
âNo,â Baelor said. His left hand, still thick and calloused from years of horse-reins, reached out and caught her wrist. He pulled her down toward him, his grip surprisingly fierce, his breath warm and scenting of cloves against her cheek.
âNot tonight. Tonight... I am not a broken thing. Not with you. I need to feel the blood in me. I need to know I am still a man.â
âYou are still a man. You are my husband, my whole world, my everything,â she mumbled softly, her hands caressing over the beard with silver specks.
The intimacy that followed was a slow, heavy communion, born not of joy, but of a desperate, clawing need to survive the isolation of the Island. It was a dance of severe adaptations, but beneath the awkwardness of his ruined frame lay the deep, unyielding heat of a man who had loved her since they were fifteen years old, his body remembering the exact map of her pleasure even if it lacked the strength to conquer it as he once had.
Baelor leaned forward, his good left hand coming up to cup her jaw with an aching gentleness. His fingers, calloused from years of holding tournament reins, trembled slightly against her cheek as he pulled her face down to his. He kissed herânot with the frantic desperation of the world outside, but with a deep, lingering hunger that tasted of the cloves he chewed to dull his pain.
It was a slow, heavy pressure of his lips against hers, a quiet assurance that beneath the stitched skin and the flaccid limbs, the blood still ran hot in him. She melted into the kiss, her mouth parting willingly against his, her tongue sliding against his own with a soft, slick heat that drew a low groan from the back of his throat. Her hands buried themselves in the silver-speckled thick of his beard, holding him close as his good hand slid down the column of her neck, tracing the line of her collarbone down to the swell of her breast under the thin silk.
âMy sweet wife,â Baelor rasped against her lips, his breath warm, shallow, and heavy with a rising arousal.
âMy whole world.â
He kissed her again, his mouth leaving hers to trace a wet, burning path down her jawline, his lips pressing hard into the sensitive hollow beneath her ear, making her shiver violently against his chest as his breath hitched.
She had to govern the entire geometry of their bodies, but she did so with a fierce, protective devotion. She knelt over him, her long, pale thighs framing his thick hips, the ivory silk of her gown pushed up to her waist in rumpled folds that gathered about her ribs. She reached down to guide his left hand, placing his rough palm flat against the bare, heat-flushed center between her thighs, letting him feel the damp warmth already gathering between them.
âGuide me,â Baelor whispered, his face dark with sweat as he strained to lift his hips. His good leg dug into the mattress, twisting the sheets into knots, but his right side dragged, threatening to throw him off balance.
âI have you,â she murmured, pausing to press another lingering kiss to his forehead, catching the salt of his sweat on her tongue before her hand slid down between them.
Her fingers closed around him, her soft palm working his manhood with slow, practiced strokes, drawing out the familiar thickness until he was fully hard against her thigh. She stroked him until he was slick with his own heat, his breath coming in ragged, shallow pants that matched the howling wind outside.
She shifted her weight forward, one of her hands sliding beneath his heavy, muscular shoulders to support his torso while her other hand guided him to her entrance.
She lowered herself slowly, stretching open to take the full, hard length of him, using her own strength to accommodate the awkward slant of his body.
When he finally slid deep inside her, filling her completely, a deep, shuddering gasp broke from Baelorâs throatâa sound that was half triumph and half absolute surrender to the tight, pulsing heat of her body.
She began to move against him, her rhythm slow, deliberate, and fiercely physical. Because Baelor could not thrust against her with his usual power, she took the burden of the friction entirely upon herself, lifting her hips and sinking down onto him with a wet, heavy rhythm that had his hips twitching upward in a desperate attempt to meet her.
She arched her back, her breasts rising and falling heavily against his chest, their skin sliding together with a slick, sweat-moistened hiss as she rode him harder, finding the angle that ground her against him until the pleasure became an unbearable, tight coil in her belly.
Baelorâs left arm locked around her waist like an iron band, pulling her down into him, demanding another taste of her mouth as he anchored himself inside her core.
She leaned down, meeting him halfway, locking their lips together in a deep, wet, open-mouthed kiss that drowned out the sound of the storm outside. Her long fingers dug into the hard muscles of his back, her nails leaving red crescents in his flesh as she accelerated her pace, her hips rolling against his manhood with a desperate, heavy friction that had them both slick with sweat.
He drank in the sight of her hair whipping across her wet cheeks, his pupils wide and fixed on her face in the firelight, watching her features twist with the raw, mounting ecstasy of her own release. The heat between them grew furious, a fierce, wet friction of skin and coarse linen that smelled of cloves, salt, and raw, mammalian survival.
It was an act of defiance against the plague across the water, a frantic, heavy mating inside a tomb, sealed with the desperate, sweet promise of his lips against hers until her walls clamped hard around him, drawing out his own thick release as they both broke apart in a shuddering, breathless climax that left them tangled and weeping in the dark.
And outside the heavy oak doors, in the freezing draft of the stone corridor, stood Maekar.
He stood like a gargoyle hewn from the basalt of the fortress, his hands resting on the pommel of his greatsword. He did not move. He did not blink.
The storm howled through the narrow arrow-slits of the gallery, spraying a fine mist of salt-water across his boots, but he did not feel the cold.
He could not escape the sounds.
The ancient doors were thick, but the timber was old, and the architecture of the Sea Dragon Tower acted as an amplifier for every echo. Through the oak, the rhythmic, heavy creaking of the rope bed cords came to him with the clarity of a war drum.
He could hear the wet, sliding friction of their skin, the frantic slap of her thighs against Baelorâs hips, and the low, animalistic groans of his brother rising in pitch.
But it was her voice that crucified him.
He heard the short, breathless gasps escaping her lipsâsharp intakes of air that he knew meant her head was thrown back, her throat bare to the dark. He heard her whisper Baelorâs name, her voice thick and wet with a desperate, feral pleasure that Maekar had last given his own late wife.
The desire inside Maekarâs chest was a living beast, hot, heavy, and foul. It flooded his groin with a fierce, throbbing ache that made his vision go dark at the edges.
He wanted her.
He wanted to burst through the oak doors, to rip his brother from her arms, to pin her pale, sweat-slicked limbs to the floor and bury himself inside her until the memory of Ashford was drowned in her skin. He wanted to hear that wet, ragged gasp against his own ear; he wanted to feel the frantic drag of her nails across his own scarred back.
But matching the desire, inch for inch, was a profound, suffocating self-loathing.
He loved Baelor.
He would have given his own eyesâhis own lifeâto give Baelor back his golden smile.
To stand here, his own blood burning for his brotherâs wife while his brother lay ruined inside by Maekarâs own hand, was a sin that no Septon could ever shrive.
He stood there in the dark, his thumbs locked so hard around his sword-hilt that the leather wrapping creaked, forcing his own body to remain a silent, freezing sentinel of his own torment. He stayed until the sounds inside died down to a low, exhausted murmur, trapped forever in the cage of his own unyielding honor.
The royal bedchamber had ceased to be a refuge long before the summer broke; it was a limestone vault where the past lay rotting in state. Above the crashing of the Narrow Sea, the room was thick with the scent of vinegar-soaked rags, old grease, and the sharp, medicinal sting of the sweetsleep the Maester used to keep the Prince from screaming when the north wind brought the salt-damp into his marrow.
Tonight, however, the fog had lifted from Baelorâs eyes. They were clearâtoo clear, like water in a bucket before the winter ice sets.
She knelt before him on the hearth rug, her hair pinned back with two simple bone needles, her sleeves rolled to her elbows. Between her knees was a basin of warm tallow and lye-water; she was washing the grit from his feet, her small, hard fingers working the calloused skin around his dead ankle with a steady, rhythmic pressure that looked more like penance than care.
Baelor sat in his high-backed oak chair, his left hand tracing the carved edge of a cedar chest. His right arm hung uselessly at his side, tucked into a sleeve pinned across his chest like a broken wing.
For a long time, the only sound was the flat hiss of her cloth against his skin and the hollow splash of the water in the basin.
âHe does not sleep,â Baelor said. His voice was flat, the old music of his tourney-days entirely gone, replaced by a thin, whistling rattle in his lungs.
âI hear his boots in the gallery at night. Three paces forward, three paces back. He stands outside that door like an iron stove that has grown cold but remains in the corner because no one has the strength to carry it out.â
She did not look up from his foot. She wrung out the linen cloth, her knuckles turning the color of lard under the strain.
âThe Prince has many duties, my love. He watches the beacons.â
He reached out with his left hand, his fingers catching a lock of her loose hair, twisting it around his thumb with a heavy, unthinking fondness.
âYou do not look at him when he brings the meat. And he... he will not look at the bed. When he lifts me, his face is turned strictly toward the ceiling, his nostrils flaring as if he were breathing in bile.â
He pulled gently on her hair until she had to raise her head. Through his eyes, she was a woman who had been dragged through a marsh, her face pale as lard, her eyes dark and flat as the water in a well.
âThere is a sickness in this house,â Baelor said, his brow furrowing with the slow, agonizing clarity that the poppy usually denied him.
âAnd it did not come from the port. What happened between you two?â
Her breath caught in her throat, a short, sharp sound like a bone breaking. She did not pull away from his touch. She remained on her knees, her hands dripping grey water into the basin, her gaze fixed on the tired features of the man she had loved since they were fifteen years old.
âThe Prince had been speaking of his guilt,â she said, her voice dropping into a dangerous, level register.
âHe was raging against your mercy, Baelor, spitting at the very life you gave him. I called him a coward. I told him he was too weak to carry the man he broke.â
âAnd Maekar.â
âHe spun on his heel,â she said, and a terrible, small smile touched the corner of her lipsâa movement that had no joy in it, only the white edge of a needle under the skin.
âHe crossed the distance between us in a single stride, trapping me against the heavy oak door. He caught me by the jaw, Baelor. He pressed his entire weight into me, crushing me against the wood until his weight bruised my ribs. And then... he kissed me. He tried to lock his hand behind my head to force my face upward.â
The words fell into the space between them like a dead bird.
Baelor did not scream. He did not call for his sword. His right side remained a stubborn, flaccid weight upon the sheepskins, a limb of stone that refused to answer his mind.
Instead, a profound, tired quiet settled into the hollows of his cheeks. He looked down at her, his expression softening into a deep, philosophical sorrowâthe look of a statesman who understood the fracturing of men under too much pressure.
âAnd what did you do?â Baelor breathed.
âI shoved him away,â she said fiercely, her small hands coming out of the basin to grip Baelorâs good thigh, leaving wet, grey patches on his linen breeches.
âI drove my elbows into his chest and threw my weight forward until he stumbled back two full paces into the dark. I wiped his spit from my mouth, and I told him never to touch me again. He took nothing, my love. He did not come into the bed. Whatever tittle-tattle you heard in Kingâs Landing, it is untrue. He did not take what belongs to you. He was a thief drowning in his own skin, reaching for the only gold left before the iron takes him entirely.â
âI know,â Baelor said softly. He did not pull away from her wet fingers. His left hand came down to rest over hers, warm and steady despite the trembling of his frame.
âI know my brother. He is a man made of straight lines and heavy weights. When those lines cross, he does not know how to bend; he only knows how to snap. The burden has broken his alignment. He reached for a piece of the world he thought he could never have, simply because the world is ending.â
âYou do not hate him?â she asked, her voice cracking.
âHow can I hate the man who carries me?â Baelor whispered, his small, pinprick pupils tracking the firelight.
âHe looks at me and sees the ghost of his own honor. He looks at you and sees the life he was never permitted to build. Every time he lifts my shoulders, he is trying to lift the weight of the Seven Kingdoms with a broken back. That assault was not an insult to me, my sweet; it was the frantic, shameful cry of a man drowning in his own cage.â
She buried her face in his linen-covered knee, her shoulders shaking with a desperate, feral grief that she had hidden from the servants, from the Maesters, and from the iron sentinel at the door.
Baelor was too merciful for his own good, too understanding of the man that he still remembered as a little red-faced babe.
âWe are left here with the man who broke our House,â she wept into his skirt, âand he is the only one strong enough to keep us from falling into the sea.â
Baelor did not answer for a long time.
The fire spat and hissed as the salt-damp crept through the chimney stones, casting long, monstrous shadows of carved dragons across the ceiling.
Slowly, clumsily, his left hand came down to rest on her head, his fingers moving through the curls with the old, familiar weight of his love.
âHe was always the fourth son,â Baelor said softly, his voice thick with the poppy but clear in its wisdom.
âWhen we were boys, he would sit at the edge of the yard, watching me take the laurels from our fatherâs hand. That did something to him. He had always been carrying grimness within his heart.â
He reached down, his fingers catching her chin, lifting her face until she was forced to look into his eyes.
âHe will bear me back to the city even though I had been the one to carry him once,â Baelor whispered.
âHe will hold my arm when I ascend the Iron Throne, and he will sign the decrees when my hand shakes. That is his penance, sweet. To be the shadow to a King who cannot walk without his mace. Do not look at him with hatred. He is already in the Seven Hells, and he built the cage with his own hands. I only wish that he would open his eyes and see that I hold no grudge against him.â
The morning after brought a false warmth. The wind died to a whisper, and the sun broke through the grey shroud, turning the sea around Dragonstone into a sheet of hammered silver.
In the Great Hall, the table was set with salt-fish, hard cheese, and ale. Baelor sat in his high-backed chair, looking more like his old self than he had in months. The color had returned to his cheeks, and though his right hand remained tucked safely into his sword-belt, his left hand was steady as he raised his cup.
âThe Maester says the ravens from the North are clean,â Baelor said, his voice clearer now, the slurring almost gone. He looked at her, his eyes soft.
âThe sickness is breaking in the Riverlands. By the end of summer, we may reunite with our children.â
She smiled, a small, fragile thing, and laid her hand over his.
âThe children will have grown,â she said softly.
âMatarys must be nearly a man grown by now, we will have to find him a match soon, and Valarr...â
She missed her children, the little boys that she had raised.
Maekar stood by the high, narrow window, his back to the room. He had not touched his food. His eyes were bloodshot from the long nightâs vigil, his face grey in the morning light. He listened to them speak of the futureâof returns, of their childrenâand each word felt like a stone added to a cairn.
He had almost convinced himself that he could endure this. He could stay here on this Island forever, a silent shadow at the edge of their sun, if only it kept them safe and kept his secret buried in the stone.
Then the iron doors at the end of the hall groaned open.
The sound of footsteps was wrong. It was not the steady stride of a castle guard, but the heavy, stumbling run of a man who had ridden a horse to death before taking to a skiff.
Maekar turned from the window. A messenger stood in the doorway, his leather jerkin soaked through with frozen sea-spray, his face white as salt.
In his hand he held a single parchment, the seal not the red of the Red Keep or the grey of the Citadel, but a hard, glittering lump of pure black wax.
The silence that fell over the hall was absolute, broken only by the cry of a lone gull outside the high window.
Baelorâs hand remained frozen around his silver cup, his eyes widening as the messenger dropped to one knee. Maekar stepped forward, his hand instinctively falling to the pommel of his greatsword, his boots striking the basalt floor like iron mallets.
But it was not Maekar who reached the man first.
With a sudden, desperate rustle of silk, she moved past them both. Her movements were no longer the slow, measured steps of a caretaker; she crossed the stone floor like a phantom, her ivory gown trailing behind her.
Before Maekar could slide his broad frame between her and the dawn, her pale fingers had already snatched the parchment from the messengerâs trembling hand.
âMy Lady,â Maekar rasped, his voice a low, warning growl that came from the bottom of his chest.
âLet me.â
She did not hear him. She did not want to hear him.
Her dark eyes were fixed entirely on that brutal knot of black waxâthe color of charcoal, the color of a burnt shroud. Her thumbs, raw and bitten from a sudden cold that overcame her limbs, dug into the edge of the seal.
The sound of the wax breaking was small, but in the vast, hollow expansiveness of the Great Hall, it sounded like the snapping of a bone.
Maekar watched her face. He stood close enough to smell the salt-damp on her hair, close enough to see the frantic pulse fluttering against the skin of her throat. Over her shoulder, his eyes caught the first few lines of the text, written in a hand so rushed the ink had smeared across the parchment like grease.
She read the words.
A terrible, suffocating stillness took her.
The breath left her lungs in a tiny, whistling gasp, and her face went so pale it seemed to dissolve into the grey morning light.
âWhat is it?â Baelor called out from the high table. He tried to stand, his left hand gripping the arm of his chair, his right leg dragging uselessly behind him, catching on the heavy wood. His voice was small, thin, and frightened.
âMy love? Is it the King?â
She did not look at her husband. Slowly, her head turned toward Maekar. The look in her eyes was not griefânot yetâbut a profound, unseeing horror, the look of a woman who had looked into the abyss and found it entirely empty.
âValarr,â she whispered. The name was barely a breath, a tiny scratch against the stone.
âMatarys.â
She stretched her hand out toward Maekar, not for comfort, but as if she were trying to hand him a blade that had already passed through her chest.
The parchment trembled between her fingers, the smeared black ink detailing how the Princes and King Daeron had all been consumed by a sudden, violent resurgence of the plague within a single fortnight.
Her direct lineage, the future of the Realm, erased in the span of three sentences.
Her two boys.
The two boys she had kissed goodbye on the docks, boasting of their strength. The boys she left behind to stand in their fatherâs shadow for a while until they should join them on Dragonstone, now swallowed by the same grey rot.
But Maekar did not take the paper. He reached out and caught her wrist instead, his massive, leather-lined hand locking around her fragile bones to keep her from falling.
For a single, agonizing heartbeat, they were bound together by the weight of the ruin once againâher hand holding the death of her sons, his hand holding her upright, while Baelor looked on from the dark end of the hall, a broken man who did not yet know he was King.
Synopsis: A dark decree divides the family tree, and the third son leaves his home at only ten; her faded body yields to melancholy, as winter shadows chill the hearth again. The Anvil Prince forgets his crown and sword, to nurse her fever in the quiet deep.
Warnings: Severe Illness & Fever, Emotional Trauma & Grief, Family Separation, Depression/Melancholy, the Traits of the Reader are not described
Word Count: 3.5k
A/N: we will soon reach the devastating endđââïž
The decree from Kingâs Landing did not arrive with the thunder of horse hooves or the sharp flare of a dragonâs breath; it arrived in a small, square piece of parchment, sealed with the heavy, dark wax of the Iron Throne.
It was hand-delivered by a weary raven whose feathers were stained with the grey soot of the Crownlands, a silent messenger that broke the spine of the summer peace they had spent nearly a decade building.
Inside the private solar, the heavy parchment crackled in Maekarâs large hands.
The silence that followed was louder than any war horn he had ever blown. The morning sun, usually so generous as it filtered through the pale limestone pavilion, felt weakâa pale, milky gold that failed to warm the sudden chill settling into the room.
âToo many,â Maekar whispered, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that sounded as if it had been dragged across broken flint.
His dark violet eyes, midnight-dark and turbulent, stared at the elegant script of his father.
âHe says I have fathered too many Princes. Too many heirs. The succession is a tangled thicket, and he wishes to prune the branches before they choke the trunk.â
She sat across from him in the high-backed walnut chair, her hands resting flat against her lap. Her fingers, usually so steady, were trembling slightly, buried within the rich folds of her plum velvet skirts.
âAemon,â she breathed, the name a fragile, broken thing on her tongue.
âThe Citadel,â Maekar growled, the word bursting from his chest like a curse. His large jaw clenched so hard the muscles jumped beneath his scarred cheeks, his thick silver beard bristling with a sudden, violent tension.
With a savage, sweeping motion of his arm, he struck the heavy iron inkwell from his desk. It shattered against the flagstones, spilling its black ink like a pool of dried blood across the stone floor.
âA Prince of the blood! Sent to scrub the floors of Oldtown, to wear a chain of common iron, and to bow before wrinkled greybeards who have never seen the dawn of a battlefield!â
âMaekar, please,â she murmured, rising slowly from her chair.
But the movement was not fluid; a sudden, sharp ache bloomed in the small of her back, a heavy, dragging weariness that had been building in the past few years. Her knees buckled slightly, a soft, breathless gasp escaping her lips before she caught her balance against the edge of the desk.
Maekar was at her side in an instant. The violent fury that had consumed him fractured into a look of absolute, terrified panic. His massive, calloused hands locked onto her waist, his thumbs digging firmly into her skin to support her weight, lifting her slightly until she was anchored against the hard, unpolished steel-velvet of his doublet.
âYou did not sleep,â he muttered hoarsely, his breath hot and frantic against her temple as he guided her back into the chair.
His brow furrowed deeply, the permanent lines of anxiety etched into his forehead tightening with a protective, suffocating force.
âAegon is seven years old, and your skin is still the color of pale tallow. You have burned yourself to ash for this family, and now my brother demands we give him a son to be slaughtered by the books.â
âHe is not being slaughtered, my Prince,â she whispered, her hand rising to touch his cheek, her rough knuckles a stark contrast to the deep, defensive geometry of his face.
âHe is being sent to learn. Aemon has the quiet of the mountains in him. You know this. He does not reach for the sword like Aerion; he looks at the flowers, he tracks the stars...â
âHe is a Targaryen!â Maekar barked, though he did not pull away from her touch.
He leaned his head heavily into her palm, his dark eyes burning into hers with a profound, unyielding misery.
âHe should be here. At Summerhall. Beneath my roof. Where the world cannot touch him.â
But the Kingâs word was law, even for the Anvil of the Redgrass Field.
The departure was a quiet, agonizing affair that took place on a morning when the Marcher mist refused to lift from the valley. The pale stone castle felt entirely hollow, the high galleries echoing with an unnatural, suffocating quiet that even the older boys could not break.
Little Aemon, now nearly ten years of age, stood near the baggage pony in a simple tunic of grey wool.
He did not cry; he possessed a rare, ancient serenity that belonged more to the histories of Old Valyria than the chaotic yard of Summerhall. In his hands, he held a small silk pouch filled with the dried petals of the yellow daisies he had plucked from the courtyard when he was just a small childâhis only token from the home he would never truly see again.
Daeron stood behind his brother, now a young man of sixteen, his soft face pinched with absolute, fragile misery as he watched the horses being saddled, his timorous violet eyes ringed with dark shadows.
Aerion, fourteen and refusing to show the weakness of tears, stood at the edge of the step, his face twisted in a look of territorial anger, his bright eyes staring at the grey-robed Maester who had come to collect his brother as if he were an enemy to be vanquished.
Maekar did not descend into the courtyard.
He stood at the high, uncurtained archway of the eastern pavilion, his massive frame casting a long, imposing shadow across the stone. He wore his heavy broadsword at his hip, his hands resting flat against the pommel, his face a mask of absolute, scarred stone.
He looked like a warlord reviewing a Vanguard before a slaughter, but as the small grey pony began its slow descent down the winding mountain path, his tensed shoulders broke.
A low, animalistic groan vibrated deep in his chest. He turned away from the light, retreating into the profound quiet of the Castleâs interior, closing the heavy oak doors behind him.
The fracture in the family was instant.
The house of soldiers and dreamers became a domain of bitter silence.
Maekar withdrew entirely from his princely duties. He refused to review the border garrisons; he ignored the smallfolk from the lower village who came to complain about the timber rights; he left the letters from the Reach lords unopened on his desk. He spent his days pacing the dark perimeter of the solar or staring down into the courtyard where Aemon used to sit in the square of golden sunlight.
And then, before the first winter frost could touch the rolling meadows, the physical toll of her sacrifices finally demanded its receipt.
The previous births had taken a heavy toll over the years, and without the distraction of a new infant, her body simply gave way under the weight of sheer melancholy.
She lay inside the master bedchamber, the massive oak bedstead draped in its heavy fabrics of plum and charcoal feeling less like a private sanctuary and more like a recovery ward.
The world outside had turned cold, the Marcher winds howling against the limestone turrets with a sharp, scraping sound that cut through the room like an iron blade.
Her flesh had gone soft and frail, her ribs prominent beneath her thin linen shift, her breathing a shallow, frantic rustle in the still room.
The sudden, unravelling stress of losing Aemon had brought a lingering, suffocating fever that kept her anchored to the mattress.
Maekar had abandoned the world entirely to sit by her side.
He sat on the low stool beside the bed, his massive frame hunched forward, casting a long, protective shadow over her bare form. He had not shaved in weeks; his thick silver beard was a wild, rugged tangle around his jawline, his hair standing up in chaotic spikes. He wore no armor, no steel-velvet doubletsâonly a loose, unbuttoned tunic of dark linen that revealed the dense, hair-dusted muscle of his tensed chest.
âYou must take the broth,â he muttered thickly, his voice cracking with an emotion so raw it made her own throat tighten.
He held a small silver spoon with a trembling hand, his massive, scarred fingers looking entirely too large and dangerous for the delicate task.
âThe Maester says the fever must be broken before the moon turns. Drink it. For me.â
âI am trying, Maekar,â she whispered, her voice a weak, breathless thing.
But the mere smell of the warm meat broth made her stomach turn with a violent, sudden nausea borne of pure fatigue. She turned her head away onto the white pillow, a sharp cry of pure exhaustion caught in her throat as a cold sweat broke across her brow.
Maekar dropped the spoon into the bowl with a loud, clattering thud.
A heavy, ragged sigh tore from his chest, his head dropping onto her shoulder as he let out a low, gravelly groan that vibrated directly against her collarbone. He buried his weathered face into the sensitive crook of her neck, his rugged beard scraping against her jaw as he began to weepâsilent, heavy tears that soaked through the thin linen of her shift.
âI cannot lose you,â he growled hoarsely against her skin, his large hand sliding up her spine to cup the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her hair with a desperate, heavy warmth.
âI have given my father a son. I have given the Realm my blood. I will not give them you. If I lose you, I will burn the Capital to ash. I will drag my father from the Iron Throne with my bare hands.â
âHush, my Prince,â she murmured softly, her fingers gently stroking the silver hair at the nape of his neck, comforting the giant who looked so terrifyingly small in the dark of the bedroom.
âThere will be no burning of thrones. It is only a seasonal chill. A bit of winter wind.â
âIt is a madness,â Maekar muttered thickly, lifting his head to look down at her with his dark violet eyes, midnight-dark and heavy with sleep and terror.
He had been plagued by nightmares of her empty side of the bed, vivid dreams of a cold mattress, and a hollow fortress.
âI am a soldier. I know the cost of a campaign. I know when the lines are too thin. Your body is a broken wall, and I... I have pushed you too hard, demanded too much of your strength.â
âIt is the house we built, Maekar,â she smiled, a weak, tired expression that barely parted her dry lips. She reached out, her fingers lacing through his rough, calloused palm, her small hand completely swallowed by his massive grip.
âLook at what we have at home. We have four streams still flowing through these halls. We have been married for nearly twenty years. I have spent more of my life with you than with anyone else.â
âThey are a torment without you on your feet,â he said, though his thumb began to trace a slow, repetitive circle against the back of her hand, a familiar routine of survival that turned his rugged features into a mask of pure, adoring worship.
âDaeron spends his hours staring into the hearth, talking of black dragons and teeth like swords. Aerion has broken three wooden chairs, screaming that he will hack the wings off any Maester who comes near the gate. Little Daella is eight now, and she still cries because she cannot find Aemonâs daisy bowl. And Aegon...â he trailed off, his jaw clenching.
âEgg sits in the library, staring at the empty chairs.â
âThey miss him,â she whispered, her eyes closing as a wave of heavy weariness washed over her.
âWe all miss him. But they are safe here, Maekar. You have given them a home of stones and clover, not iron and poison.â
âI wanted to build a sanctuary for you,â Maekar muttered hoarsely, leaning sideways until his forehead rested against her tensed shoulder, his breath hot and frantic against her skin.
âAway from the court. Away from my fatherâs neglect and my brotherâs shadows. But the sanctuary smells of salt and fire now.â
âNo,â she murmured, her thumb pressing firmly against his rough knuckle.
âIt smells of the highlands. It smells of you.â
The depths of the night brought no relief from the storm outside, the Marcher winds rattling the balcony doors with a frantic cadence that sounded like the clattering of shields.
Inside the room, the single tallow candle had burned down to a nub of yellow wax, casting long, monstrous shadows across the plum-colored velvet hangings of the bed.
Maekar did not sleep.
He had climbed into the bed beside her, his massive frame shifted on his side to act as a shield against the drafts that snuck through the limestone arches.
He held her close against his chest, his large arm wrapping possessively around her waist, his palm resting flat against her stomachâcomforting her shivering frame rather than seeking the carnal heat that usually defined their midnights.
Suddenly, her body tensed beneath the blankets.
A sharp, violent tremor ran through her limbs, her eyes snapping open as a cold sweat broke across her chest.
The fever was spiking again, the exhaustion coiling violently in her muscles. She let out a sharp, choked cry of pain, her breath hitched in a desperate, frantic rhythm that made Maekar freeze instantly.
âWhat is it?â he demanded, his voice a sharp, defensive command as he rose onto his elbow, his head snapping toward her face with the instinct of the Vanguard.
âIs it the chest? Is it the pain?â
âThe dark,â she gasped, her fingers clawing at his broad shoulders, her nails digging into the dense muscle of his back as she tried to find her breath.
âThe room... it is spinning, Maekar.â
Maekar did not call for the Maester. The new Maester was a stranger, a grey-robed thing sent from Kingâs Landing to replace the old one, and Maekar did not trust him with the reality of her flesh.
Instead, the Prince reached down to the floor, grabbing a linen cloth and dipping it into the basin of cool water he kept near the velvet chair.
With a fluid, deliberate grace that belonged more to a man handling rare glass than a soldier who broke bones, he wiped the sweat from her forehead. His massive hands were trembling with an urgency he rarely showed outside their walls, his dark eyes burning down into hers from the pillows.
âStay with me,â he murmured hoarsely, his thick voice vibrating directly against her ear as he gathered her closer into his arms, hoisting her body until her bare chest was pressed flat against the hair-dusted muscle of his torso.
âDo you hear me? You do not leave this Castle. You do not leave me with these rascals. I cannot rule them alone. I will not.â
âI am here, my Prince,â she breathed, her hands sliding down to tangle in his silver beard, pulling his face down until his rough lips met hers.
The kiss was not filled with the passionate heat of the summer pavilion; it was slow, deep, and utterly thorough, tasting of the lingering warmth of the fever and the clean, bitter scent of skin.
Maekarâs tongue parted her lips with a soft caress, careful and hesitant as though he feared to break her. There was no courtly restraint in itâonly a desperate, heavy reverence that felt like a prayer against the dark.
âTell me of the future,â he muttered thickly against her lips, his breath hot and frantic as his hands held her close to his flanks, trying to press his own strength into her failing bones.
âTell me what happens when the winter turns.â
âWe will watch the children grow,â she murmured, her voice a quiet Dornish rustle in the still room.
âDaeron will find his courage. He will see that the dragons under the floorboards are only the stories of old heroes. Aerion will learn the weight of iron, but he will hold a proper shield to protect his family, not to strike them. Little Daella will grow into a fine lady of the Marches. And Aegon...â she paused, softening at the thought of their seven-year-old boy.
âEgg will be the truest of them all. He will remember the lessons of the smallfolk and the quiet of Summerhall.â
Maekar let out a low breath that was almost a laughâa sound so rare and precious it made her heart leap even in the dark of the fever. His large fingers uncurled, wrapping tightly around hers, his calloused pad pressing firmly against her skin.
âThey are a madness,â he muttered softly, his voice cracking slightly with an emotion so raw it turned his scarred face into something beautiful in the amber twilight of the bedroom.
âThe boys, the girl, the Castle... it is all a madness.â
âBut they are yours. I would not want it any other way with any other man,â she whispered, her eyes closing as the cool linen of the cloth began to soothe the white-hot heat in her blood.
âNo,â Maekar murmured, his rough lips pressing a soft, lingering kiss against the crown of her head, his massive arm wrapping around her waist to hold her close against his chest until the space between their heartbeats was reduced to nothing at all.
âThey are ours.â
The dawn did not creep into the valley like spun amber the next morning; it remained buried beneath a heavy, leaden sky that threatened snow before the noon hour. The pale stone walls of Summerhall looked cold and grey, the pavilion uncurtained and empty, the clover and wild chicory outside withered by the first true frost of the year.
Inside the solar, the domestic chaos of their younger years had been replaced by a heavy, anxious quiet.
Daeron sat in the corner, staring blankly out the window, while Aerion restlessly polished a dagger at the walnut table.
Little Daella sat on the floor, her plum skirts bunched around her as she played idly with a loose ribbon.
Nearby, seven-year-old Aegon sat perfectly still, his large, deep indigo eyes fixed on the empty square of rug where Aemon used to sit and arrange daisy petals by color.
âIs Mother going to die?â Daeron asked quietly, breaking the heavy silence.
Aerion turned sharply, his silver hair catching the dull grey light.
âNo! Father would hack the head off any shadow that tried to touch her! And so would I!â
Aegon did not speak. He merely looked down at his small hands, his jaw setting into a remarkably solid line that mirrored his fatherâs exact silhouette.
The door to the bedchamber unlatched with a slow, hesitant creak.
Maekar stepped into the room. He looked formidable even in the grey light, his wide shoulders squared, his massive frame casting a long shadow across the rug. But the permanent frown etched into his face was gone, replaced by a hidden, protective anxiety that defined him now not as a warlord of the Vanguard, but as a father who was holding his sanctuary together by the sheer strength of his calloused hands.
He carried a small wooden bowl filled with the dried yellow petals Aemon had left behindâthe sun-pieces his third son had harvested before the grey pony took him away.
âYour mother is asleep,â Maekar announced, his gravelly voice unexpectedly soft at the edges.
He chose to look at his remaining children, stepping into the room as his heavy boots thudded softly against the stone. He fell to one knee on the rug before them, placing the bowl of petals on the floor, his massive, scarred hands resting flat against his knees.
âThe fever is breaking. The lines are holding.â
Aegon was the first to move, stepping forward to press his shoulder against his fatherâs massive chest. Maekarâs large fingers uncurled, wrapping tightly around the young boy, while his other hand reached out to draw Daella and the older boys closer.
The foul air of Kingâs Landing, the bitter neglect of the court, and the bloody memories of the Redgrass Field, all those things they had left behind ever since they were building their life in Summerhallâburied forever beneath the pale, warm stone of their summer palace.
They had faced those things together, as they had faced every birth of their five children hand in hand.
And now they were paying a heavy price in salt and fire for the purchase of this isolation, and the price was still being extracted from the householdâs peace.
But as he looked down at his family, the hard edge of his frown vanished entirely.
Maekar would pay any price to keep his family safe and protected.
âWe will wait for the spring,â Maekar muttered hoarsely, his voice cracking slightly as he looked toward the bedchamber door where his wife lay resting, her heartbeat steady and true beneath the velvet quilts.
Synopsis: One brother broken by a phantom blow, one carrying the guilt he cannot show, a Princess bound to heal a ruined stateâthree hearts consumed within the forge of fate.
Pairings: Valarr Targaryen x sister!Reader, Valarr Targaryen x Tyroshi wife!Reader
Genre: Smut, Tragedy, Political Drama, Psychological Drama, Forbidden Romance
Synopsis: A Princess leaps into the sea to flee her fatherâs chains, a foreign bride of copper silk inherits all the pains. The sister chose the rocky deep to end the royal liesâthe stranger hardens into ice, and stays, and claims the prize.
Pairings: Baelor Targaryen x wife!Reader, Maekar Targaryen x sister-in-law!Reader
Synopsis: A shattered Prince, a broken crown, a heavy shadow on the town. The guilty brother bends his knee, bound to a desperate tragedy. They flee the whispers and the rain, to heal the flesh and hold the chain. She claims his touch amidst the storm, while Iron stands to keep them warm.
Warnings: SMUT 18+, Nudity, Unprotected Vaginal Sex, Baelor survived AU, Graphic Descriptions of Head Trauma, Descriptions of Physical Disability/Paralysis, Severe Guilt & Self-Loathing, Forbidden Desire, Heavy Themes of Mortality, Death Threat, Love Triangle
Word Count: 10.2k
A/N: It will have two more parts
The wheelhouse did not turn; it dragged. It moved up the steep, winding cobbles of Aegonâs High Hill with the leaden, funeral pace of a siege engine being hauled through mud.
There were no clarions to split the heavy, salt-damp air of Kingâs Landing. There were no heralds clad in the brilliant scarlet and black of House Targaryen to clear the gutters of the smallfolk who usually choked the paths just to touch the stirrup of the Breakspear.
There was only the low, metallic groan of the axle and the wet, rhythmic plod of six dray horses, their hocks lathered in a thick, yellow foam that smelled of the road and old grease.
She watched it from the narrow slits of the solar window, her hand resting against the cold, unyielding red stone of the sill. The stone was sweating. In the late-summer heat of the Blackwater, the entire castle seemed to weep a fine, greasy film that tasted of sea salt and wood-smoke.
Below, the outer yard was a sea of upturned facesâlords in silks that had begun to sour under the armpits, Septons with their silver stars tucked into their sashes, and the ubiquitous, pale-faced scribes of the Grand Maesterâs guild, their long chains clinking like dry bone against their robes.
They were waiting for a corpse. She knew it by the way they stoodânot grouped in the easy, loud configurations of a court preparing for a triumph, but scattered, distinct, their eyes darting toward the empty gallery where King Daeron the Good usually sat when his joints allowed him the sun.
They were already calculating the distance between the Prince of Dragonstone and the black dirt of the Great Sept of Baelor.
She did not go down. When the heavy iron gates thudded shut behind the rearguard, the sound vibrating up through the soles of her bare feet, she remained exactly where she was.
She had stripped herself of her court stays and the heavy, wire-framed kirtle of Targaryen crimson three days ago, when the first raven had flown from the Kingsroad.
Now, she wore only a loose shift of unbleached linen, its hem frayed from the floorboards, her hair bound up in a rough, tight wool knot that pulled at the skin of her temples.
The doors of the outer solar did not open; the weight of a heavy shoulder slammed them back.
Maekar Targaryen stepped across the threshold, and with him came the stench of the Reach. It was the smell of horses ridden to the point of lung-burst, vinegar used to rinse old bandages, and the sharp, metallic tang of rusted iron.
Behind him came the bearersâfour silent, iron-hatted guards from Summerhall whose faces were grey with dust. They carried a long, ash-wood litter draped in grey wool.
She did not look at Maekar. She did not give him the satisfaction of her eyes, though she could feel the heat radiating from his massive frame, a thick, suffocating wave of sweat and iron that filled the small room. She only looked down at the litter.
Baelorâs dark hairâthe thick, coarse curls that always marked him as his motherâs son, the Martell Prince who looked more like the salt-shore than the Valyrian sandâhad been shorn away entirely on the backside of his skull.
The bare skin was a mottled, greenish-purple, stitched together with black silk threads that looked like fat black ants crawling toward his ear. A mountain of greying linen was wrapped about his brow, damp at the center with a clear, amber fluid that smelled faintly of old beer and rot.
His right arm, the arm that had broken the vanguard at the Redgrass Field, was curled tightly against his ribs, his fingers rigid and hooked like the talons of a dead falcon.
âSet him upon the low bed,â she said.
Her voice was not loud, but it possessed a flat, crystalline clarity that made the guards freeze before they looked to their Prince.
Maekar did not speak. He merely jerked his chinâa single, violent movement. The guards moved with a tiptoeing, fearful caution, sliding the linen-draped mattress off the ash-poles and onto the thick goose-down frame she had prepared in the alcove.
When they were done, they backed out of the chamber like men leaving a Sept, their eyes fixed on the floorboards until the oak doors clicked shut behind them.
Maekar remained standing by the door. He had not removed his gloves. His great, leather-lined fists were clenched at his sides. He stared at the small space of stone between his boots, his chest heaving under the velvet of his clothing like a blacksmithâs bellows.
He was waiting for her to break. He was waiting for the screaming, or the weeping, or the long, legalistic accusations that a woman of the court was supposed to hurl at the man who had broken her life.
He wanted the punishment; she could see it in the way his thick neck was bowed, his jaw set so hard that a small white line of tension ran from the corner of his mouth down into his beard. He wanted her to give him a reason to turn and ride back into the dark.
She walked toward him, her bare feet silent against the rushes. With every step she took, the rage inside her grew colder, turning from a wild, screaming thing into a smooth, heavy bar of iron that settled behind her teeth.
âYou are smaller than I remembered, Maekar,â she said, stopping when the toes of her bare feet were an inch from the thick, square leather of his riding boots.
The Prince did not lift his head. The shadow of his silver hair fell across his eyes, leaving only his mouth visibleâa bitter, downward curve that looked as though it had never known a smile.
âHe lives,â Maekar growled, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that sounded as though he had spent the last three days swallowing gravel.
âThe Maesters at Ashford said he would die before the Mander. The Maesters at Bronzegate said he would die before the forest. I brought him to your gates. My work is done.â
âYour work?â She let out a short, sharp sound that was less a laugh and more a striking of flint.
She reached out, her fingers locking into the cold, mud-crusted edge of his coat. She did not use the gentle touch of a Princess; she twisted her hand into the leather straps, forcing his massive head up until his violet eyes were locked into hers.
âYou call this work? You break his skull like a walnut at some petty hedge-knightâs tourney, you haul his half-dead meat across three hundred leagues of dirt, and you think you can simply drop him at my feet and ride back to Summerhall to nurse your little pride?â
Maekarâs breath caught, a hot, sour gust of wine and onions that brushed her cheeks. His eyes, bloodshot and ringed with black circles of exhaustion, flared with a sudden, violent heat.
He was a man who lived on the edge of his own skin, always waiting for a slight, always expecting to be passed over for his brother.
Yet, as he looked into her faceâpale, fierce, stripped of courtly artifice and framed by the sharp, undone linen shiftâthe heat in his chest shifted, twisting into a sudden, leaden ache that knocked the breath from his lungs. It was not anger. It was a terrifying, unbidden awe at her sheer, unyielding clarity. He had never looked at herâtruly looked at herâaway from Baelorâs shadow.
âI did not see him,â Maekar hissed, his hands twitching at his sides, though he did not lift them to break her grip. His eyes dropped from her mouth to the white linen over her collarbones, his knuckles tightening in his gloves.
âThe sun was behind his crest. I thought... I had to protect my son. I struck to parry, and the ash splitââ
âI do not care about your sun, and I do not care about your son,â she said, her voice dropping into a low, lethal whisper.
âLook at him, Maekar. Look at what your parry did.â
She twisted her hand harder, forcing him to turn his head toward the alcove. Maekar resisted for a fraction of a second, his great neck muscles stiffening like oak roots, before he gave way with a low, strangled groan.
Baelor lay perfectly still beneath the grey wool. His left eye was closed, the skin around it white and translucent as lard, while his right eye was partially open, a thin, glassy sliver of white showing beneath the lid.
He looked like an effigy carved from old river-silt, waiting for the rain to melt him back into the mud.
âHe is the Prince of Dragonstone,â she said, her lips so close to Maekarâs ear that he could feel the cool drift of her breath against the rough hair of his beard, a sensation that made his skin prickle with a strange, defensive dread.
âHe is the only man who stands between this Realm and the madness of his brothers. Aerys is in his books, Rhaegel is dancing through the halls in his shift, and you... you are a murderer who lacks the courage to stand by the corpse.â
âI am no murderer!â Maekar roared, his hands finally flying up to grip her wrists.
His fingers were like iron pincers, his leather gloves rough against her bare skin, but he did not pull her away. He held her there, his chest heaving, his face so close to hers that she could see the small gold flecks in his violet eyes.
He looked down at the pale, narrow bones of her forearms in his graspâso fragile compared to the heavy steel he spent his life wieldingâand a sudden, sickening dread went through him.
He was terrified of his own density, terrified that he might break her, too, simply by holding her.
âIf I were a murderer, I would have put the mace through his throat while he lay in the mud! I would have taken the Crown for myself! I love him... I worshiped him... he was the only one who ever looked at me and did not see the fourth son.â
âThen show me that love,â she said, her voice unyielding, her eyes boring into his until the anger in his face began to fracture, leaving only a vast, dark sea of remorse.
âDo not run to Summerhall. Do not let the lords see you skulk away like a whipped dog. You will stay in this palace, Maekar. You will sit by his bed, you will lift his meat when he cannot move, and you will be the iron wall that sits between his chair and the vultures of the Small Council. You will swear it to me. Now.â
Her voice cracked.
Maekar stared at her. The silence in the solar was so thick that the only sound was the distant, oily hiss of a tallow candle burning down into its cup.
He felt the coldness of his steel breastplateâin his mind he had not taken it offâthe softness of her linen shift, and the heavy, terrifying gravity of her presence. She was offering him a purpose that belonged to him aloneâeven if it meant standing guard over the ruin he had made.
Slowly, his grip on her wrists relaxed. His great hands did not fall back to his sides; they lingered on her bare forearms, his rough leather fingers sliding down to her wrists, feeling the quick, frantic beat of her pulse beneath the skin before he tore them away, dropping them to his sides as if he had been burned.
âI will stay,â he whispered, his voice losing its gravel, leaving only a low, solemn weight.
âI will be his right hand. And I will be your shield. Until the fire goes out.â
The door to the private chambers did not creak; it swung open with the heavy, urgent stride of young men who still wore their spurs.
Valarr entered first. The Young Prince, the eldest son, looked so much like his father that for a terrible, heart-stopping instant she thought the Breakspear had risen from his mattress.
He had Baelorâs dark eyes, his straight, proud nose, and the easy grace of a knight who had won his first tourney garland at seventeen. But today, his handsome face was drained of its gold; his silver-trimmed doublet was undone at the throat, and his hands were trembling as he rushed toward the alcove.
Behind him came Matarys, his younger brother, whose hairâwhich resembled his motherâsâwas a stark contrast to Valarrâs dark locks. Matarys was still small enough to look fragile in his heavy velvet robes, his wide purple eyes darting between his mother and the looming, silent shadow of his uncle Maekar by the hearth.
âMother,â Valarr breathed, dropping to his knees beside the low bed. His hand hovered over his fatherâs grey, stitched skull, not daring to touch the raw skin.
âThe yard is full of crows. Lord Ambrose is already talking about summoning the Great Council. They speak as if he is dead.â
âHe breathes, Valarr,â she said, her voice softened to that tone only a mother used for her children. She stepped between her sons and the light of the tallow candles.
âAnd while he breathes, the succession does not shift by a single inch. You are the heir to Dragonstone, and your brother is behind you.â
Matarys shrank back slightly, his hip bumping against Maekarâs blackened greaves. He looked up at his uncle with a mixture of terror and awe.
âDid you... did you truly do this, Uncle? They say your mace split his helm.â
Maekar did not move an inch out of the chimney-shadow, his eyes fixed resolutely on the floorboards, though his mind remained helplessly pinned to the white shape of her shift.
His voice was a heavy stone dropped into a shallow well.
âThe ash split, boy. The Gods held the parry, not I. Go to your brother.â
Valarr rose from his knees, his dark eyes flashing with a sudden, volatile heat that belonged to his fatherâs blood. He turned on Maekar, his young chest heaving beneath his silk doublet.
âYou should have stayed in Summerhall, Uncle. If the King sees him like thisââ
âThe King is already here,â a low, rasping voice called from the doorway.
King Daeron stood between his two white-cloaked Kingsguards, looking less like a monarch and more like a bundle of dry sticks wrapped in purple velvet. The years of his long peace had grown heavy upon him; his white hair was thin and wispy, and his eyes were cloudy with the grey cataracts that had begun to steal his sight.
âGrandfather,â Valarr said, stepping back instantly, his royal pride dissolving into the duty of a grandson.
Daeron did not look at Valarr, nor at Matarys. His cloudy eyes drifted across the small solar until they found the alcove where his eldest son lay under the grey wool.
When he reached the edge of the mattress, he lowered his head, his thin shoulders trembling under his heavy velvet mantle.
âBaelor,â the King whispered, his voice cracking like a dry reed. He reached out with a pale, blue-veined hand, his fingers tracing the edge of the grey wool sheet.
âMy right hand... my strength. The Gods are cruel to leave an old man his breath while the vanguard falls.â
He turned slowly, his dim sight fixing upon Maekar where he stood in the shadows. There was no fury in Daeronâs faceâonly a vast, ancient weariness that was harder to bear than an executionerâs axe.
âYou were always the Anvil, Maekar. But the Anvil should not break the Hammer.â
Maekar bowed his head so low his beard touched his collarbone.
âI am here to be his shield, Your Grace. Until he rises.â
âHe must rise soon,â Daeron muttered, looking to her, his hand reaching out to touch her forearm with a dry, papery grip.
âThe Small Council is souring. Aerys will not leave his books, and Rhaegel... Rhaegel is weeping in the gardens. If Baelor does not speak to the lords, the Realm will look to the sons.â
He glanced at Valarr and Matarys, his old eyes heavy with premonition.
âKeep them close. The air in this city is changing.â
The privacy of the bedchamber was a different kind of battlefield. Here, the grand rhetoric of the Great Hall died in the sour smell of vinegar and the cloying, suffocating sweetness of milk of the poppy.
The sun had gone down behind the hills of the Reach, leaving the room in a thick, amber twilight that was lit only by a single tallow candle on the wash-stand.
She had stripped Baelor of his traveling linen, her hands moving with a slow, meticulous caution that had taken her days to learn. He was a massive man, built for the tilt-yard, and when his right side went dead, he became as heavy as an oak log.
Before she called for Maekar, she sat on the edge of the mattress alone. Baelorâs left eye was open, hazy but deeply fixed on her face. He could not lift his hand, but his fingers twitched against the down quilt, trying to find her thigh.
âYou smell of... the solar,â Baelor whispered, his voice a broken thing, yet his dark eye shone with the remnants of the fierce, boyish charm that had won her years ago.
âThe ink... and old wax. You have been... ruling in my stead, my sweet?â
âSomeone must keep the scribes from stealing the silver while you rest,â she murmured, leaning down until her lips rested against his temple, just inches above the raw, black stitches.
The skin there was burning, a dry, papery heat.
She shifted her weight, sliding her hand into his left one, intertwining their fingers. He squeezed backânot with the bone-crushing strength of the Hammer, but with a lingering, soft insistence that made her throat close with tears.
âI remember... the first tourney,â Baelor slurred, a ghost of a smile touching the good side of his mouth.
âYou wore... blue wool. You told me... if I fell to a Frey... you would marry... a stable-boy.â
âAnd you stayed in your saddle,â she whispered, her voice cracking as she pressed a soft, desperate kiss into his palm, her tears wetting his rough skin.
âYou always stayed in your saddle, Baelor. You must stay in it now.â
He looked at her, his gaze filled with a profound, bitter tenderness. He knew what he was nowâa shattered giant, a heavy burdenâand she could see the agony of that realization in the way his dark brow furrowed.
âI am trying,â he murmured.
âBut the ground... it keeps... rising to meet me.â
She pulled his left hand up to her cheek, holding it there, letting the dry warmth of his skin anchor her against the darkness of the castle.
For a long, silent moment, they were simply a husband and wife clinging to each other on the edge of a precipice, the bitter reality of his broken body balanced against the sweet, enduring memory of their youth.
Then, the darkness deepened, and she knew she could not lift him alone.
âHelp me lift him, Maekar,â she called out.
The Prince stepped out of the shadows by the hearth. He had taken off his coat, wearing now only a loose shirt of grey wool that was unbuttoned at the throat, revealing the thick, silver hair of his chest.
He kept his eyes fixed strictly on Baelorâs shoulder, his great, calloused hands sliding under his brotherâs armpits with a strange, trembling gentleness.
He was intensely aware of her posture across the mattress, the way her linen shift pulled tight against her shoulder-blades as she leaned down, but he clamped his jaw shut and looked only at the dark hair of his brotherâs crown.
âOn three,â she murmured, âone. Two. Three.â
They lifted together. She caught Baelorâs hips, her muscles straining against the weight until her breath came in a short, sharp gasp. Maekar bore the brunt of it, his face flushing a dark crimson as he pulled his brotherâs torso up against his own chest, holding him there like a child while she slid the soiled linen sheets from beneath him.
Baelorâs head fell back against Maekarâs shoulder. His left eye fluttered open, the pupil vast and black under the candlelight.
âMae... kar,â he slurred, a small trickle of grey saliva running from the dead corner of his mouth down into his dark beard.
Maekar did not answer. His face was a foot from his brotherâs, and she could see the terrible, agonizing spasm of grief that twisted his mouth.
He held his tongue, his great arms locking around Baelorâs back to steady him while she dipped a fresh linen cloth into the basin of warm water.
âHold him so,â she commanded.
She began to wash him. It was a slow, sacred labor. She started with his face, avoiding the black stitches around his head, her fingers moving with a light, rhythmic stroke. She wiped the road-dust from his neck, the salt-crust from his collarbones, and the sour grease of the ointment from beneath his arms.
Every time her hand passed near Maekarâs fingers, the air between them seemed to tighten.
She could feel the heat of Maekarâs skin, the frantic, heavy thudding of his heart beneath his grey wool shirt.
He was staring at her handsânot with the casual lust of a courtier, but with a dark, horrified reverence. He watched the way she loved the man he had broken; he watched the way her fingers smoothed over the blue bruises and the green yellowing skin of Baelorâs ribs, and she could see that every stroke of her cloth was a stroke of the whip across Maekarâs conscience.
Maekar kept his gaze fixed on those fingers, his throat dry, swallowed by a deep, solitary shame because a part of himâthe black, hidden depth he refused to nameâwished those small, cool hands were tending to his own unbroken skin.
âHe is cold,â Maekar whispered, his voice a low vibration that made the water in the basin ripple.
âThe blood does not move well on his right side,â she said, not looking up from her work.
She rinsed the cloth in the basin, the water turning a pale, milky grey.
âWe must rub his legs with mustard oil before the poppy takes him again. If the meat goes cold, it rots.â
She reached for the clay jar of oil, pouring a thick pool of the yellow liquid into her palms before rubbing them together until the scent of mustard filled the alcove, sharp and stinging to the eyes.
She began to work on Baelorâs right legâthe great, muscular thigh that had once held him firm against the charge of the rebel knights.
The muscle was soft now, loose and unresponsive beneath her palms like wet clay.
Maekar watched her. His breath was coming shorter now, his eyes tracking the way her linen shift clung to her back as she leaned over the bed, the dampness of the room pasting the dark hair to the nape of her neck.
He felt a terrible, forbidden weight settling in his gut, a solitary misery that made him want to turn his back on the room, yet he remained locked in place, his chest heaving like a blacksmithâs bellows.
âLet me,â he growled, stepping forward until his boots clicked against the frame of the bed.
âNo,â she said, her voice sharp as a needle as she kept her back to him.
âYour hands are too rough, Maekar. You would tear the skin. Stay where you are and hold his head.â
Maekar froze, his great hands twitching at his sides, his face darkening with a mixture of anger and shame that made him look like an iron furnace about to burst.
But he did not move. He stood there in the twilight, the proxy King and the guard, while she rubbed the life back into his brotherâs dead flesh.
The middle of the night was the worst hour. The tallow candles had burned down into greasy puddles of fat, leaving the solar in a dark, velvet blackness that was broken only by the pale grey light of the moon through the high windows.
Baelor had fallen into the deep, heavy sleep of the poppy, his breathing a slow, snoring rattle that sounded like a dog scratching at a door. He lay at the center of the great bed, his left hand tucked beneath his cheek, his right arm stiff and cold against the linen sheet.
She lay beside him. She had crawled into the space between his good side and the wall, her linen shift thin against her skin, her body curled into the small shape of a nesting bird.
She had spent all her life sleeping in the crook of his right armâthe big, warm arm that used to smell of leather and fresh grass, the arm that had always held her firm against the nightmares of her youth.
Now, that arm was on the wrong side of him. It lay across his chest like a dead branch, cold to the touch and rigid as stone.
She reached out in the dark, her fingers smoothing over Baelorâs chest until they found his heart. It was beatingâslow, heavy, a steady thud-thud-thud that told her he was still there, trapped inside the cage of his own boneâbut there was no heat in it.
The fever had left him, and with it had gone the vibrant, furnace-warmth that used to fill the bed when they had lain together as husband and wife.
She felt small. She felt cold.
Beside her, Baelorâs left eye fluttered open. The moonlight caught the wetness of his dark pupil, remarkably clear through the haze of the milk of the poppy.
âYou are... awake, my sweet,â he slurred.
The deadness on his right cheek made the words heavy, sliding out of his mouth like dry pebbles.
âI am here, Baelor,â she whispered, shifting closer, her fingers tracing the silver threads of his lineage in his dark beard.
âI am always here.â
Baelor tried to turn his head toward her, but the heavy bandages around his skull caught against the goose-down pillow, and he let out a low, whistling gasp of pain.
âThe bed... is too big,â he murmured.
âI cannot... find your hip. My right side... it is like an old log... left in the rain.â
âThen let me be the sun,â she said, her voice breaking slightly as she leaned over him, pressing her forehead against his good cheek.
âI will warm the wood, Baelor. We will go back to Dragonstone. The sea air will clear the rot.â
Baelor lay quiet for three slow, heavy thuds of his heart. His left hand, the only part of his upper body that still answered his mind, dragged itself across the linen sheet until his fingers hooked into the hem of her shift. His grip was weak, lacking the solid, easy confidence that had turned her ankles in the grass when they were young, but he held her with a desperate, small persistence.
âMaekar,â Baelor whispered into the dark space between their lips.
âHe is... outside the door?â
âHe stands guard,â she said, her voice turning hard and flat.
âHe will stand there until you tell him to move.â
âHe... he looks at me... and he sees... a ghost,â Baelor said, a single, fat tear sliding from his left eye down into his dark hair, leaving a wet, silver track in the moonlight.
âHe was always... the fourth son... my sweet. He wanted... to parry my weight... not break my crown. Do not... let the crows... eat him... while I sleep.â
âThe crows will not touch him,â she whispered, her lips brushing his forehead, tasting the salt-crust of his sweat and the bitter tang of the vinegar rinse.
âI have his chain, Baelor. I will hold him until you can lift the Hammer yourself.â
Baelor let out a low, dry sigh, his fingers slipping from her shift as the poppy took him once more, dragging him down into the grey silt where she could not follow.
She lay there against his good side, her heart hammering against her ribs, feeling the terrible, cold space that separated her from the husband she had known.
A low rustle of rushes came from the outer solar.
She sat up instantly, her hand flying to the small dagger she kept beneath her pillow, her heart hammering against her ribs like a bird in a cage.
âWho is there?â she whispered into the dark.
The shadow that stepped into the alcove was too large to be a guard.
Maekar stood in the moonlight, his grey wool shirt unbuttoned to the waist, his silver-gold hair wild about his brow. He carried no weapon, but his fists were clenched, his violet eyes glowing like hot coals in the grey light.
He stopped at the foot of the bed, his chest heaving as if he had just run up the steps of the tower.
âHe groaned,â Maekar whispered, his voice a low, rough rasp that sounded like dry leaves scraping across stone.
âI heard him from the hall. I thought... I thought his breath had failed.â
âHe is sleeping,â she said, her voice dropping to a sharp whisper as she let her dagger fall back against the sheets.
She did not lie back down; she remained sitting on the edge of the mattress, the linen of her shift translucent in the moonlight, her bare knees visible beneath the hem.
âThe poppy holds him fast. Go back to your guard, Maekar.â
Maekar did not move. He stood there at the foot of the bed, his eyes locked onto her form with a sudden, agonizing pain that made her own breath catch in her throat.
He looked at her bare knees, at the pale curve of her throat in the silver light, and the solitary misery that had been curdling in his chest for weeks finally split wide open. He did not see his brotherâs queen; he saw the only living thing left in this tomb, and the hunger that gripped him was so sharp it felt like an arrow between his ribs.
âI cannot sleep,â Maekar said, his voice dropping into a low, intimate growl that vibrated through the floorboards.
He took a step around the bedframe, moving with a heavy, deliberate slowness until he was standing a foot from her knees.
âEvery time I close my eyes, I see the mace. I see his helm split like an egg. And then... then I see you, sitting in the gallery, wearing that crimson gown, looking down at me as if I were a dog that had bit its master.â
âYou were a dog,â she said, her voice cold, though her fingers tensed into the linen sheets.
âYou were a brutal, clumsy beast who did not know the value of the thing he struck.â
âThen whip me,â Maekar hissed, taking another step until his shins were pressing against the wood of the bed.
He reached out, his great, calloused hand finally coming down to lock around her bare ankle. His grip was firm, his fingers hot as irons against her cold skin, but he did not pull her. He held her there, his violet eyes burning into hers with a terrifying, absolute devotion.
âWhip me until the blood runs into my boots. But do not look at me with that coldness. Do not treat me like I am a ghost.â
She looked down at his hand on her ankle. A strange, terrifying heat flared in her gutâa sudden, violent awareness of his mass, of the sheer, primitive strength of the man who had broken her life.
She did not pull her foot away; she let his hand bide there, feeling the rough texture of his skin against hers, her anger turning from a cold bar into a hot, liquid current that ran straight up her leg.
âYou are no ghost, Maekar,â she whispered, her voice cracking with the first sign of vulnerability he had heard since he reached Kingâs Landing.
âA ghost would be easier to bear. You are the iron that remains in my House, and I am cursed to use you until you are blunt.â
Maekar let out a low, defeated soundâa growl that was half a sobâand dropped to his knees at the side of the bed. He did not let go of her ankle; he pressed his forehead against her bare knee, his great shoulders shaking under his linen shirt as the guilt finally broke through his iron walls.
She watched him weep at her feet and reached down, her small hand moving with a slow, deliberate caution until her fingers locked into the thick, wild curls of his hair, pulling his head closer to her shift.
Below them, Baelor snored on, his breathing a steady, safe rhythm in the dark, entirely protected by the two who feared for his life and bonded through that shared pain.
The rain came on the fourth weekâa sudden, violent deluge that turned the red clay of Aegonâs Hill into a thick, bleeding mire and washed the accumulated filth of the lower city down into the Blackwater in great, stinking torrents. The heat did not leave; it simply turned into a heavy, suffocating steam that hung over the Red Keep like a wet shroud, making the candles spit and the salt in the cellars turn to grease.
She sat at the long table in Baelorâs solar, a mountain of wax-sealed parchments spread before her.
She had spent the morning reviewing the harbor dues from Oldtown and the timber reports from the Kingswood, her quill scratching a steady, relentless path through the numbers.
The doors of the solar were opened by a guard, and Brynden Rivers walked into the room.
Bloodraven had not changed his clothes since riding through the mud of the Kingsroad from the North. His long, smoky-grey cloak was stained with dark red clay around the hem, and his high leather boots left wet, grey tracks across the polished stone of the floor. His pale skin looked translucent in the grey light of the window, and the dark red birthmark that crawled up his throat looked like a fresh splash of blood against his neck.
His single red eye fixed upon her with a cold, calculating intensity that made her quill hand pause.
He did not bow. He walked to the edge of the table, his long, thin fingers resting on the back of Baelorâs empty chair.
âMy Lady,â he said, his voice a low, melodic whistle that sounded like wind through a keyhole.
âThe road from the North was... long. I had heard that the court was under new management.â
âThe court is under the management of the Prince of Dragonstone, Lord Brynden,â she said, her voice cool and unyielding as she set her quill down.
âThough he is currently indisposed, his commands remain the law of the land.â
Bloodraven let out a soft, dry sound that might have been a chuckle. He looked at the parchment spread before her, his single eye taking in the numbers with a single glance.
âThe commands of a man who cannot lift his chin from his chest are... difficult to interpret, My Lady. I have seen the guards at the gates. They say the Breakspear is a prisoner in his own chambers. They say the Iron Prince has taken his brotherâs placeânot just in the Council, but in the bed.â
The insult was a cold blade in the room.
She stood up from her chair, her movement so sudden the silver inkwell rattled against the wood. Her face went white with a blinding, lethal fury, her hands clenching into the fabric of her skirt.
âYou dare speak such treason in this room, Bloodraven? I will have your tongue torn out and fed to the crows before the sun sets.â
âHe will not have to wait for the sun,â a voice roared from the entrance.
Maekar Targaryen stepped into the solar, his boots dripping with rainwater, his great sword drawn and gleaming in the grey light. His face was a mask of pure, murderous rage, his violet eyes flashing like a lightning storm.
He did not hesitate; he lunged across the room, the tip of his blade stopping a mere inch from Bloodravenâs throat.
âSay it again, sorcerer,â Maekar hissed, his breath coming in short, violent gasps, his knuckles white around the hilt of his sword.
âSay one more word about my brotherâs wife and I will see if your white skin can hold its blood.â
Bloodraven did not move. He did not flinch from the steel at his throat. His single red eye remained fixed on Maekarâs face, a cold, mocking amusement in its depths.
âPrince Maekar... you always were too quick with the iron. It is a family trait, it seems. But iron does not stop whispers. It only makes them louder.â
âI can make them quiet enough,â Maekar growled, his blade twitching forward until a small drop of crimson blood appeared on Bloodravenâs pale neck.
âI have five thousand men in this city who answer to my name. I can clear your nest of crows before the tide turns.â
âEnough,â she commanded.
Her voice was not loud, but it possessed a terrifying, absolute authority that made both men freeze.
She stepped around the table, her silk skirts trailing through the wet mud Bloodraven had left on the floor. She walked straight to the white-haired lord, her eyes locking onto his red eye with an icy, unblinking clarity.
âLord Brynden,â she said, her voice dropping to a whisper that was colder than the rain outside.
âYou are the Master of Whispers because Baelor and the King chose to trust your eyes. But do not mistake his mercy for weakness. The Iron Prince stands at my right hand, and his sword answers to my voice. If I hear one more whisper of treason from your birdsâif I find one single crow nesting where it does not belongâI will let Prince Maekar have his way with your throat. Do we understand each other?â
Bloodraven looked at her for a long, silent moment. The mockery left his face, replaced by a cold, calculating respect. He saw the alignment of the forces in the roomâthe brutal, unyielding strength of the Prince and the icy, absolute intellect of the woman who held his chain. It was a dangerous, lethal combination, one that even his magic could not easily break.
Slowly, with a stiff, formal grace, Bloodraven bowed his head.
âWe understand each other, My Lady. The birds will sing only the songs you wish to hear.â
âThen get out of my sight,â Maekar growled, his sword remaining level until Bloodraven had backed out of the solar and the doors had thudded shut behind them.
When they were alone, the silence returned to the room, heavy and thick with the scent of rain and anger. Maekar lowered his sword, his breath still coming in short, ragged gasps. He stood completely still, his jaw locked, his eyes tracking a single drop of rainwater as it slid down his blackened breastplate.
He did not say a word, but the raw tension in his wide shoulders spoke of a man suffocating under a weight he could never confess.
âLet him whisper. Let the whole world whisper for it is not true,â she said, walking toward him until she was standing within the heat of his shadow. She reached up, her small hand resting against the wet linen of his shirt, her fingers feeling the frantic, violent hammering of his heart.
âAs long as your sword remains in my hand, they cannot touch us.â
Maekar looked down at her face, his violet eyes dark, entirely silent, yet burning with a terrifying, buried hunger. He felt the pull of her presence like a madness in his veinsâthe forbidden, beautiful agony of being so close to the woman he worshiped, the woman that belonged to his brother.
He reached out, his great hand hovering for a second over her shoulder, completely mute, before he let it fall, his fingers locking into the fabric of her shift with a desperate, silent force.
âI am yours,â he whispered, his voice thick with a passion that tasted of ash.
âI am yours until the world ends.â
âI know,â she said softly, her fingers tightening around his wrist, anchoring him to her as the rain continued to lash against the high stone windows of the keep.
The fourth week brought a brief, deceptive cool spell from the bay, but inside the high towers of the Red Keep, the air remained thick with the scent of boiled herbs and the sharp tang of clean well-water.
It was the day she had chosen to bathe him. For twenty days, Baelor had known only the damp, grey misery of sponge-washings and the dry itch of the linen sheets. His skull-wound had finally sealed itself into an ugly, puckered ridge of white flesh, and the Grand Maester had given his permission for the Prince to enter the tub.
It took the strength of both of them to bring him there.
The copper tub sat at the center of the alcove, steam rising from its depths in great, twisting ribbons that smelled of pine needles and dried chamomile. Maekar stood on the right side of the bed, his great wool shirt soaked through with sweat before they had even begun, his face set like a stone wall as he slid his arms beneath Baelorâs thighs and shoulder-blades.
âEasy, brother,â Maekar growled, his voice a low, rhythmic grunt as he lifted Baelorâs torso from the down mattress
âI have you. Do not struggle.â
Baelor did not struggle. He could not. His right side hung limp and pale against Maekarâs chest, his left hand clutching weakly at his brotherâs shoulder for balance.
Something that Maekar could never have imagined happeningâhis strong, golden brother relying on help like a small child.
âStrong... lad,â Baelor slurred, his dark eye blinking heavily against the steam.
âAlways... the Anvil... Maekar.â
She stood at the side of the tub, her skirts tucked up into her sash, her arms bare to the elbow.
When Maekar lowered Baelor into the warm water, she was there to catch his head, her small hands supporting the shorn, scarred backside as his body settled into the copper depths with a great, sighing splash.
âYou may leave us, Maekar,â she said, not looking up from her work as she dipped a sponge into the steaming water.
Maekar did not leave. He stepped back against the stone wall, his chest heaving under his wet shirt, his violet eyes fixed on the scene before him with an intensity that felt like a physical weight in the room. He watched the way her hands moved over his brotherâs flesh.
It was a slow, deliberate ritual that held no shame, only the raw, sacred intimacy of a wife reclaiming her husband from the dirt of the road. She used a cake of soft tallow soap that smelled of lavender, rubbing it into a thick, white lather between her palms before smoothing it over Baelorâs broad, scarred shoulders.
She washed his chestâthe massive, hair-darkened expanse that had once turned the swords of the rebel lords. She washed his left arm, the muscles still hard and defined under the skin, and then she moved to his right side.
The contrast was small, barely visible yet terrible. The right arm was slightly smaller now, the skin pale and thin, the muscles beginning their withering from disuse like a branch that had been girdled by wire.
âIt... lacks... the sun,â Baelor whispered, his dark eye tracking her hand as she gently massaged the dead fingers, trying to force the blood back into the rigid joints.
âThe sun will find it again on Dragonstone, my love,â she murmured, her voice sweet and steady as she rinsed the lather away with a silver pitcher of warm water.
âThe sea air is clean there. Not like the grease of this city.â
As she leaned over the copper rim, the thin linen of her shift became wet from the splashing, the cloth sticking to her skin until the pale curve of her ribs and the dark shadow of her spine were visible in the grey light of the window.
Maekar let out a short, sharp catch of his breath from the shadows.
She heard it. She did not turn her head, but her hand paused for a fraction of a heartbeat on Baelorâs shoulder, her own skin flushing a sudden, hot crimson beneath the damp linen.
The chemistry between her and Maekar was a living thing in the small alcoveâa thick, suffocating current of yearning and guilt that seemed to rise with the steam from the water.
Maekar was watching her loving his brother, and she knew that every touch she gave Baelor was a knife she was twisting in Maekarâs heart. He wanted to be the one she washed; he wanted to be the one who lay helpless beneath her hands, yet he would rather die than betray the man who slept in the tub.
âMaekar,â Baelor slurred, his left hand reaching out through the water until his fingers brushed the copper rim.
âThe... gold cloaks... are they... firm?â
Maekar took a step out of the shadows, his face pale beneath his white beard, his eyes avoiding her wet shift with a desperate, iron effort. He forced his gaze to stick to Baelorâs face, his heart knocking violently against his ribs like a trapped beast.
âThey are firm, brother,â he said, his voice dropping into a deep, solemn register that was his only shield against the madness of his own thoughts.
âThe gates are guarded by my own men from Summerhall. Lord Ambrose tried to send a courier to Oldtown this morning, but I had the rider turned back at the river gate. The Council will do nothing without our leave.â
âGood,â Baelor breathed, his eye closing as the warmth of the water began to soothe the long, aching pain in his skull.
âListen... to him, my sweet. He is... the iron... of our House.â
âI am listening,â she said softly, her hand moving back to Baelorâs hair, rinsing the soap from the dark curls with a gentle, rhythmic motion that never varied. But as she did, her eyes lifted, locking onto Maekarâs face through the ribbons of steam.
There was no anger in her gaze nowâthe fury had burned itself down. She saw the raw, absolute devotion in his violet eyes, the way he stood like an iron pillar at the foot of his brotherâs bath, ready to break the world if she gave the word.
She had bound him to her wheel, and as she watched the muscle in his jaw twitch in response to her gaze, she knew that the Iron of Summerhall would never run from her again.
The fifth week brought a heavy, suffocating stillness over the city, the air thick with a premonition that made the horses in the stables kick at their stalls. The wind from the south tasted of sulfur, and the ravens coming from the Reach carried whispers of an unnatural blight creeping through the border towns.
She stood in Baelorâs solar, watching her sons.
Valarr was polishing the crossguard of his sword, his jaw tight, while Matarys sat at the small side table, nervously rolling a dragon piece between his fingers.
They were young, but they were not blind. They could feel the invisible threads tightening around the castle.
âWe are leaving,â she said, her voice cutting through the silence of the room like a cold blade.
Valarr looked up, his brow furrowed.
âLeaving, Mother? Grandfather has just called for the autumn ledgers. He expects us at the morning court. And Matarys was to ride with the Gold Cloaks on the morrow.â
âMatarys will ride nowhere but to the docks,â she said, turning her gaze upon her youngest, whose purple eyes went wide.
âThe fogs in the lower town are thickening, and the air in this keep has turned sour. I will not have my sons waiting in the shadow of this Throne until the Council determines how to carve up your fatherâs inheritance.â
The door opened, and Maekar entered. He was dressed for travel, his dark charcoal doublet buttoned to the chin, a long leather riding cloak over his shoulders. His face was gaunt, but his eyes were hard and fixed on her.
âThe Black Betha has taken her water,â Maekar said, his voice a low vibration that made Matarys rise from his chair.
âThe captain has set the watch. If we are to move him, it must be before the evening guard changes at the sally-port. Bloodravenâs men have been sniffing around the lower wharves since noon.â
Valarr stood, his hand resting on his pommel. He looked from his mother to his uncle, a sudden, sharp understanding dawning in his dark eyes. He saw the alignment between themâthe raw, physical weight of the Prince and the absolute, icy clarity of his mother.
âYou are taking him to Dragonstone. Without the Kingâs leave.â
âYour grandfather is old, Valarr, and his eyes see only the peace of yesterday,â she said, walking over to press her hands against her eldest sonâs shoulders.
âDragonstone is your fatherâs seat. It is the only place where the stone is thick enough to keep out the vipers of this court.â
She paused, looking down at the heavy gold signet ring on Baelorâs desk.
âBut you two must remain. For now.â
Valarrâs jaw tightened, his hand dropping from his pommel.
âRemain? Mother, if the city is souring, our place is by his litter.â
âNo,â she said, her voice dropping into a whisper.
âThe court expects you both to take your places at the Council table on the morrow. If all of us vanish into the bay before the sun sets, Bloodraven will have the city gates closed before our hull clears the harbor. You and your brother carry the full face of the succession. By staying, you draw their eyes away from the sally-port. You protect him by letting them see you.â
Valarr stared at his mother, searching for a jest in her featuresâbut there was none. The fierce, dark pride of the Breakspear flared in his eyes, but he bowed his head.
âI understand, Mother. We will hold the yard until the tide turns. Matarys, polish your greaves.â
âAnd you?â Maekar whispered, his voice dropping into a low, intimate rasp that was meant for her ears alone. He stepped closer, his presence a dark, suffocating force that filled the space between them.
âIf I take the tiller... if I carry your House across the water... will you bide by my side when the Kingâs grace demands our return?â
âThe King will not demand it, Maekar,â she whispered back, her fingers reaching out to lock around his bare wrist, feeling the frantic, heavy pulse beneath his skin.
âHe is too old to chase Dragons. We are the iron that remains. Let them stay in their palace until the winter takes them.â
The sally-port was a narrow, dripping cleft in the red stone of the cliff face, leading down to the private wharves beneath the Kingâs steps. The rain was falling in great, silent sheets that turned the Blackwater into a grey, churning soup, the air thick with the smell of old salt and the rising fog from the bay.
They moved in perfect silence. Maekar walked at the head of the line, his great shield slung across his back, his drawn sword gleaming in the pale lantern light.
Behind him came the four guards from Summerhall, their boots wrapped in rags to deaden the sound of their steps against the wet stone, bearing Baelorâs litter between them.
She walked beside the mattress, her long crimson cloak wrapped tight around her shift, her hand resting on Baelorâs left shoulder to steady him against the rocking of the path. Her heart ached with the weight of the two sons she had left behind to hold the courtâs attention.
Baelor was conscious, his dark eye blinking heavily against the rain that drifted through the archway, his left hand clutching weakly at the fur of her collar.
âClean... air,â he slurred, his voice a thick whisper that was nearly lost in the rushing of the tide below.
âMy... sweet. We... are going... to the sea?â
âYes, my love,â she murmured, leaning low over the litter until her wet hair brushed his forehead.
âWe are going to Dragonstone. The stone is old there, and the wind is clean.â
Baelor let out a low, satisfied sound, his eye closing as the salt breeze began to clear his lungs of the heavy grease of the Capital.
âGood,â he breathed.
âMaekar... is he... with us?â
âI am here, brother,â Maekar said from the front of the line, not turning his head as his eyes scanned the dark mouth of the wharf below. His voice was a solid bar of iron in the night, a reassuring shield that broke the terror of the dark.
âThe ship is ready. The lines are cast.â
The Black Betha lay against the stone pier like a long, black water-beetle, her single mast stepping into the grey sky, her sails furled tight against the rain. The captain stood at the gangway, his face hidden beneath a wet leather hood, his hand resting on the rail as he watched the Princeâs guard approach.
âQuickly,â she commanded, her voice a low, sharp whistle that made the bearers quicken their pace.
They transferred the litter across the narrow wood of the gangway, Maekar standing at the center of the rail to steady the ash-poles with his own massive hands. Once the mattress was safely settled in the small deck cabin, she stepped inside, leaving Maekar to guard the deck.
The cabin was cramped, smelling faintly of old tallow and sea salt. Baelor lay beneath a mountain of dry wool, the rocking of the swell rolling him gently against the wooden partition.
He looked up as she entered, his dark eye remarkably clear in the amber glow of the small whale-oil lamp swinging from the rafter.
âCome... closer,â Baelor whispered. The slurring was lighter now, smoothed out by the sharp, clean scent of the saltwater.
She did not hesitate. She shed her heavy, wet crimson cloak, letting it drop to the floorboards, and stripped away the damp, salt-filmed shift until she stood bare in the amber twilight of the cabin.
When she crawled onto the narrow berth beside him, the space was so tiny that her skin pressed flush against his good left side. She tucked her head beneath his chin, but she did not remain still.
She needed the heat of him; she needed to drown out the memory of Maekarâs iron grip and Bloodravenâs pale, mocking eye.
Baelor let out a long, shuddering sigh, his left arm coming up to wrap tightly around her shoulders, pulling her so close she could feel the steady, heavy thudding of his heart beneath his wool shirt.
âYou are... cold,â he murmured, his lips brushing the crown of her damp hair.
âI have been cold since you returned from Ashford, Baelor,â she whispered against his collarbone, her fingers working the laces of his tunic. She pulled the linen apart, exposing the broad, sun-darkened expanse of his chest. She wanted him bare, stripped of the Prince and the tragedy, down to the raw, heavy mass of the husband she knew.
âI know,â he said, his voice dropping into a soft, aching register that made her eyes burn. He turned his face into her hair, inhaling deeply.
âI know what... I have given you. A broken knight... a half-dead Prince to drag across the Kingdoms. It is a... bitter gift, my sweet.â
âIt is the only gift I want,â she said fiercely, lifting her head to look into his dark eyes.
She shifted her weight, sliding her thigh over his left hip. Because his right side lay dead and unresponsive under the wool, she took the full burden of their mass, straddling him with a slow, deliberate caution.
Baelorâs left handâthe big, scarred hand that had held shields and broken vanguardsâslid down the curve of her spine, his fingers heavy and warm as they dug into the flesh of her hip, pulling her down against him.
âI cannot... lift you,â he whispered, a sudden, dark frustration flashing in his good eye as his rigid right arm trapped him against the bedding.
âI cannot... hold your waist, my sweet.â
âYou do not have to lift me,â she murmured, her lips brushing his jaw, tasting the salt-crust of his sweat.
âI am here. I have you.â
She guided his left hand between them, her own fingers locking with his as she pressed his palm against the warm, damp junction of her thighs.
She was already slick, her body responding to the desperate, terrifying proximity of him, the sheer relief of his living skin after weeks of stone and silence.
Baelor let out a low, thick groan, his thumb catching the small, sensitive bud of her flesh, stroking with a clumsy, heavy insistence that sent a sharp, liquid ache straight up into her belly.
She lifted her hips, her dark hair falling forward to veil their faces as she positioned herself over him. Slowly, with a steady, unyielding downward pressure, she took him inside her.
The fullness of him was a sudden, breathless shockâthe familiar, furnace-warmth of his body stretching her, filling the cold void that had settled behind her ribs since Ashford. Baelorâs breath caught, a hot, ragged gasp against her neck as his left hand gripped her thigh so hard his knuckles turned white.
âBaelor,â she gasped, her hands planting flat against his chest for balance as she began to move.
The rocking of the Black Betha dictated their rhythm, the heavy creak of the hull beneath them matching the slow, deep slide of her hips.
She set the pace, shifting her weight to accommodate his ruined side, her skin slicking with sweat as the heat in the small cabin turned suffocating and thick. Every downward stroke brought a low rumble from Baelorâs throat, his chest heaving under her palms, his left leg flexing against the mattress to meet her thrusts.
It was a beautiful, heartbreaking couplingâlacking the easy, sweeping vigor of their youth in the grass of the Reach, but weighted with a fierce, territorial hunger. With every heavy, sliding friction of their skin, she was clawing him back from the grave, asserting her right over his flesh against the Gods who had tried to split his skull.
Baelorâs dark eye remained locked onto hers, wide and burning through the amber haze of the whale-oil lamp. He watched her mouth, his lips parting as the friction mounted, his left hand sliding up from her thigh to lock into her hair, pulling her down for a deep, desperate kiss that tasted of salt and old devotion.
The end came with a sudden, rolling swell of the bay. She drove down hard against him, her internal muscles clamping tight around his length as a violent, shivering release shattered through her lower belly. She let out a sharp, crying gasp against his mouth, her forehead dropping to his shoulder as Baelor stiffened beneath her, his left hand wrenching her hair as he spent himself deep within her with a low, defeated growl that shook his entire frame.
They lay tangled together in the aftermath, the rhythmic thudding of their hearts slowing to match the roll of the sea. She did not move off him, remaining curled against his good left side, her skin cooling in the draft from the deck.
Baelorâs left arm wrapped tight around her waist, holding her to his chest as if the world outside the cabin door did not exist.
Outside, Maekar stood on the open deck, the rain plastering his hair to his brow, his wool shirt soaked through until it looked like a second skin across his chest.
He carried no shield now; his hand rested on the rail, his knuckles white against the dark oak, his eyes fixed resolutely on the black, empty mouth of the bay.
He could hear the low, muffled murmur of their voices through the thin timbers of the cabin belowâthe soft, intimate sounds of a husband and wife finding each other in the dark.
He did not speak. He did not let out a single groan. He simply stood there like an iron pillar in the storm, his violet eyes burning with a solitary, absolute devotion that required no words, a shield that would break the world before it let the night touch them.
The Black Betha began to drift away from the stone pier, out into the deep, grey waters of the bay, while behind them, the red towers of the Keep faded into the silent grey horizon, leaving the sons to navigate the storm while the Anvil slipped out to sea to protect the weakened Hammer from the oncoming storm that was knocking on the gates of Kingâs Landing in the form of a sickness.
Synopsis: The Ashford meadows green and wide, cannot conceal the Dragonâs pride. Upon the knee, his mind undone, she binds the fatherâs wilder son. A whispered word, a private shame, ensures the beast will claim the game.
Warnings: SMUT 18+, Targcest, Oral Sex, Power Play, Unprotected Vaginal Sex, Femdom/Malesub, Praise Play & Degradation, Toxic Dynamics, Biting/Blood, Overstimulation, Graphic Animal Cruelty/Death, Graphic Sports Violence, Severe Psychological Manipulation, Age Gap of 6 years (Aerion is nineteen, Reader twenty-five)
Word Count: 5.4k
The thick stone walls of Ashford Castle held the damp chill of the river Cocklesuent, keeping the midday heat at bay.
Outside, the Ashford Meadows were a vast, undulating sea of silk and boiling ambition, but within the heavy oak-paneled solar of the keep, the atmosphere was suffocatingly still.
Through the high, arched casement window, the distant sounds of the encampment drifted inâthe rhythmic clink-clink-clink of armorersâ hammers and the petulant bugling of warhorses.
Yet inside, the heavy trestle table was cluttered not with festive sweetmeats, but with map-scrolls, logistics ledgers, and silver flagons of Arbor gold.
âThe smallfolk are swarming from here to the Honeywine,â Baelor remarked, his voice a calm, stabilizing anchor against the stone walls.
He sat with his customary, effortless majesty, his dark hairâinherited from his Martell motherâcropped neat. He leaned across the polished oak, offering a small, rectangular cedar box with a gentle, statesmanlike smile.
âI had the merchant-captains bring this up from the Kingâs Landing wharves before we departed, sister. A true Myrish silk lace, dyed the deepest charcoal. I thought it might bring some small comfort to your... persistent grief.â
âYou are too thoughtful, brother,â she murmured, her voice dropping into a register of flawless, fraudulent modesty. She accepted the box, her long, ringless fingers tracing the fine, web-like lace inside.
âA widowâs weeds are rarely so elegant.â
âGrief or no, the logistics are a bloody nightmare,â Maekar grumbled, completely ignoring the courtly exchange.
The youngest Prince paced the perimeter of the solar like a caged manticore, his massive, broad-shouldered frame casting long, severe shadows across the tapestries. His granite face was twisted in a permanent scowl, his violet eyes bloodshot from sleepless miles on the Roseroad.
He kicked a stray stool out of his path with a heavy, iron-shod riding boot.
âThree hundred household lances to quarter, the Ashford garrison complaining about the forage limits, and every landless sellsword in the Seven Kingdoms trying to push his way into the lists. Lord Ashford has cleared his finest guest wings for us, yet we are here coordinating search parties instead of showing the Crownâs stability.â
Maekar halted his pacing abruptly, his scowl deepening as his mind strayed from the tourney logs to a far more agonizing domestic failure.
âAnd where the devil is Daeron?â he spat, slamming his fist onto the table so hard the silver chalices jumped.
âHe was supposed to be here three days ago. He has my youngest boy, riding squire for him, and yet he disappears into every roadside tavern between Summerhall and the Cocklesuent! A drunkard and a truant, both of them.â
Baelor sighed softly, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
âDaeron will arrive, brother. He likely took the longer path through the hills to avoid the heat.â
âHe took the path that had the most wine casks,â Maekar barked, his face tightening with a profound, mounting worry. He was a father besieged by his own bloodline, his anxiety over his missing sons bleeding into his every word.
âIf anything has happened to Aegon on the road... if Daeronâs negligence has compromised the boyâs safety, Iâll strip him of his titles myself. It is a disgrace. Because of his dallying, I must waste the first day of the lists coordinating outriders.â
His severe, unforgiving gaze swung like a heavy siege engine toward the recessed archway near the hearth, where Aerion stood in the shadows.
The Brightflame had been silent since they rode through the Castle gates. He stood leaning against the stone masonry, his hands tucked behind his back, his silver hair catching the amber firelight like spun glass.
To any casual observer, his handsome face was a mask of profound, aristocratic boredom, his lips curled into his perpetual, mocking sneer.
âAnd you,â Maekar growled, pointing a thick, calloused finger at his remaining youngest son.
âSince your eldest brother is a drunkard and your father must play the scout, you will keep your vanity on a short leash during the opening feasts. I saw what happened at the ford with the Florent boy. I heard your shouting.â
Aerionâs posture did not change, but a dangerous, static tension rippled through his broad shoulders.
âThe boy was clumsy, father. His beast nearly scraped the paint from the royal carriages.â
âHe was a guest of the Reach, and you behaved like a rabid hound!â Maekar roared, his voice rattling the silver flagons on the table. He stepped closer to Aerion, looming over him with an unyielding, military wrath.
âI will not have you embarrassing the Crown before the Tyrells have even broken bread in the Great Hall. I have spoken with the tourney marshals. Your name is not to be entered into the lists. You will sit in the royal gallery, you will wear your finest silks, and you will remain a silent spectator. Do you take my meaning, boy?â
A heavy, suffocating silence descended upon the solar.
Aerionâs violet eyes, darker and wilder than his fatherâs, flashed with a sudden, feral fury. The muscle along his sharp jawline throbbed violently against his skin.
For a fraction of a second, his gaze broke from Maekarâs face and flicked across the roomâdirectly to his aunt. It was a desperate, bleeding look of pure humiliation, an unspoken plea from a broken beast looking to its master.
She met his gaze with an unblinking, crystalline stare, her face remaining completely impassive, a marble Septa offering no comfort.
âAerion,â Baelor intervened softly, his calm tone cutting through Maekarâs heat like rain.
âYour father speaks of prudence. This tourney is not for personal grievances. Let the younger knights have their day in the dirt.â
Aerion swallowed hard, his throat bobbing against the high, stiff collar of his scarlet doublet. He forced his head down in a stiff, clumsy bow that looked as though it cost him his very soul.
âAs you command, father,â Aerion choked out, his voice a low, gravelly scrape.
âI shall be... the perfect Prince.â
âSee that you are,â Maekar muttered, turning back to the map-scrolls, his face still clouded with resentment over Daeron and Aegonâs absence.
âGo. Check on the stable-masters in the outer yard. Get out of my sight.â
Aerion did not wait. He turned on his heel and strode out of the solar, the heavy oak door slamming shut behind his broad back. As the dust of his sudden exit settled, she calmly adjusted the Myrish lace shawl over her shoulders, her mind already tracking the exact trajectory of his madness.
The opening feast in the Great Hall of Ashford Castle had been a prolonged, agonizing exercise in jealousy.
From her elevated seat at the high table, draped in her endless, hypocritical widowâs black, she had watched the provincial lords of the Reach swarm the hall.
They had toasted her beauty with the sweet, heavy wines of the South, their eyes lingering far too long upon the pale column of her throat and the silver waves of her hair.
And through it all, she had watched Aerion.
He sat at his fatherâs left hand, a silent, terrifying statue of royal indifference. He had barely touched his meat, his long, elegant fingers twitching against the stem of his wine chalice until the silver warped under his grip.
Every time a southern lord laughed too loudly in her direction, Aerionâs eyes would widen, the pupils blown so large by the torchlight that his violet rings were nothing more than thin wires around a dark, violent center.
He had vanished before the final sweetmeats were served.
Now, within the heavy timbered confines of her assigned chambers in the Castleâs eastern tower, the silence was absolute.
The room was a sanctuary of dark stone, lit only by a single, low-burning brass brazier and the dying embers of the hearth that cast long, flickering shadows over her brass-bound luggage trunks and the plush carpets.
The heavy iron-bolted door did not merely open; it was slipped through with a frantic, silent urgency.
Aerion entered like a dying storm, closing the heavy oak door behind him and dropping the iron bar into place with a muffled, metallic thud that sealed the world away. His breath came in short, ragged pants through his bared teeth. He had stripped off his heavy formal belt, his fine scarlet doublet completely unbuttoned at the throat, exposing the pale, sweating column of his neck. His silver hair was wild, tangled by his furious pacing through the Castle corridors, and his eyes were completely unspooled.
âThey look at you,â he hissed, his voice a low, dangerous whistle that cut through the dim room. He crossed the distance between them in three long, predatory strides, his heavy leather riding boots thudding against the hearth rugs.
âEvery unwashed, illiterate dog from the Mander sits there and drools into his trencher, thinking he has the right to see you.â
He reached out, his calloused handsâtrembling with a ravenous, starving desperationâseizing her by the upper arms. He pulled her forward with a sudden, violent jerk, trying to force her body against the hard, unyielding plate of his chest.
âYou smiled at them. You sat beside my uncle and let them toast to your widowhood as if you were a prize to be collected at the end of the lists.â
She placed her long, cool hands against his jawline, her thumbs pressing firmly into the soft skin beneath his chin, forcing his head back. Her amethyst eyes were wide, clear, and dripping with an icy, patronizing discipline that hit his explosive energy like a bucket of well-water.
âYou are throwing a tantrum, little Prince,â she murmured, her voice a cool, velvety purr that filled the narrow space.
âYou stand in my chambers, reeking of sour wine and sweat, shouting like a tavern brawler because some boys from the Reach have eyes in their heads.â
âI am the Brightflame!â he roared softly, his voice cracking under the weight of his undone pride. His grip tightened on her arms, his fingers digging into the soft black silk of her sleeves with a bruising force that would leave dark shadows by the dawn.
âI am the blood of the Dragon! My fatherâs cowardice will not cage me while those southern swine pretend to be knights before your gallery!â
âAnd yet, you are caged,â she whispered, her lips curling into a tiny, knife-like smile.
âYou stood before Maekar in the solar and bowed your head like a scolded squire. You said, 'As you command, father.' You let him strip your lance before the entire court.â
A choked, feral sob left Aerionâs throat at the reminder of his public shame. His jaw trembled beneath her fingers, his forehead dropping forward until it rested against her shoulder, his hot, ragged breath burning through the linen of her collar.
âHe has ruined me,â he whimpered, his royal armor completely fracturing in the dark.
âHe wants to keep me in the dark. He wants me to starve.â
âThen you will starve,â she said, her voice turning into a cool wall of iron.
With a smooth, unhurried movement, she wrenched her arms from his grip and stepped back, leaving him swaying in the center of the stone room. She looked down at him with an absolute, regnant severity.
âYou come to my quarters demanding comfort like a rabid hound, yet you bring nothing but the stink of your fatherâs leash.â
The insult hit him like a physical blow. The conflict within him played across the sharp, handsome lines of his face like wildfire over a dry field. His celebrated malice, the terrifying temper that made his brothers look away when he entered a room, surged violently, demanding he take what he wanted by force.
Yet it fought a losing battle against the pathetic, unhinged dependency he had harbored for nine long years.
He did not back down either. He stood towering over her, a volatile, breathing wall of muscle and frustrated royalty, his fists trembling at his sides.
âYou think you can rule me with a look,â he growled, his voice a low, gravelly vibration in his chest as he stepped back into her space, looming over her.
âI am a Prince of the blood. I could snap that pale neck before the guards reached the landing.â
She did not flinch. Instead, she leaned her head back against the high stone masonry behind her, looking up into his wild eyes through half-lidded lids, her expression dripping with a cool, mocking serenity.
âThen do it, little Prince,â she whispered, her voice a velvety purr that seemed to rob the air from his lungs.
âChoke the breath from me. Let Maekar find my body, and let the Realm see the Brightflame executed like a common butcher. Go on. Put your hands here.â
She took his right wrist, her long, cool fingers guiding his hand until it rested against the bare column of her throat. His palm pulsed against her frantic jugular.
Aerion froze, his chest heaving as the sheer proximity of her skin paralyzed his rage, turning his lethal intent into a starving, helpless awe.
âYou will not,â she murmured, a tiny, knife-like smile curling her lips as his fingers convulsed against her neck, unable to squeeze.
âBecause you are a rabid hound, Aerion, but you know exactly who holds your leash. If you wish to taste the fire tonight, you will submit to the vessel that holds it. Stand there and watch your queen.â
Without breaking eye contact, she reached behind her waist, finding the silk ties of her black mourning gown. With a single, elegant tug, she loosened the front panels, letting the heavy black silk part down to her navel, exposing her torso to the dim, amber glow of the brazier. Her breasts were full, pale as morning mist, the nipples hardened by the sudden draft of the stone tower.
The arrogant Prince vanished, replaced by a beggar. He stepped forward instinctively, his long, elegant fingers reaching out to claw at the bare skin of her waist, but she struck his hands down with a sharp, stinging slap that left a bright red mark across his knuckles.
âDid I say you could touch me, Nephew?â she asked, her voice dripping with patronizing discipline.
âYour hands are filthy with the dust of the Roseroad. If you are to worship me tonight, you will use the only part of you that knows how to speak the language of Kings.â
She shifted her weight, pinning her back against the masonry and guiding his silver head downward by the crown of his hair.
Aerion kneeled blindly, his frame awkward and straining as he buried his face into the soft, fragrant hair of her mons until his head swam.
A shiver of genuine pleasure rippled through her lower belly as his wet tongue finally made contact.
He did not strike or tear now; he licked her with a frantic, desperate reverence. His tongue was broad, hot, and heavy as he tasted the salt of her skin, his hands bunched into tight fists behind her hips, strictly obeying her command not to touch her flesh with his fingers.
He was sobbing into her now, his breath hot and damp against her clitoris, his silver hair becoming soaked with her mounting juices as the distant clatter of the tourney camp echoed softly through the stone walls outside.
She let him taste her, let him drink from the vessel until the high, tight coils of her own pleasure began to tighten in her lower stomach. The overstimulation of his frantic tongue, combined with the constant, thrilling risk of discovery just beyond the heavy timbered door, drove her pulse to a fever pitch. But before the wave could fully break, she pulled his head back by the hair once more, forcing him to stand up straight.
Aerion let out a long, miserable groan of absolute denial as he was dragged away from the wet, glistening source of his obsession. He stood tall, swaying on his feet, his handsome lips shiny with her fluids, his breath coming in ragged, weeping puffs.
âNot yet, little Prince,â she whispered, her amethyst eyes dark and unblinking.
She reached down, her fingers finding the leather laces of his breeches. She did not untie them with the hurried energy of a lover; she picked at the knots with a slow, meticulous malice, her fingernails scratching the sensitive skin of his lower belly until his length sprang free.
He took himself in his hand, his knuckles turning white as he stroked himself twice, a single drop of clear pre-cum spilling from the tip onto the carpet.
âPlease,â he whimpered, his eyes glazed with an absolute, terrifying docility.
âIvestragÄ« nyke mÄzigon iemnÈł ao... I am burning, Aunt. I am burning to ash.â
Let me come inside you.
She looked down at his exposed manhood, then back to his desperate face, and she began the final, elegant weave of her trap.
âYou are burning because you are a Dragon, Aerion,â she whispered, her voice dropping into a register of sweet, poisonous praise play that made his eyes widen. She pulled him down as she cradled his cheeks.
âA great, powerful Dragon. And yet your father treats you like a common clerk. He tells you to sit in the gallery. He tells you to let the lesser lords of the Reach win the glory.â
Aerionâs teeth clicked together, a sudden, frantic rage mixing with his arousal.
âHe forbade it. If I ride without his leaveââ
âMaekar is an old soldier, Aerion,â she interrupted softly, her thumbs wiping away a bead of sweat from his temple.
âHe is cautious. He is frightened of your fire because he knows it is brighter than his heirâs. He wanted his precious Daeron to shine without your shadow darkening the lists but now he is not here and your cousin is the only one representing our House. Will you let your father cage you? Will you let Valarr win the cheers of the Realm while you sit among the women?â
âNo,â Aerion gasped, his chest heaving under his scarlet doublet, his length twitching violently against his stomach.
âI am better than all of them.â
âThen show me,â she commanded, her voice turning into a sharp, iron directive.
âDefy him. Enter the lists tomorrow under your own proud name. I do not want a Prince who cowers in the gallery. I want to see you break the lances of your every opponent.â
She squeezed his hair, her voice dropping to a harsh, hypnotic whisper against his ear.
âRide for me, Aerion. Smash his peace to pieces, and I will let you drown in this fire until you cannot remember your own fatherâs name.â
The manipulation acted on his fractured mind like oil on an open flame. His royal pride, his celebrated malice, and his ravenous sexual desperation fused into a single, terrifying impulse of absolute rebellion.
âI will ride,â he choked out, his violet eyes flashing with a manic, unhinged glory.
âI will take the field. I will drag their proud shields through the dirt until the Mander runs red with their blood!â
âThen take your prize,â she said.
She did not let him stand. Instead, she pushed him until his legs met the edge of the bed, forcing him to sit as she lowered herself slowly, deliberately onto his lap. Her hand guided the head of his length against her opening.
With a slow, agonizingly deep surge of her hips, she sank upon him.
A sharp cry of shared air left both their lips at once.
Aerionâs eyes closed, his jaw locking as his body adjusted to the crushing, velvet heat of her walls. He felt her inner muscles contract around himâa deliberate, practiced squeeze that nearly brought him to his knees for a second time.
âDo not move, Aerion,â she commanded, her hands rising to grip his chin, forcing his eyes open.
âLook at me while you take your Crown.â
He opened his eyes, and the fury had entirely vanished from them. They were glazed, soft, and filled with a terrifying, absolute docilityâthe look of a hound that had finally been allowed to rest its head in its masterâs lap.
She began to ride him, her rhythm slow, measured, and deeply dominant. Each downward plunge of her hips was a heavy, deliberate weight that drove him deep into her core.
The danger was a physical weight in the air; through the heavy timber of the door, she could hear the heavy, rhythmic tread of Lord Ashfordâs guards passing down the stone corridor, the clink of their mail coat links sharp in the night air.
The risk of discovery turned the intimacy into an agony of overstimulation. Every time Aerion tried to thrust upward, tried to reclaim the dominant rhythm, she pressed her flat palm against his sternum, forcing him back down, keeping him pinned beneath her weight.
âYou are so strong, Aerion,â she whispered, her voice dropping into that sweet, poisonous praise play that she knew made his blood sing. She leaned down, her lips brushing his earlobe as her silver hair fell over his face.
âSuch a great, powerful Dragon.â
Aerion let out a sharp, undone cry, his hips slamming harder against hers as her words hit his ego like oil on fire.
âYou are my monster,â she hummed, her voice as smooth and cold as the river-stone below.
âThe only man alive wicked enough to ride for my favor.â
The slow, measured rhythm broke into something frantic, something wild and ancient as the Targaryen bloodline itself. He began to drive upward with a terrifying, unpolished speed; his breathing came in loud, weeping gasps as the climax began to claim his lower body.
She met his speed, her own pleasure rising in a violent, dark crescendo that made her head fall back into the shadow of the stone vaulted ceiling.
Her teeth found the soft, sweating skin where his neck met his shoulder, biting down with a deep, deliberate puncture that drew a bright, thick line of blood.
With a final, incredibly deep thrust that buried him to the very root of his groin against her pelvis, Aerionâs body went completely rigid.
A loud, feral scream was choked in his throat as she pressed her hand over his mouth, the sound echoing off the high stone ceilings like a muffled groan. He shattered violently, his head thrown back as he spilled himself deep within her, the hot, thick streams of his seed filling her cavity until she could feel the burning heat of it against her cervix.
She came with him, her body contracting in a series of tight, agonizingly sweet spasms that clamped around his length like an iron fist, drawing every last drop of his strength from his body.
The silence returned to the Castle tower all at once, save for the dry, scraping sound of their breathing and the distant, rhythmic bugling of a warhorse across the Ashford Meadows.
Aerionâs strength failed him entirely. His upper body collapsed forward against her bare chest, his silver head burying itself in the heavy, wet tangle of her hair. He was begging for breath, his muscles trembling with the afterglow of a climax that had torn the very soul from his ribs.
She sat upon his lap, her long legs still wrapped securely around his waist, her arms coming up to hold him against her body. Her fingers ran gently through the damp silver strands.
In the dim amber light of the brazier, she looked down at the Prince who had come to break the Reach. His face was soft and vulnerable against her throat, his royal armor completely stripped away by the secrets of her flesh.
She reached down, her fingers finding the collar of his scarlet doublet. With a practiced, careful movement, she drew the fine wool together, buttoning the silver clasps one by one until the deep, red bite mark upon his neck was perfectly hidden beneath the high, formal trim.
âFix your laces, Aerion,â she whispered, her voice returning to that cool, melodious purr of the courtly widow. Her body unmounting him.
âThe hour grows late. Your father will expect his knight to look like a Prince tonight while Valarr opens the tourney.â
Aerion did not move for a long minute, his forehead resting against the pale skin of her collarbone, his breathing finally slowing.
Then, with a slow, hesitant breath, he pushed himself back, his hands trembling violently as he fastened his breeches in the dark.
He did not look at her as he unbarred the heavy oak door. He stepped out into the cool, windswept corridor of the keep, his face a slab of royal indifference once more as he vanished into the shadows of the Castle wing.
But beneath the scarlet wool of his collar, the skin was already turning black and blueâa secret, permanent branding of the shadow that ruled him from within.
Tomorrow, the Dragon would ride.
The morning sun broke over Ashford with a brutal, blinding clarity.
The stands of the royal gallery were packed to overflowing, a sea of bright silks, fluttering pennants, and the roaring chatter of the smallfolk gathered along the barriers.
Maekarâs seat beside Baelor was conspicuously empty, the Prince of Summerhall already out on the northern roads with a vanguard of outriders, his mind consumed by the terrifying possibility of what might have befallen Daeron and little Aegon in the wild spaces of the Reach.
She sat in the front tier of the gallery, the Myrish charcoal lace shawl draped flawlessly over her shoulders, framing her face in a mask of elegant, mourning serenity.
Beside her, Baelor Breakspear leaned back in his carved oak chair, his dark eyes surveying the field with the calm, analytical gaze of a man who ruled the Realm in all but name.
He adjusted the silver Targaryen dragon clasp at his shoulder, his voice dropping into a low, private register meant for her ears alone as the heralds blew their long brass trumpets.
âOur brotherâs anger has blinded him to the larger board, sister,â Baelor murmured smoothly, his eyes never leaving the barrier below.
âHe rages about Daeronâs truant drinking and hunts for Aegon in the brush, but he does not see the true shape of things to come.â
âAnd what shape is that, brother?â she asked, her voice a cool whisper of wind.
Baelor turned his head slightly, a small, knowing smile touching his lips, though a rare flicker of personal unease crossed his eyes.
âOur father believes that once your mandatory year of widowâs mourning has reached its full circle, it would be... most politically advantageous for the Realm⊠if you and I were to wed.â
She did not flinch, but her mind instantly sharpened.
âYou and I?â she echoed, keeping her tone a soft, perfectly calibrated note of royal curiosity.
âA Dragon line must remain unbroken,â Baelor explained, nodding slowly.
âBut more than that, it is a matter of perception. I have always borne the look of our motherâdark hair, swarthy skin. To the smallfolk and the lords alike, I look more like a Prince of Sunspear than a king of the Andals. My appearance has always given fuel to the embers of rebellion, a weakness the Blackfyre sympathizers eagerly exploit when they whisper that a true Targaryen should possess the blood of Old Valyria.â
He glanced at her, his eyes tracing the striking, undeniable perfection of her silver-gold waves and the deep violet of her eyes.
âYou, sister, carry the absolute purity of our House. By taking you as my future Queen, our father means to visually reinforce my claim. Your unmistakable Valyrian blood will stand alongside me on the Iron Throne, a living testament to our lineage that will silence the rebels and completely fortify my position when the Crown finally passes.â
âA meticulous plan,â she whispered, a cold, dark wave of amusement washing over her thoughts.
The future Queen.
Their father wanted her anchored to the statesman to bleach the Dornish stain from his heirâs legacy, completely oblivious to the fact that she already held the keys to the Kingdomâs madness, coiled securely around the neck of Maekarâs wildest son.
Before Baelor could reply, the trumpets cut through the morning air with a sharp, piercing blare.
From the far end of the lists, the gate sloughed open. Aerion Targaryen rode into the sunlight.
He was a vision of terrifying, ostentatious majesty. His polished steel armor resembled the body of a dragon with shimmering scales, and his shield bore the three-headed Dragon of his House, spitting roaring plumes of painted flame.
He sat high and arrogant upon his great brown horse, his silver hair hidden beneath his unvisored dragon helm.
He had defied his father.
He had entered the lists.
And now he was seeking Baelorâs approval by parading in front of the pavilion while he twisted his rings.
She glanced at her brother, gauging his reactionâwhich was a simple but accepting nod.
Aerion paraded his horse, arrogance written over his features as he sought out his cousin for a quick exchange before challenging his opponent.
Across the dirt barrier, his opponent was waiting: Ser Humphrey Hardyng, a seasoned, solid knight of the Reach, his shield painted with the red bars of his House, his posture steady and unyielding.
Aerion lowered his visor with a sharp, metallic clack. He did not look at the lords, nor at the smallfolk who cheered his royal blood.
He tilted his lance upward, the iron tip pointing directly toward her tier of the gallery for a brief, breathless secondâa silent, blood-soaked dedication of the violence to come.
âWhat is he doing?â Baelor muttered, his posture instantly stiffening, his brow furrowing with sudden, sharp disapproval.
âMaekar explicitly forbade him from entering. The boyâs madness will ruin the peace of the day.â
âLet us see how bright his flame burns, brother,â she murmured, her amethyst eyes locking onto the brown mare.
The marshalâs scarlet flag dropped.
The roar of the crowd died in an instant, replaced by the thundering, bone-shaking rumble of hooves against the packed turf.
Aerion spurred his horse with a sudden, vicious cruelty, his iron rowels tearing into the beastâs flanks until the brown horse screamed, throwing its head back as it charged down the lane like a runaway siege engine.
Ser Humphrey came on steady, his lance leveled straight and true at the center of Aerionâs metallic breastplate.
The distance closed in a heartbeat. But as the two riders neared the midpoint of the barrier, Aerion did not brace for the impact. He did not aim his lance at Hardyngâs shield or his helm.
He ducked, steering his horse away from the impact.
The crowd voiced its clear displeasure.
The opponents turned for another round, closing the distance with frightening speed.
With a sudden, sickening burst of sheer, malicious insanity, Aerion dropped the point of his lance.
He drove the heavy, iron-tipped oak shaft downward, plunging it with an immense, brutal force directly into the soft, unarmored throat of Ser Humphreyâs oncoming warhorse.
The impact was horrific.
The iron head tore through flesh and bone, splitting the horseâs jugular in a violent, fountain-like spray of crimson. The great beast let out a choked, bubbling shriek, its front legs buckling instantly as its momentum flipped its massive body forward into the dirt.
Ser Humphrey had no chance to escape, his armor crashing into the barrier with a sickening, bone-snapping crunch. At the same time, the dying horse collapsed directly on top of his twisted limbs, crushing him beneath a mountain of thrashing, bloody meat.
The entire tourney ground went completely, utterly silent.
Aerion reined in his brown mare at the end of the lists, turning the beast smoothly in a circle amidst the settling dust and the pooling red blood of the field. He lifted his visor, his handsome face perfectly calmâproud evenâhis violet eyes wide and glittering with an unhinged, manic glory as he looked up into the royal galleryâdirectly into her eyes.
Beside her, Baelorâs face paled with absolute horror and disgust, his features twitching in disappointment and probably annoyance.
âGods have mercy,â he whispered, his hands trembling against the gallery rail.
âHow shall I explain this to Maekar?â
She sat perfectly still in the shadow of the red silk pavilion, the Myrish lace shawl cool against her neck. She looked down at the blood soaking into the green Ashford turf, and her lips parted into a tiny, hidden smile of exquisite satisfaction.
Thinking of an AU where Baelor survives the Trial but is left permanently disabled with mobility issues. His wife takes care of him and refuses to let Maekar run away from what he did (their relationship is complicated at first, full of tension). She becomes the buffer between the brothers, helping Maekar find forgiveness and helping Baelor show his brother that he doesn't harbor hatred đââïž
Synopsis: A foreign bride of copper thread arrives to find the Princess dead. Beside a shattered Prince of dread, she shares a cold, abortive bed. His body fails, his spirit breaks, but from his ruin, she awakesâshe will not leap into the deep; she dons her gold to rule the keep.
A/N: can be read as a standalone, but features the aftermath of the events in the Cost of Crowns :)
The grand Tyroshi galley had been built for celebration, its sails dyed a vibrant, arrogant purple, its prow carved into the likeness of a gilded sea-dragon. But as the ship sheared through the dark, churning waters of the Blackwater Rush, it felt less like a bridal chariot and more like a floating tomb.
She stood at the railing, her fingers gripping the salt-crusted wood so tightly her knuckles turned the color of ivory.
Beneath her heavy, multi-layered silk robesâwoven with the finest Tyroshi threads of deep violet and copperâher body shivered. It was not the cold wind off the bay that froze her, but the suffocating silence that hung over the land.
She had been promised a golden city.
Her father, the Archonâs closest ally, had told her of the grand feasts, the roaring crowds, and the magnificent Prince with a silver-gold strand in his hair who would place a Crown upon her head.
He had told her that her wealth would buy her a place at the right hand of the Iron Throne, far from the petty factional squabbles of the Disputed Lands.
Instead, Kingâs Landing rose from the mist like a decaying beast.
There were no heralds. No trumpets blared from the mud-slick docks of the harbor. The massive, towering walls of the Red Keep were draped not in the proud crimson of House Targaryen, but in devastating, endless banners of ash-grey mourning velvet.
The fabric hung limp in the damp air, weeping soot onto the stone below. From the high hills of the city, the bells of the Great Sept of Baelor began to toll. It was a slow, agonizingly rhythmic dirge that vibrated through the hull of the ship, striking her chest like a physical blow.
Dong. Dong. Dong.
A monotonous counting of the dead.
As the vessel was warped into the slipway, she looked down at the smallfolk gathered on the wharves. They did not cheer; they did not throw flowers. They stood in huddled masses, their faces smeared with charcoal, their heads bowed in superstitious terror.
To them, a Princess jumping from the royal apartments was an omenâa sign that the curse of the Targaryen madness had returned to roost in the blood of the good King Daeron.
When the gangplank lowered, she pulled her heavy veil over her face, shielding her foreign features and the vibrantly colored hair from the grim, silent harbor.
Waiting for her at the base of the pier was a delegation that looked entirely hollowed out.
At the front stood Prince Baelor Targaryen, the Hand of the King. The histories she had studied with the magisters in Tyrosh spoke of Baelor Breakspear as a paragon of chivalry, a man of iron will and radiant majesty who possessed the dark hair of his Martell mother rather than the traditional Valyrian silver. He was the hero of the Redgrass Field, the man who had crushed the rebel Dragons of Daemon Blackfyre.
But the man standing before her now looked a hundred years old. His proud, muscular shoulders were stooped, bent under a weight no plate armor could deflect. His dark hair was unkempt, flecked with fresh grey at the temples, and his eyesâthe legendary Valyrian violet inherited from King Daeronâwere bloodshot, sunken deep into dark, bruised hollows of sleeplessness.
She stepped off the wood and onto the stones of Westeros, offering a perfect, practiced foreign curtsy, her silks rustling loudly in the quiet harbor.
Baelor did not step forward to raise her. He merely stared at her, his gaze sliding over her copper-dyed silks, through her translucent veil, and looking entirely through her.
He was looking at the empty space beside her, or perhaps at the ghost that walked in her shadow.
âMy Lady,â Baelorâs voice was a rough, gravelly ruin, devoid of any royal warmth.
âWesteros welcomes you. My father, the King, sends his regrets. He is... indisposed within the Kingâs House. The Crown greets its new daughter.â
âI grieve for your loss, my Lord Hand,â she replied, her Westerosi speech precise, though flavored with the soft, rolling cadence of the Free Cities.
âThe entire Narrow Sea has heard of the tragedy that befell your House.â
A collective flinch rippled through the royal guards behind Baelor. The Handâs jaw clenched so hard the bone looked ready to snap through his skin.
For a terrifying second, she thought she had misspoken, but then she realized the truth: they were not just grieving. They were terrified. The Princessâs sudden, horrific leap from the high balcony of Maegorâs Holdfast had not just broken her body on the rocks below; it had fractured the very sanity of the court.
âWe do not speak of it,â Baelor rasped, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper that barely carried over the tolling bells.
âThe Princess is with the Seven. Your duty now is to the living. To my son.â
He escorted her toward a heavy, black-curtained wheelhouse lined with boiled leather to muffle the sounds of the streets. Inside, away from the prying eyes of the silent smallfolk, the atmosphere was suffocating.
Baelor sat across from her, his large hands resting heavily on his knees. He did not look like a conqueror; he looked like a man who had built a cage and found himself trapped inside it.
As the wheelhouse jolted, climbing the steep, winding incline of Aegonâs High Hill, Baelor spoke into the dark.
âYou are an intelligent woman. Your father spoke highly of your wit, and the Archon values your compliance. I will not insult you with courtly lies.â
He closed his eyes, his breath rattling in his chest.
âMy daughter did not slip. She did not take a winter fever, nor did she lose her footing on the morning dew. She flung herself into the sea because of the decree I carved into parchment with my own hand.â
She held her breath, stunned by the raw, bleeding honesty of the Hand.
âI thought only of the Realm,â Baelor whispered, his voice cracking, revealing the absolute ruin of a fatherâs soul.
âThe Blackfyre wounds are deep. Bittersteel still plots in Essos with the Golden Company, and the Realm still bleeds from the treason of Haegon and Daemonâs surviving sons. I needed Highgardenâs wheat to feed a fractured land. I needed Tyroshâs coin and ships to close the Stepstones to the exiles. I signed her away to the Reach to secure the Tyrells, and I signed you to my son to secure the Narrow Seas. I thought... I thought she would understand duty. We are Dragons. We endure the heat so the sheep do not burn.â
He opened his eyes, and a single tear tracked through the dust on his lined cheek, catching the dim light filtering through the curtain seam.
âBut she chose the cold. I heard the splash, my lady. In the dead of night, from my tower, I heard the sea take her. And now, I must look at my sonâthe boy I raised to be the perfect knight, the boy who has never once broken my command, the jewel of our Houseâand know that my ink is the poison that rots his mind. You must be strong. Valarr is... he is not the Prince the Realm believes him to be right now. He is a boy carrying a sword too heavy for his arms.â
The wheelhouse ground to a halt inside the cavernous courtyard of the Red Keep. As the curtains were drawn aside, she looked up at the looming, blood-red stone walls of the fortress and felt a deep, systemic dread.
The machinery of statecraft had crushed one Princess, and now it was yawning open to swallow her whole.
Before she was introduced to her betrothed, she was left to wander the castle under the watchful eyes of the Kingâs Guard. The servants moved through the corridors like ghosts themselves, speaking only in hushed, terrified whispers.
She passed the tapestries of the old KingsâViserys, Aegon the Unworthy, Aegon the Conquerorâand realized that every stone in this fortress was soaked in the blood of family feuds.
She was taken to the maiden apartments to rest before the evening feast, but the rooms were not empty.
Though they had been scrubbed with vinegar and lemon water, the scent of the dead Princess lingered. It was in the heavy drapes, the oak wardrobes, and the small, carved wooden horses left on the windowsill.
âThey say she did not weep,â a maidservant muttered, her voice trembling as she adjusted the heavy copper pins in her hair. The girl did not realize she was speaking loud enough to be heard.
âThey say she walked out onto the ledge in nothing but her shifts, looking out toward the sea, and she did not make a sound when she went over. The guards found her hair caught in the lower masonry before the tide took her.â
âHush, girl,â an older woman snapped, slapping the maidâs hand away from the wardrobe.
âThe Archonâs daughter has no need for your kitchen gossip. The Princess is dead. The King wills that we look to the new morning.â
But there was no morning in the Red Keep.
The air felt thick, heavy with the moisture of the Blackwater Bay and the stagnant rot of unexpressed grief.
She excused herself from the maidservants, unable to bear the weight of their stolen glances. They looked at her as if she were a sacrificial lamb brought to replace a favored pet.
She walked down into the lower baileys, her silk slippers clicking against the damp flagstones.
The castle was a labyrinth of red stone, built by Maegor the Cruel to hide his secrets. Everywhere she turned, she saw guards in silver-and-white armor, their faces grim beneath their visors. They were not guarding against enemies from without; they were watching the family within.
She descended into the royal gardens, seeking an escape from the heavy, stagnant air of her assigned chambers. The gardens were famous in the songs of the singersâfilled with blue winter roses from the North and orange blossoms from Dorne.
But today, the flowers looked wilted, their petals bruised by the heavy, salty mists that rolled off the cliffs.
The air smelled of damp earth and late-blooming roses, but as she walked deeper into the labyrinth of hedges, the scent changed.
It became the sharp, icy smell of old winter.
She rounded a corner and stopped dead.
There, in a secluded alcove of the castle walls, stood a solitary weirwood tree. Its pale, bone-white bark gleamed in the grey light, and its blood-red leaves wept silently onto the damp grass below. Kneeling at the base of the white roots, his face buried in the wet moss, was Prince Valarr.
She stepped back, intending to slip away unnoticed, but the sheer, unhinged agony of his posture rooted her to the spot.
Valarr was talking to the roots. His voice was a ragged, breathless chant, entirely devoid of the royal restraint she had expected from the heir to the Throne.
âYou promised,â he choked out, his fingers clawing violently into the dirt, ripping up the grass until the soil lodged beneath his fingernails.
âWe stood here. Sixteen. I kissed your hands. I told you the Dragons do not ask permission from sheep. I told you I would make our grandfather see. I told you Highgarden would not have you.â
He pulled something from his tunicâa torn, jagged strip of fine white linen, stained with dark, dried sea salt and old grease from the rocks.
It was a remnant of the shift his sister had worn when she leaped. Valarr pressed the fabric to his mouth, inhaling frantically, his chest heaving with short, terrified gasps.
âI bowed my head,â he screamed suddenly, his voice fracturing into a wild, terrifying pitch that echoed off the high stone walls.
He struck his fist against the white trunk of the weirwood, again and again, until his knuckles split open, painting the pale bark with fresh, bright Targaryen blood.
âI sat at the council table! I looked at the floor because father asked me! I let them take you, and you left me here with them! You left me with the Crown! I hate it! I hate them! I hate myself!â
He collapsed against the roots, his silver-and-brown hair falling wildly over his face, clutching his bloodied hand to his chest.
He began to tear at his own tunic, his nails scratching red welts into his collarbone, utterly mad with a grief that had no outlet in a court that demanded perfection from its golden boy.
Her foot shifted on the gravel.
A single pebble clicked.
Valarrâs head snapped up with predatory speed. His violet eyesâthe exact, terrifyingly beautiful shade of the ld Valyrian bloodlinesâwere wild, bloodshot, and rimmed with an intense, manic fury. When he saw her standing there, wearing her foreign copper silks, his grief curdled instantly into venom.
He rose to his feet, swaying slightly, looking like a beast that had been cornered in its den. He tucked the salt-stained linen back into his tunic, his jaw clenching until a muscle ticked violently beneath his silver-pale skin.
âWho gave you leave to walk here?â he snarled, stepping out from the shadow of the weirwood.
âThis is not Tyrosh. This is not a market where your father can buy a view of my ruin.â
âI... I did not mean to intrude, my Prince,â she said, her voice trembling despite her best efforts to remain poised.
âI was merely seeking fresh air.â
âThere is no fresh air in this place,â Valarr mocked, stepping closer until she could smell the sour wine on his breath and the metallic tang of the blood dripping from his knuckles. He sneered, looking down at her foreign features with an expression of pure disgust.
âYou are very bright, are you not? All those copper threads. All that gold. You think you are going to climb into my bed and take her place? You think you can just paste your face over a corpse?â
âI am here because my people willed it, just as yours did,â she said, her voice hardening as her Tyroshi pride reasserted itself.
âI am not your enemy, Valarr.â
âYou are alive,â he whispered, his voice dropping into a dangerous, freezing register that made the hairs on her arms stand up.
âThat makes you my enemy. Every breath you take in this castle is a breath she should have had. Remember that, Tyroshi. When you look at me, know that you are looking at a ghostâs husband.â
He pressed past her, his heavy riding boots clicking sharply against the gravel, leaving her alone beneath the weeping red leaves of the weirwood, shivering in the wake of his absolute malice.
The Great Hall of Maegorâs Holdfast was a theater of the dead.
The highborn lords and ladies of the Seven Kingdoms sat in tight, uncomfortable rows beneath the massive dragon skulls that decorated the walls. Their conversations were muted, their laughter forced and hollow, echoing strangely against the high timbered ceiling.
At the center of the high table sat King Daeron the Good. The monarch looked entirely diminished, a frail, trembling old man who could not bring himself to look at his grandson.
Beside him, Baelor Breakspear stared blankly into his silver chalice, his hand trembling slightly whenever the wine was poured.
To the left sat the lords of the Reachâthe Tyrells. They wore their brilliant green and gold, their faces smug, completely untouched by the tragedy. They had inherited the dead Princessâs hand via a different political match, and they sat across from the bridegroom like vultures waiting for the rest of the meat to rot. Lord Tyrell himself was deep in conversation with his cousins, his loud, boisterous laughter cutting through the somber atmosphere like a knife.
She sat beside Valarr, feeling the unnatural, feverish heat radiating off his body. He had been poured into a magnificent doublet of black velvet, embroidered with three-headed dragons of rubies, but the finery only made him look more like a corpse in a display case. He had not touched his food.
The roasted capons, the venison pastries, and the sweet Dornish plums remained cold on his pewter plate. Instead, he had consumed three flagons of heavy Arbor Gold wine, his violet eyes staring fixedly at the heavy linen tablecloth.
She watched his hands. They were the hands of a knightâbroad, strong, calloused from the lance and the broadsword.
But now, they were twitching. Every time a servant approached to refill his cup, Valarrâs fingers would jerk, his knuckles whitening against the silver.
âThe King looks old,â a lord whispered from the lower tables, his voice carrying through a lull in the music.
âThey say he has not slept since the funeral. He sees his granddaughter in the shadows.â
âHe is not the only one,â another replied, dunking a piece of dark bread into his gravy.
âLook at the Prince. He looks ready to murder the musicians.â
The music was a mistake. The master of revels had chosen old, courtly love songs from the Reach, thinking to flatter the Tyrells, but every lyric about beautiful maidens and high towers felt like a cruel joke.
Valarrâs jaw was set so tightly that she could hear his teeth grinding together from where she sat.
âA toast!â called out Lord Tyrell, his voice booming offensively through the silent hall as he stood up, his belly pressing against the edge of the table.
âTo the future of the Realm! To the peace bought with Tyroshi coin and Dragon blood! To Prince Valarr and his new bride! May their bed be fertile and their House be blessed by the Mother!â
The hall rose, a sea of silver chalices lifting in the dim torchlight. Hundreds of eyes turned toward the high table, waiting for the Prince to accept his fate.
Valarr was forced to stand. She rose beside him, her hand reaching out to steady him as he swayed, his body heavy with the weight of the alcohol.
When his fingers wrapped around the stem of his silver chalice, his hand began to shake. It was not a subtle tremor; it was a violent, spastic shudder. The dark red wine sloshed over the rim, pouring over his split, bloodied knuckles, tracking down his wrist like fresh blood.
He tried to speak. He opened his mouth to give the traditional response of the bridegroom, to thank the lords for their presence and declare his devotion to the Crown.
But no sound came out.
His throat clicked, a dry, choked rattle. He looked across the hall, his eyes scanning the covered stone gallery where his sister used to sit during the tourneys, searching for the shared, boyish glance that had survived every trial of their youth.
He saw only empty stone and grey velvet.
With a low, ragged gasp, Valarr slammed the silver chalice down onto the table. The vessel flipped, the dark red wine erupting across the white linen like a fresh wound, soaking into the lace and dripping onto the stone floor.
He did not look at the King.
He did not look at his father.
He turned and rushed from the high table, his heavy velvet cloak trailing behind him, his boots echoing like an executionerâs stride through the stunned, dead silence of the Great Hall.
Prince Baelor closed his eyes, his head dropping into his hands with a heavy, broken sigh. The King stared at the spilled wine, his pale lips moving in a silent prayer.
She stood alone at the high table, hundreds of foreign eyes staring at her exposed, humiliated face, realizing that the wedding feast was merely the prologue to her execution night.
The bedding ritual had been a bloodless, mechanical nightmare.
The court had no stomach for the traditional, boisterous stripping of the bride; the shadow of the balcony hung too heavily over the castle. The women of the court had unhooked her copper gown in silence, their fingers cold against her skin, before leaving her alone in the freezing dark of her chambers.
The fire in the hearth had burned down to cold, grey ash.
She stood by the grand, silk-sheeted bed, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
She wore a fine, translucent Tyroshi silk nightgown, a garment meant to entice, to provoke desire in a husband. But in this tomb of a room, the fabric felt loud, offensive, and utterly foolish.
She looked at Valarr. He sat on the edge of the mattress, his head bowed, his hands resting on his knees. He had removed his heavy doublet, leaving only his thin linen shirt, but he had not moved for twenty minutes.
The silence was a physical weight. It pressed against her ears, filled with the distant, rhythmic crashing of the waves against the cliffs below the castle.
Crash. Hiss. Crash.
It was the sound that had welcomed her to Westeros, and it was the sound that would follow her to her grave.
She took a slow, deliberate breath, hardening her resolve. She was a wife now, by the laws of the Seven and the decrees of the Archon. She had a duty to secure her position, to bind this volatile Prince to her before his madness dragged them both down into the dirt. If she could give him an heir, if she could tether him to the bed, she could survive.
She had to make him see her, not the ghost.
She walked forward, her bare feet silent on the cold carpet. She knelt before him, placing her warm hands over his icy knees.
âValarr,â she murmured, her voice soft, adopting the gentle, coaxing tone her mother had taught her for dealing with difficult men.
âLook at me. We are wed. The court is gone. The lords are in their cups. Let me... let me comfort you.â
Valarr flinched at her touch as if she had burned him with a hot iron, but he did not pull away. Slowly, he raised his head. His violet eyes were completely unfocused, staring through her face, lost in some dark, internal horror that she could not follow.
But as she slid her hands up his thighs, her thumbs brushing against the linen of his breeches, something shifted in him. A sudden, desperate mania sparked in his gazeâa wild, predatory light that made her heart leap into her throat.
He did not see her. He was entirely blind with a frantic, consuming need to escape his own mind, to drown out the screaming silence of his guilt and the memory of his fatherâs ink.
With a low, guttural growl, Valarr lunged forward. His hands came up with a violent, bruising velocity, catching her jaw, forcing her mouth up to meet his.
The kiss was not an act of love; it was a territorial assault, a desperate attempt to find life in a room filled with death. His mouth crashed down onto hers with a desperate, crushing hunger that split her lower lip against her teeth, the metallic taste of blood spreading across her tongue. He tasted of sour wine, old wood, and unadulterated ruin.
Before she could even gasp for air, his large hands gripped the delicate Tyroshi silk of her nightgown. With a sharp, tearing sound that echoed like a whip-crack through the quiet room, he ripped the fabric down to her waist, exposing her bare breasts to the freezing air.
He pinned her backward onto the mattress, his heavy, muscular body slamming into hers with a reckless force that knocked the breath from her lungs.
âValarrââ she choked out, her hands coming up to press against his broad shoulders, trying to find some purchase, some sanity in the storm.
He did not hear her. He was hyperventilating, his chest heaving violently against her skin, his heart hammering like a trapped bird.
He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his teeth nipping fiercely at her collarbone, biting her until he left a sharp, dark mark that would turn purple by morning.
His rough palms scraped aggressively up her inner thighs, gathering the ruined remnants of her silk gown, forcing her legs apart with an unyielding, heavy knee.
He was frantic, clawing at his own breeches with his bloodied knuckles, freeing his hardness with a manic desperation.
He needed to possess something; he needed to feel the fire of life to burn away the cold ghost in his head. He wanted to lose himself in the friction, to forget the cliffs and the banners and the sound of his fatherâs voice.
âLook at me,â he commanded, his voice a ragged, gravelly whisper against her skin, his fingers locking through hers, pinning her wrists to the pillows with a crushing weight that made her bones ache.
âLook at me while I take youââ
He opened his eyes. He looked down at her face.
The world stopped.
In the dim, ghostly moonlight bleeding through the balcony doors, Valarrâs gaze was permanently focused.
He did not see the silver-pale hair of his ancient blood. He did not see the familiar, insular violet eyes that had shared his cradle, his secrets, and his childhood vows beneath the weirwood.
He saw her. He saw her colored, foreign hair splayed across the white linen. He saw her eyes wide with fear, pain, and absolute alienation.
He saw a stranger from across the sea.
The illusion shattered instantly. It was as if the fire in his blood had been struck by a tidal wave of ice.
Valarr froze. The frantic energy drained from his muscles in a single, agonizing second, leaving him heavy and limp above her. His grip on her wrists went completely slack, his fingers slipping away from hers. His chest stopped heaving, his breathing hitching in his throat as if he were choking on his own tongue.
Beneath her thighs, against the weeping entrance of her core, she felt the physical reality of his failure. The fierce, rigid hardness that had been pressing against her skin went entirely soft, shrinking away into nothingness, leaving only a cold, damp emptiness between them.
The impotence was absolute. It was a physical manifestation of his psychological ruin.
Valarr stared down at her, his face twisting into a mask of pure, unadulterated horror. He tried to force it. With a sharp, angry gasp, he grabbed his own flesh, his fingers digging into his skin, trying to wrench the life back into his body out of pure, desperate rage. He slammed his hips against hers once, twiceâa dry, friction-filled strike that did nothing but bruise them both, their pelvic bones clashing with a dull, hollow sound.
His body refused the treason. It refused to perform for the woman who had bought his sisterâs life with Tyroshi gold. His duty as a Princeâthe submission to his fatherâs will that had defined his entire existenceâhad hit a wall built of a dead girlâs bones.
A low, pathetic whimpering sound tore from his throatâa sound that did not belong to a Prince of the blood, but to a beaten dog.
He scrambled backward, pulling himself away from her as if her body were made of wildfire. He tumbled off the side of the bed, his knees hitting the cold stone floor with a dull, heavy thud that shook the washstand. He did not try to fix his clothes; he did not try to speak to her or offer some courtly apology.
He crawled into the dark corner of the room, curling his large, muscular frame into a tight, pathetic ball against the heavy velvet drapes. He buried his face in his knees, his broad shoulders shaking violently as he broke.
He did not weep like a Prince; he let out dry, hacking, ugly sobsâa horrific, guttural ruin of a sound that filled the silent spaces of the room, competing with the sound of the sea outside.
He was a man drowning in his own cowardice, completely paralyzed by the realization that he could never force his body to betray the dead.
She was left entirely naked on the grand, silk-sheeted bed, the freezing air of the room biting at her bare skin. She lay perfectly still, her split lip bleeding quietly onto the white pillow, staring up at the dark canopy above. She did not move to pull the blankets over her chest. She let the cold take her, let it numb the ache in her jaw and the sting on her collarbone.
The silence after his breakdown was deafening. In that raw, humiliating aftermath, the last remnants of her girlhood died. She realized, with a freezing clarity, that she had been sold into a House that was already dead. She was married to a ghostâs husband, and no amount of wealth or silk could ever protect her from the rot in his soul.
The hours passed like drops of oil from a broken lamp. The moon moved across the sky, casting long, skeletal shadows through the balcony doors, but the man in the corner did not move.
His sobbing eventually stopped, replaced by a low, rhythmic wheezing that told her he was still awake, staring into the dark.
She lay on the bed, her body stiffening as the sweat dried on her skin. She thought of her father, sitting in his palace in Tyrosh, counting the profits from the new trade treaties. He would be drinking pear brandy, toasted by his captains, believing he had made his daughter a Queen.
He did not know that she was lying in a cold room with a broken Dragon, her bridal sheets stained with blood from her own lip.
âAre you going to tell them?â
The voice came from the corner, so low and raspy that she thought she had imagined it. Valarr had not lifted his head from his knees.
She did not turn her head to look at him. She kept her eyes fixed on the ceiling.
âTell them what, my Prince? That you have no stomach for your fatherâs peace? Or that you cannot perform the duties of a husband?â
A sharp, indrawn breath came from the dark.
âTell my father. Tell the King. Let them know that their golden boy is broken. Let them find another cousinâor my brother to take the seat. Let them have the Crown.â
âAnd what happens to me if I tell them?â she asked, her voice flat, devoid of any anger or pity.
âThey will send me back to Tyrosh as damaged goods, or they will lock me in a motherhouse in the hills to keep your secret. My father will lose his treaties, and your father will find another bride from the Reach to paste over the cracks. No, Prince Valarr. I will not tell them.â
Valarr let out a low, bitter laugh that ended in a cough.
âYou are smarter than my sister was. She thought she could change their minds by refusing. She thought if she cried loud enough, father would relent.â
âYour sister was a fool,â she said, the words slipping out before she could stop them.
âShe thought the world cared about her heart. In Tyrosh, we know that everything has a price. Her life was the price for Highgardenâs alliance, and my freedom was the price for your ships. She threw her life into the sea for nothing.â
âDo not speak of her,â Valarr snarled, his voice flashing with a brief, pathetic remnant of his earlier rage. He shifted against the drapes, his leather boots scraping the floor.
âYou know nothing of her.â
âI know she left you here,â she said, finally turning her head to look at the dark shape in the corner.
âShe left you to carry the weight alone, and you are failing. Look at you. You are the heir to the Iron Throne, and you are hiding in the corner like a kitchen boy who broke a dish.â
Valarr did not answer. He pulled his knees tighter to his chest, his silver-and-brown hair obscuring his face entirely as the silence returned to the room.
The first cracks of a grey dawn bled through the arched stone window, painting the room in shades of slate and bone. The mist off the bay was thick enough to tasteâsalty, damp, and smelling of old iron.
Valarr still lay in the corner, his weeping spent, silent and motionless in his shame. He was awakeâshe could see the dull, dead glimmer of his violet eyes in the shadowsâbut he could not bring himself to look at her face or the ruined bed.
The future King was entirely at her mercy. She held the secret of his ultimate vulnerability, his treasonous grief, and his failure in the marriage bed.
Slowly, deliberately, she slid out of the bed. Her limbs were stiff from the cold, but she did not let herself shiver. She did not weep; she did not call for the servants to bring hot water or fresh linens.
She walked past the ruined, torn remnants of her bridal silk lying on the floor like garbage, her bare feet stepping over the purple fabric without a second glance.
She walked to her iron-bound travel trunks, reaching inside past the delicate laces and the summer silks to pull out a new gownâa heavy, stiff robe of dark Tyroshi copper, heavily embroidered with thick gold thread that felt as rigid as a suit of plate armor.
She dressed herself in the cold dawn light, pulling the stays tight with her own fingers until her ribs ached, snapping the golden clasps over her wrists until she was completely encased in her familyâs wealth.
She painted her lips with a dark, stained berry paste to hide the split where his teeth had cut her, and she brushed her hair until it fell in smooth, disciplined waves down her back.
She walked to the massive, arched stone window of her chamber, stepping out onto the cold, stone balcony.
The wind off the Blackwater Bay was freezing, whipping through her hair and tugging at her copper skirts, but she did not feel the chill. She walked to the edge, her leather slippers clicking firmly on the damp stone.
She looked down. Far below, the black sea crashed violently against the jagged rocks, the white foam churning in the dark like a quiet, forgotten promise.
She stood exactly where the Princess had stood before she took her final flight.
She looked down at the rocks, understanding the dead girl now. She understood the desire to tear the velvet away, to escape the suffocating machinery of this wretched Realm that used its children as currency.
The Princess had chosen freedom in the deep, dark down, leaving her blood on the stones as her final protest.
She gripped the stone railing, her jaw tightening until the bone ached beneath her skin. She looked out at the vast, grey city waking up beneath the smoke of the morning firesâthe smallfolk beginning their daily crawl through the mud, the guards changing watches on the walls, the bells of the Sept preparing to ring for the morning prayers.
Pity would get her killed in Westeros. Tears would ensure her destruction in a court of Dragons and vultures.
The Princess had chosen to fly, but sheâshe would choose to rule.
She turned her back on the sea, her heart hardened into absolute ice. She walked back into the room, stepping past the broken Prince without a single glance, her copper skirts rustling loudly in the quiet dawn.
She was ready to play the cold, cynical game required to survive the rotting legacy of the Dragonsâand she would start by teaching her husband how to lie.
Synopsis: An amber dawn, a soldierâs armor cast, where rowdy dreamers interrupt the night; a midnight kiss, a secret taking hold, to fill the quiet womb with summerâs light. Five distinct streams from one high mountain crest, the bitter court and bloody wars resigned; the rugged Anvil finds his perfect rest, within the madness of a house aligned.
Warnings: SMUT 18+, Unprotected Vaginal Sex, Mild Breeding Kink, (Early) Pregnancy Sex, mentioned Pregnancy & Childbirth, Mild War References, the Traits of the Reader are not described
Word Count: 4k
The dawn over the Marcher hills did not burst with the violent crimson of the Capital; it crept into the valley like spun amber, warming the pale limestone walls of Summerhall until the fortress seemed to breathe with the morning light.
Through the high, uncurtained arches of the eastern pavilion, the breeze smelled of dew-soaked clover, wild chicory, and the cool, clean stone of the highlands.
Inside the master bedchamber, the world was reduced to the space between two heartbeats.
The massive oak bedstead, draped in heavy fabrics of plum and charcoal, remained a territory entirely untouched by the burdens of the Realm.
Here, the armor of the Prince lay scattered in the shadowsâa dented gorget resting near a velvet chair, a split leather belt unbuckled on the floorâleaving only the raw, heavy reality of the man beneath.
Maekar lay shifted on his side, his large frame casting a long shadow across the linen sheets. His silver hair was a stark tangle against the white pillows. Even in the profound quiet of the morning, his body retained the hard, defensive geometry of a soldier; his wide shoulders were subtly squared, his jaw tensed against the lingering ghosts of old campaigns.
Yet, his massive, calloused hand was anchored possessively over her hip, his thumb tracing a slow, repetitive circle against her skin with a familiar, heavy warmth.
âYou are awake,â she whispered, her voice a quiet Dornish rustle in the still room.
Maekarâs dark violet eyes blinked open, midnight-dark and heavy with sleep, but the moment they locked onto her features, the turbulent sea inside them softened.
He did not speakâhe had never been a man for morning pleasantriesâbut his grip tightened on her waist, hoisting her body closer until the bare expanse of her chest pressed flat against the dense, hair-dusted muscle of his torso.
âThe sun is too early,â he grumbled hoarsely, his thick voice vibrating directly against her collarbone as he buried his face into the sensitive crook of her neck.
His silver beard, thick and rugged, scraped delightfully along her jawline, causing a soft, breathless laugh to escape her lips.
âThe sun answers to no Prince, Maekar,â she murmured, her fingers lacing into his hair, pulling him down to meet her mouth.
The kiss was slow, deep, and utterly thorough, tasting of the lingering warmth of the night and the clean scent of skin.
Maekarâs tongue parted her lips with an easy, practiced dominance, exploring the cavern of her mouth with a heavy reverence that held no courtly restraint.
He cupped her cheek with his palmâthe rough, scarred skin of his knuckles a stark contrast to her soft fleshâbefore his hand slid downward, mapping the slope of her shoulder, the curve of her waist, and the broad swell of her hips.
The familiarity of his touch was an intoxicating drug, a routine of survival that had turned into absolute devotion over their years away from the court.
âLet me,â he growled hoarsely against her lips, his thick fingers trembling with an urgency he rarely showed outside their walls. He unlaced the heavy cords of his breeches, freeing his rigid, pulsing length into the warm air of the room.
Before he could shift his weight to loom over her, she placed her palms flat against his tensed shoulders, anchoring him to the mattress. With a fluid, deliberate grace, she swung her leg over his broad hips, straddling his waist. The sudden, direct heat of her bare thighs wrapping around his flanks made Maekar let out a low, guttural grunt, his tensed abdominal muscles rippling beneath her knees.
He did not wait to guide her. His massive hands slid up to grip her waist, his thumbs digging firmly into her skin as he lifted her slightly, his dark violet eyes burning up into hers from the pillows.
Slowly, deliberately, she lowered herself onto him, burying his rigid length inside her in one deep, unyielding sink.
Her eyes snapped shut, a sharp cry of pure pleasure caught in her throat as she accommodated the sudden, overwhelming fullness of him. She stretched tightly around his length, her internal walls clamping in a desperate rhythm that made Maekar freeze, his jaw clenching so hard the muscles jumped beneath his scarred cheeks.
A low, animalistic groan vibrated deep in his chest, his hands locking onto her hips to hold her perfectly still, waiting for the initial, suffocating wave of heat to pass.
âYou wrap around me like a vice,â he muttered thickly, his breath hot and frantic as his hands slid up her spine, his palms tracing every vertebra with a rough, desperate heat.
âMove with me, my Prince,â she breathed, her hands sliding down to tangle in his silver hair, her hips beginning a slow, rolling grind that drove him deeper into her core.
Taking control of the pace, she set a relentless, agonizingly sweet rhythm, rising and falling against him while her thighs clamped tightly around his waist to pull his solid weight closer.
The mattress creaked beneath them, the space filling with the frantic cadence of their breathing and the wet sound of their bodies meeting.
Maekarâs tensed shoulders broke, his hands sliding down to cup her bottom, squeezing and tilting her hips to meet his upward thrusts as he began to drive back from below, his breath turning into jagged, desperate gasps.
The tension built to a fever pitch, a blinding, desperate need pushing them both toward the precipice as she arched her back, completely consumed by the white-hot friction coiling violently in her lower belly.
Then, a sharp, scraping sound echoed from the outer corridor.
The heavy oak door of their bedchamber did not slam, but it unlatched with a slow, hesitant creak that cut through the quiet room like an iron blade.
Maekar froze instantly. His muscles went rigid as stone, his chest heaving violently against her own as he held himself deep inside her core, his head snapping toward the doorway with the sharp, defensive instinct of the Vanguard.
She scrambled off of him at the sudden interruption, pulling the blankets up. Any servant would have knocked or announced themself at this early hour of the day.
This could not be a servant.
Through the widening gap of the door, a tiny, pale silhouette appeared against the golden light of the hallwayâconfirming her suspicion.
Little Prince Daeron, now nearly nine years of age, stood in his linen nightshirt, his sandy brown curls a wild tangle around his forehead. He was clutching a small, frayed woolen blanket to his chest, his large, timorous violet eyes ringed with dark shadows, his small face pinched with absolute, fragile misery.
âMother?â the boy whispered, his voice trembling so lightly it barely carried across the rug.
âThe dragons under the floorboards... they were roaring again.â
A heavy, ragged sigh tore from Maekarâs chest, the fierce, passionate heat in his dark eyes instantly fracturing into a mixture of profound frustration and paternal weariness. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, his forehead dropping against her shoulder as he let out a low, gravelly groan that vibrated directly against her skin.
âThe boy is eight,â Maekar muttered hoarsely into her hair, his voice thick with unfulfilled tension.
âEight years old, and he still fights the shadows in his sleep.â
âHush,â she murmured, her fingers gently stroking the silver hair at the nape of his neck, comforting the man before she attended to the child.
âHe is a dreamer, Maekar. You cannot fight a nightmare with a broadsword.â
With a careful, reluctant slowness, Maekar disengaged from her body, the loss of his warmth leaving her skin shivering in the morning breeze. He shifted back onto his side of the bed, pulling the heavy velvet quilt up to his chest to cover his bare form, though his jaw remained set in a hard, stubborn line.
She slid out from beneath the blankets, her bare feet silent against the cool flagstones as she pulled a loose, plum-colored velvet robe over her shoulders, tying the silk cord around her waist in one fluid motion. She stepped into the space between the bed and the doorway, falling to her knees on the rug to meet her firstborn at eye level.
âCome here, my sweet,â she said softly, opening her arms wide.
Daeron did not hesitate. He bounded forward, his small bare feet padding softly across the stone before he buried his face into the rich fabric of her shoulder, his tiny fists bunching her robe as his frantic breathing began to slow under her touch.
âThey were burning the hills, Mother,â Daeron whimpered, his small body shivering against her chest.
âThe black ones. They had teeth like swords.â
âThe hills are safe, little bird,â she whispered, smoothing her hand over his fine curls, casting a quiet, warning look back toward the bed where Maekar sat propped against the pillows.
The Prince looked formidable even in the dark, his arms crossed over his massive chest, his brow furrowed deeply. Yet, as he watched the earnest way she held the trembling boy, the hard edge of his frown began to thaw, replaced by that hidden, protective anxiety that only defined him as a father.
Before Daeron could be fully soothed, a sudden, heavy thud rattled the balcony doors.
âOut of the way, craven!â a sharp, high-pitched voice barked from the corridor.
Aerion, barely seven years of age, marched into the room like a conqueror reclaiming a lost province.
He wore no nightshirt; he had managed to don a small, mismatched velvet doublet over his undergarments, and in his right fist, he gripped the wooden dragon Maekar had carved for him with a white-knuckled intensity. His silver-white hair stood up in wild, chaotic spikes around his bright, unblinking violet eyes.
âThe dragons were not under the floor, Daeron!â Aerion declared loudly, stamping his small leather boot against the stone rug.
âThey were in the courtyard! I went to find them, but the guards barred the gate!â
âFuckâs sakeâ Aerion,â Maekarâs gravelly voice cut through the room like a heavy shield. The Prince sat up further, his large hand rubbing his temples as he looked down at his second son.
âThe hour is fresh. Why are you out of your chambers with a wooden toy?â
Sometimes he wondered if he had fathered too many children. They were loudâunbearably loudâthroughout every stage of life. He had hoped that it would become quieter once they grew.
But none of that.
His children were a loud force of rascals. Especially here within their sanctuary, far from Kingâs Landing and the suffocating expectations of children. Summerhall was never quiet, not during the day, not during the night. One of his four godsdamned children was always screaming.
But his children were happy here, happier than Maekar himself ever had been during his own childhood.
How could he be mad at them?
How could he stop breeding his wife if he was unable to keep his damned hands off her?
There was no other way. Makear had to endure his own doing. He was the only one to blame and if he was being honest, there was nowhere else he would rather be but his beloved wife and his rowdy children.
âTo fight, Father!â Aerion marched directly to the edge of the mattress, thrusting the wooden dragon forward until it brushed against Maekarâs knee. His tiny jaw clenched in a flawless, stubborn mimicry of the Princeâs own expression.
âDaeron always weeps when the wind blows. I do not weep. I am the Dragon. Tell him, Father! Tell him the craven gets no egg!â
âEnough,â she said firmly, rising from the floor with Daeron still clutching her hand. She stepped into the space between the two brothers, her grounding presence a shield against Aerionâs volatile spark.
âThere will be no yelling in this chamber, Aerion. And your brother is no craven; he has the sight of the mountains in him.â
She led both boys toward the massive bed, lifting Daeron effortlessly onto the wide mattress where he immediately scrambled to the center, burying himself under the heavy down quilt near his fatherâs side.
Aerion, refusing to be left behind, scrambled up the heavy posters like a wild cat, settling himself at the foot of the bed, his bright eyes scanning the room as if looking for an invisible enemy to vanquish.
Maekar looked at the two boys occupying his private sanctuary. Daeron was curled into a small ball, his pale forehead finally smoothing out as he clutched Maekarâs large pillow, while Aerion was fiercely chewing on the wooden wing of his toy, his face twisted in a look of territorial anger.
âYou see what you have built?â she murmured with a soft, tired smile, climbing back into the bed beside her husband. She leaned her head against his wide shoulder, her hand sliding down to lace her fingers through his rough palm.
âA castle of soldiers and dreamers.â
Maekar let out a low breath that was almost a laughâa sound so rare and precious it made her heart leap. His large fingers uncurled, wrapping tightly around hers as he looked down at his family.
âThey are a madness,â he muttered softly, his thumb tracing the back of her hand.
âBut they are mine.â
The passing moons did not cool the raw, physical language that existed between them; if anything, the isolation of Summerhall only intensified it. By the onset of the yearâs second season, a new secret had taken root within the fortress wallsâone that was still hidden from the Maesters and the court, known only to the two of them in the deep of the night.
It was during the early, tender weeks of her fifth pregnancy, when her body had only just begun to change, that Maekarâs possessiveness became an almost suffocating force.
On a midnight when the Marcher winds were howling against the limestone turrets, Maekar dragged her into the shadows of his private solar. He had spent the afternoon arguing with Reach lords over boundary markers, his temper a jagged, volatile flint.
He had not even allowed her to make it back to the bedchamber before his heavy hands were unpinning the silver brooches at her shoulders, his movements thick with a desperate, heavy hunger that always overtook him when the burdens of the Realm grew too loud.
âMaekar,â she gasped softly as he backed her up against the massive walnut desk, the cool wood pressing through the thin linen of her shift.
He did not answer with words. His dark violet eyes were midnight-black, burning with a fierce, territorial heat as he dropped to his knees before her. His massive hands slid up her thighs, bunching the fabric of her skirts until they rested around her waist.
Her body was still outwardly unchangedâher belly flat, her waist narrowâbut Maekar handled her as if she were made of the rarest glass. His calloused palms spread flat across her lower stomach, his thumbs tracing the invisible, sacred arc where his fifth child was only just beginning to form. The knowledge that his seed had taken hold once more inside her was a drug to him; it turned his rugged features into a mask of pure, adoring worship.
Slowly, deliberately, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to her navel, his hot breath soaking through her remaining shift. He kissed her lower belly over and over again, his thick silver beard scraping delightfully against her skin, making her arch her back with a sharp, breathless sigh.
âYou are a well that never runs dry,â Maekar growled hoarsely, his voice vibrating directly against her skin as he rose to his feet, his massive frame towering over her in the amber firelight.
He unlaced his heavy leather breeches with trembling fingers, freeing his rigid, pulsing length. He did not wait. Gripping her by the hips, his large thumbs digging firmly into her flesh, he lifted her slightly onto the edge of the high desk.
With one heavy, unyielding thrust, he buried himself inside her core.
Her eyes snapped shut, a sharp, choked cry escaping her lips as her internal walls instantly clamped around his massive length. The sudden, overwhelming fullness of him made her fingers claw at his broad shoulders, her nails digging into the dense muscle of his back.
Because of the early pregnancy, her body was hyper-sensitive, pulsing with a tight, desperate friction that made Maekar freeze, his head dropping into the crook of her neck as a low, animalistic groan tore from his chest.
âMove, my Prince,â she breathed, her legs wrapping tightly around his broad flanks, anchoring him closer as her hips began a slow, rolling grind against him.
Maekar took control of the pace with a heavy, relentless dominance. He set a slow, deep rhythm that made the heavy walnut desk creak beneath them, his upward thrusts driving him to the very root of her body. His hands slid up her ribcage, his calloused palms cupping her breasts, testing their new, heavy fullness with a rough reverence that left her completely breathless.
The space filled with the frantic cadence of their breathing and the wet sound of their bodies meeting. The contrast was starkâhis scarred, battle-hardened geometry crushing her soft, fragrant flesh into the dark wood.
The tension built with an agonizing, sweet speed. She arched her back, completely consumed by the white-hot friction coiling violently in her lower belly, her core contracting around him in a desperate, frantic rhythm that pushed them both toward the precipice.
The year turned with a sudden, heavy heat that seemed to bake the rolling meadows of Summerhall into fields of pale gold. The pale stone castle had become a hive of chaotic, vibrant life, fully established away from the suffocating politics of the Capital.
The household was no longer the quiet refuge of their first year. It was a domain of roaring children, clattering wooden swords, and the high, sweet laughter of little Daella, who was now a doted-upon infant of one. She spent her days trailing after her older brothers like a small, colorful bird, her tiny velvet slippers patting loudly across the sunny galleries.
But the true focus of the summer lay within the heavy, shadow-drenched privacy of the nursery.
The fourth son, Aegon, had been born on a morning when the Marcher winds were perfectly still, his first cry a sharp, demanding note that cleared his tiny lungs before he settled into a quiet, alert focus.
Now, three moons later, the youngest prince sat securely in his motherâs arms within the sunny alcove of the solar. Aegonâwhom the household had begun to call 'Egg' due to his perfectly round headâwas a robust, heavy infant.
âSoftly, Aerion,â she warned, her hand rising to gently block a blunt wooden practice sword from swinging too close to the nursing chair.
Aerion, now seven and wearing a rich doublet of black and scarlet velvet, let out a fierce, territorial grunt. He was currently stalking around the perimeter of the rug, his violet eyes bright with a restless energy that the summer heat had only amplified.
âHe does not even move, Mother!â Aerion complained, thrusting his wooden blade into the air.
âI will teach him to strike! He must hold a shield!â
âHe is three moons old, Aerion,â she replied with a quiet, patient laugh, shifting Egg against her breast. The infant did not flinch at his brotherâs shouting; he merely scrunched his little nose, his tiny fists bunching the linen of her kirtle.
âHe has plenty of time to learn the weight of iron. For now, he prefers the quiet.â
Beside the large arched window, little Aemon, now nearly three years of age, sat quietly in a square of golden sunlight. He was a beautiful, calm child, his dark indigo eyes fixed on a small wooden bowl filled with wild daisies he had plucked from the courtyard.
âLook, Mother,â Aemon babbled softly, holding up a single yellow flower with a rare, contented smile.
âThe sun-pieces.â
âThey are beautiful, Aemon,â she murmured, her heart swelling with a profound warmth as she watched her third son return to his quiet task.
âThe smallfolk in the lower village are complaining about the timber rights,â Maekar announced in a loud, gravelly command as he strode into the room, his heavy boots thudding against the flagstones.
âThe Reach lords are pushing their boundary markers past the stream again. They think because we are far from Kingâs Landing, we will not notice the theft of three leagues of oak.â
âLet the timber wait for an hour, Maekar,â she said softly, her eyes locking onto his with an unyielding, warm amusement.
âThe Lord of Summerhall has more pressing duties in this room. I can count five.â
Maekar stopped abruptly in the center of the rug. His turbulent violet eyes scanned the domestic chaos before himâAerion currently hacking at the leg of a walnut table, Aemon quietly stacking daisy petals, and little Daeron sitting hesitantly in the corner, reading of the old Dragonlords of Valyria.
From behind Maekarâs massive velvet cloak, a tiny hand reached out to tug at his scabbard.
Little Daella looked up at her father with a pair of bright, fearless violet eyes. She did not see the grim Prince who had broken the rebel line at the Redgrass Field; she saw only the giant who carried her on his shoulders through the rose gardens.
âUp, Papa,â the yearling princess demanded, her little arms reaching toward the sky.
âUp!â
The transformation was instantaneous.
The hard, defensive armor of the Prince completely melted away. The permanent frown etched into Maekarâs face vanished, his lips parting into a soft, genuinely breathless smile that was filled with a warmth he reserved for his family alone. He dropped his heavy leather gloves onto a table and fell to one knee on the rug, his massive, scarred arms reaching out to lift the toddler effortlessly into the air.
Daella shrieked with pure, unadulterated joy as Maekar settled her securely against his broad shoulder, his thick silver beard brushing against her cheek until she giggled frantically, her tiny hands tangling in his hair.
He walked toward the nursing chair and sat down heavily on the low stool beside her, his massive frame casting a protective shadow over her and the newborn infant.
âHe has been waiting for you,â she whispered, shifting her position so that Maekar could see the babyâs face.
Egg chose that exact moment to let out a soft, tiny sneeze, his little legs kicking beneath his swaddling blankets. His large eyes snapped upward, locking onto the scarred, weathered face of his father.
The warrior who handled heavy broadswords looked entirely terrified as he reached down with a single, massive finger, his rough, calloused pad gently brushing the babyâs impossibly soft cheek. Slowly, deliberately, the infantâs tiny hand flailed upward, his small fingers wrapping around Maekarâs rough thumb with a surprisingly firm, iron-like grip.
The Princeâs breath caught in his throat. He looked down at his fourth sonâhis fifth child overallâwith an expression of such pure, adoring worship that his entire silhouette seemed to soften in the amber light of the solar.
âHe has a strong grip,â Maekar muttered, his voice cracking slightly with an emotion so raw it made her own throat tighten.
âA proper Targaryen hand.â
âHe will need it to survive his brothers,â she laughed softly.
âLook at them, Maekar. They are four streams from the same mountain, but they are all flowing to the same sea.â
Maekar looked up from the infant, his dark violet eyes scanning the room once moreâwandering over his lively offspring.
The foul air of Kingâs Landing, the bitter neglect of the court, and the bloody memories of the war felt a thousand leagues awayâburied forever beneath the pale, warm stone of their summer palace.
Maekar leaned sideways, his rough lips pressing a soft, lingering kiss against the crown of her head, his massive arm wrapping around her waist to hold her close against his chest.
She smiled, closing her eyes as the quiet dark of the summer afternoon settled around them, fully content in the warmth of the Anvilâs hearth.
Genre: Dark Smut, Political Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Angst
Synopsis: Silks of mourning, heart of stone, she binds the Brightflame to her throne. A shared murder, a toxic kiss, they spin a web of madness and bliss. But dragons unhinge when the strings are pulled, by blood and by exile, the fire is schooled. He sails to the sea, consumed by her name, while the widow inherits the ash of his flame.
Your lately valarr fic is sooo good! Do you think you Will write the reaction of baelor/valarr finding out she killed herself?
Aah, thank youuđ„čđ«¶
I originally planned to keep this an impulsive oneshot but after proofreading it, I had the idea of a sequel part with a POV switch to Kiera for the reader with a little time skip in between
Synopsis: A golden Prince, a Kingdomâs pride, bows his head to the turning tide. He takes her body, claims her breath, but trades her future for her death. She leaves his bed, she tears her gown, to flee the heavy world of Kings. She leaves him to his golden Crown, and steps into the air on wings.
Warnings: SMUT 18+, Targcest, implied Suicide, Major Character Death, Unprotected Vaginal Sex, Emotional Distress, Forced Political Marriage, No Happy Ending, Biting/Marking
Word Count: 4.5k
A/N: felt like being tragic (yes, it hurt) pssh, here is the Sequel
The heavy oak door of the maidenâs chambers clicked shut, the sound echoing through the cavernous room like the sudden, clean strike of a headsmanâs axe.
For weeks, the Red Keep had been a gilded cage of suffocating whispers and hushed conferences behind closed doors.
Down below, in the cavernous Great Hall of Maegorâs Holdfast, the muffled, booming sounds of a royal feast vibrated through the very stones of the floor. The distant, mocking thrum of lutes, the clink of silver chalices, and the synchronized roars of laughing highborn lords leaked through the masonry like a slow-bleeding poison.
They were celebrating.
They were drinking to the future of the Seven Kingdoms, toast after toast raised to a peace bought with the currency of her broken life.
King Daeron the Good, the Grandfather who sat so mildly upon the Iron Throne, had spoken.
The Small Council, led by the iron-willed hand of Baelor Breakspear, had carved the royal decree into thick, unyielding parchment, sealing it with the dark red wax of the three-headed dragon.
The Great Rebellion was only a decade past, and the wounds of the Blackfyre treason still bled quietly across the Realm.
The Crown needed alliances; it needed to bind the fractured pieces of Westeros back to the throne.
And so, Prince Valarr Targaryenâthe golden-boy heir, the jewel of the Realm, the grandson Daeron loved above all othersâwas to marry Kiera of Tyrosh, securing the wealthiest of the Free Cities and closing the Stepstones to the remnants of the Bittersteelâs exiled rebels.
And sheâValarrâs sister, his shadow, the blood of his ancient bloodâwas to be shipped away to the Reach within the fortnight. She was to be wed to a powerful Tyrell lord she had never laid eyes upon, simply to bind the fertile fields of Highgarden to the Dragonâs coin.
She had spent the last two hours pacing the perimeter of her chambers, her slippers tracking silent, frantic circles into the heavy Myrish carpets.
In the corner, cast in the long, skeletal shadows of the guttering candles, stood her iron-bound travel trunks. They sat open, half-filled with the fine silks and heavy wools deemed appropriate for a lady of the Reach. Every folded garment felt like a shroud.
The political machinery of Westeros had spoken, grinding her girlhood dreams into dust.
But what broke her completely, rotting the very core of her soul until she felt like a hollow shell walking the high galleries of Maegorâs Holdfast, was that Valarr had not spoken against it.
A shadow detached itself from the heavy, blood-red velvet drapes near the balcony.
Valarr stepped into the dim, amber glow of the dying hearth fires.
He looked entirely unraveled, a ghost of the pristine Prince who had sat beside the King at the high table only hours ago.
He had stripped off his fine, gold-embroidered doublet, leaving it discarded somewhere in the dark corridors, and wore only a loose linen shirt that lay completely open at his throat.
The invisible, crushing weight of the Crown he was born to inherit seemed to bow his broad shoulders, casting his features into sharp, melancholic relief.
He smelled faintly of the sweet, heavy perfumes of the foreign emissaries and the sharp, burning tang of Arbor Gold wine.
âValarr,â she breathed. Her voice was a fragile, broken thing, catching instantly on the cold air of the room.
He did not speak. He crossed the stone floor with an urgency that completely betrayed his usual courtly grace, his heavy riding boots clicking sharply against the stone. There was no protocol in his stride, no royal restraint.
When he reached her, his hands came up with a frantic, desperate velocity to frame her face. His grip was almost bruising, his fingers trembling violently against her jawline, his thumbs catching the hot tears she had not realized were falling until they scalded his skin. His violet eyesâthe exact, terrifyingly beautiful, insular shade of her ownâwere wild, dark, and fractured with a helpless, suffocating rage.
She looked up at him, the fresh warmth of his hands doing absolutely nothing to soothe the agonizing chill spreading outward from her chest.
Her breath came in short, ragged gasps, her chest heaving as she stared into the depths of his tortured gaze.
The betrayal was a physical weight pressing down on her windpipe.
âDid you even look at him?â she whispered, her voice cracking beneath the immense weight of her grief.
âWhen your father read the decree to the council... when he signed away my life to the Reach... did you even look him in the eye? Or did you just look down at the floor?â
Valarrâs jaw clenched so hard a muscle ticked violently beneath his silver-pale skin.
âI tried,â he rasped, his voice choked with a pathetic, desperate guilt.
âI told them our bloodââ
âYou told them nothing!â she cried out, the sound muffled against the heavy drapes of the room. Her violet eyes welled completely, spilling over until hot, unchecked tears tracked down his wrists, soaking into the cuffs of his linen shirt. She clutched at his forearms, her nails digging through the fabric into his muscle.
âMy heart hurts so deeply, Valarr... it hurts so deeply that I cannot breathe. It feels as though they have reached into my chest and torn the fire out of me, and you sat there and watched them do it.â
Valarrâs expression shattered entirely. A look of unadulterated anguish crossed his handsome features, stripping away the Prince and leaving only a broken boy.
He pulled her forward, slamming her body against his chest, wrapping his heavy arms around her as if he could physically shield her from the decrees of the Realm. He buried his face in her hair, his breath hitching.
âLet them have the Realm,â Valarr rasped against her temple, his forehead dropping heavily against hers, his hot breath mingling with her tears.
âLet them have the succession, the alliances, the feasts. Let father have his peace and grandfather his treaties. Tonight, you are my only queen. You are the only blood that matters in this wretched world.â
The words, meant to be a romantic balm to her bleeding heart, tasted like cold, bitter ash on her tongue.
Tonight.
Only tonight.
He would give her a single night of stolen shadows, a few hours of treasonous darkness, but he would give their father, their grandfather, and the faceless millions of the Realm the entire remainder of his living days.
He had not fought for her.
When the Small Council met behind closed doors, he had not drawn himself up to his full height, he had not invoked the ancient rights of the Dragon lords, and he had not stood before Baelor Breakspear and King Daeron to refuse the Tyroshi bride. He had bowed his brown head, accepted his duty like a well-trained hound, and come to her chambers to beg for a temporary escape from his own cowardice.
But as he looked down at her now, the sheer, desperate hunger in his eyes was a drug, a sweet, dark poison she had been addicted to for years.
And she was too weak, too utterly broken, to push him away. Not yet.
Before the heavy shadows of statecraft had crept into their bedchambers, there had been the sunlit, dusty courtyards of their childhood.
They had been inseparable since the cradle, two halves of a single, ancient soul born into the high, cold halls of the Red Keep.
She closed her eyes and let herself drift backward, escaping the suffocating reality of the present.
She remembered the sweltering summer afternoons in the training yards, when the air smelled of crushed grass, sweat, and iron. Valarr would practice for hours with his heavy wooden sword under their fatherâs watchful eye. Whenever Valarr struck a decisive blow, splitting his opponentâs shield or sending a master-at-arms stumbling into the dirt, he would not look to his lord father for approval. He would not care if the Hand of the King smiled.
Instead, his violet eyes would immediately scan the covered stone gallery, cutting through the crowd of court ladies until they found her. They would flash with a bright, boyish pride, a secret signal that said this is for you.
And when the sun went down, and the bruises of training grew too painful to bear in silence, it was always her fingers that rubbed the soothing mint and oil salves into his aching shoulders. They would hide away in the cool, drafty recesses of the royal library, tucked behind massive stacks of crumbling histories, while the Grand Maesters dozed over their ancient scrolls.
In those quiet hours, he was not the future King; he was just her brother, her protector, his head resting heavily in her lap as she ran her fingers through his curls.
Their love had blossomed naturally, like a wildfire creeping through dry brush, unnoticed by a court too blind to see until it was too bright to ignore.
It began with small, lingering touches at the high tableâa hand brushing against hers under the cover of a heavy linen tablecloth while the King discussed taxation, a shared glance across a crowded Great Hall that communicated entire lifetimes in the span of a single heartbeat.
She remembered, with a precision that cut like a knife, the night of his sixteenth nameday.
He had snuck out of his own grand feast, leaving the highborn lords and ladies wondering where the guest of honor had vanished. He had found her in the royal gardens, sitting beneath the pale, weeping leaves of the solitary weirwood tree that grew within the castle walls. He had not spoken a word then, either. He had simply knelt before her in the damp grass, the silver moonlight painting his hair like spun glass. He had taken both of her small hands in his and pressed a reverent, burning kiss to her open palms.
âI will marry you,â he had whispered into the dark of the gardens, his voice fierce with youth and untamed certainty.
âI do not care what the Maesters say of the old traditions or the sins of our ancestors. Our blood belongs together. We are the Dragons, and Dragons do not ask permission from sheep. I will make our grandfather see. I will make them all see.â
For three long, beautiful years, that promise had been her anchor against the shifting tides of the court.
They had loved each other in secret, their bodies discovering one another in the dark of her chambers, creating a private, impenetrable Kingdom where he was her King and she was his Queen.
They had built an entire life on whispers and stolen kisses, foolishly believing that because they were Targaryensâbecause they were the blood of Old Valyriaâthe world would eventually bend to their iron will.
But the world did not bend. It broke them instead.
The devolution of their love had been a slow, agonizing strangulation, a gradual darkening of the sun.
It began a year ago, when Baelor took a larger, more aggressive hand in Valarrâs training for the throne. Suddenly, Valarr was missing from their usual hiding spots. His duties grew into a monstrous entity that devoured his time. His letters grew shorter, more hurried, and his eyes grew heavier with the crushing fatigue of statecraft and coin-counting.
When the first whispers of the Tyroshi alliance filled the drafts of the corridors, she had run to him, her heart in her throat, expecting the fiery, untamed Prince who had knelt beneath the weirwood tree.
Instead, she had found a young man standing alone on the battlements, staring out at the grey, churning waters of the Blackwater Rush.
His face had already begun to harden into the emotionless, unreadable mask of a future ruler.
âIt is for the Realm,â he had told her, his voice flat, devoid of the wild fire that used to consume him whenever he spoke her name. He had not looked at her.
âWe must secure the stepstones. The trade routes are suffering, and the Blackfyre loyalists are gathering in Essos. Grandfather says... father says it is our duty. We cannot be selfish.â
In that single, devastating moment, she had watched the man she loved devolve from a magnificent Dragon into a common, calculating politician.
He had traded his fire for a Crown of gold, and he had traded her for a peaceful succession.
Now, in the dim, suffocating light of her bedchambers, the bitter memory of that betrayal fueled a sudden, frantic desperation in her blood.
If this was to be her execution nightâif the coming dawn meant her death as a Targaryen and her birth as a political prisoner of the Reachâshe would ensure the executioner felt the full, agonizing weight of what he was destroying.
The restraint that had kept them balanced on the edge of propriety for years snapped entirely.
Valarrâs mouth crashed down onto hers with a desperate, crushing hunger that bruised her lips.
It was not the gentle, reverent kiss of their youth beneath the weirwood; it was a violent, territorial claim. His tongue tangled with hers, deep and possessive, drinking in her shallow, ragged breaths as if he could store them in his lungs to survive the dry, loveless years ahead of him.
She clung to him with a feral intensity, her fingers tangling fiercely in his gorgeous brown hair with the unique silver strand, pulling him down, letting the sheer heat of his desire temporarily burn away the cold, rotting disappointment in her chest.
He moved them blindly toward the grand, silk-sheeted bed, his hands tearing at the intricate silk laces of her court gown with a manic franticness.
He needed her bare. He needed to feel the raw heat of her skin against his, stripped of the heavy velvet, the stiff corsetry, and the gold embroidery that represented the court trying to pull them apart.
With a low, ragged growl that vibrated against her collarbone, his large hands gripped the heavy fabric of her bodice. The fine Myrish seams parted with a sharp, tearing sound that echoed like a confession through the quiet room. He pulled the sleeves down her white arms, pinning her elbows momentarily as he pushed her backward onto the mattress.
The heavy velvet skirts pooled around her waist and thighs before he swept them away entirely, discarding the remnants of her royal identity onto the dark stone floor like garbage.
She was left in nothing but her thin, translucent linen shift, through which the feverish heat of her skin radiated. Valarr pressed her back into the pillows, his heavy, muscular body following her down without a single moment of hesitation.
He buried his face in the crook of her neck, inhaling sharply, his chest heaving violently against her breasts. His lips traveled from her jaw down to the sensitive dip of her throat, kissing her with a frantic, feverish intensity that bordered on madness.
âMemorize me,â he demanded against her skin, his teeth nipping fiercely at her shoulder, his lips sucking the tender flesh until he left a dark, bruised mark.
âBreathe me in. Remember the taste of me when they drag you to the Reach. Let that lord try to touch you, but make him look at my marks on your skin.â
âI could never forget,â she choked out, her hands sliding under his linen shirt to grip the warm, hard muscles of his back, though the bitter thought followed immediately behind the words:
You are the one choosing to let them drag me there. You are the one handing me over.
Valarrâs hands were unyielding, heavy, and warm as they slid up the hem of her shift. The rough, calloused texture of his palmsâhardened from years of swordplayâscraped pleasantly against the soft, sensitive skin of her outer thighs.
He gathered the fine linen in his fists, pulling it up past her hips until she was completely exposed to his burning gaze.
The amber light of the dying fire danced across her pale skin, painting her in shades of gold and shadow.
Valarr paused, hovering over her on his forearms, his breathing ragged and shallow as he looked down at her. His violet eyes had darkened to near-black, filled with an intense, possessive lust that only she would ever be permitted to see. The perfect, dutiful Prince of the Realm was entirely gone; in his place was a desperate man being broken by his own choices, clinging to his only true sanctuary.
âLook at me,â he whispered fiercely, his voice a low, gravelly growl as his hands moved to trap her wrists above her head, locking his fingers through hers with a bruising force.
âLook at me while I love you. Know that no one else will ever own my heart like this. No one.â
He shifted his weight, his heavy knee parting her thighs with an unyielding pressure. She unlatched her hands from his grip, refusing to be pinned, choosing instead to wrap her arms tightly around his neck, pulling him down so that her chest was pressed flush against his beating heart. The heat between them was staggering, a fever born of shared blood, ancient madness, and forbidden desire.
Valarr reached down between them, his fingers finding her already slick and aching for him. He stroked her with a heavy, deliberate pressure, his thumb circling the sensitive bud of her desire until she arched off the mattress with a soft, broken sob, her head tossing back against the pillows.
âValarr, please,â she begged, her hips rolling instinctively against his hand, her mind blurring into a haze of pure sensation.
âNo more waiting. No more talking.â
He groaned, the sound vibrating deep within his chest. He freed himself from his breeches, the stark, unforgiving hardness of him pressing against her inner thigh, teasing the weeping entrance of her core.
He did not rush, despite the agonizing hunger tearing through them both. Instead, he leaned down, capturing her mouth in another deep, wet kiss, drowning out her whimpers with his own tongue while his hips slowly, inexorably nudged forward.
As he pushed inside her, a breathless cry tore from her throatâa sound of pure, unadulterated pleasure mixed with a deep, systemic ache that went down to her very bones.
He was thick and unyielding, filling her so completely that she felt stretched to her limits. The friction of his slow, deliberate entry was a beautiful, agonizing burn.
Valarr paused when he was buried fully within her, his muscles trembling under the strain of his restraint, his eyes locked onto hers as he waited for her body to adjust to his size.
âYou feel so perfect,â he choked out, his hips twitching slightly, burying himself even deeper against her pelvic bone.
âSo warm. My sister. My only love.â
She wrapped her legs tightly around his waist, locking him to her, her heels digging into the backs of his thighs to pull him closer.
âMove,â she whispered, her fingers digging deep into the muscles of his back, her nails scratching light, red tracks across his shoulders.
âValarr, move.â
The restraint snapped completely. Valarr began to move above her with a relentless, driving pace, each thrust a violent defiance of the King, the council, and the fate awaiting them at dawn.
The slick, wet rhythm of their bodies colliding echoed through the quiet room, a scandalous, beautiful symphony born of sin. He withdrew almost fully before plunging back inside her, striking deep, causing her to cry out his name into the dark spaces of the room.
The world narrowed down to the suffocating heat of the bed and the rustle of tangled silk. Valarrâs pace grew faster, harder, his upper body slick with sweat that dripped onto her skin, burning wherever it touched. He shifted his grip, sliding his hands beneath her hips to lift her off the mattress, angling her body so he could drive into her even deeper. Every thrust felt like a brand, a desperate attempt to permanently alter her, to make it impossible for any other man to ever touch her without feeling his ghost.
She was drowning in the sensation, her senses overwhelmed by the smell of his skin, the taste of his mouth, and the relentless, rhythmic pounding of his hips against hers. Her core clamped tightly around him with every stroke, sending waves of blinding pleasure rippling through them both.
Valarrâs face twisted in an agony of ecstasy, his jaw clenched so hard the muscles stood out in sharp relief.
âI will never let you go in my mind,â he gasped, his thrusts becoming short, hard, and frantic as he neared his limit. He leaned down, his mouth finding her ear, biting the lobe softly before his voice broke into a ragged whisper.
âTell me I am yours. Say it.â
âYou are mine,â she sobbed, her hips meeting his with an equal, desperate ferocity.
âAnd I am always yours.â
The lie tasted bitter, but the physical reality was undeniable. The building tension within her tightened like a coiled spring until it finally snapped. A shattering, breathless climax ripped through her body, her walls pulsing violently around him in tight, uncontrollable waves.
The intense internal friction was the final catalyst for Valarr. With a low, guttural ruin of a sound, he drove himself into her one last, deep time, his hips locking pinned against hers as his body shuddered violently, pouring his love, his grief, and his supreme defiance into her.
He stayed buried inside her for a long time, his forehead resting against her shoulder, his chest heaving as he breathed in her scent. He kissed the wet tracks of tears from her face, his large hands gently smoothing her hair back from her forehead.
Slowly, the frantic energy of their passion faded, replaced by the heavy, somber reality of the coming dawn.
Hours later, the fire had burned down to cold, grey ash, casting the room in a pale, ghostly light.
Valarr slept heavily beside her, completely exhausted by the weight of his grief and the sheer intensity of their union.
One of his heavy, muscular arms was slung possessively over her waist, holding her close to his chest even in sleep. His brown hair was fanned out across the white linen of the pillows, gleaming faintly in the dark.
He looked peaceful.
In the quiet dark, he looked like the boy beneath the weirwood tree againâa boy who believed he had successfully loved her one last time, who believed this night would be enough to sustain her through a lifetime of exile.
She lay perfectly still, staring up at the dark canopy above. The flush of physical pleasure had long since faded, leaving behind a cold, absolute, and terrifying clarity. And with that clarity came a crushing wave of resentment that choked the breath from her lungs.
He was the future King. He was the golden Prince, the darling of the commons and the lords alike.
If he had stood before Baelor and Daeron and refused to marry Kiera, the Realm would have shaken, the small council would have raged, but he would have kept her.
He had the power of the Dragon in his veins, the blood of Aegon the Conqueror.
Instead, he had chosen the easy path. He chose the throne. He chose his duty to a Kingdom that did not care if his heart bled. He chose to be a good grandson and a dutiful son, leaving her to bear the consequences of his crown alone.
He loved her, yesâshe knew he didâbut he loved the idea of his unblemished legacy more.
This night was not a beautiful tragedy to be written into the histories. It was a farewell execution, and Valarr was the one pulling the lever while whispering that he loved her.
The realization was surprisingly gentle when it finally settled in her chest, a quiet, freezing stillness that washed away all her fear.
She refused to play the part he had written for her. She refused to go to the Reach, to be handled by a stranger in a cold castle, while she spent the rest of her miserable life watching Valarr smile at his Tyroshi lady from across a crowded hall, watching him breed heirs with another woman, knowing he had not thought she was worth fighting for.
If he would not choose her over the Realm, then she would choose herself over his world.
Carefully, meticulously, she slid out from under Valarrâs heavy arm, ensuring her movements were as light as a whisper. He stirred slightly, letting out a soft, low mumble into the pillows, but the exhaustion of his duties and their passion kept him anchored in sleep.
She did not put her courtly gown back on. She left the heavy velvet and gold embroidery where it lay ruined on the floor.
Instead, she slipped into a simple, ethereal white shift that flowed like mist around her bare ankles. She did not look at her jewelry, her family rings, or the dragon tokens she had accumulated over her short life.
She walked slowly, deliberately, toward the massive, arched stone window of her chamber, stepping out onto the cold, moonlit balcony.
The wind off the Blackwater Bay was freezing, whipping through the thin linen of her shift and biting at her bare skin, but she did not feel the chill. For the first time in her life, the suffocating, crushing weight of the Targaryen name felt entirely weightless.
Far below, the black sea crashed violently against the jagged rocks at the base of the Red Keep, the white foam churning in the dark like a quiet, welcoming promise of eternal rest.
There would be no political marriages there.
There would be no duty, no crowns, and no betrayals.
She turned her head slightly, looking back through the open balcony doors. Valarr was still asleep, a beautiful, tragic silhouette in the shadows of the bedchambers. A flawless Prince who would wake up to a Kingdom, a Crown, and a wedding feast, but who would never, for the rest of his living days, have her again.
Would he mourn her?
Would he regret?
Would he forget her one day?
Whatever the answer was, she would not be there anymore to witness.
She would be free with Valarr as the only man who ever held her heart.
âYou should have fought for me,â she whispered into the howling wind, her voice completely devoid of tears, filled only with a profound, final quiet.
She stepped up onto the stone ledge of the balcony. The wind roared in her ears, lifting her hair away from her neck, tugging at the white linen of her shift like a pair of pale wings.
She closed her eyes, inhaling one last time, tasting the salt of the sea, the cold smoke of the dying hearth, and the lingering, fading scent of Valarr on her skin.
She leaned forward, tilting her weight into the empty air.
Synopsis: The smoke of Redgrass dies in bitter shade, as far from courts, a pale stone refuge is made. Through adoring palms, the war-wrought anvil healsâto hold a firstborn rose, the hardened father kneels.
Warnings: SMUT 18+, implied Pregnancy, Childbirth, War Trauma, Mutual Masturbation, Handjob, Fingering, Rough Intimacy, the Traits of the Reader are not described
Word Count: 4.5k
The smoke of the Redgrass Field had long since cleared from the skies of the Crownlands, but it seemed destined to linger forever in the valleys of Maekarâs mind.
By the late months of the hundred-and-ninety-sixth year since Aegonâs Conquest, the Capital did not celebrate its survival so much as it exhaled a collective, shuddering breath.
The Great Bastard was dead, his treason buried in the bloody mud alongside thousands of rebel knights. But the victory had left a bitter, metallic aftertaste in the mouths of those who had actually broken the line.
She stood on the high, wind-scoured battlements of the Kingâs Gate, her fingers white where they gripped the cold stone railing. In her arms, she held little Aerion, who was now a heavy, squirming toddler with a crown of pale silver fuzz and an insatiable appetite for trouble.
Beside her, Daeron clutched tightly at the rich Dornish embroidery of her kirtle, his large, timorous eyes darting fearfully toward the Great Keep where the horns were blowing a long, low, and discordant welcome.
The royal host was returning.
At the front of the column rode Prince Baelor. The Breakspear.
Even from the high battlements, his armor seemed to catch the pale winter sun with a flawless, blinding brilliance. The smallfolk who lined the muddy streets did not just cheer; they screamed his name until their voices cracked, throwing winter roses and dried herbs beneath the hooves of his great warhorse. He was the savior of the Realm, the Hammer that had shattered the rebel Vanguard.
His smile was silver, his hand raised in an easy, golden grace that made the bloody civil war feel like a chivalric song.
But she did not look at Baelor.
Her eyes tracked past the glittering Vanguard, past the proud banners of the Stormlands and the Dorne borders, until they found the rear of the command line.
There rode the Anvil.
Maekar did not look like a Prince returning in triumph. He looked like an executioner who had survived his own scaffolding. A thick beard was now covering his scarred cheeks, making him look older than he actually was. He wore no polished plate, no decorative gold; his armor was the same dark, unpolished steel he had ridden out in, now heavily gouged, dented, and caked in a grim crust of dried mud and old, dark blood that was not his own.
His massive shoulders were bowed as if the weight of the sky were resting upon his shoulder pads.
He did not look up at the cheering crowds. He did not wave. His face was a mask of absolute, scarred stone, his jaw set so tightly that the muscles looked like iron rivets.
When the heavy iron portcullis finally rattled shut behind the column, she did not wait for the formal reception in the Great Hall. She gathered her sons and descended into the shadowed, chaotic lower courtyard, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
The air in the bailey was a thick soup of horse sweat, raw leather, and the heavy, greasy smell of cheap liniment. Men-at-arms were shouting, unbuckling armor, and tossing bloody bandages into the dirt.
Maekar had already dismounted. He stood by his heavy black stallion, his back to the crowd, his large hands trembling slightly as he unlaced his split leather gambeson.
âMaekar,â she breathed, her voice cutting through the martial din like a quiet Dornish breeze.
He stiffened instantly. For a terrifying second, his hand flew to the hilt of his heavy broadsword, his body twisting with the violent, hair-trigger instinct of a man who had spent half a year sleeping with one eye open to the dark.
But as his turbulent violet eyes landed on her face, the weapon-hand dropped. The dark, manic intensity in his gaze did not vanish, but it fractured, a sudden, devastating vulnerability breaking through his blunt features.
He did not speak. He stepped into her space, his heavy, mud-splattered boots crunching violently through the gravel. Without a care for the watching squires or the minor lords who bypassed him to seek Baelorâs favor, he reached out, his massive, bare hands catching her by the waist and pulling her flush against his chest.
The impact was rough, the smell of him overwhelmingâiron, old sweat, stale camp smoke, and the deep, terrifying musk of total war.
She did not care.
She threw her free arm around his neck, burying her face into the damp linen of his collar, her tears finally slipping past her lashes to stain his shoulder.
âYou are alive,â she whispered against his skin.
He broke the embrace only to look down at his sons.
Daeron shrank back slightly, terrified by the dark blood on his fatherâs sleeve, but Maekar did not push him. Instead, his eyes landed on Aerion, who was staring up at him with a strange, fearless intensity, his tiny hands reaching out to touch the cold, dented iron of his fatherâs gorget.
He may not have been away for long⊠but Gods, his sons had grown so much in his absence.
Maekar let out a low, fractured soundâhalfway between a sob and a gruntâbefore pulling all three of them back into the dark sanctuary of his shadow.
The peace they sought did not exist in the Red Keep.
The weeks that followed the victory were a slow, agonizing torture for the fourth son. In the Small Council, King Daeron the Good wept with joy as he placed a pin into Baelorâs tunic, naming him the Hand of the King. The songs sung in the Queenâs ballroom were all of the Breakspearâs brilliant strategy, of his beautiful chivalry upon the Redgrass Field.
They did not sing of the Vanguard. They did not sing of the fourth son who had held the line against the furious onslaught of the rebel knights, standing like an iron wall while his own blood pooled in his boots.
They spoke of Maekarâs defense as a perfunctory duty, a stubborn necessity that allowed his older brother to win the day.
King Daeron, perhaps recognizing the dangerous, tightly coiled resentment brewing in his youngest sonâs chest, called Maekar into the Solar. As a reward for his unyielding valor on the battlefield, the King officially granted him the newly completed castle of Summerhallâa fortified palace built in the lush, rolling hills where the Stormlands met the Reach and the Dornish Marches.
It was a seat of his own. A territory far from the golden shadow of his brother.
âWe leave,â Maekar told her that very night, his voice filled with a sudden, desperate urgency as he barred the heavy oak doors of their apartment. He did not look at her with his usual grim composure; his eyes were bright, almost frantic.
âWe pack the wagons before the sun rises. I will not spend another moon breathing the foul air of this Castle.â
She did not argue. She rose from the bed, her bare feet silent against the stones, and took his hands.
âWe go,â she swore softly.
âTo our own hearth, Maekar. To our own truth.â
The move to Summerhall was a long, dusty trek, but with every league they put between themselves and the Capital, the heavy, suffocating knot in Maekarâs shoulders seemed to loosen.
The castle itself was beautifulâa stark contrast to the grim, crowded masonry of the Red Keep.
Summerhall was built of a warm, pale stone that seemed to catch the sunâs light and hold it like a hearth fire. Its towers were high and airy, surrounded by endless, rolling meadows of wild grasses and late-blooming roses that filled the morning breeze with a sweet, clean fragrance.
It was a fortress, yes, but it was also a pavilion of peace, its wide courtyards open to the sky and the distant, purple-blue peaks of the red mountains of her youth.
Within those pale stone walls, the healing began.
Maekar spent his days riding the borders of his new lands, his large hands working the soil, his voice giving practical, quiet commands to the smallfolk who did not know the political games of the Capital. He was their Prince, their shield, and for the first time in his life, he was the first man in the room.
The transition to Summerhall was not a sudden cure for the ghosts that haunted Maekarâs mind, but rather a slow, quiet unravelling of his iron defense.
In their first spring away from the Capital, before the terraces had completely surrendered to the lush crawling rose-vines, the silence of the Marcher nights belonged to them alone. No courtiers were whispering outside their chambers, no grand trumpets echoing from Baelorâs wing to remind Maekar of his permanent place at the end of the table.
On one such night, the air blowing off the distant purple peaks was sweet with the scent of crushed clover and rain. Inside their bedchamber, the pale stone walls held the residual warmth of the afternoon sun, needing only a small, crackling fire in the hearth to bathe the room in a deep, flickering amber.
Maekar stood by the open terrace doors, his massive bare back turned to the room. He wore only a loose pair of dark breeches, the cord unlaced at his waist. Even in the soft light, the terrible tolls of the Redgrass Field were mapped across his skinâthe jagged, silver track of a rebel spearhead sliced across his ribs, and the deep, knotty tension that still kept his wide shoulders rigidly squared against an invisible enemy.
She rose from the heavy velvet bench, her bare feet pressing noiselessly into the thick woolen rugs. She did not wear a heavy gown or the suffocating silk shifts of the Capital; she wore only a sheer, cream-colored kirtle that flowed around her legs like water.
Stepping into his shadow, she did not hesitate. She slid her arms around his thick waist, pressing the soft curve of her cheek directly against the warm, broad expanse of his shoulder blades.
Maekar stiffenedâa sharp, instinctive twitch of his muscles that always remained from the Vanguardâbut as the scent of her, like lemon groves and sweet oil, filled his senses, his head fell forward. A heavy, ragged sigh tore from his chest, his shoulders dropping a fraction of an inch as he leaned back into her embrace.
âThey will be rewriting the songs. Adding verses to the glorious Hammer,â Maekar hoarsely muttered, his gravelly voice vibrating through his spine directly against her palms.
âWe are far apart from the Capital, my Prince, let it rest,â she murmured softly, her fingers sliding over his ribs, tracing the rough, raised skin of his newest scar with a terrifying tenderness.
Maekar turned slowly within her arms, his turbulent violet eyes burning with a sudden, desperate intensity beneath his heavy brow. The thick beard he had kept since his return brushed against her forehead as he leaned down, his large, calloused hands coming up to grip her waist with a sudden, breathless weight.
âLet me distract you, Maekar,â she whispered, her eyes locking onto his.
âLet me distract you from your worries.â
He leaned down to catch her lips with his own; soft and carefully. One of his calloused hands cupped her cheekâthe one that had held a sword to killâhis thumb caressed her skin.
Oh, his sweet wife. How did he deserve her?
He caught the hem of her light kirtle in his palms, gathering the thin fabric up and over her head in one fluid, breathless motion. He tossed it blindly into the shadows, leaving her standing entirely bare before him, her skin flushed warm, and glowing.
Maekarâs breath caught in his throat. His eyes dragged down her body, drinking in the soft curves of her hips, the swell of her breasts, and the subtle, silver stretch marks on her skinâthe beautiful, proud badges of the two sons she had already gifted him.
To him, she was not just a woman; she was a sanctuary built of sun and stone.
âWhat would I do without you?â he muttered hoarsely against her lips.
He did not carry her to the bed. Instead, with a heavy sweep of his arm, he cleared the low, wide oak table beside the hearth, sending a silver washbasin clattering to the floor. He lifted her effortlessly, setting her hips down upon the smooth, dark wood at his eye level.
She parted her thighs instinctively, her legs wrapping tightly around his waist to pull him closer, the heat radiating from his bare skin so intense it made her shiver.
Maekar leaned over her, his large hands anchoring her thighs wide apart on the table. He did not rush to free himself; instead, his rough, calloused palms smoothed slowly up her calves, mapping the soft skin of her knees before sliding deliberately along the sensitive flesh of her inner thighs.
The heat of his hands was searing, and when his fingers brushed high enough to stroke across her swollen, aching center, a soft, helpless whimper broke from her lips. His thumb found her slick center through the damp heat, applying a broad, heavy pressure that made her hips rise instinctively off the wood, her fingers tangling frantically in his silver hair.
He leaned into her, his thick beard scraping delightfully against her jawline as his mouth trailed down to nip hungrily at the sensitive column of her neck. His fingers worked with a heavy, agonizingly slow rhythm, parting her sensitive folds and spreading her sweet, honeyed wetness until she was writhing beneath his touch, entirely consumed by the white-hot friction building in her lower belly.
âMaekarââ a soft, breathless gasp tore from her throat as she caught his tensed wrists, trying to steady her racing heart against the sheer intensity of his focus.
âI wished to distract you, not the other way around.â
âThen do it,â he growled hoarsely, his thick voice a demanding plea as he pressed his forehead against hers, taking her hands and guiding them down to the front of his trousers.
âDo not make me bear the weight of this day alone.â
She did not hesitate. Her fingers unlaced the heavy cords of his breeches, freeing his rigid, aching length into the warm air of the room. The sheer size of him, hot and pulsing against her knuckles, sent a fierce jolt of desire straight to her core.
At the same time, Maekarâs large hand slipped back between her thighs, his thumb finding her slick, swollen folds with a sudden, breathless pressure.
A sharp cry of pure pleasure cut through the quiet room as her palm closed around his heat. She set a relentless, desperate pace for him, her hand sliding down his length, teasing the crown of his arousal while her thumb caught the slick moisture at the tip, spreading it along the rigid shaft.
He worked with a meticulous, adoring reverence that held no courtly restraint. The contrast of his rough, heavy palm against her sensitive, honeyed center made her arch her back violently, her fingers clawing at the smooth wood of the table behind her.
Maekarâs tensed shoulders finally shattered, his head falling into the crook of her neck as his fingers drove deeper against her pearl, tracing her trembling flesh with an unyielding, rhythmic pressure.
He matched her pace stroke for stroke, his heavy, jagged breaths catching in his throat each time her palm squeezed him tightly. Every touch from him was a silent declaration that her body was the only place that belonged utterly to him, a sacred space where the armor of the Prince could be cast aside.
The white-hot tension coiled violently, pushing them both over the precipice.
âMaekar,â she whimpered, her hips rolling helplessly against his hand as the pressure became too much to bear.
A wave of intense, rhythmic pleasure rippled through her entire body. Her internal muscles pulsed relentlessly, tightly clamping against nothing as she cried his name into the high rafters of the room.
Hearing the beautiful, fractured sound of her release broke Maekarâs restraint completely; with a final, desperate stroke of her hand, he let out a low, primal roar against her neck, his body shuddering violently as he spent his warmth across her fingers, anchoring them both to the quiet dark of Summerhall.
Afterward, as the fire died down to a mound of glowing red embers, Maekar did not pull away. He gathered her bare, trembling body into his massive arms and carried her to the massive, velvet-curtained bed.
He lay with his head resting heavily against her chest, holding her as if she might vanish into the morning mist if he let go. The rigid stiffness had finally left his shoulders, the hard armor of the Prince completely melted away into the soft, domestic dark of their summer home.
This was his home now.
Away from the court, away from the Capital.
In the arms of his sweet wife.
It was in the second year of their residence at Summerhall, as the summer rose-vines began to crawl up the terraces of their private pavilion, that she gave him his third son.
Aemon was born on a morning that was so quiet, so perfectly still, that the entire world seemed to be holding its breath.
The labor was swift, a gentle affair compared to the agonizing, day-long torture of Daeronâs birth. When the child finally emerged into the room, he did not scream or roar as Aerion had. He let out a single, soft cry, his tiny lungs clearing before he settled into a quiet, alert stillness.
âA son, My Lady,â her Dornish maid whispered, her face glowing with a soft reverence as she washed the infant.
âA perfectly calm little Prince.â
When Maekar entered the chamber, his boots did not clank with the terrifying noise of war; they thudded softly against the thick, woolen rugs. He approached the bed with his usual hyper-careful steps, his massive frame casting a protective shadow over her as he leaned down to look upon his third-born.
The boy was beautiful, his skin smooth and free of the flushed anger that had marked Aerionâs birth. A thin tuft of pale silver-gold hair clung to his scalp.
âWe will name him Aemon, for the Dragonknight. A name of true honor,â she murmured, leaning her head against Maekarâs strong shoulder as he sat on the edge of the mattress.
Maekar reached down, his blunt finger hovering over the babyâs tiny, pale fist. Slowly, deliberately, the infantâs fingers uncurled, wrapping around the massive digit with a surprisingly firm grip. Aemon did not pull away; he merely scrunched his little nose, his mouth set in a straight line.
âYou only give me sons, my husband,â she murmured into his shoulder, âwhen will I have a daughter for myself?â
Maekar smiled. A soft and small twitch of the lips that she loved to kissâbarely noticeable for anyone but her.
If his wife wished for a daughter then he would do everything in his might to grant her that wish.
The peace of Summerhall was a fertile ground, and the Gods, it seemed, heard the Anvilâs prayer.
The pale stone castle had become a sanctuary of true warmth.
Daeron was growing into a gentle, soft-spoken boy, his pale forehead no longer pinched in worry.
Aerion was a wild, laughing force of nature, chasing the hounds through the outer courtyards with a wooden sword and a fierce, territorial roar that made the guards chuckle.
And little Aemon sat quietly in the grass of the gardens, his dark indigo eyes tracking the movements of the birds as his thick baby hands plucked small daisies growing around him.
But the true crown of their domestic joy came at the height of the summer heat.
The labor was a long, heavy ache that lasted from noon until the sun sank behind the mountains, painting the stone walls of their bedchamber in shades of bruised gold and deep plum.
Maekar did not leave her side for a single second; pain was always a shared burden between them.
He sat on the low stool, his linen shirt soaked through with his own sweat, his massive hands holding hers with a desperate, unyielding strength that felt like an iron clamp.
âOne more thrust, my love,â he hoarsely murmured against her ear, his breath hot and frantic.
âOne more. Give me your strength.â
With a final, shattering cry that tore from her lungs, the agonizing pressure vanished, replaced by a sudden, thin, and piercing wail that sounded entirely different from the heavy roars of her sons. It was a high, sweet melody that seemed to pierce the very stone of the room.
The old midwife lifted the child, her wrinkled face breaking into a wide grin.
âA daughter, Your Grace! The Mother has blessed the Anvil with a rose!â
A daughter.
Maekar had gifted his sweet wife the daughter that she had wished for.
The words hung in the warm air of the room like a spell. Maekar froze, his entire body going rigid as his hands dropped from hers.
His large violet eyes, usually so fierce and turbulent, went wide with an expression of pure, unadulterated shock.
He had three sonsâthree boys built for shields and broadswordsâbut a daughter was a creature from a different world entirely.
The maids cleansed the babe with a frantic, joyful efficiency, wrapping her in a thin, lavender-scented silk blanket before handing the bundle directly to the Prince.
Maekar took his first daughter into his arms as if he were holding a vessel made of spun glass. The giant of a man, the warrior who had broken the rebel line at the Redgrass Field with brutal, bloody force, looked completely and utterly terrified. He walked back toward the bed with hesitant, trembling steps, his broad shoulders squared instinctively to block the cool breeze from the window, wrapping the child in a protective cocoon of pure muscle.
He sat on the edge of the mattress, his face pale. She leaned up against the pillows, her body aching and exhausted, her hair clinging to her face in damp strands, but her eyes were fixed entirely on her husband.
The baby was tinyâso much smaller than her brothers had been. A few fine, gossamer curls of the same color as Daeronâs hair lay against her pink forehead. Suddenly, her little eyelids fluttered open, revealing a pair of bright, brilliant violet eyes that seemed to catch the amber light of the candles and turn it into gold.
She did not cry; she let out a soft, tiny sneeze, her little fists flailing against the silk blanket until they brushed against Maekarâs rough thumb.
âMy first rose,â Maekar whispered, his voice breaking completely, a single, heavy tear slipping from his eye to track a damp path over his scarred cheek, vanishing into the silver beard.
He leaned down, his rough lips pressing against the babyâs impossibly soft forehead with a tenderness that made her heart ache.
He was completely transfixed. The battle-hardened Prince, the man who carried the bitter scars of a thousand courtly snubs, had turned entirely soft for his baby girl. He held her against his massive chest, his thumb tracing the delicate curve of her tiny jaw over and over again, his features melting into an expression of such pure, adoring worship that she had to turn her head to hide her own tears.
âBring them in,â she murmured toward the doorway, where her Dornish maid stood with a wide, knowing smile.
The three older Princes of Summerhall stepped into the room, their movements a comical display of their different natures.
Daeron, now seven years of age, entered first. He walked with hesitant, hyper-careful steps, his large violet eyes fixed on the tiny bundle in his fatherâs arms with a quiet, solemn fascination.
Behind him came Aerion, who was nearly five. He did not walk; he bounded into the room, his wooden dragon gripped tightly in his fist, his violet eyes bright with a restless, chaotic energy. He stopped abruptly at the edge of the rug, his small mouth set in a hard frown as he stared at the baby, his tiny fists bunching his little velvet doublet.
At the rear of the line came little Aemon, barely a yearling, balanced securely on the hip of a nurse.
âCome closer, my loves,â she said softly, offering Daeron a warm, encouraging smile.
âCome meet your sister.â
Daeron approached the bed first, his boots making no sound against the thick rug. He climbed up beside her with a careful slowness, leaning over her arm to look down at the babyâs face. When little Daella let out a soft, tiny sigh, her little fist flailing in her sleep, Daeronâs pale forehead smoothed out, a rare, beautiful smile breaking across his soft features.
âShe is so small, Mother,â Daeron whispered, his voice filled with a sudden, protective reverence.
âIs she made of sugar?â
âNo, Daeron,â Maekar said, his gravelly voice unexpectedly soft as he reached down, his massive hand gently ruffling his firstbornâs brownish curls.
âShe is made of steel and summer roses. And it is your duty to protect her.â
Daeron nodded solemnly, his little chest puffing out with a pride he rarely showed.
Suddenly, Aerion marched up to the edge of the bed, his wooden dragon thrust forward as if he were challenging the infant to a duel.
âDoes she have a dragon?â he demanded, his bright eyes snapping toward his father.
âCan she fight?â
Maekar let out a low breath that was almost a laughâa sound so rare and precious it made her heart leap.
âShe will not fight, Aerion,â Maekar said firmly, his thumb tracing the newbornâs cheek.
âYou and your brothers will do the fighting for her. She is the rose of this house, and you are the wall that keeps the winter away.â
Aerion stared at his father for a long moment, his tiny jaw clenching in a perfect mimicry of Maekarâs own stubborn frown, before he dropped his wooden dragon into the bed and reached out to touch the babyâs silver fuzz with a surprising, hesitant gentleness.
From the nurseâs arms, little Aemon let out a sharp babble, his indigo eyes fixed on the woman who was his motherâdemanding to be in her arms.
She leaned her head back against the pillows, allowing the nurse to place her youngest son into her arms, watching her four children gathered around them.
The foul air of Kingâs Landing, the bitter neglect of the court, and the bloody memories of the Redgrass Field felt a thousand leagues awayâburied forever beneath the pale stone of their new home.
The domestic sanctuary they had built in the dark had finally stepped into the light. Her life would never be grey; her dreams had not died in the Capital. They had merely evolved into the beautiful, fierce reality of the family they were building together in the safety of their summer palace.
Maekarâs lips pressed a soft, lingering kiss against the crown of her head as their children laughed in the quiet room.
âWe have outrun the sun, my love,â he whispered into her hair.
She smiled, closing her eyes as she squeezed Aemon close against her breast.
Synopsis: By ancient stone where rivers wind, he demands the truths she left behind. No soft denial, but a lethal kiss, a shared murder, a toxic bliss. Bound by blood and a dark confession, he becomes the slave to her obsession.
Warnings: SMUT 18+, Targcest, Oral Sex, Power Play, Unprotected Vaginal Sex, Femdom/Malesub, Praise Play & Degradation, Toxic Dynamics, mentioned Murder/Poisoning, mild Violence, Age Gap of 6 years (Aerion is nineteen, Reader twenty-five)
Word Count: 5.6k
A/N: the translator I used for the High Valyrian passages
The Roseroad had been a slow, rhythmic torture of dust, flies, and iron.
For three hundred miles out of the Kingâs Landing gate, the Targaryen caravan had crawled through the sweltering belly of the summer heat like a glittering, armored serpent, its multi-colored scales formed by the overlapping shields of three hundred household knights. The air was a thick, stagnant soup that smelled of sun-baked horse dung, the oily grease used to keep the wheel-axles from seizing, and the bitter, green reek of the crushed grass beneath thousands of iron-shod hooves.
At the vanguard rode Maekar together with Baelor, their greatdestined silhouettes framing the horizon against the pale, bleached blue of the Reach sky.
Baelor Breakspear, the Prince of Dragonstone, sat his great golden-bay stallion with the easy, effortless majesty of a man born to wear the Crown. He wore a simple black wool doublet, the pin of the Hand attached to the front. Baelor spent his hours leaning from his saddle to speak with the hedge knights, the village Septons, and the minor landed gentry who gathered at the verges of the road to glimpse the royal blood.
To Baelor, this progress was a matter of statecraftâa necessary, almost holy duty to accept the hospitality of the Lords upon the road, thereby reinforcing the magnificent, unbroken presence of the House of the Dragon.
Beside him, Maekar rode like a man anticipating an ambush. Her youngest brother was a man who marched to a battlefieldâs harsh, unyielding rhythm, refusing to halt for the comfort of the highborn ladies or the pathetic complaints of the baggage train.
His massive black warhorse was a beast of pure muscle and malice, its iron shoes kicking up heavy grey plumes of limestone dust that settled into the intricate, gilded carvings of the royal wheelhouses behind them and coated the dry throats of his personal guard. Maekarâs face was a slab of granite, his violet eyes fixed straight ahead, ignoring the cheers of the smallfolk as if they were nothing more than the buzzing of summer midges.
Behind the elderly menâbehind the banners of the Crown Prince, his son, and the heavy, slow-moving wagons of the royal treasuryâriding in a silence that simmered like hidden wildfire, was Aerion.
To the common knights of Summerhall and the household guards who watched him from the corners of their eyes, the Brightflame appeared exactly as he always did: arrogant, unyielding, dangerously beautiful, and profoundly bored.
He sat his brown palfrey with a careless, predatory grace, one hand resting lightly on his hip while the other held the reins with a loose, mocking indifference. His violet eyes, darker than his fatherâs, the perpetual sneer that kept even the most ambitious squires from drawing too close to his stirrup.
But beneath that flawless facade of royal indifference, Aerion Targaryen was utterly, violently unraveling.
Every single turn of the iron-shod wheels behind him, every dry groan of the carriage wood, was a rhythmic, maddening reminder of the woman locked inside the lead wheelhouse.
The heat within his boots felt like liquid lead, his skin itching beneath his heavy red wool doublet, but the true fever was in his skull.
For six days and six nights, he had been trapped in a cage of public restraint, his horseâs head kept strictly level with his fatherâs right stirrup, his ears filled with Maekarâs gruff lectures on cavalry formations and Baelorâs tedious discourses on the grain tithes of the Reach.
And through it all, he had caught only glimpses of her.
He had seen the brief, maddening flash of a pale, milk-white hand adjusting a heavy dark silk curtain to let in a breath of the dusty air. He had watched, from fifty paces away, the trailing edge of her heavy mourning train as she stepped down from the carriage steps at dusk, her movements so fluid and silent she seemed to slide over the grass like oil.
Whenever they halted at some minor lordâs holdfast for the night, she was there at the low table, always flanked by her solemn, grey-cloaked guardsâmen whose hands never strayed far from the pommels of their longswords, whose eyes followed Aerion with a cold, protective suspicion that made his knuckles turn white beneath his cuffs.
Across those smoky, drafty hearths, she would look at him.
She would look through him.
Her amethyst eyes, wide and clear as winter ice, offered him nothing but a cool, unblinking stare that seemed to mock the very blood in his veins.
She sat among the provincial lords of the Reach like a marble Septa, draped in her endless, hypocritical black silks, her voice a soft, melodious purr as she accepted their condolences for her late, unlamented husband, the young heir of Oldtown.
She had not spoken a single word to him since the night in the Maidenvault. Not a whisper. Not a sign.
She had broken him in the dark, filled his ears with her poisonous, treasonous secrets, and then retreated behind the impenetrable fortress of her widowâs grief, leaving him to starve on the dusty road like a hound tied to a post.
By the time the royal caravan finally reached the low, rolling hills of Bitterbridge, the sky had turned the color of a bruised plum, dark violet clouds rimmed with the angry, golden belly of a dying sunset.
The ancient keep of House Caswell rose above the rushing, swollen waters of the Mander like a grey, moss-slick sentinel, its thick stone walls built to endure the humid, suffocating heat of the Reach.
The Castle was an old thing, heavy-timbered and squat, its lower bailies choked with the damp, green reek of river-moss, water-logged timber, and the heavy, sweet rot of the summer clover fields that stretched out toward the horizon.
Here, there was no perfume of burning Myrish resins to hide the sweating reality of the world; there were no courtly songs from the Kingâs Landing minstrels to drown out the low, frantic beating of a young manâs heart.
For Prince Maekar, the brief stay at the Castle was a matter of rigid, military logistics. Before his boots had even cleared his stirrups, he was barking orders to the master of horse, demanding a necessary pause to rest the heavy draft horses, iron the buckled wheels of the supply wagons, and allow his knights to shake the thick white dust of the Roseroad from their cloaks.
Prince Baelor, ever the diplomat, immediately climbed the stone steps to the Great Hall, his arm around the shaking shoulders of the old Lord Caswell, accepting the Castleâs salt and bread with a grace that made the local smallfolk weep into their sleeves.
But for Aerion, the mainland stronghold was a pressure cooker whose lid was about to blow off.
He did not wait for the welcoming ceremonies to conclude. He did not look back to see if his squire had unloaded his armor or if his fatherâs eyes were searching for him among the crowd of horses. As the horses were led away to the stables, Aerion stood in the shadow of the main gatehouse, his breath coming quick and shallow through his teeth, his eyes fixed on the small, private courtyard that led toward the older sections of the keep.
He had watched her.
He had seen the exact moment she declined Baelorâs invitation to join the high table, her head bowing with that exquisite, fraudulent modesty as she murmured some lie about her devotions, about her need for quiet prayer for the soul of her dead lord.
He had watched her slip away from the bustling welcoming party, a solitary, midnight shadow in black Dornish silk, gliding with terrifying purpose toward the isolated library tower that sat on the western wall of the Caswell keepâa place where the lords of Bitterbridge kept their dusty histories, their rotting harvest ledgers, and their forgotten scrolls.
Driven by a feral, frantic hunger that had accumulated over miles of suffocating restraint, Aerion followed her into the dark.
The Castleâs solar-library was a narrow, circular vault, its walls lined with rotting parchment scrolls that smelled of dry rot and silverfish, heavy iron-bound ledgers of long-dead lords, and crumbling accounts of grain tithes from the century before the Conquest.
It was a room where no one came, least of all Prince Maekar or his dull, duty-bound knights, who preferred the sharp tang of ale and the sound of dice in the lower guardroom. The air inside the tower was heavy with river damp, old ink, and the cold, static scent of stone that had not seen the sun in three hundred years.
In the very center of the circular chamber stood a massive, freestanding mirrorâa rare, absurd luxury brought up from Oldtown by some long-dead Caswell lord who had loved vanity more than steel.
Its frame was a masterpiece of dark, forged iron, beaten by some master smith into the shape of creeping briars and long, jagged thorns whose sharp points met at the apex to hold a massive sheet of polished Myr glass. The glass was old, slightly warped by decades of river humidity, casting back a reflection that looked like something glimpsed through the depths of a bottomless pool.
She stood before the glass, her back to the heavy oak doors of the tower.
She had discarded her heavy, dust-coated traveling cloak, leaving it over a low stool by the stairwell, but the gown she wore beneath was still the color of a starless nightâa stiff, high-collared Dornish silk that covered her completely from the base of her throat to the very tips of her leather slippers.
It was a modest garment on its face, the traditional, unadorned garment of a virtuous, grieving widow, yet the way the heavy fabric caught the low, grey twilight from the high arrow-slits made her look less like a mourner and more like the very shadow the Castle had been built to contain.
The heavy iron latch of the door clicked. It was not a soft sound, but a sharp, deliberate announcement of presence.
She did not turn.
She did not even flinch.
She merely watched the reflection in the Myr glass as the heavy oak door swung open on its unoiled hinges, revealing the tall, broad-shouldered shadow that warped the smaller but elegant figure of the young Princeling.
Aerion did not enter the room like a man; he entered it like a storm that had been trapped in a narrow canyon, his heavy leather riding boots striking the stone floor with a frantic, uneven rhythm that betrayed the absolute chaos roaring through his veins. He had not changed out of his traveling gear; his high leather boots were still splattered with the grey mud of the Roseroad, and his fine wool doublet was completely unbuttoned at the throat, exposing the pale, sweating column of his neck and the rapid, erratic pulsing of his collarbone.
His violet eyes were wild, the pupils blown so large by the dim light of the tower that the purple rings were nothing more than thin, jagged wires around the dark centers.
He was panting slightly, his chest heaving under the heavy wool as if he had run the entire length of the winding stairs from the courtyard to the sky to reach her.
âThe Tears of Lys,â he hissed, his voice a low, gravelly scrape that sounded as though it had been dragged over broken stone.
He did not close the door behind him; he left it to swing on its massive iron hinges, letting the damp river wind howl up the stairwell, his focus entirely, maniacally locked onto her straight, dark spine.
âYou sat beside his bed. You watched him choke on his own tongue while the Maesters wept into their chains and blamed a fever of the gut. Tell me the truth of it here, where there are no guards and no Kings. Look at me and tell me you did not lie to me in the dark of the Maidenvault.â
She let out a soft, low purr of a laughâa sound that was entirely devoid of fear, a sound that hit his frantic, explosive energy like an oil slick over a burning brand.
She did not turn to face his wrath. Instead, she leaned her long, pale hands against the carved edges of the heavy oak table before the mirror, her silver-white hair falling over her shoulders in a heavy, glittering curtain that contrasted sharply with the black silk of her spine.
âAre you asking as a Prince of the Realm, Nephew?â she murmured, her amethyst eyes meeting his in the warped reflection of the Myr glass, her lips curling into a tiny, knife-like smile.
âOr are you asking as the boy who used to hide behind the marble pillars of the Great Sept just to watch the lace of my veil drag across the cold stone?â
Aerion crossed the distance between them in three long, predatory strides. His handsâcalloused from the heavy iron pommels of his practice swords and the brutal friction of leather reins but still too soft for a proper manâseized her by the upper arms. He did not pinch; he gripped her with a bruising, desperate force that would leave dark, crescent-shaped shadows upon her pale skin by the morning, his fingers digging into the stiff Dornish silk.
He dragged her backward with a sudden, violent jerk, forcing her spine flush against the hard, unyielding plate of his chest. His breath was hot, ragged, and thick with the scent of sour wine he had swallowed at the crossroads and the bitter, sharp tang of his own frantic arousal.
âDo not play your courtly games with me,â he snarled, his lips brushing the sensitive, shell-like curve of her ear as he spoke, his voice vibrating directly into her skull through the bone.
âI have stayed awake for six nights listening to the tramping of horses on the dirt, thinking of your hands around my throat, thinking of the way you looked at me when you spoke of his death. You are a murderer. A highborn, silver-haired monster who belongs in the black cells beneath the Red Keep.â
âAnd yet,â she whispered, her voice dropping into a register so smooth, so entirely controlled that it seemed to slow the very frantic beating of his heart against her shoulder blades, âhere you are, alone. You did not run to Maekar with the tale of my treason, did you, little Prince?â
She tilted her head back, deliberately resting the weight of her silver-white crown against his shoulder, her eyes still locked onto his through the silvered glass of the mirror.
âYou did not run because the thought of it makes your blood burn,â she continued, her fingers moving slowly, deliberately over the dark wood of the table, tracing the deep grain like a map.
âYou did not run because you realized that the only thing more beautiful than a Dragon is a Dragon that knows how to kill without leaving a mark. You do not want to punish me, Aerion. You want to worship the hand that held the vial.â
A choked, feral sound left Aerionâs throatâa noise of pure, unadulterated frustration and undone pride.
His grip shifted from her arms to the high, stiff collar of her mourning gown. He did not look for the silver clasps or the delicate silk ties that held the garment together. He drove his fingers beneath the fabric at her throat and pulled.
The Dornish silk tore with a sharp, loud hiss that sounded like green wood hitting a high flame. The heavy black fabric split down the spine, parting all the way to the small of her back, revealing the flawless expanse of her shoulders and the delicate, elegant curve of her vertebrae.
Beneath the gown, she wore nothing but a shift of fine, bleached linen, so thin that the heat of his hands burned through the fabric before he had even touched her skin.
âLook at us,â she commanded. Her voice was no longer a purr; it was a low, iron directive that cut through his frantic movements like a blade through silk.
Aerion froze, his hands still bunched in the ruined, torn fabric of her gown, his breath rattling in his throat.
âLook in the glass, Aerion,â she said softly, her amethyst eyes widening as she stared into the reflection.
âLook at what the blood of Old Valyria has made.â
In the dim light of the tower room, the mirror cast back a terrifyingly beautiful portrait.
They looked less like aunt and nephew and more like two halves of a singular, ancient entity that had been split apart by time and reunited in sin.
There was the stark, striking contrast of his youthâthe nineteen-year-old Prince with his sharp, predatory jawline, his silver hair cropped short, his chest broad and heavy under his red wool doublet.
And there she wasâher body fully realized to the womanly figure, her silver waves falling in long, heavy coils past her waist, her pale skin smooth and cool against the frantic, sweating heat of his frame.
âWe are the same fire,â she whispered, her hand rising slowly to cover his rough knuckles where they rested against her collarbone.
âBut you are the flame that wastes itself in the wind, Aerion. You roar, you scream, you strike innocent men in the yard to prove you are strong. But I... I am the heat that cracks the stone from within.â
She turned slowly within his grip, her movements fluid and unhurried, until she was facing him. She did not look down at his hands, which were trembling now with the sheer, agonizing weight of his restraint. She looked straight into his violet eyes, her own gaze steady and bottomless.
âYou wish to take me again?â she asked, her lips parting into a knowing smile.
âYou wish to force me against the stone and pretend you have conquered the widow of Oldtown?â
âI will have you,â he whispered, his bared teeth clicking together as he leaned down, his forehead almost touching hers.
âI will have you until there is nothing left of him in your mind. Until you beg me to stay inside you.â
âThen you will have me⊠on your knees,â she said.
Aerion blinked, his expression hardening into a look of sharp, dangerous confusion.
âWhat?â
âYou heard me, little Prince,â she murmured, her hands rising to rest against the sides of his throat, her thumbs tracing the pulsing veins beneath his jaw.
âYou are used to taking what you want because men fear your fatherâs name or your own cruel temper. But here, in this keep, your titles mean nothing. If you wish to taste the poison, you will submit to the vessel that holds it.â
She reached behind her, her fingers finding the silk ties of her linen shift. With a single, elegant tug, the white fabric loosened, slipping from her shoulders to pool around her waist; leaving her torso entirely bare to the cool air of the vault. Her breasts were full, pale as morning mist, the nipples hardened by the sudden chill of the room.
Aerionâs breath hitched, a thin line of saliva catching at the corner of his lower lip as his eyes tracked the downward slide of the linen. He moved forward, his hips tilting instinctively toward her, but she placed a single, flat palm against the center of his chest, her fingers digging through his red wool doublet into his sternum.
âNo,â she said. The word was a cool wall of iron.
âYou do not touch me. Not yet.â
âI am burning,â he growled, his hand flying down to his breeches, his long fingers tearing frantically at the leather laces until his length sprang freeâheavy, thick, and dark with the blood that had been pounding in his groin since they had left the capital. He took himself in his hand, his knuckles white as he stroked himself twice, his eyes fixed on the pale curve of her belly.
âI am the Brightflame, Aunt. I will not be ruled by a woman who smells of another manâs grave.â
âThen leave,â she said simply.
She leaned back against the edge of the heavy table, her legs parting just enough to reveal the silver-white hair between her thighs.
âGo back to your father. Tell him you were frightened by a widowâs ghost. Go to Ashford and ride against hedge knights while the real power of the Realm sits in the dark, waiting for a man who knows how to kneel.â
Aerion let out a sound that was half-sob, half-snarl.
The conflict within him was visibleâit played across the sharp, handsome lines of his face like wildfire over a dry field. His royal pride, the celebrated malice that made his brothers look away when he entered a room, was fighting against the ravenous, starving obsession that had ruled his thoughts for nine long years since he had last seen her at court.
Slowly, his knees began to bend.
It was a clumsy, hesitant movement, the movement of a wild creature that had never been broken to the bridle. His heavy leather riding boots scraped against the dark stone as he sank, lower and lower, until he was resting on his knees before her, his silver head level with the soft, round curve of her hips.
âGood boy,â she whispered, her voice dropping into a register of high, sweet praise that made a violent shudder run from the nape of his neck down to his heels.
She reached down, her fingers wrapping around his wild, silver hair, pulling his head back until he was forced to look up at her. His eyes were wet with the sheer frustration of his denial, his lips pitched open as he panted against her skin.
âYou look so much more like a King when you are looking up at me, Aerion,â she murmured, her other hand coming down to touch his cheek, her thumb wiping away a bead of sweat that had gathered at his temple.
âThe Dragon does not rule by teeth alone. It rules because it is worshiped. Let me hear you worship me.â
Aerionâs hands came up to grip her thighs, his calloused palms sliding over the smooth, bare skin where her gown had split. He did not pull her toward him; he simply held her as if she were a holy relic, his fingers twitching against her flesh.
âIksÄ uÄpa perzys,â he whispered, his voice cracking as he slipped into the high, formal Valyrian of their ancestors, claiming her as the ancient fire.
You are ancient fire. You are I love. I take, my mother.
She let out a low, disapproving hum, her fingers tightening in his wild silver hair with a sudden, sharp tug that forced his head back. She looked down at him with an icy, mocking perfection, completely unimpressed by his breathless attempt at courtly Valyrian.
âEven your tongue trips over itself like a common squireâs, little Prince,â she murmured, her voice a cool, velvet correction.
âHigh Valyrian does not bend to the lazy speech of Kingâs Landing. If you are to speak the language of Kings while groveling at my feet, you will speak it flawlessly.â
She leaned down, her lips brushing against his ear as she whispered the proper cadence, emphasizing the sharp, rolling verbs he had butchered.
âIksÄ uÄpa perzys,â she corrected softly, her tone dripping with patronizing discipline.
âIksÄ Ă±uha jorrÄelagon. Mazeman, ñuha muña. Say it rightly, Aerion, or I will leave you to choke on your own frustration.â
You are ancient fire. You are my love. I take, my mother.
Aerion swallowed hard, his throat bobbing against her fingers. The humiliation of her correction mixed with the agonizing weight of his arousal, sending a violent shiver down his spine. He looked up at her, his violet eyes wide and entirely undone by her dominance.
âSpeak it so I can taste it, Nephew,â she commanded, her fingers tightening in his hair, forcing his face closer to the silver-white delta between her thighs.
âNyke jorrÄelagon, muña,â he gasped, his nose brushing against the soft, fragrant hair of her mons, confessing that he wanted his mother-queen as the scent of herâsalt, musk, and the faint, sweet trace of almondsâfilled his senses until his head swam. He used the old formal term of reverence reserved for the creators of bloodlines, his lips opening against her flesh.
âNaejot sagon ñuha Äeksio. Ăuha Änogar.â
I love, mother. To be my master. My blood.
âYou are my creature, Aerion,â she whispered, her head tilting back against the mirror as his tongue found her.
He did not strike or tear now; he licked her with a frantic, desperate reverence, his tongue broad and wet as he tasted the salt of her skin, his hands digging into the meat of her buttocks to hold her steady against his mouth. He was sobbing into her now, his breath hot and damp against her clitoris, his silver hair becoming soaked with her own mounting juices.
She let him taste her until she could feel the high, tight coils of her own pleasure beginning to tighten in her lower belly, but before the wave could break, she pulled his head back by the hair once more.
Aerion groaned, a long, miserable sound of denial as he was dragged away from the wet, glistening heat of her source. He looked up at her, his lips shiny with her fluid, his manhood twitching violently against his own stomach, a single drop of clear pre-cum spilling from the tip onto the stone floor.
âNot yet,â she whispered, her eyes dark and unblinking.
âLook in the glass again, little Prince.â
He turned his head obediently, his neck straining under her grip as he forced himself to look into the massive Myr mirror.
âSee what you are,â she said, her voice a low, hypnotic drone.
âYou are the son of Maekar, the grandson of King Daeron. You are the knight who will ride at Ashford. And you are the boy who cannot even spill his seed without my permission.â
âPlease,â he whimpered. The word was entirely un-royal, entirely un-Targaryen. It was the plea of a slave to his master, begging her to come into him and let him inside.
âMÄzigon ezÄ«magon ñuhon.â
Come into mine.
âSwear it,â she said, her hand sliding down his throat to rest over his heart.
âSwear that your lance belongs to me. Swear that every man who looks at me at Ashford will find his name in your blackest thoughts. Swear that you are my hound, Aerion.â
âI swear it,â he choked out, his eyes fixed on their reflectionâthe dark widow standing tall and bare above the kneeling, weeping Prince of Summerhall.
âIksan se zaldrÄ«zes toliot pĆntoma, yn nyke jorrÄelagon se dohaeragon ao.â
I am the Dragon above them all, but I love and serve you.
She smiled, and the look was so beautiful, so utterly devoid of mercy, that it made his heart skip a beat.
âThen rise, my Dragon,â she said.
Aerion stood up all at once, his legs nearly giving way beneath him as the blood rushed from his head. He did not wait for her to move; he seized her by the waist and lifted her entirely off the ground, setting her down upon the high, dark edge of the library table. The ancient ledgers and scrolls scattered around them, falling to the stone floor with a dry, rustling clatter that sounded like the bones of dead Maesters.
He crowded between her thighs, his heavy length rubbing against her wetness, but he did not thrust. He stood there, his chest pressed against hers, his lips inches from her mouth, waiting.
âSlowly,â she whispered, her legs wrapping around his hips, her heels digging into the small of his back to lock him in place.
âYou are not a beast in the yard, Aerion. You are a Prince tasting his Crown.â
With a slow, agonizingly deep surge of his hips, he drove himself inside her.
The fit was so tight, so perfectly slick from his previous worship, that a long, low hiss of shared air left both their lips at once. Aerionâs eyes closed, his teeth baring as his body adjusted to the crushing, velvet heat of her walls. He felt her inner muscles contract around himâa deliberate, practiced squeeze that nearly brought him to his knees for a second time.
âUmbagon,â he groaned, his voice a broken whisper against her collarbone, begging her to stay.
âOpen your eyes, Aerion,â she commanded, her hands rising to grip his chin, forcing him to look into her face.
âLook at me while you take your prize.â
He opened his eyes, and the fury had entirely vanished from them. They were glazed, soft, and filled with a terrifying, absolute docilityâthe look of a hound that had finally been allowed to rest its head in its masterâs lap.
He began to move, his rhythm slow, measured, and deeply worshipful, just as she had commanded. Each thrust was a deliberate, heavy weight that drove deep into her core, his hips tilting with a practiced care that showed how entirely he was listening to the responses of her body. When she gasped, he slowed; when her fingers dug into his shoulders, he drove deeper, his breath coming in short, rhythmic puffs against her neck.
The dark stone walls of the tower seemed to close in around them, trapping the high, sticky heat of their skin within the small circle of the mirrorâs light. In the silvered glass, their bodies moved in a slow, hypnotic danceâthe red of his doublet, the black of her ruined silk, and the blinding, radiant white of their shared flesh.
âYou are so strong, Aerion,â she whispered, her voice dropping into that sweet, poisonous praise play that she knew made his blood sing. She pulled his head down, her lips brushing his earlobe.
âSuch a great, powerful Dragon. My late husband... he was a weak thing. A small man who trembled when I looked at him. But you... you could hold the whole Realm in your hand, could you not?â
Aerion let out a sharp, undone cry, his hips slamming harder against hers as her words hit his ego like oil on fire.
âI am... I am the Brightflame. I am better than him. Say I am better.â
âYou are my King,â she lied, her voice as smooth and cold as the river-stone below.
âYou are the only man alive who could ever hold my secrets, Aerion. Because you are the only one who is wicked enough to love them.â
The praise was his absolute undoing.
The slow, measured rhythm broke into something frantic, something wild and ancient as the Targaryen bloodline itself. He began to drive into her with a terrifying, unpolished speed, his hands lifting her thighs high over his shoulders, his breathing coming in loud, weeping gasps as the climax began to claim his lower body.
She met his speed, her own pleasure rising in a violent, dark crescendo that made her head fall back against the metal frame of the mirror. The iron thorns seemed to vibrate against her skull as Aerionâs hips battered against hers, the wood of the table groaning under their combined weight.
âĂuha Äeksio,â he cried out, his voice rising to a high, archaic chant as his vision began to fail him, calling her his master as the grey room spun into a vortex of silver and red.
âNow, Aerion!â she shouted, her fingers clawing at his back, drawing bright, thick lines of blood through his torn linen shirt.
âGive me your fire!â
With a final, incredibly deep thrust that buried him to the very root of his groin against her pelvis, Aerionâs body went completely rigid.
A loud, feral scream left his lipsâa sound that echoed off the high vaulted ceilings of the Caswell tower like the roar of a hatchling breaking from its shell. He shattered violently, his head thrown back as he spilled himself deep within her, the hot, thick streams of his seed filling her cavity until she could feel the burning heat of it against her cervix.
She came with him, her body contracting in a series of tight, agonizingly sweet spasms that clamped around his length like an iron fist, drawing every last drop of his strength from his body.
The silence returned to the vault all at once, save for the dry, scraping sound of their breathing and the rhythmic, distant rushing of the river below.
Aerionâs strength failed him entirely. His legs buckled, and his upper body collapsed forward against her bare chest, his head burying itself in the heavy, wet tangle of her silver hair. He was panting like a winded stallion, his muscles trembling with the afterglow of a climax that had torn the very soul from his ribs.
She sat on the edge of the table, her long legs still wrapped securely around his waist, her arms coming up to hold him against her body. Her fingers ran gently, almost soothingly through his damp silver bangs, her touch remarkably soft.
In the warped reflection of the Myr mirror, she looked down at the Prince who had come to break her. His face was soft and vulnerable against her throat, his royal armor completely stripped away by the secrets of her flesh.
She had her hound.
As she looked out through the narrow arrow-slit toward the dark trails of the southern Reach, she knew that when they reached Ashford, the Brightflame would burn exactly where she pointed him.
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