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looking at myself in the mirror after reading smut
✸ WELCOME TO THE FAMILY — modern!targaryen au
summary. as a struggling college student at king’s landing university your best friend kiera suggests getting a part time job, and what better opportunity than to babysit her boyfriend’s youngest cousin — aegon known as egg targaryen?
word count. 8.2k
warnings. aegon being an absolute menace and maekar crashing out as usual, english is NOT my first language so sorry if there are any spelling or grammar mistakes!!
note. i genuinely had the most fun writing this fic (went a little overboard with the text oops), not really much to say besides that, just hope you enjoy reading!!
next part. series masterlist.
When Kiera first brought up the idea of getting a part-time job, you thought she was joking.
You were seated across from her in The Dragon’s Brew, the campus café tucked between the humanities building and the old red-brick law faculty.
Sunlight seeped in through the windows, outside King’s Landing was bustling as it always did—restless, metallic, a little grimy around the edges.
Through one of the windows you could see students scurrying off to class, while others were enjoying the sunlight that had come with spring.
Inside though it was quietly pleasant. Ferns hung from exposed pipes. Fairy lights coiled around black metal beams. Sade was crooning softly through the speakers.
At the table beside you someone was typing aggressively like the fate of the Seven Kingdoms depended on their thesis.
“I mean, when you think about it,” Kiera said, stirring her iced coffee with unnecessary elegance, “you could really use the extra cash.”
It was easy for her to say. When your father managed international investments for one of the largest dye conglomerates in Tyrosh, you didn’t wake up at 3 a.m. calculating whether you could afford groceries and next semester’s textbooks.
You were an international student on a visa that came with built in safety nets and a wardrobe of imported linen.
You loved Kiera — truly. But sometimes she floated a few inches above the ground. Or above your ground at least.
Being a scholarship student at King’s Landing University meant you did not have the luxury of floating.
“Kie,” you said carefully not wanting to offend her. You wrapped your hands around your coffee cup like it might anchor you in some way, “there is absolutely no way I can fit a part-time job into my schedule.” You deadpanned waiting for her reply.
Your planner was color-coded within an inch of its life. Filled with lectures and study blocks. Therapy appointments. Gym sessions you clung to like lifeboats. Pottery on Thursdays because molding clay was the only thing keeping you from pulling out all your hair.
You were surviving, not thriving. And surviving took precision and careful planning.
She rolled her eyes in a way that was affectionate but infuriating. “My mom always says we make time for the things we really want.”
You raised an eyebrow. “Your mom also has a private driver and three assistants.”
“That is not the point.” She leaned forward conspiratorially, pushing her streak of vibrant pastel hair behind her ear.
“It’s our last year. You’re literally a month ahead of half the class. You could find something flexible. Somewhere you can study while working.” She was absolutely relentless.
“Plus,” she added, “it would look good on your résumé.”
Kiera was the social media manager for the campus. She ran the official KLU student page which was filled with campus tours, interviews and various other content. The page had more than fifty thousand followers.
They paid her well. She thrived on engagement metrics and comment sections. She did not have to maintain a perfect GPA to keep her funding.
“For you,” you said gently, “passing is fine. For me passing is like a ticket back home. My parents would never let me hear the end of it if I got one grade less.”
Her expression softened for half a second before she masked it with a dramatic sigh. “You are so intense.”
“And you are so detached from reality.” You countered.
She grinned. “That’s why we balance each other.”
You checked the time on your phone and felt your stomach dip. Fifteen minutes until Professor Ashford’s two-hour lecture on post-Conquest political structures.
Two hours of fluorescent lighting and his droning voice dissecting the failures of the Targaryen Restoration like he personally witnessed it.
“Can we change the subject?” you pleaded. “I want to forget that I’ll soon be trapped in Ashford’s lecture of torture.”
Kiera winced. “Poor you. Ashford really is unbearable.”
Last semester he’d spent twenty minutes berating a student for citing a Dornish historian. As if bias didn’t exist in every archive from Oldtown to Braavos.
You’d considered skipping his lectures and teaching yourself. But attendance was mandatory. And you needed every attendance point.
King’s Landing University did not care about your anxiety or sleep schedule. It cared about numbers and attendances.
“So,” she said brightening, “Valarr and I are going to a concert Friday. You should come along.” She suggested, visibly looking forward to the idea.
Valarr Targaryen pre-law, perpetually grumpy looking yet somehow always kind.
He and Kiera had met at a Freshers’ Week party three years ago and started dating almost immediately. Everyone had assumed it would implode by midterms. Instead, they’d grown into the campus most beloved couple.
You shared a few seminars with him. He was sharp in debates but gentle in private conversation, the sort of person who’d never condemn you even if he wasn’t particularly fond of you.
“And third-wheel the entire evening?” you deadpanned. “Hard pass.”
She waved a hand dismissively and rolled her eyes. “It’s not like that.”
“It is exactly like that.”
She hesitated. And then, as if casually remembering something entirely insignificant added “Aerion’s coming too.”
Aerion Targaryen. Valarr’s cousin. He was a business major and campus menace.
He drove a black sports car that you’d bet all your money on was from his daddy’s pocket.
He wore designer brands like he was perpetually exiting a fashion editorial. He had that sharp, almost predatory beauty the Targaryens were infamous for—snow white hair that caught light in just the right way, violet eyes that held amusement and boredom in equal measure. He held himself as if he were superior to everyone and everything. Always gloating on about how King’s Landing would have never been built without his ancestors.
He also once tried to fight Duncan the Tall (as he was nicknamed for his extreme height), outside a club in Flea Bottom and got knocked flat on his back before security dragged the other guy away.
All bark. No bite.
Still, people gravitated toward him. There was nothing quite like pretty privilege and a deep pocket to gain an appropriate social status.
“Well,” you said evenly, “good luck with that.”
Kiera groaned, collapsing back into her chair. “I was hoping you’d come suffer with us.”
“You’re unbelievable, you really hate me so much that you’d drag me into a friday night with Aerion Targaryen?” Your lip twitched as the words left your lips.
“You could at least keep him distracted.”
You stared at her, completely unconvinced.
“Oh by the Seven,” she laughed. “Relax. I’m kidding.”
“You are not.”
She grinned, unrepentant.
“I have pottery Friday,” you said. “And I plan to spend it molding something symmetrical instead of arguing with a Targaryen about late-stage capitalism.”
She snorted. “He doesn’t argue. He monologues.”
Your nose wrinkled but you couldn’t hold back a chuckle. “Even worse.”
Rumors clung to the Targaryens like expensive perfume. They were old money of valyrian roots, it was a known fact. Political donors. A family foundation that funded half the city’s art museums and quietly influenced half its policy.
King’s Landing wasn’t medieval anymore. There were no armies and dynasties. But power still moved in bloodlines.
And you were very aware of where you stood on that map.
A scholarship student from nowhere special. Carefully balancing ambition and exhaustion.
Your phone buzzed with a calendar reminder: Ashford – 10:00 a.m.
You inhaled slowly, mentally composing yourself .
“Okay,” you sighed, standing and slipping your notebook into your bag. “I need to go pretend I care about succession disputes.”
“You do care,” Kiera’s eyes moved to you, rising too. “You just pretend you don’t.”
You paused, considering that.
Maybe she was right. Maybe you cared too much.
About grades. About stability. About not falling behind.
The city hummed beyond the café walls. Somewhere in the financial district, deals were being signed that would ripple through generations.
Somewhere in Flea Bottom, someone was counting coins for rent. Somewhere on campus, Aerion Targaryen was likely skipping class because attendance was not mandatory for people like him.
And here you were. Measuring your life in fifteen-minute increments.
“Kie,” you said suddenly, adjusting the strap on your bag, “if I did get a job… it would have to be something super quiet. Flexible. Low-stress.”
Her eyes lit up immediately. “Oh my gods, so you are considering it.”
“I said if.”
She looped her arm through yours as you both stepped out into the cool King’s Landing air. “We’ll find something perfect.”
You highly doubted that.
But as you crossed the busy street toward the humanities building, wind tugging at your coat, the thought lingered in the back of your mind like an unfinished sentence.
Would it really be that bad to drop on of your hobbies and get a job? You’d still keep yourself occupied and at least you’d be earning some extra cash.
Maybe there was a way.
Maybe you just hadn’t seen it yet.
By Sunday evening you were slouched over your laptop, hair still faintly damp from the shower, your new citrus shampoo clinging to you like something clean and hopeful.
You wore your oldest most worn university shirt, the one with the faded gold KLU crest stretched across the front and a pair of soft plaid pyjama pants that had survived three exam seasons and at least two minor breakdowns.
Your dorm room was dim except for the glow of your desk lamp and the city bleeding in through the curtains.
King’s Landing never slept. Traffic hummed along the main road beyond campus. Somewhere farther off, closer to the river, bass from a club pulsed faintly like a second heartbeat.
You had the part-time job website open. Scrolling.
There was dog sitting. Retail assistant at the mall in the Crownlands Plaz — must be available weekends. Bartender in a Flea Bottom cocktail bar—experience preferred. Private tutor for first-year economics. Receptionist. Event staff. Library aide.
Every listing felt like a test you were destined to fail.
Thirty-minute commute to the mall?That was an hour lost every day. An hour you did not have.
Three high-energy huskies? Your nervous system could barely handle your own brain at 2 a.m.
Bartending until midnight? Absolutely not. You needed sleep like other people needed oxygen.
Tutoring? What if someone asked a question you couldn’t answer and you exposed yourself as an academic fraud?
Your mind was efficient at self-sabotage. It wrapped every opportunity in caution tape.
You imagined yourself in a retail uniform, exhausted, grades slipping. You imagined coming home too tired to study, too wired to sleep. You imagined losing your scholarship. Losing the fragile scaffolding you had built your life on.
By the time you reached the bottom of the page, your dinner had gone cold.
You exhaled sharply and shut the laptop. Your brain was utterly exhausted and your eyes were watering from all the blue light.
“Not happening,” you muttered to the empty room. You decided you were just not destined for a part time job.
The idea dissolved as quickly as it had come.
—
The weekend passed gently. You read. You outlined an essay. You reorganized your notes for Ashford’s class because control over formatting felt like control over something.
You lit a candle Sunday night and convinced yourself you were recharging instead of procrastinating your future.
By Monday morning, the job hunt felt distant like something you’d thought about in a fever dream.
You met Kiera before your 11 a.m. lecture at a new bakery that had opened near campus.
It was tucked into a renovated townhouse with ivy crawling up the stone façade and gold-lettered windows that read Honey & Hearth.
Inside everything smelled like butter and sugar.
They had a little patio garden in the back wrought iron tables, pale blue cushions, climbing roses that were probably fake but convincing enough. Students filled the space, laptops open, sunglasses perched on their heads.
The atmosphere was comfortable and light.
You both ordered coffee and pastries, Kiera something elaborate and aesthetic “instagram worthy” as she’d say, you a simple croissant still warm in its paper sleeve.
“So,” you asked between bites, flakes scattering onto the small ceramic plate, “how did Friday go?”
You meant the concert. The one you had so wisely declined.
Kiera’s expression darkened immediately.
“Ugh. Don’t even ask.”
She grabbed a hair tie from her wrist and twisted her bright hair into a messy bun with the kind of careless elegance only she possessed.
“That bad?” You chuckled.
“It was absolutely horrendous,” she continued. “Aerion made a scene. As usual.”
You felt laughter bubbling in your chest before you could stop it.
“I told Valarr I am never going anywhere with Aerion ever again.”
You covered your smile with your coffee cup. “Hey, don’t look at me like that,” she snapped playfully. “You were supposed to suffer with us.”
“And third-wheel a Targaryen meltdown? I think not.”
She muttered something under her breath and you nudged her knee with yours in apology.
“Well,” you said, leaning forward slightly, “what did he do this time?”
Kiera straightened in her chair, clearly ready to relive every second.
“So you know Tanselle, right? The super tall arts major? Theater and painting?”
Your eyes widened. “Of course I know Tanselle. She’s so sweet. I saw her in that contemporary piece last semester—she was absolutely incredible.”
Tanselle was one of the rare genuinely kind people on campus. Soft-spoken. Creative. The type who genuinely remembered your name and asked about your exams. And not just because she was ‘networking’ or thought your boyfriend was hot.
“Yeah,” Kiera continued, “so we’re at the party, everything’s fine. Aerion’s flirting with some chic by the bar, and then he spots Tanselle across the room.”
She made a dramatic pause.
“And?” You waited for her to continue.
“And he practically lunges at her.”
“What?”
“I’m not exaggerating. He storms over and starts going off about her latest play. The one with the dragon dying in the final act.”
You frowned. “It was symbolic, the whole point of the play—.”
“Tell that to him. He starts ranting about how it’s disrespectful to the Targaryen name, how she’s pushing some anti-monarchy political agenda—”
You blinked. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was.”
Your disbelief curdled into irritation.
“No fucking way,” you muttered. “He cannot be serious.”
“Oh, he was deadly serious.” She took a sip of her coffee.
You imagined poor Tanselle cornered by Aerion Targaryen’s wounded ego and felt your stomach twist.
“What happened?”
“Well,” Kiera sighed, “you know Duncan? Everyone knows he fancies Tanselle, but still hasn’t scrambled together the courage to ask her out. He nearly punched Aerion. Valarr had to physically drag him back before it turned into a full-blown brawl.”
You let out a low whistle. “Seven hells.”
“It was chaos,” she admitted, though a reluctant smile tugged at her lips. “Entertaining chaos.”
“Yeah, I’ll pass on witnessing that firsthand.”
She laughed, shaking her head.
“Anyway,” she said, shifting gears, “how was pottery?”
You grimaced. “Canceled. Apparently there was a power outage at the studio.”
She groaned. “That sucks.”
“Yeah. So I just stayed in. Watched Netflix. And I… kind of browsed part-time jobs like you said, but I didn’t—”
You didn’t get to finish. Kiera froze mid-bite, eyes widening dramatically.
“Oh my gods. I completely forgot to tell you.”
You narrowed your eyes. “That’s never a good start.”
She leaned across the table, brimming with excitement. “I have literally the perfect opportunity for you.”
Your stomach dropped. “Do I want to hear this?”
“Trust me. It’s perfect.”
She lowered her voice slightly, though not enough to mask the thrill in it. “You know how Aerion has siblings?”
You stiffened.
“Yes.”
“Well. His youngest brother is, like, ten. And Valarr mentioned that his uncle is looking for someone to babysit him. Just part-time. Because he’s always busy.”
Your mind immediately conjured the image of the Targaryen family. Modern royalty of King’s Landing.
Maekar Targaryen—board member of half the city’s financial institutions. His father Daeron was practically a policy architect.
His oldest brother Baelor chaired cultural foundations and appeared on magazine covers like a statesman from another century.
Their surname carried weight.
You’d heard Maekar’s wife had died a few years ago.
The thought flickered through your mind—Aerion as a child. However insufferable he was now, grief at that age left marks.
Kiera kept talking.
“Aegon’s actually sweet. I’ve met him. He mostly plays in the backyard or video games. You’d just have to make sure he does his homework, maybe drive him to practice, make dinner. That’s it.”
She said it like it was nothing.
“You could study while you’re there,” she added eagerly. “And they’d definitely pay well.”
That part lingered. The Targaryens did not do anything cheaply.
“The only family wealthier is the Lannisters,” Kiera added casually, as if that clarified everything.
You pressed your lips together.
“Okay, but if Maekar Targaryen wants someone to look after his son, why not hire a professional nanny?”
Kiera hesitated. “He has.”
That was not reassuring.
“What do you mean he has? And, what happened?”
“And Aegon isn’t exactly fond of them. The last one quit on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”
You stared at her.
“What? What do you mean she had a nervous breakdown?”
“No, no, it’s not like that!” she rushed. “He’s not a monster. He just gets bored. Adults bore him.”
“That’s worse.”
She waved you off. “Maekar actually asked me first, but I’m too busy.”
You snorted. “Too busy getting your nails done and curating Instagram posts.”
“Exactly,” she said without shame. “So what do you think?”
You looked down at your coffee. It had gone cold.
Working for the Targaryens. The thought circled in your mind.
Spending afternoons in one of those sprawling estates you’d only seen in society magazines. Studying in marble kitchens and glass-walled living rooms. Getting paid enough to ease the constant pressure coiled in your chest.
It sounded… practical. Dangerous, but practical.
“I don’t know,” you admitted quietly. “I’m not even good with kids.”
Kiera rolled her eyes. “You’re patient. You’re organized. You overthink everything. You’ll be amazing.”
“And if I’m not?”
“Then you quit. You wouldn’t be the first.”
That shouldn’t have been comforting.You weighed it carefully.
A few weeks, you told yourself. You could try it. Save some money. If it turned into a disaster, you’d fabricate a scheduling conflict and leave.
You inhaled slowly.
“Okay,” you said, almost to yourself. “Fine. Sign me up.”
Kiera practically vibrated with excitement. “Yes!”
She immediately reached for her phone.
“I’ll send you Maekar’s contact.”
You swallowed.
Somewhere in the city, in a house much larger than yours, lived a ten-year-old Targaryen who had driven professional nannies to the brink.
And you had just volunteered to be next.
—
You had spent an absurd amount of time perfecting that email.
First draft then delete then rewrite then reword. You had lost count how many times you had redone the entire thing.
You kept it formal but not stiff. Competent but not desperate.
You attached your CV, your transcript, even a short paragraph about your experience tutoring first-years. You debated whether mentioning pottery made you sound well-rounded or just straight up unserious.
By Friday evening, you were so tired of staring at it that you hit send purely out of spite. Fuck it.
The message whooshed away into the abyss of the Targaryen inbox. The rest was in the hands of the Gods.
You were ninety-five percent certain it would vanish into administrative oblivion.
Kiera had given you Maekar Targaryen’s business email—and, helpfully, his assistant’s, “in case he’s drowning in meetings,” as she’d put it. You had addressed both.
Then you spent the entire weekend pretending you didn’t care. Or at least tried to.
You went for a run along the river, the wind sharp against your cheeks. You tried to study but read the same paragraph six times without comprehension. You even considered taking a spontaneous trip out to the Kingswood just to escape your own thoughts.
None of it had helped.
But Monday arrived regardless.
You were sitting in your usual 11 a.m. lecture, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, Professor Ashford dissecting something painfully abstract, when your phone gave a small, traitorous ping. The icon of your mail app popped up.
You told yourself not to look. You clicked on it anyway.
Your heart began to pound before you even opened it.
Inbox. One new message.
From: Maekar Targaryen.
Your fingers trembled as you clicked.
The email was brief. Efficient.
We appreciate your interest. After reviewing your application, we would like to proceed. You are hired. Please begin tomorrow from 13:00–19:00. Further details attached.
You stared at the word. Hired.
Professor Ashford’s voice faded into white noise.
You were actually hired.
You were going to be responsible for Aegon Targaryen.
You were going to enter the Targaryen household.
The thought that you were going to inevitably cross paths with Aerion Targaryen crossed your mind for the first time.
Your stomach twisted violently. You hadn’t truly processed that part before.
Tomorrow. 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. That meant shifting one seminar online. Rearranging your week. Rearranging your entire life.
What have you done?
—
You woke at 5 a.m. the next day. Not because you needed to — but because your nerves refused to let you sleep.
You stood in front of your closet like it was a battlefield.
What does one wear to babysit a Targaryen child?
You discarded outfits onto your bed one by one. Too casual. Too academic. Too try-hard. Too plain. You did not want to look like you were playing dress-up in someone else’s world.
In the end, you chose light wash jeans and a soft V-neck sweater. Clean. Neutral. Competent.
You brushed your hair twice, put on some natural makeup and applied your favorite lipgloss.
You looked friendly, not too try hard, not too trying to fit into the Targaryen picture thing.
After your morning lecture, you boarded the bus heading toward the Red Keep district, it was the most polished slice of King’s Landing.
Skyscrapers gave way to manicured hedges and wide, tree-lined streets. Cars here gleamed. Pavement here shone.
The air itself felt more expensive.
The Targaryen residence was impossible to miss.
Red brick, but not in the harsh way rather deep, smooth, almost velvety.
A sweeping driveway. Iron gates etched with a three-headed dragon sigil so subtle it was almost understated.
Your eyes widened as you approached.
A guard stopped you at the gate. You showed your ID, your email confirmation. He nodded and escorted you through like you were entering a consulate.
If the exterior was imposing, the interior was something else entirely.
Mahogany wood so polished it reflected light like water. Intricate carvings along the banisters. Portraits lining the walls—ancestors, no doubt. You noted a portrait of Aegon the First “Conqueror” his nickname was.
The entire house breathed legacy. Old money forged in fire and blood, translated into marble countertops and designer lighting.
It was silent. Oppressively so. Not a soul anywhere.
You stood in the foyer, unsure whether to move, when footsteps echoed against the polished floor.
“Ah. You must be Aegon’s new governess.” An unfamiliar voice startled you.
The man approaching you was older, grey-haired, dressed impeccably in a white button-up and pressed slacks. His accent was faintly foreign—Lysene, perhaps but you couldn’t be sure.
“I am Maellon,” he said, extending his hand. “Aegon’s tutor. I’ve served this family for over twenty years.”
Governess. That was certainly a way to put it.
You straightened instinctively. “Yes. That would be me.”
He studied you for a fraction too long as if assessing if you really were the right person and not some fraud.
“We have concluded lessons for the day. Aegon is in his room.”
There was something in his expression—hesitation. As if he wanted to warn you.
“Well,” he continued, already stepping backward toward the door, “I am sure Lord Targaryen has left you instructions.”
He had not. No one had done such a thing.
You opened your mouth to clarify, but Maellon was already moving.
“I wish you luck, young lady.”
His lips curved faintly. Not unkindly. Almost… sympathetically.
And then he was gone.
The front door clicked shut behind him and the silence was almost loud at this point.
You slipped off your shoes and ventured deeper into the house, heart thudding.
The corridor stretched endlessly. Doors lined both sides, most closed. The place felt less like a home and more like a museum where you were not meant to touch anything.
You turned left—Maellon had come from that direction.
What if Aegon had escaped? What if he had run off just to spite you?
What if you have failed within the first ten minutes?
Your thoughts spiraled until you heard something behind one of the closed doors.
A faint noise. Electronic and rhythmic.
You followed it to a door at the end of the hallway.
You rapped your knuckle twice on the wood.
The noise stopped instantly. There was no reply.
You tried the handle. Unlocked.
You pushed the door open slowly.
The room was large but lived-in—bookshelves, a sleek desk, a gaming console hooked to a massive screen. There were some posters on the walls, albeit all framed.
It was ridiculously clean for the room of a ten year old child.
In the center of it all stood a boy with pale blond hair almost identical to his brother’s.
He stared at you like you had broken into his home. And in some abstract way perhaps you had.
His gaze was sharp and calculating.
“Hello,” you offered gently. “You must be Aegon.”
He didn’t answer immediately. He was clearly assessing you.
You felt it physically—the way his eyes scanned your clothes, your posture, your expression.
“Hello,” he said at last. His voice was calm. Controlled.
“Are you my new nanny?”
The word felt like a test.
“Yes,” you replied, keeping your voice even. Children could smell insincerity the way dogs sensed fear.
He didn’t move from the center of the room.
“What’s your name?”
You introduced yourself.
He repeated your name slowly, tasting it, like he was testing whether it suited you. Then he raised a single pale eyebrow.
How could a ten-year-old make you feel like you were being evaluated for a corporate position?
“And what do you study?”
There it was again—that unsettling composure. The judgemental tone.
He stood like a miniature executive conducting an interview.
“I go to KLU,” you said, naming your major.
His eyes sharpened. “You must know Aerion then.”
Your stomach tightened. You had no idea what the internal politics of this family looked like.
“Yes, he’s—”
“An asshole,” Aegon finished flatly, spinning back toward his console.
A laugh escaped you before you could stop it.
“Well,” you muttered under your breath, “at least we agree on that.”
He didn’t hear you—or pretended not to. Either way you were glad he chose not to respond.
The PlayStation hummed back to life.
You cleared your throat. “So. Maester Maellon mentioned you had homework.”
He didn’t even look at you.
“I finished it.”
You glanced at the pristine notebook and textbook sitting untouched on the massive desk across the room.
“I don’t think so.”
He swiveled in his chair slowly, eyes narrowing. “You don’t believe me.”
“I can see your notebook from here, Aegon.”
He scoffed. “I don’t need that.”
You inhaled. So this is how it’s going to be.
You walked calmly to the console and reached for the plug.
“What—hey!” He jumped up. “You can’t do that!”
“Oh yes, I can.” You unplugged it smoothly. “No games until homework is done.”
“You’re such a shrew!” he snapped, face flushing. “I hate you. You’re horrible.”
The words were sharp, but hollow. You could tell he didn’t fully understand the weight of them.
“Oh, I bet,” you replied coolly. “And you’re a spoiled little punk.”
His eyes widened slightly at your boldness.
“You know,” you continued casually, “I have a niece. She does all her homework without arguing. Smartest little girl in all the Seven Kingdoms.”
You absolutely did not have a niece.
He stared at you clearly eating it all up.
“I bet,” he muttered darkly. “My father is going to fire you anyway.”
“Maybe,” you shrugged. “But before that happens, I’ll make sure to tell my niece how lazy Aegon Targaryen is.”
Silence fell between you. He was calculating.
You could almost see the gears turning behind his pale eyes.
“If I do my homework…” he said slowly after a minute, “…will you let me play my PC?”
There it was. Regulation and negotiation.
“Yes. Of course.” You promised him.
He moved to his desk—an enormous slab of polished wood that was, frankly, bigger than your entire dorm table—and grabbed a pencil.
“If you need help—”
“I don’t.”
You folded your arms. “Alright. But I’ll still check it.”
He shot you a look and began scribbling.
You sat quietly, scrolling idly on your phone but watching him from the corner of your eye. He worked quickly. Focused. No dramatics now. At least he was efficient.
After a while he pushed back his chair.
“Done.”
He stood, posture stiff. “Can I please play now?”
Mannered — you noted.
“Let me check.”
“Do you think I’m stupid, miss?”
“I don’t think you’re stupid,” you replied gently. “I think you’re a student.”
“You’re a student too.” Oh he was quick witted.
“Yes. But I’ve been studying for ten years. You’ve been writing for, what, two?”
“Four,” he corrected immediately. “Since I was six.” There was pride in his tone.
You nodded solemnly. “Impressive.”
You flipped through the pages. Most of it was correct. A few spelling errors. You handed the notebook back.
“Erase those. Rewrite them properly.”
He groaned dramatically but complied. After a few more minutes, you nodded.
“Good job. Now you can play.”
You plugged the console back in. He sat cross-legged on the floor, controller in hand.
“Egg,” he said suddenly.
You blinked. “What?”
“Everyone calls me Egg.”
You softened slightly. “Alright, Egg.”
He seemed satisfied with that.
“Would you like a snack?” you asked.
He stared at you like you’d asked if the Dothraki lived in Westeros.
“Um. Sure.”
“Anything particular?”
“Peanut butter.” Simple.
“Alright,” you said. “Peanut butter and apples.”
—
You stepped back into the hallway and exhaled. Round one: successfully survived.
Now you just had to find the kitchen in this architectural labyrinth.
You walked left. Then right. Opened a door—linen closet. Another, this one was some kind of sitting room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a manicured garden.
Everything gleamed. Everything felt too expensive to even breathe on.
The kitchen had to be somewhere obvious.
You finally found it after passing what looked like three separate dining rooms.
And it was… absurd, like everything else in this house. Well more manor than house.
Marble countertops the size of small islands. Two refrigerators. A pantry larger than your dorm bathroom. Copper pots hanging from a rack like decorative trophies.
You stood in the center of it, momentarily overwhelmed.
Apple and peanut butter. How hard could that be? You weren’t going to let some snob kitchen better you.
You opened the first fridge.
Sparkling water. Imported cheeses. Pre-cut fruit arranged like artwork. No whole apples in sight.
Second fridge. Still no sign of apples.
A thought popped into your head. Produce drawer.
You tugged it open.
Rows of perfectly polished apples, red and green, organized by variety.
Of course they were, riche people were like that.
You grabbed two, then turned to the cabinets.
Which one held peanut butter?
You opened one. Plates.
Another. Glassware.
Another. Some kind of artisanal grain collection.
You muttered under your breath.
“Why does anyone need this many compartments?”
You opened a sleek drawer. Cutlery. Another—spices arranged alphabetically.
You crouched to check the lower cabinets. Nothing but baking trays and mixers that probably cost more than your tuition.
Finally—finally—you opened a tall pantry door tucked beside the double ovens.
Rows of labeled containers.
And there was your peanut butter.
Three different kinds. Organic. Almond. Regular.
You grabbed the regular jar like it was a prize you’d won in battle.
You found a knife after another brief scavenger hunt, sliced the apples carefully on a marble board that probably had its own insurance policy, and arranged everything on a small plate.
You paused. This was ridiculous.
You were scrambling through a palace kitchen to make a snack for a ten-year-old who had just called you a shrew.
And yet — you felt oddly triumphant.
Balancing the plate carefully, you made your way back through the maze of hallways, half-worried you’d get lost and starve before reaching his room.
You knocked lightly before entering. Egg looked up from the floor.
You held up the plate like an offering.
“Apple slices,” you said. “With peanut butter.”
For a moment, he just stared at it. Then at you. Assessing the gesture.
Round two, apparently, was about to begin.
Aegon—Egg—balanced the controller against his knees while grabbing the apple bites off the plate.
You sat cross-legged on the rug a few feet away, answering emails on your phone and trying not to look completely out of your depth.
The television glowed against the pale walls of his room.
Onscreen, animated karts sped around a brightly colored track.
He paused the game abruptly and looked over at you.
“Do you want to play?”
He held out the second controller like a challenge.
You hesitated for half a second.
“Sure.”
You had never owned a PlayStation. Growing up, consoles were luxuries reserved for well off families—the kind with extra money after bills were paid. Regardless you accepted the controller as if you’d been doing this your whole life.
He unpaused the game. Mario Kart.
Bright music, and tiny characters. Pure absolute chaos.
You pressed buttons at random, pretending you knew what they did.
“So,” he began casually, steering his character with unnerving precision. He clearly played a lot. “do you have a boyfriend?”
You barked out a laugh, nearly driving your kart off the edge of the track.
“Straight to the point, aren’t you?”
He shrugged. “It’s a yes or no question.”
“No. I don’t.”
He hummed, swerving past you effortlessly.
“Most nannies do.”
“Do they?”
“They talk about them a lot. Like I care.”he rolled his eyes.
You grinned despite yourself as your character spun out after hitting a banana.
“One of them wanted to know exactly what time I used the toilet every day,” he continued. “She tried to make a schedule.”
“Seven hells,” you muttered, mashing buttons uselessly.
“I won’t ask you to schedule your bathroom habits,” you assured him.
“Good.”
He threw a blue shell that obliterated your already tragic position.
“You’re terrible at this,” he observed.
“Thank you.” Your lips quirked up in a mock smile.
“Do you want me to teach you?”
You narrowed your eyes. “Are you going to be condescending about it?”
He considered. “Maybe a little.”
You nudged him with your elbow. “Go ahead.”
For the next twenty minutes, he instructed you with surprising patience.
His little fingers pointing to each and every button and explaining exactly what it was used for.
“No, not that button. That’s drift. See? Like that.”
You followed his guidance, slowly improving. When you finally managed to knock him off first place with a perfectly timed item, he stared at you.
“You did that on purpose!” He groaned.
“I did.” You grinned triumphantly.
“Okay,” he said reluctantly. “You’re not hopeless.”
High praise from Egg Targaryen.
As you played, the house remained eerily silent.
No footsteps. No voices. No distant clatter from a kitchen.
“Is it always this quiet?” you asked.
“Yes,” he replied simply, eyes still on the screen.
“Sometimes Daella and Rhae are here,” he added. “Then it’s loud. They blast Taylor Swift and usually bring friends. Father hates strangers in the house.”
There was something in his tone when he said father. Not fear. Not exactly resentment. Just… distance.
“And Aerion?” you asked carefully.
He snorted. “He’s around sometimes, unfortunately.”
“And Daeron?”
Egg’s fingers tightened briefly on the controller.
“He doesn’t live here much.”
You nodded. You’d heard the rumors—Daeron Targaryen had dropped out of university a few years ago. There were whispers about him having a serious drinking problem and going to rehab.
“And Aemon’s abroad,” Egg continued matter-of-factly. “In Oldtown.”
He listed his siblings like items on a shelf. A full house that somehow felt empty.
“I’m bored,” he declared suddenly, dropping the controller.
“You’ve been playing for an hour.”
“I’m still bored.”
You laughed. “Alright, what do you suggest?”
“Outside.” He shot up and ran out the door.
—
The garden behind the house was enormous. Like everything else in this house.
Not just a yard—an estate. Perfectly trimmed hedges. A wide stretch of grass. Stone pathways weaving between flower beds. A pond stood at one edge. There was a small practice goal set up at the other.
You blinked against the sudden brightness.
Egg grabbed a football from near the patio doors.
“Can you play?”
“Define ‘play.’”
He rolled his eyes. “Kick the ball.”
“Yes, I can kick the ball.”
He placed it at his feet and passed it toward you with surprising force. You barely managed to trap it.
“Okay,” he said, stepping back. “Let’s see how athletic you are.”
“You’re testing me again, aren’t you?”
He grinned. “No.”
You kicked the ball back, a little too hard. It veered off to the side.
He chased after it, laughing.
“You’re terrible!”
“You’re ten! It doesn’t count!”
“And I’m better than you!”
“Oh, it’s on now.”
For the next several minutes, you ran across the lawn, passing the ball back and forth. You tripped once on uneven grass and nearly took him down with you. He darted around you like a fox, quick and agile.
“You’re slow!” he shouted.
“I have adult knees!” you shot back.
At one point he attempted to nutmeg you, clearly very pleased with himself when it worked.
“Ha! Did you see that?”
“I did. Unfortunately.”
He burst into genuine laughter—the kind that crinkled his eyes and made him look exactly his age.
Not sharp. Not calculating. Just a boy.
After football devolved into chaos, he dragged you toward a small wooden structure near the hedge.
“Obstacle course,” he announced.
“You built this?”
“Mostly.” He was obviously very proud of it.
It consisted of cones, a low bench, and a rope strung between two poles.
“You have to follow my instructions,” he said. “No questions.” Suspicious.
“Fine.”
“Run to the bench, jump over it, crawl under the rope, then spin five times and sprint back.”
“You’re trying to make me dizzy.”
“No.” He giggled again.
You stared at him.
He crossed his arms. “Afraid?”
Absolutely not.
You took off running.
You vaulted the bench (gracelessly), ducked under the rope, then spun in circles until the world tilted sideways. By the time you tried to sprint back, you nearly collided with a hedge.
Egg was laughing so hard he could barely stand.
“You’re evil,” you gasped, clutching your side.
“My turn,” he declared proudly.
You gave him equally ridiculous instructions—hop on one foot, recite the kingdoms of Westeros backward, then cartwheel (he attempted it, failed spectacularly, and blamed the grass).
Soon you were both breathless.
He flopped onto the lawn, staring up at the sky.
You hesitated before lying down a few feet away, grass cool against your sweater.
For a moment, there was no testing. No power struggle. Just shared laughter fading into comfortable silence.
He picked at a blade of grass.
He glanced at you sideways, as if trying to decide if he should say something or not.
“Most of them leave,” he said quietly.
The breeze stirred the hedges. You knew what— who he was referring to, his nannies.
You remembered this boy had lost his mother when he was very young. He probably didn’t remember her at all.
Your heart squeezed at the thought.
You didn’t promise anything. Promises felt too fragile in a house like this.
“Well,” you said lightly instead, “I haven’t left yet.”
He rolled onto his side, studying you again—but this time, there was less suspicion in it.
“Okay,” he said.
Not a challenge. Not a threat.Just… okay.
And for the first time since you’d walked through those red-brick gates, the vast Targaryen estate didn’t feel quite so intimidating.
It felt almost alive.
—
After tumbling around in the grass and laughing so hard your ribs hurt, the sun began its slow descent behind the tall hedges, staining the sky in streaks of amber and rose. You brushed stray blades of grass from your jeans as you both went back inside, breathless and giddy.
“Alright,” you said, clapping your hands together once as if you had everything under control, “I should probably make some dinner. Any preferences?”
The vast kitchen was now glowing beneath the chandelier, all polished marble and intimidating silence.
“Ummm…” Aegon tilted his head standing in front of the fridge. He was serious as if negotiating a state treaty. “I’d like some mac and cheese—” He paused dramatically. “No wait! Chicken nuggets!”
You hesitated. You weren’t entirely sure how pleased Maekar Targaryen would be if he came home to find his son being fed processed poultry in porcelain surroundings that screamed Michelin-starred dinner party. But surely nuggets were better than starvation.
“Alright,” you nodded. “I can do that.”
“Thanks! I’ll go shower and change until then,” he declared, already halfway out of the room.
“Okay…” you called after him, faintly relieved he was at least behaving like a normal ten-year-old.
You opened the freezer—of course it was filled with organic, gluten-free, ethically-raised chicken nuggets. Even their junk food had pedigree. You found pre-cut potatoes and sighed.
“Of course,” you muttered.
The air fryer seemed like the safer option. Wrong choice.
Fifteen minutes later you were still jabbing at the touchscreen settings like it had personally offended you. Meanwhile, you failed to notice one crucial detail: there had been absolutely no sound of running water upstairs.
Eventually, by some divine intervention, the nuggets were done. You placed them carefully onto an ornate porcelain plate that had absolutely no business holding chicken nuggets.
You had just reached for cutlery when the front door opened.
You heard heavy footsteps.
Measured but purposeful.
You froze with the plate of dino shaped nuggets in your hands.
A man entered the kitchen—tall, broad-shouldered, silver-white hair trimmed neatly, beard impeccably groomed.
His suit jacket hung over one arm; his shirt sleeves were rolled just slightly. His expression was carved from stone, a permanent scowl between his brows. He looked terribly handsome in spite of it.
“Who the fuck are you,” he all but snarled at you, “and what the fuck are you doing in my house?”
You nearly dropped the plate.
“I—”
“If you’re another of Aerion’s girlfriends or worse Daeron’s, I suggest you pack up and leave right now.”
“I apologize, sir,” you stammered, heat flooding your face. How do you even break this to him?“You… hired me.”
He stared at you like you’d just claimed you were his long lost daughter.
“And when the fuck did I do that?”
You quickly explained about the email. About Kiera and the babysitting she had mentioned.
His eyebrow arched skeptically. You concluded it was his assistant who had hired you and sent that email.
“Well,” he said stiffly shifting his weight to stand at his full height, “Aegon has been in need of a new babysitter. After the last one had a nervous breakdown.”
“So I’ve heard—”
And then Aegon appeared. Your heart stopped and you nearly choked on your own spit.
His head was completely shaved. Not trimmed, not buzzed. Shaved.
Gone were the soft silver locks. In their place—smooth, pale scalp. He looked exactly like his nickname. He looked like an egg.
Maekar slowly turned toward him.
“Seven bloody hells!” His voice thundered as his eyes fell upon the boy. “What the fuck is this now?”
You felt tears prick at your eyes. This was it. You were done. You were witnessing your unemployment in realtime.
Before Maekar could explode further, the front door opened again. Laughter echoed in.
“Ooooh, I hear there’s a fine new boy from Dorne—” a girls voice trailed off as she entered the kitchen.
They were both dressed in impeccable plaid skirts and white tights.
Daella and Rhae took one look at Aegon and burst into hysterics.
“You look like a skinhead!” Daella wheezed through laughter.
“Enough!” Maekar snapped at all of them.
They quieted, barely.
“Is this why I hired you?” he roared at you. “To let my son make a freak of himself?”
“I—” you didn’t even know what to say. You thought Aegon liked you. Clearly you were wrong.
“Father.”
Another unfamiliar voice, yet this one was calm, if slightly amused.
Behind the girls stood what you could only assume was Daeron Targaryen.
His hair wasn’t silver pale like the rest of his family’s. It was dirty blonde pulled back into a ponytail.
His expression was amused, hands casually in his pockets.
“I told Aegon to shave his head.”
Maekar looked like he was about to have a stroke. Before his rage could be unleashed any further he sighed.
“I cannot deal with this right now,” he muttered darkly. “I’ll speak to you two later.”
He turned to you.
“And you. Get out of my house.”
Then he disappeared upstairs.
Were you fired? Probably. You looked at the giggling girls. Definitely.
You did not even want to look at Aegon.
The girls grabbed him immediately.
“Come on!” Daella chirped. “We have to post this on Instagram!”
“And TikTok! And Snapchat!” Rhae added gleefully.
They vanished in a flurry of giggles.
You stood there, clutching your dignity by a thread.
Daeron stepped closer, hands still casually in his pockets.
“Rough day,” he said mildly. “Welcome to the Targaryen household.”
“Welcome?” you muttered. “More like goodbye.”
“Oh, don’t be so grim.” He chuckled. “My father is always like that.”
“Well I’m fairly certain your father just fired me.”
“If he wanted you fired,” Daeron said thoughtfully, “you wouldn’t still be standing here.”
“That’s… oddly reassuring.”
You placed the plate down at last.
“Thanks for covering for me.”
“Oh.” He blinked. “It wasn’t a lie.”
Your stomach dropped. “What?”
“I told him to shave it. He said he hated being a Targaryen. I said maybe losing the hair would make him feel less like one.”
You stared at him. That was not a sentence you wanted to unpack. You were not in the mood to play family therapist. Because clearly this household seriously needed one.
You just hummed at his words. “Well..” Daeron said slightly awkward. “I’ll clean this up if you want to..” he glanced at the door. “Don’t get me wrong it’s not that I want you out of the house,” he quickly corrected himself. “It’s just — well— you saw my father.” He stated.
“Yeah… I think it’s better if I go.” You agreed.
—
By the time you stepped outside, the sky was fully indigo. The garden where you’d been laughing an hour earlier felt distant now, surreal.
Aegon ran out just before you reached the gate.
“Hey!” You turned albeit everything in you was screaming not to. You were still cross with him, even if he didn’t shave his head to spite you.
He stood there—bald, sheepish, and suddenly very small again.
“Are you… coming back?” he asked.
You hesitated, something in you softeningZ
“I don’t know,” you admitted honestly.
He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Sorry about the head thing.”
“You could’ve warned me,” you sighed.
A tiny grin tugged at his lips. “It was kind of funny.”
You tried not to smile.
“It was a little funny.”
He brightened.
“Thanks for not treating me like I’m five.”
“That’s because you’re not.”
He seemed to hold onto that.
“Well,” he said awkwardly, “if you don’t come back, I’ll probably get someone who schedules my bathroom breaks again.”
You snorted.
“I’ll… see what happens.”
He nodded once.
“Bye.”
“Bye, Aegon.”
You walked down the long driveway feeling like you’d just survived a medieval trial by fire.
—
When you finally got home, you collapsed onto your bed fully clothed. Then you grabbed your phone.
You:
I am going to strangle you.
Three dots appeared immediately.
Kiera:
?????
You:
You sent me into a HOUSE of silver-haired psychos.
Kiera:
HAHAHAHAHA did you meet the dad???
You:
He told me to get out of his house while I was holding chicken nuggets on fine china.
Kiera:
STOP 😭😭
You:
Aegon SHAVED HIS HEAD. He’s an egg. Literally.
There was a full thirty seconds of typing.
Kiera:
I’M SORRY WHAT
You:
Bald. Completely bald. In front of his terrifying father. I almost died.
Kiera:
…
But are you fired???
You stared at the ceiling.
You weren’t sure.
You thought about Aegon asking if you were coming back. About how he laughed in the grass. About how the house felt quiet in a way that wasn’t normal.
You:
I don’t think so. But if I go back and get publicly humiliated again I’m haunting you.
Kiera:
Worth it. This is elite content.
She was so unserious. You groaned and tossed your phone aside.
You were going to strangle her.
But as you lay there replaying the day—the laughter, the chaos, the shaved head, the absurdity of it all—you found yourself smiling despite everything.
It had been a disaster.
A ridiculous, overwhelming, unhinged disaster.
And somehow… you had a feeling you’d be going back.
©padmespetal 2026 : I DO NOT APPROVE OF MY WORKS TO BE TRANSLATED OR COPIED ANYWHERE WITHOUT PERMISSION
─── ✷ PRETTY WHEN YOU CRY. valarr targaryen
synopsis . you saw the future. You saw that spring would be the last for the young heir prince, Valarr. On the day they buried the Breakspear, you convinced him to trade his crown for a life with you. words. 13k
contents. +16 (MDNI) ⋆ seer! reader ⋆ mourning ⋆ grief ⋆ fluff ⋆ healing ⋆ fate vs free will ⋆ fake marriage ⋆ emotional hurt/comfort ⋆ gentle sex ⋆ aftercare ⋆ alcohol comsumption ⋆ grief has already taken his father, don't let it take his soul. ⋆ masterlist ⋆ akotsk taglist⠀ಣ notes. ever since I saw my boy at his father’s funeral, I felt compelled to comfort him... but I am doomed to love melancholic characters with tragic endings, never meant to actually have them.
The evening in King's Landing was heavy with grief.
The sky hung grey and low over the Great Sept of Baelor, as if the gods themselves had bowed their heads for the death of Baelor Targaryen, the Breakspear. The air smelled of tallow candles, incense, wilted flowers, and the red wine that spilled from the nobles' full cups like blood shed in vain.
You were no noble, no.
Your dress was the kind of faded white belonging to one who washed her clothes in the river and relied on the sun to dry them. The fabric was simple, but it clothed your body as you liked, marking the curve of your breasts and the slenderness of your hips. Your feet were bare, dirtied from the road, and in your hair you had braided a few wildflowers.
In your hand, a cup of wine.
You did not know the name of the man who had served you, nor did you care. You drank slowly, not out of elegance, but because you wanted to taste the farewell on your tongue. The liquid was strong, bitter, burning your throat, as if it were only right that it should hurt. You wanted the last thing you kept of Baelor not to be the smell of death, but the warmth of the wine going down your throat, warm like the smile he had given you the last time you saw him.
You stood there for a few moments, before the body of him who had been the only good man you had ever known.
"Who are you?"
The voice came from behind, deep, suspicious. You turned slowly, balancing the cup with the same skill with which you balanced yourself after a few cups too many.
It was Prince Maekar.
You recognised him by his hard features, by the look that seemed to want to pierce through you, and by the guilt that followed a step behind. He watched you as if you were a mistake, so you inclined your head in a gesture that was not quite a bow.
"Someone who also came to say farewell."
Maekar frowned.
"That is no answer."
"It is the only one I have."
You took a sip of wine, feeling the prince's gaze weigh upon you like a stone. He was not a bad man — so they said — but he was a tired man. And tired men rarely have patience for riddles.
"My brother was buried today," he said, his voice breaking for an instant. "I am in no humour to deal with the likes of you."
You lowered your cup, finally, and looked at him with an honesty that disarmed him.
"Nor am I, my prince. I came from very far to be here. In truth, leaving Flea Bottom without being killed is near enough a miracle."
The name made Maekar raise an eyebrow.
"Flea Bottom?"
"Some years ago, your brother found me in an alley, about to be sold as a slave by merchants who had taken me by force. He did not have to do anything, but he did. He paid for me. Gave me food, a roof, a purpose. Said I deserved more than that. And he deserved more than this."
Your voice trembled now, but you held firm.
"He was the only good man to cross my path in my whole life. The only one who looked at me as if I were a person. So yes, Prince Maekar," you raised your cup, in a silent toast to the air, "I came to say farewell. And there is no force in the world that could have kept me from being here today."
Maekar was silent for a long time. The cold evening wind stirred the flowers in your hair, and when he spoke, his voice came out lower.
"He never told me."
"He did not need anyone to know to do good."
The prince looked away, and you saw, for an instant, the pain he tried to hide behind the armour of a serious man.
"Stay until the end, if you wish," he said, finally. "And then... well, then you decide what to do."
He walked away without waiting for an answer.
You stayed until the end.
The funeral dragged on for hours. Hymns were sung, incense was burned, tears were shed that were not always true. You stayed at the back, leaning against a cold stone column, watching. You did not approach the royal family, did not try to speak to anyone. You merely stayed.
When the last septon fell silent, when the last nobles withdrew to their warmed chambers, when the torches began to crackle lower, you were still there.
The stone floor of the Sept was icy beneath your bare feet, but you no longer felt it. You looked to the place where Baelor's body had lain, and the tears you had held back all day finally came.
"Why did you have to go there?" you whispered, your voice thick. "Why did it have to be you?"
You wiped your face with the back of your hand, sniffling softly. You needed to leave. You needed air.
That was when you saw him.
Outside the Sept, in a secluded corner of the garden, someone sat upon a large stone, covered by the black cloak of House Targaryen. The hood was down, and the dim light of day's end illuminated dark hair — very dark — with a streak of white falling at the side. His eyes were red from weeping, and you did not fail to notice that one was blue and the other, brown.
Valarr.
Baelor's son… the one he had spoken of so often, asking what you saw about the young prince. You had never imagined the meeting would be like this; you had never even imagined you would one day leave Flea Bottom for the sept.
But something inside you — that strange thing that always pulled you where you should not go — made your feet move towards him.
You stumbled a little on the way. The wine still had its effect, and the damp earth of the garden did not help, but you went on, with the flowers in your hair, the white dress staining at the hem, until you stopped beside him.
Valarr lifted his face.
For a moment, he merely looked at you. The mismatched eyes travelled over your face, your dress, the flowers in your hair, your bare feet. There was sadness in them, yes, but also something akin to wonder. As if you were a vision, a strange dream his weariness was conjuring.
"Go away," he said, his voice hoarse.
You tilted your head, a small smile forming at the corner of your mouth.
"No."
He frowned.
"No?"
"No. I would not miss the chance to see someone as prettu as you crying."
The comment caught him off guard. He blinked, and for an instant, the sadness gave way to something confused, almost irritated.
"What are you talking about?"
"You, of course," you said, shrugging, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Today would have been a horrible day if I had not seen you."
Valarr stared at you for a long second. Then, he let out a snort, a sound that could have been laughter or disbelief, you could not tell.
"You are drunk."
"A little, but that does not mean I am wrong."
He looked away, his shoulders tense beneath the cloak.
"You know nothing about me."
"I know more than you think."
You sat on the ground beside his stone, without ceremony, pulling at your dress to keep it from getting dirtier than it already was. You raised the cup — still with a bit of wine — towards him.
"Want some?"
He looked at the cup, then at you.
"Do you always offer wine to princes?"
"Only to those who look like they need a swallow."
This time, he almost smiled. Almost.
Valarr held the cup for a moment, as if it weighed more in his hands than it should. Then, he brought it to his lips and took a long drink. The wine was cheap, of the sort served to the common folk, but he did not seem to mind.
"You were inside," he said, more statement than question. "I saw you. At the back, near the column."
You raised an eyebrow.
"I thought I would go unnoticed. But I was wearing white in a place where everyone dressed in black."
"And I am not blind."
He handed the cup back. His fingers brushed yours for an instant, and you felt a strange warmth where the skin touched, like a spark that dies before you can name it.
"Why did you stay?" he asked. "No nobles stayed until the end, only family… and you."
"I am no noble."
"That I saw."
He did not say it as an insult. He merely stated it, with a disarming honesty.
You shrugged, drawing your knees up towards your chest, hugging your legs.
"He was good to me. That is not paid for with half an hour of mourning. It is paid for by staying until the last moment, even if he does not know. Even if no one sees."
Valarr was silent for a long time. When he spoke, his voice came out lower.
"He was like that. Good. People speak of the prince, the heir, the knight… but no one speaks of that. Of how he was simply good."
"You know," you said. It was not a question.
He looked at you.
"He was my father."
"And you loved him."
"Yes."
The word came out simple, bare, without defences. And in that moment, seeing the way he gripped his cloak tightly, how his chin trembled slightly even as he tried to hide it, you felt something tighten inside you.
"He spoke of you," you said, softly.
Valarr lifted his face.
"He always spoke of me."
"It would be strange if he did not…" you took a sip of wine, moving your hands in gestures. "He said you were too seriou, unlike me, that you lived with your head in books, always learning to be the best, and that you had a good heart. He said that one day I should meet you."
Valarr nodded, absorbing this.
"And why is that?"
"I am not like the noble girls you must have known; I would hate to dress like them too," you said, plucking a flower from beside the stone he sat on and tucking it into his cloak. "But Baelor thought you might trust me more because of it. More than you trusted him."
"Did you see him often? Were you his lover? Half-sister?"
"No! No!… seven hells, Valarr, no!" you scolded him, startling him as if he had asked the most absurd questions. And he had. "I did not see your father as often as I would have liked, but whenever he passed through the city, he found a way to seek me out. He brought food, coins, asked if I was well. He said I reminded him of a sister he never had."
Your voice faltered on the last word. You looked away, blinking rapidly to hold back the tears that threatened to return.
Valarr said nothing, but you felt the movement before you saw his hand reaching out, hesitant, hovering in the air for a moment before landing lightly upon yours.
The touch was timid, almost a request for permission. As if he did not know if he could, if he should, if it was right.
You turned your hand, interlacing your fingers with his.
"What is your name?" he asked, after a long silence.
"No one has asked me that for a long time."
"I am asking."
You smiled, a small, sad smile.
"You may call me whatever you like. Names do not matter much to me."
He frowned, but did not insist.
"Very well. Then… what did you do? Besides receiving visits from my father?"
"Many things, Prince Valarr. I helped the children not go hungry, tended to the sick with herbs I gathered in the fields. Sometimes, when someone was desperate enough, I would look into their future and tell them what I saw."
Valarr looked at you with an expression you could not decipher.
"You have dreams? Like Daeron?"
"No, not dreams. I see things. Pieces. It is not something I control; it happens when I least expect it."
He was silent for a moment. Then, he let out a short, humourless laugh.
"If you could see the future, why did you not warn my father not to go to that damned trial by seven?"
The question hurt more than you expected.
"I did warn him, my prince," you drank again from the wine, trying to hide the thickness in your voice. "I did the best I could, but I cannot control a dragon."
Valarr froze.
"I warned him two years ago, and then again before you all left for Ashford. I faced the royal guards and shouted his name until he came. And when he did, I told him that if he went through with what was right, he would not come home. Not the same way he left."
You felt the knot in your throat tighten.
"I remember how Prince Baelor looked at me, and placed his hand on my shoulder, and said: 'Sometimes, doing what is right costs more than we are willing to pay, but it is still right.' Then he called the guards and had them take me away. He told me not to worry, that everything would be well."
Tears streamed down your face as you smiled in disbelief. Disbelief that you had thought a prince would listen to you; disbelief that you had thought you could change fate.
"Your father knew he was going to die, Valarr. He chose to fight."
The young prince did not move. His hand squeezed yours more tightly, as if you were a support, an anchor in a sea that threatened to sweep him away.
"Why would he do that?" his voice came out rough. "Why would he walk towards death knowing it awaited him?"
"Because he was a good man. Because he thought he could cheat the gods in the trial by seven, where no guard could stand against him. But the gods punish cheats. In their sight, that was not fair."
You wiped your face with your free hand, sniffing.
"And because he knew that if he did not go, another would have to. And he did not want anyone to die in his place. Truth be told, he thought there was no chance he would die. But I warned him."
You were silent again, and perhaps that was for the best. Telling Valarr the truth, knowing the gods would punish him for his fury, or that his own family might change him.
Then, he looked at you, admiring each line of your face, pondering for a moment.
"Did you see my death?"
The question came so low you almost did not hear it. There was fear there, in his eyes, but also a strange courage, like one who would rather know the worst than live in doubt.
"I saw it."
He swallowed hard.
"How?"
"Sickness. You and the king. I do not know what causes it, I do not know when, but I saw flowers… spring. I saw the two of you ill, weak, and Matarys too, then… nothing."
Valarr was silent for a long time. His hand still held yours, but now his fingers trembled slightly.
"How long?" he asked finally. "How long until it happens?"
"I do not know. Visions do not come with dates. But it will be during spring. It could be this one, or the next. It would be hard to know."
He released your hand suddenly, rising in a swift movement. He began to pace back and forth, his steps nervous on the damp earth.
"You must be one of those Pentoshi witches, come to curse my family. I cannot stay here listening to this. You are drunk, I am in mourning, none of this makes sense."
"I am flattered to be called a witch. You are not the first. However, I am quite sure I am not one," you said, clearly. "You should trust me, my prince."
He stopped pacing and turned to you, his eyes brimming with anger and despair.
"And what would you have me do? Flee? Abandon my family, my name, my duty? I am now my grandfather's heir."
"You will not be more than that if you stay in King's Landing, Valarr… you will be a king who never was, just like your father," you answered, rising as well. "If you wish, you may try to change your fate. But I cannot stop you from choosing what you think is right, just as you could not stop your father."
"You are telling me to pretend I am not who I am? To vanish in the night like a coward?"
"Like someone who chose to live."
You took a step towards him, and then another, until you stood face to face. The height difference was great, but you were not intimidated by how much taller he was than you expected. You lifted your face and looked into his eyes.
"I do not know what will kill you, Valarr. I do not know if it is plague, if it is poison, if it is something from within. But I know you have a chance to avoid it if you leave here. If you go far away."
He stared at you for a long moment. The wind blew, stirring the flowers in your hair, and you saw something change in his gaze.
"Why do you care?" he asked, his voice breaking. "You do not even know me."
"I knew your father. And he loved you. That is enough for me."
Valarr looked away, but you saw his chin tremble.
"I cannot simply go," he whispered.
"No one is tying you to the foot of the Iron Throne, my prince."
"And where would I go?"
"Anywhere. We could go together."
The word 'together' hung in the air between you. He looked at you, confused.
"Together? You would come with me?"
"Why not? I am leaving tonight. There is nothing to keep me here, waiting for the same sickness to kill me. The only good man I ever knew in this city is dead now. What is left for me?"
Valarr opened his mouth to answer, but no sound came. He seemed lost, as if the ground were shifting beneath his feet.
"You are asking me to flee with a stranger," he said, finally. "A stranger who saw the future, who knew my father…"
"And who offered you wine," you finished, a small smile appearing. "Do not forget the wine."
He let out a sound that could have been laughter, could have been tears. He ran a hand over his face, weary.
"This is madness."
"I am going to Dorne. Or Winterfell. You have until spring to find me."
You took another step, standing so close you could feel the warmth of his body in the cold evening. You raised your hand and, slowly, touched his face. The skin was damp from recent tears, soft beneath your fingers.
"You are pretty when you cry," you whispered. "But you are more pretty when you smile. I wish I could see that more often, Prince Valarr."
He caught his breath, and for a moment, the world seemed to stop. Then, slowly, he raised his hand and covered yours, which still rested on his cheek. His eyes were fixed on yours, intense, searching for something; perhaps a lie, perhaps confirmation.
"If I go," he said, his voice low, "will it be with you?"
"Yes."
"And if I wish to return one day?"
"You return, when you feel you must. When it is your time to sit the throne."
"And if I never wish to return?"
You smiled, a sweet, sad smile.
"Then we will find a new place to live."
He was silent for a long time, just looking at you. The grey day bathed his face in silver, highlighting the white streak in his dark hair, the eyes of different colours, the mouth slightly open like one who still does not believe what he is about to say.
"What shall I call you?" he asked, finally. "If we are to spend the rest of our lives together, I need a name."
"Choose something to call me. After all, I shall not walk the Seven Kingdoms calling you 'prince'."
He thought for a moment. Then, a small smile — the first you had seen on him — appeared at the corner of his mouth.
"My maid."
You raised your eyebrows, and pushed him hard by the shoulder, heading towards the road.
"If you think I will serve you just because you are a pretty-faced little prince, I had best go to Dorne alone."
"My wife."
You felt the heat rise to your cheeks.
"Your wife?"
"Yes. We do not know what sort of folk, or what sort of men, we shall meet upon the road. And Dorne lies at the other end."
You laughed, disbelieving, and set your hand on your hip, narrowing your eyes.
"Very well, 'husband'."
He walked to you and held your hand more firmly, and this time it was not timid. It was firm, like one who had already made his choice and would not turn back.
You did not know if you could handle Valarr's grief, for it would be only the two of you, and your whole life had been just you and no one else. You were both suffering, but Baelor was his father, and his pain ran deeper. Leaving his life behind would not be easy, and everything would become a whirlwind for him. You feared it might make him ill.
"And if you fall ill?" you asked, suddenly. "Do I bring you back?"
"I cannot fall ill. Or else I would condemn you to die with me," he said, a sad smile on his lips. "We shall need horses. But first, I will fetch what I can."
"Are you sure about this?" you asked, holding his hand. "About wanting to come with me?"
"My choice is the right one, wife. I do not wish to die."
The moon was already high when you heard the hoofbeats of a horse on the dirt road.
You were leaning against a tree, on the outskirts of the city, where you had promised to wait. The night was cold, and you had pulled the white dress over your knees, your feet still bare, the flowers in your hair already wilting. For a moment, you feared he would not come. That reason had won out, that duty had spoken louder.
But then the silhouette emerged from the darkness.
Valarr came riding a magnificent horse — a warhorse, large and dark as the night, with head held high and the steady step of one who knew its worth. He himself now wore simpler clothes, nothing that shouted "prince", but still there was something about him he could not hide: the bearing, the look, the white streak the moon insisted upon lighting.
He stopped before you and dismounted without a word. For a long moment, they merely looked at each other. Then, he extended his hand.
"I came."
You smiled, a small smile, and let him pull you up.
"I know."
He mounted behind you in the saddle, and for an instant there was the awkwardness of strange bodies adjusting, hands that did not know where to rest. But then his arms encircled your waist to reach the reins, and the warmth of his chest against your back warmed something inside you.
"South?" his voice sounded close to your ear.
"South."
He pressed his legs to the horse, and you rode towards where the wind was warmer.
The first night was the hardest.
They stopped at a simple inn by the roadside, the sort that asked no names nor origins, so long as you paid in silver. Valarr arranged for two separate chambers — he insisted on it, with a formality almost funny coming from someone who had just abandoned his own life to flee with a stranger.
"You are my wife now," he said, his eyes looking away. "But that does not mean that… I mean to say, I shall not…"
"Take liberties?" you finished, a smile playing on your lips. "What a gentleman."
He blushed. He actually blushed. A Targaryen prince, heir to the throne, blushing like a boy.
"Sleep well, my wife."
"Sleep well, my husband."
You parted at the door, each to their own side, but you did not sleep well. You woke in the middle of the night to a strange sound coming from the chamber next door. It was muffled, like a groan of pain, or perhaps quiet weeping. You lay still for a moment, listening, your heart tight.
Then, without much thought, you rose.
His chamber door was not locked, and you entered slowly. Valarr was thrashing in the bed, the sheets tangled around his legs, his face contorted in agony. His brow shone with sweat, and he murmured senseless things — scattered words, names.
"Father… father, no… do not go…"
You crossed the chamber and sat on the edge of the bed. You hesitated for an instant, then reached out and touched his face. It was warm. Too warm.
"Valarr," you called, softly. "Valarr, wake up."
He did not wake. He continued to struggle, his eyes moving beneath his lids, his breath short and quick. You passed your hand over his brow, then his neck, searching for signs. Fever. He had a fever.
"No, no, no," you whispered, panic rising. "Not now. It cannot be now."
With trembling hands, you rose and went to the water basin in the corner of the chamber. You wet a cloth and returned to his side, dabbing gently at his face, his chest, trying to lower the fever.
"You will not die," you said, your voice breaking. "You will not die, Valarr. I will not let you abandon me too."
The words came out unthinking, and only afterwards did you realise what you had said. You swallowed the tears and continued passing the cloth.
At some point, between one movement and another, you lay down beside him on the bed. You had not thought about it; it simply happened, your body finding his, your arm draping over his chest, your head finding a place on his shoulder.
And you began to sing. It was an old song, the sort your mother used to sing to you before she died, before Flea Bottom, before everything. A song about the sea, about sailing far away, about finding peace after the storm. You did not know if the words made sense, did not know if he could hear, but you kept singing, softly, while his hand found yours and squeezed — weakly, but squeezed.
"Stay," he murmured, still asleep. "Do not go."
"I will not," you answered, pushing the hair from his brow. "I am here."
When you woke, the morning light was coming through the crack in the window.
The first thing you felt was the warmth. Not Valarr's fever, but the warmth of a living body, breathing, beside you. The second thing you felt were his fingers moving slowly through your hair, parting the strands with a tenderness that made your chest ache.
You lifted your face.
Valarr was awake, his mismatched eyes fixed on you with an expression you could not decipher. The fever had broken — or perhaps it had only been a nightmare, a scare — but he still looked fragile, vulnerable in a way you had not imagined a prince could be.
"You sang to me," he said, his voice hoarse with sleep.
You looked away, feeling the heat rise to your cheeks.
"You had a fever and nightmares. I did not know what else to do. I thought you were falling ill."
"I am not ill."
"I truly hope not."
He was silent for a moment, but his hand kept moving through your hair, and you closed your eyes, letting it happen.
"No one has ever done that for me," he said, so low you almost did not hear. "No one has ever stayed when I asked."
You opened your eyes and looked at him.
"Well, I stayed. But I could have gone."
The smile that appeared on his face was small, fragile, but it was a smile. And in that soft morning light, with his dark hair tousled and the white streak falling across his face, he was exactly what you had said in the sept.
Handsome. Too handsome.
"Your fever broke," you said, changing the subject before the silence grew too heavy. "It was only a scare, I think."
"My nightmares have always been like that," he admitted. "Since I was a child. My mother used to say I would cry in my sleep."
"And you cry awake too."
He laughed, a low, surprised sound, as if he had forgotten how.
"You are terrible."
"You like it."
His gaze met yours, and for a moment the air seemed to leave the room.
"I do," he confessed.
You stayed like that for a while longer, lying in the small inn bed. Then you sat up, pulling at the white dress that had rumpled overnight.
"We need to eat something and be on our way. Dorne does not come closer while we sit here idle."
Valarr watched you rise, and when you turned to leave, he called out:
"Wait."
You stopped.
He rose too, crossed the room in long strides, and stopped before you. For a moment, he seemed to hesitate. Then he raised his hand and touched your face with the same gentleness with which he had run his fingers through your hair.
"Thank you," he said. "For last night. For today. For… everything."
You covered his hand with yours.
"That is what wives are for, is it not?"
He smiled again, and this time the smile lit up his whole face.
The following days were like that.
They rode during the day, stopping at inns or, when there were none, camping by the roadside. Valarr had brought money — more than you had imagined — and food, and even clothes for you. Simple dresses, but of good fabric, and a pair of boots you took time getting used to after so long barefoot.
"How did you know my size?" you asked, when he handed you the boots.
He blushed, that lovely colour rising from his cheeks to his ears.
"I… looked. When you slept, that first night. Your feet were sticking out of the bed, and I…"
"You measured my feet while I slept?"
"It was only a quick look!"
You laughed, a warm laugh that echoed on the empty road, and he joined you, embarrassed but clearly pleased to have got it right.
The nights were harder.
Valarr's grief came in waves. Sometimes he would be quiet for hours, his eyes lost on the horizon. Other times, in the middle of the night, you would wake to the sound of his crying muffled in the pillow of the next chamber. And always — always — you went to him.
You did not ask if you could; you did not wait for him to call you. You merely entered, sat on the bed, and stayed. Sometimes you sang. Sometimes you only held his hand. Sometimes you let him bury his face in your shoulder and cry until he could cry no more. And slowly, between one tear and another, between one smile and another, something was changing.
On the fifth night of travel, you did not sleep in separate chambers.
It had rained all day, and you arrived at an inn soaked through, shivering with cold. There was only one chamber free, with a single bed far too small for two.
"I shall sleep on the floor," Valarr offered at once.
"You will not."
"But…"
"Valarr." You set your hands on your hips, looking at him. "We are to spend the rest of our lives together, according to you. Will you sleep on the floor every single night?"
He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again.
"When you speak like that, it seems so simple."
"Because it is simple."
And simple it was.
That night, you lay side by side in the small bed, bodies touching because there was no room not to touch. You felt his warmth at your back, his breath in your hair, and for the first time in days, the silence between you was not difficult.
"May I ask you something?" his voice sounded in the dark.
"Yes."
"Why did you go to the sept?"
The question was simple, but you felt its weight.
"I told you. Your father…"
"No. I know that. But why did you stay? After everyone had left. After it was over. Why were you still there?"
You thought for a moment.
"Because when someone goes, a void remains. And I wanted to fill that void with my presence, even if he could no longer feel it. Even if no one saw, I needed him to know, somehow, that he was not alone in death. Just as he was not alone in life."
The silence that followed was long. Then, you felt his arms wrap around you from behind, pulling you close.
"You are the kindest person I have ever known," he whispered near your ear. "After my father."
The tears came warm and silent. You did not wipe them away; you only let them fall as his hands held yours.
"We shall be alright," you said, more to yourself than to him. "We shall."
"We shall," he confirmed. "because we have each other."
The next morning, the sun rose golden over the road.
You woke with the warmth of his body still wrapped around yours, and for a moment you merely lay there, feeling. His chest rising and falling against your back. His arm heavy on your waist. The calm breathing of one who slept in peace.
And for the first time since leaving King's Landing, you felt that perhaps, just perhaps, everything might turn out well.
The road to Dorne was long, and winter insisted on showing its teeth through the trees. You had discovered, in the first days of travel, that Valarr Targaryen did not know how to light a fire.
"How can a man of twenty seven years not know how to light a fire?" you asked, incredulous, watching him rub two stones together with the determination of one who expected the fire to appear by miracle.
"I was a prince," he answered, his shoulders tense with shame. "I had people for that."
"And now?"
He lifted his face, the white streak smudged with ash, his mismatched eyes flashing.
"Now I have you."
You laughed, a pleasant sound you were growing used to hearing from yourself, and knelt beside him. With the patience of one who had taught Flea Bottom children to survive, you covered his hands with yours.
"It is not strength, it is skill. You strike the stone like this, at an angle, letting the spark fall on the dry straw. Then you blow slowly, as if you were seducing the fire."
He looked at you sideways, a small smile forming.
"Seducing the fire?"
"Fire is like a woman, Valarr. It needs patience, gentleness, and at the right moment, a warm breath."
His laughter echoed in the clearing, and you felt your chest warm in a way you were beginning to know well.
Two weeks on the road and Valarr was still, undeniably, a prince.
He rode as if born on a horse's back, yes, and had an impressive aim with the bow they bought in the first village. But he also tried to pay with gold coins at inns where no one had seen gold for generations, greeted people with the formality of one raised to rule, and looked at chickens as if they were mythical creatures.
"It will peck you if you keep staring," you warned, one afternoon when you stopped to rest at a farm.
Valarr stepped back, alarmed.
"Peck?"
"Yes. They do that. They have beaks. They peck. Did your books teach you nothing?"
"My books did not speak of chickens."
You held back your laughter and reached out your hand to him.
"Come. I shall introduce you."
And so you spent the afternoon teaching a Targaryen prince how to milk a goat (disaster), how to recognise edible herbs (he mistook parsley for a poisonous plant and you only noticed in time because the horse refused to eat it), and how to walk barefoot.
"This is disgusting," he said, when you made him remove his boots on a dirt path.
"Your feet need to feel the ground, Valarr. To know if it is warm or cold, if there is stone or sand. How will you rule a people if you do not know what they feel?"
He looked at you with a strange expression, as if you had said something far deeper than it seemed.
"You think much on these things," he observed, as his feet sank into the soft earth.
"I lived long with little. One learns."
He did not answer, but that day, he walked barefoot all the way to camp.
The river appeared at dusk, when the sun was already beginning to set behind the mountains.
It was a beautiful place, hidden among trees, with crystal water and a small waterfall forming a natural pool. You stopped the horse and sighed.
"I need a bath."
Valarr dismounted behind you, looking at the river with an expression you could not identify.
"Is it deep?"
"I do not know, but it does not matter. It has been days since we found an inn with hot water, and I smell worse than the horse."
He laughed, but there was something different in the laugh. You did not think much on it, too busy removing the new boots he had given you, your toes eager to feel the cold water.
It was when you began to lift your dress that you noticed. Valarr had his back turned. Completely turned, his shoulders tense, staring fixedly at the trees on the other side of the river as if expecting them to do something interesting.
"Valarr?"
"Hm?"
"What are you doing?"
"Keeping watch."
"For what?"
He did not turn, and his voice came out a little higher than usual.
"To make sure no one appears. You are going to bathe, are you not? So, I am keeping watch."
You smiled a smile he could not see.
"And if someone does appear?"
"I shall send them away."
"And if it is a band of armed merchants?"
He turned his head slightly, just enough for you to see his profile, his jaw set tight.
"I have a sword."
"And if they have bows?"
"I…" he hesitated. "I won the joust at Ashford. I can handle myself."
The laugh escaped before you could hold it.
"Valarr Targaryen, you are the most endearing thing I have ever met."
He muttered something you did not understand, but his shoulders relaxed a little.
The river was cold, but good.
The water washed away days of road, of dust, of sweat. You dipped your head, feeling your hair loosen from the wilted flowers that still stubbornly clung, and for a moment you simply floated, looking at the darkening sky.
When you emerged, Valarr was still there. With his back turned, yes, but now sitting on a stone by the riverbank, his sword in his lap, his eyes fixed on the forest. His posture was that of a guard, of a protector, and something in that made your chest tighten in a good way.
"You may turn," you called. "I am decent now."
He turned slowly, as if afraid of what he might see, and when his eyes met yours — your wet hair dripping water, your damp dress clinging to your body, your weary smile — something changed in his face.
"What?" you asked, tilting your head.
"Nothing." He looked away too quickly. "Only… you seem happy."
"Clean water does that to a person."
He did not answer, but when you left the river and sat beside him on the stone, you felt his body relax towards you, as if by instinct.
That night, you camped near the river.
Valarr lit the fire alone for the first time. It took nearly an hour, and he cursed in High Valyrian on at least three separate occasions, but when the flame finally appeared, the smile on his face shone brighter than the fire.
"I did it!" he exclaimed, turning to you like a child who had just received a gift.
"My husband is a man of many talents," you teased, but you were smiling.
He sat beside you, close enough that your arms touched. The night was cold, and the warmth of the fire was not enough, but the warmth of his body… that was.
"Teach me more things," he asked, after a while.
"What sort of things?"
"Things of… common folk. Things I ought to know."
You thought for a moment.
"Tomorrow I shall teach you to fish without a rod. With your hands."
His eyes widened.
"Fish? With my hands?"
"It is easier than it seems. And harder than it seems too, but if you manage it, you shall never go hungry again."
"I have never gone hungry."
"I know, but now you might. So learn."
He was quiet for a moment, processing.
"You treat me as if I were your equal," he said, softly.
"Because you are."
"I am a prince."
"Were. Now you are only Valarr. My Valarr."
He swallowed hard.
"Your Valarr?"
"My husband, are you not? So. Mine."
You felt his gaze on your face, burning, and when you turned to face him, he was closer than you expected.
"May I ask you something?" his voice came out hoarse.
"Yes."
"Do you… do you feel it too?"
"Feel what?"
He hesitated. His hand found yours in the dark, fingers interlacing.
"This strange thing in my chest when you smile. This tightness when you move away. This fear that one day you will wake and decide it was a mistake to come with me."
"Valarr…"
"I know it seems madness. We have known each other but a few weeks. Yet when I am with you, the grief hurts less. When you sing, I can sleep. When you laugh, I forget my father died. And that is…" his voice faltered. "That is frightening. Because if you leave, I do not know what would be left of me."
You did not answer with words. You only released his hand, raised your arm, and pulled his face to yours.
The kiss was slow.
There was no hurry, no desperation. It was merely the most natural thing in the world, as if you had done it a thousand times before. His lips were soft, a little tremulous, and the taste held a hint of salt — tears you had not seen him shed.
When you parted, his forehead rested against yours.
"I shall not leave," you whispered. "Not while you want me to stay."
Days later, Valarr caught his first fish with his bare hands.
It took three tries, and he fell in the river twice, and you laughed so hard your belly ached. But when he emerged with the silver fish thrashing between his fingers, his victory cry startled the birds in the entire forest.
"LOOK! LOOK WHAT I DID!"
"I am looking, Valarr!"
"I AM THE KING OF FISH!"
"You are ridiculous, that is what you are!"
He came out of the river soaking wet, his dark hair plastered to his face, the white streak like a wet feather. The fish still thrashed, and he held it away from his body, clearly unsure what to do now that he had succeeded.
"And… and now?" he asked.
"Now we kill it, clean it, and eat it."
The look of horror on his face was so pure you almost felt sorry for him.
"Kill it?"
"Valarr, it is a fish."
"I know it is a fish, but… kill it?"
You rose, went to him, and took the fish with a firm hand. In a swift, precise movement, you killed it with a stone, and began cleaning it right there, with the knife he had given you.
He watched it all with an expression of fascination and horror mingled.
"Where did you learn to do that?"
"Flea Bottom. We had no cooks."
"And you never… never felt sickened by it?"
"I did. At first. But hunger teaches you to overcome disgust."
He was silent for a long time, watching you work. Then, without a word, he sat beside you on the river sand and extended his hand.
"Teach me."
You looked at him.
"Are you sure?"
"If we are to spend the rest of our lives together, I must learn this too. I cannot leave everything to you."
The smile that appeared on your face was so wide it hurt.
That afternoon, Valarr Targaryen, heir to the Iron Throne, learned to clean a fish. He got his hands covered in blood and entrails, made faces of disgust at several moments, and in the end, when the fish was ready to be roasted, he looked at you with such genuine pride that your heart nearly stopped.
"Did I do it right?"
"Perfectly."
His smile was worth more than all the gold in King's Landing.
That night, the fish was the best you had eaten in weeks.
And afterwards, lying under the stars, with the warmth of the fire warming your feet and his body warming your back, you thought that perhaps, just perhaps, the gods had got one thing right in life.
"Valarr?"
"Hm?"
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"For coming."
His arm tightened around your waist.
"Thank you for giving me a reason to come."
You smiled in the dark and closed your eyes. For the first time in many years, you did not dream of the future.
The Dornish frontier was three days away when the storm caught them.
It had been building on the horizon since afternoon, dark clouds swallowing the blue sky, and you had smelled the rain in the air long before the first drop fell. Valarr smelled it too, his mismatched eyes narrowing as he assessed the land around them.
"We need to find shelter."
"There," you pointed to a rock formation further ahead, a rise of stone that looked as though the winds had carved it. "There should be a cave."
It was not quite a cave. More a cleft in the rock, deep enough for two bodies to shelter, wide enough to spread their cloaks upon the ground. But when the rain came down, thick and violent as only southern storms can be, that hole in the stone seemed the finest place in all the world.
The horse stood beneath a nearby overhang, grumbling but safe. The two of you squeezed into the cleft, soaked, breathless, laughing like children who had just escaped a scolding.
"We are soaked through," Valarr said, frustrated.
"We are."
"And no dry wood for a fire."
"No."
"And it will rain the whole night."
"Likely."
He looked at you.
"And you are laughing."
"Because it is funny."
"What is?"
"Us. Fleeing a storm into a hole in the rock, soaked, no fire, no hot food, and yet…" you gestured, searching for words. "Yet it is better than any night I spent in Flea Bottom."
His look changed. That look you were beginning to know, deeper, more intense.
"Did you have many bad nights?" he asked softly.
"Some."
"Tell me."
You hesitated, but there, in the dark of the cleft, with the rain falling outside and the warmth of his body so near, the words came easier.
"Hungry nights. Cold nights. Nights when drunken men tried to force their way into where I slept. Nights when I saw things in the future and did not know whether to tell or to keep silent."
He listened in silence, and when you finished, his hand found yours in the dark.
"You will never spend another night like that," he said, as if it were a promise, an oath. "As long as I live, you will never have a life like that again."
"Valarr…"
"I swear it by the old gods and the new. By my father. By my name. You will never be alone again."
Emotion tightened your throat. You blinked quickly, but some tears escaped all the same.
"You are so good," you whispered. "So good, and you do not even see it."
He raised his free hand and wiped your face with his fingers, slowly.
Night fell in earnest, and the rain did not relent.
You spread your cloaks upon the floor of the cleft as best you could, and lay side by side to keep warm. Your bodies came together out of need at first — sharing warmth was a matter of survival — but slowly, need became something else.
You felt his breath in your hair. His hand resting on your waist, light, as if waiting for permission to stay. His legs against yours, and even through the damp clothes, the warmth was nearly unbearable.
"Valarr?"
"Hm?"
"Are you awake?"
"I am."
"I cannot sleep," you confessed.
"Nor I."
"Why?"
He took a long time to answer.
"Because you are too close."
The air caught in your lungs.
"Do you want me to move away?"
"No." The answer came quickly, almost urgent. "I do not."
You turned your body in the darkness, facing him. You could not see much, only the gleam of his eyes, one lighter than the other, reflecting the scant light that entered the cleft.
"What do you want, husband?"
He swallowed. You felt the movement in his body, the tension in his muscles.
"You," he confessed. "I want you in a way that… that I cannot explain."
Your hand found his face in the dark. The skin was warm, soft, and you felt when he closed his eyes beneath your touch.
"Then have me," you whispered.
"Are you certain? Because if it is only because we are here, alone, if it is only because…"
"Valarr." You interrupted, your thumb passing over his lips. "I was certain the moment you appeared in the night with a horse and a note for your uncle. I was certain when you gave up the notion of calling me your maid. I was certain when you caught a fish with your bare hands and shouted that you were the king of fish." A smile trembled in your voice. "I was certain long before today."
He laughed, a low sound, almost a sob, and then the kiss came differently this time.
His hands found your face, your hair, the nape of your neck, pulling you closer as if it were possible to disappear into each other. The damp clothes were in the way, and you both realised at the same moment. His fingers fumbled with the ties of your dress, clumsy, and you laughed against his mouth.
"Let me," you whispered. "Let me take it off."
"No." His voice was firm, even as rough as it was. "Let me do it… let me know you too."
Your heart raced.
"The dress opens at the back. There is a tie."
His fingers found the tie, pulled slowly, and you felt the fabric loosen on your shoulders. He kissed your shoulder when it appeared, bare in the dim light, and the warmth of his mouth on your skin made you tremble.
"You are so beautiful," he murmured against your skin. "So beautiful it hurts."
"You can hardly see me."
"I can feel you. It is better."
The dress slipped away, and you were left in only your smallclothes, thin, damp, nearly transparent. His eyes travelled over your body even in the dark, and you saw the way he caught his breath.
"May I touch you?"
The question was so polite, so Valarr, that you felt your eyes grow wet again.
"Yes."
His hand found your waist first, slowly, as if learning the way. Then it rose, tracing your ribs, the curve of your breast, and when his fingers brushed your skin, you arched your back in an instinctive movement.
"Like this?" he asked, his voice uncertain.
"Yes. Like this. Perfect."
He gained confidence. His mouth found yours again while his hands explored, and you felt each touch as if it were fire, as if he were marking your skin forever. His clothes came off next — you took them off, with more practice, but with the same urgency. He touched you with wonder, with respect, but also with a poorly hidden hunger that made your blood boil.
"Here?" he asked, when his hand brushed the side of your breast.
"Yes."
"And here?"
His fingers slid forward, covering your breast fully, and you arched your back with a low moan.
"Valarr…"
"It is so soft," he murmured, more to himself than to you. "So perfect."
He lowered his head and kissed where his hand had been, his mouth hot and damp on your skin. The kiss became a lick, the lick became a gentle nibble, and you buried your fingers in his hair, pulling.
"More," you begged.
He did not stop.
His mouth travelled down, finding your other breast, while his hand continued to caress the first. His fingers brushed your nipple, and you moaned louder, the sound muffled by the rain outside.
"Like this?" he asked, his lips still on your skin.
"Yes. Gods, yes."
He repeated the movement, learning what made you moan, what made you arch, what made your fingers tighten in his hair. And when he finally brought mouth and hand to both breasts at once, you lost your breath for an instant.
"Valarr," you gasped. "Valarr, I need…"
"Need what?"
"You."
You pulled him on top of you, feeling his weight, his warmth, skin against skin. And then you felt him, hard, hot, pressing against your thigh, and the air left your lungs.
"Do you feel that?" he asked. "What you do to me?"
"I feel it. Because you do the same to me."
He kissed you, deep, and his hand travelled down between your bodies. His fingers found your most sensitive place, and you moaned into his mouth when he began to touch.
"Like this?" he asked against your lips.
"Yes. Slower. Like that."
He learned quickly. His fingers circled, pressed, explored, and you felt the pleasure building low in your belly, hot, urgent.
"Valarr, I am going to…"
He did not stop, and when the pleasure came, you bit his lip to keep from crying out, your body arching against his, your legs tightening around his waist in an instinctive movement. Valarr positioned himself between your legs, and you felt his cock teasing you, sliding, asking without words.
"Do you want it?" he asked anyway. "Are you certain?"
"Valarr, if you ask again, I swear…"
He entered you without ceremony. Slowly, carefully, but without hesitation. You felt every inch, every moment of the delicious invasion, and when he was fully sheathed, you both stopped, gasping, just feeling.
"You are so tight," he murmured, his forehead against yours. "So warm."
"You are so big," you answered, and he laughed, a trembling sound.
"Is that good?"
"It is perfect."
He moved.
At first, the movements were slow, deep, drawing soft moans from you both. He looked into your eyes as he moved, as if he needed to see your reaction, as if every expression on your face were a map to his pleasure.
"Like this?" he would ask, and you would answer with moans, with squeezes, with your nails digging into his back.
The rhythm quickened, and the cleft in the stone filled with the sounds of you, bodies meeting, breathless gasps, muffled groans. The rain outside competed in volume, but it lost.
"You are so handsome," you whispered, running your hand over his face, his lips, his eyes. "My handsome prince."
"Yours," he answered, his voice breaking. "Only yours."
He changed the angle, and suddenly the pleasure grew more intense, deeper. You moaned louder, and he seemed to understand, repeating the movement once, twice, three times. One of his hands found your clit, touching in rhythm with his thrusts, and the pleasure that had already been good became almost unbearable. You felt your release approaching like a wave, growing, about to break.
"I am going to come," you warned, your voice high. "I am going to come, Valarr, I am going to…"
"Come. Come with me."
He buried his face in your neck, his movements growing more ragged, more urgent, and when you finally shattered, he followed a second later, a muffled groan into your skin, his whole body trembling.
You stayed like that for a long time. His hand still touched your face, his fingers tracing your jaw as if you were the most precious thing in the world.
Then he turned you onto your back in a swift movement.
You felt the cold air of the cleft on your bare back for a second before the warmth of his body covered you completely. His weight pressed you against the ground, and you moaned, your fingers digging into the earth and the cloaks beneath you.
"You do not know," his voice sounded near your ear, warm. "What you do to me."
"I did not know," you managed to say, your voice failing as his hands gripped your hips.
"You did know. You did. You saw me weeping and decided you would have me. And I let you. I let you because I could not say no to you even if I tried."
The truth in his words warmed something deep in your chest. You turned your head, trying to reach his mouth, and he let you, but it was a different kiss, crooked, desperate, more teeth than lip.
"I want you again," he confessed against your mouth.
"Then have me."
He did not wait.
This time, there was no care, no slowness. There was only the urgency of two bodies that had spent too long wanting each other in silence. He entered you in one movement, and the moan you both let out mingled in the damp air of the cleft.
He began to move, and there was nothing merciful in the rhythm. It was pure hunger, need, as if he were trying to make up for all the nights you had slept side by side without touching, all the river baths he had watched with his back turned, all the moments he had wanted and not had.
His hand buried itself in your hair, pulling your head back, arching your spine at an angle that made you moan louder.
"You are mine," he said, his voice breaking. "My wife. Mine. And no one will take you from me. Not the gods. Not the sickness. Not the bloody future."
"I am yours," you confirmed, the words coming out broken by moans. "I am. Always."
His rhythm quickened, lost composure, and you felt when he began to tremble. But before he could finish, he stopped.
"No," he growled. "Not like this. I want to see you."
He turned you again, now facing him, and when his eyes met yours in the half-dark, you saw everything. The desire, yes, but also the fear, the hope, the immense and terrifying love that had grown too quickly between you.
"Look at me," he asked, his voice lower now. "Look at me while we do this. I want to see you."
His legs fitted between yours, and when he entered again, slower this time, deeper, you did not look away. You stayed like that, gazing at each other in the dark, while your bodies moved in a rhythm that was yours, only yours.
His hands held your face as if you were too precious to exist. His thumbs passed over your cheeks, your lips, while the rest of his body asked for more, asked for everything.
"I love you," he said, and his voice was full of tears. "I love you so much that sometimes it hurts. That sometimes I wake in the night afraid I dreamed you."
"It is no dream," you answered, the words coming out difficult, broken by moans and emotion. "I am here. I am not leaving."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
He kissed you then, and the kiss was everything, despair and hope, hunger and devotion, the beginning and the end of all things. When Valarr's hand descended to stroke your cunt, you felt your skin burn with fire. Desire swelled in your throat as he ran his hand over your neck, through your hair, grabbing a fistful and using it to control you. His touch was possessive and thrilling.
He slid inside once more, and you arched your back, moaning with pleasure as he filled you completely. Your hands found purchase in his hair, anchoring yourself as he sank deeper into your cunt. Flames of pleasure licked at your walls. Ecstasy ran through your veins like milk of the poppy, numbing and delirious, as Valarr slid in and out of you. The hot pressure expanded, and your eyes rolled back, hearing the prince's moans echo your own.
You hissed through your teeth. The heat, like a branding iron burning flesh, intensified as Valarr's face rested on your shoulder and you could hold him tighter. Valarr bit your shoulder, and you dug your nails into his back. Yet, before you could be more cautious with your touches, Valarr became even more merciless and sank even deeper.
Seven Hells, you thought.
Valarr's body was covered in sweat, and each time he went deeper, you felt as if you were being consumed by fire. The sensation of being filled by him was almost superhuman, a mix of pleasure and pain that seemed without end.
Valarr let out small moans as he pressed his forehead to yours. When he saw you part your lips and dig your nails into his skin, he knew you were again close to your peak. He kept a steady rhythm, feeling your release crest and soak him completely with your desire.
"Can you ride a dragon?" he asked, leaning over you and pushing back the hair stuck to your face. You nodded.
Valarr wet his lips, descended to yours and kissed you before lying down beside you. He sat up and reached out his hand for you to come to him. You crawled to him, placed your hands on his collarbones and positioned your legs on either side of the prince's hips, aligning your soaked cunt with the head of his cock.
The position made your toes curl, and the way you sank down and rose repeatedly drew heavy moans from Valarr. He gripped your waist, quickening the movements as he watched you give yourself over to pleasure. He felt your hands tighten on his shoulders and your moans increase when he saw your brows furrow. Valarr held your hips firmly and thrust hard, unable to contain himself.
Your lips met his briefly before you felt the hot spill inside you, running down the walls of your tight core. Valarr smiled, pushing the hair from your face once more, admiring your flushed, exhausted face. You were completely spent, your body light and slow.
You lay down upon Valarr, who stroked the back of your neck, while his other hand slid over your waist, his fingers tracing a gentle, soothing path on your skin. His eyes, still glistening from the recent experience. You stayed like that for a long time, until his breathing calmed, until his body relaxed upon yours. And when you thought he had fallen asleep, his voice sounded again, softly:
"May I ask you something?"
"Yes."
"When you saw the future... did you see me? Us? This?"
You thought for a moment.
"No. I never saw this. But I think it is because the future changes. We changed it. You chose to come, I chose to stay, and now... now everything is new."
He lifted his head.
"There were no more visions?"
"A few," you murmured. "But they were not about us."
The next morning, the sun rose golden over the mountains.
You woke with the warmth of his body still wrapped around yours, and for a moment you just lay there, feeling it. His calm breathing against your back. His heavy arm around your waist. The peace.
"Awake?" his voice came, rough with sleep.
"Awake."
He tightened his embrace, pulling you closer.
"You could pretend you were not."
"Why?"
"Because I want to stay like this forever."
You smiled and turned your head to kiss his chin.
"We have a whole lifetime to stay like this. Get up, my prince."
"I am no longer a prince, as I have told you, my wife," he grumbled, but he was already smiling. "I am only Valarr."
The Dornish frontier was crossed on a morning of open sky, when the sun no longer burned as it did in the lands of the marches, but warmed generously. You felt the difference in the air first, drier, more fragrant, laden with spices and flowers you did not know. Then you saw the landscape change, the greens giving way to shades of red earth and golden stone, the trees becoming sparser, more twisted, more beautiful in their endurance.
Valarr said nothing during the crossing, merely rode at your side, his mismatched eyes fixed on the horizon, and when you finally stopped atop a hill to gaze upon what lay ahead — the first Dornish dwellings, the clay roofs, the olive groves — his hand found yours and squeezed.
The months passed like water through fingers.
You found a small place, far from the great cities, close enough to a village for food and trade, but isolated enough that no one would ask where you came from or why the dark-haired man had a streak of white that stubbornly betrayed his origin.
The house was simple, with whitewashed stone walls, a clay roof, a small garden at the back which you tended with hands that had once merely survived in Flea Bottom. Valarr built a pen for chickens, and this time no one needed to teach him how to handle them. He had learned. There was a stream nearby, where you still bathed on warm days, and he still kept watch, now seated on a stone with a book in hand — one of the few he had brought in his pack — his eyes lifting now and then towards you.
The nights were long and good. The love between you had deepened, transformed, ceased being that urgent flame of the first weeks to become a constant fire, one that warmed without burning. He still had nightmares, sometimes, and would wake calling for his father. But now you were always there, and the warmth of your body was enough for him to fall back asleep.
You had changed too. The visions came more rarely, as if the gods had decided to grant you a respite. When they came, they were small — the harvest that would be good, the neighbour who would have a child, the rain that would arrive earlier than expected. Nothing of deaths, nothing of tragedies. Nothing of sickly springs.
And you both knew, without ever saying it aloud, that perhaps it was because you had fled the path that was laid out.
But it was on an ordinary afternoon that you looked at him and decided. The white streak would always give him away. No matter how he tried to hide, that single strand of silver hair amidst the dark screamed Targaryen to anyone who understood such things. And though you were in Dorne, though the Dornish had their own reasons for not loving dragons, you could not take risks.
You prepared the dye with herbs and clay, as the village women had taught you, and asked him to sit on the bench near the window. He obeyed without question. He no longer questioned when you did such things. He trusted. Your hands dipped into the dark paste and began to work, separating strand by strand, covering the white with the brown that would make him like all other men. He closed his eyes beneath your fingers, letting you do what was needed, and the silence between you was so full of love it almost hurt.
When you finished, you led him to the small mirror you had bought in the village. He looked for a long time. Touched his hair, now all dark, and for a moment you feared he would miss it, that that streak was the last thing connecting him to who he had been.
But then he turned, and the smile on his face was so pure, so grateful, that you forgot to breathe.
"Now I am only yours," he said, or you imagined he said, because there was no sound, only the movement of his lips and his eyes shining.
You pulled him into a kiss, and it was answer enough.
The wedding took place at winter's end (which for you in Dorne felt like summer). There was no sept, no maester, no important witnesses, only an old travelling septon passing through the village, two simple rings Valarr had bought from a local smith, and the stars as witnesses.
You wore a new dress, not white, for that was for maidens and you had never been one, but blue like the Dornish sky at dusk. He wore the best clothes he had, simple but clean, his hair now completely dark falling over his eyes. The septon spoke the words, you repeated them, and when it was done, Valarr held your face in both hands and kissed you as if it were the first time.
Afterwards, there was a small feast in the village. The neighbours brought food and wine, played music on instruments you did not know, danced until the moon set. And in the midst of those simple folk who would never know they were celebrating the wedding of a Targaryen prince, you danced with him, and laughed, and felt that finally, after so many years, you had found a home.
Spring came and went. Then came another, and another.
You lived. Simply lived. He planted, you harvested. He mended the roof, you baked bread. He still wept, sometimes, when the memory of his father pressed upon him, and you still sang to him, the same songs as always. At night, love still found you, now calm as a river, now a storm, but always true. The children came, in time. First a boy, with eyes like his father, whom he named Baelor; then a girl, with hair so light you had to dye it from a young age, whom you called Alyssa. And life expanded, filled the small house, brought laughter and tears and worries and joys you had never imagined possible.
And the years passed, and King's Landing grew distant.
The news arrived on an ordinary day, brought by a merchant coming from the city. He spoke of a plague, a terrible sickness that had swept the capital years ago, called the Great Spring Sickness. He spoke of deaths, of mourning, of a king who had wasted away, of princes who had succumbed one after another. He spoke of silence across the whole continent, stricken by that illness which killed men who were strong at dawn and dead by dusk.
You listened with a heavy heart, your fingers finding Valarr's beneath the table. When the merchant left, you sat in silence for a long time. He was the first to break it.
"My grandsire?"
"Dead. They said it was the sickness."
"My brother?"
"Also, my prince."
He did not ask about his uncle Maekar. You knew he feared the answer.
"Aerys," he said, finally. "Daeron's son. He..."
"Lives. But they still search for you, Valarr."
He nodded slowly. His gaze was lost somewhere in the distance, and you knew what he was thinking. It could have been him. He could have been there. He could be dead. But he was not.
"I escaped," he whispered, more to himself than to you.
"We escaped," you corrected, squeezing his hand. "We fled, we changed, we lived."
He turned his face to you, and his eyes were brimming.
"Do you think I should return?" he asked, but his eyes strayed to the children playing with wooden dragons he had learned to carve. "What was your last vision of us?"
The question caught you off guard.
You closed your eyes, searching. It had been so long since the visions had quieted. At first, you thought it was fear, exhaustion. Later, you began to suspect it was peace. That the gods, or fate, or whatever governed such things, had finally left you in peace.
"That we were well here," you murmured, staring fixedly at the table, at the marks in the wood, at his hands still holding yours. "It was the last thing I saw in years."
He did not answer immediately.
He merely sat there, listening to the children playing outside. The boy shouted something about dragons. The girl laughed, that high-pitched little laugh that always made you smile.
"When I was small," he began, "my father used to take me to see the dragons. The skulls, I mean. There were no real dragons left, only the bones. He would put me on his shoulder and point to the largest of them all. He would say: 'That one was Balerion. His fear was so great that enemies fled at the mere sound of his name.'"
He paused.
"I would ask if we would ever have dragons again. He would laugh and say no, that the eggs had turned to stone, that the magic had gone away. But in his eyes... in his eyes I could see that he wished for it. Wished for it greatly."
His voice faltered.
"He wished so much that I might see a real dragon."
You said nothing, only squeezed his hand.
"Now our children play with wooden dragons," he continued. "They do not know what a real dragon is. They do not know what the Iron Throne is. They do not know that their father could have been king."
He finally turned his face to you.
"And I look at them and think: is it selfish? Is it cowardice? To stay here, hidden, while my name is given to some dead man..."
"While you live," you finished.
"While I live," he agreed.
The silence returned, but it was different now. Heavier, fuller with things unsaid.
You could have lied. You could have said yes, that he should return, that the throne awaited him, that his blood demanded it. But you knew Valarr. You knew every part of him, every shadow, every fear. And you knew that, deep down, he was not asking what he should do.
He was asking permission to stay.
"You asked me what my last vision was," you said, finally. "But it was not the last."
He frowned.
"I had one yesterday. While I was dyeing the little one's hair."
"And what did you see?"
You smiled, a small, wet smile.
"I saw her. Many years from now. Old, with wrinkles on her face and grandchildren in her lap. I saw her telling stories to little children, stories about a prince who gave up a throne to live for love, because of a woman who saw the future. I saw the children asking if the story was true, and her laughing and saying: 'Of course it is. He was my father.'"
Valarr caught his breath.
"I saw our son. Grown, strong, with a sword in his hand. Your sword, defending this house, this land, this life we built. I saw him teaching his own children to fish with their hands, just as you taught him."
Your voice faltered, but you continued.
"I saw you. Old, grey-haired, sitting at this same table, with me beside you. I saw your hands holding mine, and I saw that you still looked at me the same way you looked at me that night in the sept. As if I were the most precious thing in the world."
Tears were streaming now, but you did not wipe them away.
"That was the last thing I saw. And it was the most beautiful."
He was still for a long time. Then, slowly, he raised his free hand and wiped your face with his fingers, the same way he had done on that first night, in the shelter of the stone, when the rain fell outside and the world was only the two of you.
"Then we stay," he said.
"We stay," you confirmed.
He pulled you into an embrace, long, tight, and you remained like that for a long time, listening to the children squabble in the yard, feeling the Dornish sun warm your skin, living.
Outside, somewhere far away, Aerys Targaryen sat the throne that could have been his. Counsellors whispered of the lost uncle, of rumours that Prince Valarr yet lived, of the need to find and eliminate any threat to the new king.
But here, in this simple whitewashed house, with the smell of bread in the oven and the sound of children's laughter, the only kingdom that mattered was this one. The kingdom of two bodies that loved each other. Of four hands that built a life. Of children who would never know the weight of a crown.
And when night fell, and the children slept, he drew you close in bed and whispered in the dark:
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"For going to the sept that day. For seeing me cry. For giving me wine. For giving me a reason to live."
You smiled in the darkness and nestled your head against his chest.
"Thank you for living, Valarr."
© 2026 KONALIS | do not copy, remake, repost, or translate any of my works. ︵︵ cr. gif ⨟ @gameofthronesdaily
More medieval dyes for y'all!
haunting me (you must be)
Rating: Explicit Pairing: Baelor Targaryen/Fem!Reader Word Count: 5.1k Summary: In the month-long gap between his proposal and your wedding, Prince Baelor does all he can to keep his hands off you. Contents: tyrell!reader, established relationship, age gap, smut, power play, sexual tension, unprotected premarital (scandalous!), teasing, oral sex (fem receiving), frottage, denial, scent kink, biting, "just the tip", certified pervert Baelor Targaryen
The Prince of Dragonstone is not what you expected, in more ways than one.
You had expected to pursue the Prince Valarr, when you’d first come to court. By all accounts, he was kind, measured, too dutiful for his own good. Handsome, if you were any judge of men’s looks. Easy, your mother told you. Prince Valarr would not deny you anything, should you become his wife, and you knew it from just a few minutes of conversation with him. If you nudged, he would flop over, belly up.
And yet, against everything you had been raised to want, you found yourself pulled to his father instead. Every conversation you had with Prince Baelor was more engaging than the last when you realized he did not expect you to only be knowledgeable in matters of fashion and embroidery. His willingness to converse with you deeply, truly, beyond courtly pleasantries, brought you closer till you spent more time with him than his son — more time than was appropriate.
Now, a moon’s turn after your departure from King’s Landing, you were returning as the Crown Prince’s betrothed instead.
He had taken some convincing, when you first confronted him with your desire, one you knew he returned despite his insistence that it was a passing fancy, that you did not truly want a widower who is twice your own age, that you knew not what you spoke of. But you were nothing if not skilled at persuasion, and when he finally came to you at Highgarden, you were smiling at him knowingly before he could even bend down on one knee.
There was another month to go, still, till the day of your wedding, much to your dismay. While you were uncompromising on your vision for the grand occasion — you’ve had the details planned since you were a child, and you would not let something as silly as time stop you from importing the Qaathi silk of your dreams for your wedding dress — you must admit, the precautions taken to preserve your honour in the time since you’ve arrived are beginning to grate your nerves.
Baelor Targaryen is known for his impressive patience. It is his ability to lie in wait that won him countless battles against the Blackfyre pretender, and it has never once hurt his cause to exercise caution, to wait and strategise before charging in headfirst.
And yet, he feels his patience slipping.
He held himself back when he first met you, repressing his affections as you grew closer, reminding himself countless times that it was improper to want someone ostensibly meant for his own son. He was hesitant even when you yourself proposed a marriage, confessing that you loved him, as he loved you — he barely allowed himself to indulge when you threw your arms around his neck and pulled him into a desperate kiss. Even then, he waited over a fortnight after you left in disappointment till he rode for Highgarden, taking the time to discuss it with his son and his own father.
Baelor Breakspear, the Hammer, known for his unbreaking composure. How humorous, he thinks, that my reputation will be soiled by someone in a silk dress instead of chainmail.
The dresses you brought with you from Highgarden were all quite stylish, elaborate and brightly coloured, and much more low cut than anything worn by the other ladies at court. Even now, as you sit across from him in an evening gown, properly long-sleeved and dark-coloured, the sleeves sit just under the curve of your shoulders, exposing the top of your chest. Your hair, perfectly curled and braided, does nothing to hide the expanse of your neck from his roaming eyes.
You converse pleasantly, ever the agreeable girl you’re known to be, chatting with his nieces about the wedding preparations and how you’re finding King’s Landing now that you know it is to be your home. You are the picture of propriety, and yet he is having trouble keeping his eyes off you.
He is painfully aware that he could call you to his chambers. You’ve been kept on the opposite side of the Red Keep, far from the Tower of the Hand, in the same Maidenvault built to save the first of his name from his own temptation — the irony is not lost on him. And yet, if he sent for you late at night, no one would deny him, not now, when you were to be his wife in a month’s time. He could take you, over and over again, loudly, and no one would question his honour as a Prince of the Realm.
The judgemental eye it might draw upon you, however, is something he could never forgive himself for.
That is what stops him every time, when his base urges creep in, reminding him of his royal privilege to have whomever he wants; he cannot bring himself to compromise your honour.
You, on the other hand, seem determined to do the opposite. He accompanies you back to your chambers after supper, the Kingsguard and one of your lady’s maids following behind as faithful chaperones. Quiet chatter fills the silence on the long walk back to the Maidenvault, discussion of who might run into whom during the wedding reception, which Lords are not to be seated together lest old, petty rivalries rear their ugly heads once more.
“Mm, but who are we to deprive your subjects of free entertainment?” You say, a playful smile gracing your face. An easy chuckle leaves him; he found himself laughing more in a minute of your company than he had in the last two years
“I suppose they will have to settle for the free entertainment the Crown is already providing, considering how many musicians have been brought from the Reach for the occasion.” His tone is light-hearted, no real heat behind the admonishment of your excessive requests for the wedding.
“I know so few dances from this region, Your Grace, and I will not be deprived of dancing at my own wedding solely because I do not know the songs!”
“No, we couldn’t have that.”
“You will, then?” You turn to stand in front of him, stopping him in his tracks, finally realising they’ve arrived at your chambers. “You will dance with me? As much as I please?”
That look you’re giving him, equal parts teasing and pleading, sends a shock down his spine, the same one that overtook him when he first laid eyes on you. Those eyes have haunted his dreams ever since, taunting him with his own desire, no matter how hard he tries to ignore it.
“Of course, my dear.” He tells you, his voice calm, measured, the smile on his face giving very little away. He wants to call you much more. My love, my heart, the object of my every desire, my wife. He curses the chaperones you are constantly accompanied by while in his presence, always within earshot, stopping him from speaking to you openly as he did when you came to him that night and bade him to admit his affections. He had never spoken so openly before, not even with Jena, and now he longed to tell you again, that he would dance with you till his feet fell from his ankles as long as you wished it, that he’d keep you up all night if he could.
When you lean up, onto the tips of your toes, and press a whisper of a kiss to his cheek, despite the presence of your chaperone, he almost slips. His breath stops in his chest at the warmth of your lips on his skin, the exposed expanse of your chest pressed to his just so. He knows if he looked down he would see into your dress, down at your breasts, and he clenches his teeth together in an effort to stop himself.
“Thank you, my Prince.” You say, sweetly, your voice breathless. His jaw unclenches once you’re a safe distance away, but he can still smell your perfume in the air.
It’s all he can think about, even once he’s bid you a goodnight. He has half a mind to steal one of your nightgowns before it makes it to the laundry, just to keep the scent of you close.
Try as you might, you cannot hold back the smug smile on your face.
Baelor has not been able to tear his eyes away since he laid them on you today. You’d sent for him, having asked around till you discovered he had zero meetings with the Small Council today, and bade him to accompany you on a walk through the palace gardens. A chaperoned one, of course, but the chaperones could not stop you from wearing one of your most daring dresses; your mother had smirked when she saw it. It was a pink number, the fabric light and airy, well-suited for both the Reach and King’s Landing when summer heat hung heavy in the air. The detailing on it, winding embroidery creating patterns of stems and vines all along the dress in red thread, was some of the finest you’d ever seen.
There was also, of course, the extremely unnecessary cut outs at your waist, framed by a red rose-patterned silk, baring the skin of your waist just so. At Highgarden this dress wouldn’t have so much as turned a head in your direction, but this was not Highgarden, and for that you were grateful.
Baelor was doing his best to keep his eyes and hands to himself, purposefully setting the former forward, and the latter clasped behind his back, where he could squeeze them as tight as he needed to in order to restrain himself.
The conversation came easy, as it always did. No Small Council meetings did not mean no work, there was always a petition to grant, a marriage to approve on the King’s behalf, a grievance to assuage.
“I appreciate that you can speak so freely of the work you do, my Prince. There are many a Lord that would never concern a Lady in such matters.”
“You are to be Queen one day, my dear,” He replies. “Soon you will curse me for burdening you with such matters.”
You give him a humoured smile as you reach a grand fountain in the gardens, carved from gleaming marble and babbling with water. You wander closer, silently beckoning him to follow — you know, with the chaperones a safe distance away, that any conversation between you would be masked by the sound of flowing water. “Well, I doubt the Small Council would allow a woman to sit in on policy discussions even if she is Queen, much less one that is with child.”
That raises the Prince’s eyebrows, in shock and intrigue. “Rest assured, there will be no pressure for you to bear children so soon after we are wed, as I have two heirs already. I promise, you will be spared much of the early scrutiny. If you were to desire no children at all, my dear, I would not force it upon you.”
His reassurance is sweet. Far too sweet for your intentions.
“I should like to begin fulfilling our marriage duties as soon as possible, my Prince.” You look up at him through your eyelashes as you speak, your expression schooled, so your chaperones might think you’re having decent conversation. You lower your voice, just above a whisper, though you know they cannot hear you. “A moon’s turn feels much too long to wait, does it not?”
Baelor’s eyes flutter shut, his chest rising with the deep breath he takes, and for the first time since you’ve met him, the Prince of Dragonstone flushes a subtle pink. You can’t help the small proud smile that upturns the corner of your lips.
“I have waited an agonising amount of time to be with you, my love,” He finally speaks, his mismatched eyes settling back on you with a new intensity. “I will not have you dishonored because I cannot wait a moon’s turn longer.”
It’s your turn for your cheeks to heat, a burning ache filling your chest at the sound of his voice, far lower than you’ve heard it before. You know, tonight, you’ll do your best to recall it with a hand between your thighs, desperately trying to sate the hunger he’s inspired in you.
“My Prince-”
“My Lady!” Your Septa calls, her stare a disapproving one, and you both realise that you are standing far too close to each other.
“The tulips are this way, my dear, I know you wished to see them in full bloom.” Baelor announces, loud enough to be heard from meters away, and leads you away from the fountain before you can say another word to make his britches feel too tight.
You try not to let the frustration at her interruption show on your face for the rest of the walk.
It happens several days later.
You have scarcely seen your betrothed since that afternoon in the royal gardens. His time became far too occupied with matters of the Realm as the Lords of Westeros arrived from far and wide for the wedding, using their time in the capital to make their petitions to the Crown in-person. Every time you happened upon the throne room, the Good King Daeron was seated on that ghastly chair, a crowd of noblemen filling the room as they await their turn to speak. And next to the King, there he was, standing at his father’s side as his trusted Hand, looking every bit the part. It caught your breath every time, to set your eyes upon him in this setting; you could see it then, the crown on his head, clear as day. It might be you there someday, standing next to Baelor as his Queen while he sits upon the throne.
And yet, you found you cared little for the title now. All that mattered was that you were with him.
You’ve grown restless in his absence. It’s barely been a week, but you can’t stand the sight of his empty chair at supper, the brief greetings you share when you pass each other in crowded halls, your eyes brazenly displaying the way you long to spend more than a clock-tick in his presence.
It felt like madness. All your life you believed marriage would be simple for you, as it was for your mother, and her mother before her. A husband was an easy thing to influence, to wrap around your finger and bend to your will, and you’d grown into a woman of marriageable age assuming no man would ever cause you grief. This tugging ache, this burning for someone’s touch, was not what you anticipated, from a husband nor a lover, and you found yourself, for once, incapable of containing yourself. You felt it — in the frown that marred your face when Baelor retreated from you, the ache of longing at the sight of his back, the dizzying heat between your legs when you thought of him late at night that you simply could not soothe by yourself.
When he finally summoned you to his solar, much too far into the night to be appropriate, you could not dress quickly enough. You cared little about the nervous stares from your lady’s maids as they helped you into your gown, a deep red colour, perfect for a Targaryen bride. The Kingsguard knights trailed far behind you, your steps far too quick for them, but you could not find it in you to delay.
You are breathless when you finally land in front of his study. There is little time to collect yourself before the guards step in front of you to open the door, quietly announcing your presence to the Prince before departing. Leaving you standing before your future husband, alone, and several meters further from him than you’d like to be.
He stood up when you’d entered the room, like one might expect a common Lord to do in the presence of royalty. And yet he stayed behind his desk, frozen in place, his eyes meeting yours with something unknowable in them; something smouldering and torrid that you couldn’t name if you tried.
You stay like that for what feels like forever. Stunned into stillness before each other, silence only interrupted by the thudding of your heartbeat in your ears and the low, crackling fire.
“I have missed you.” Your words come quieter than you expected, almost a whisper. There is no one here to watch your impropriety, and yet you cannot speak your words any louder out of careful habit.
“As have I.” His voice is hoarse, like he is straining to speak, and his eyes never move from yours.
You take a hesitant step towards him. “Baelor-”
And then whatever stupor had overtaken him is broken. He rushes towards you, his hands coming to either side of your face, cradling you between them, and his lips are on yours quicker than you can fathom.
His kiss is feverish, demanding, invading your every sense so you have no choice but to surrender, but you wouldn’t resist him anyways. You arch your neck backwards to accommodate his height, you let his tongue pass your lips, you let him steal the breath from your chest till your lungs burn, and still you whine quietly when he pulls away, never allowing more than a clock-tick to pass before your mouth is back on his.
He has to tug you away, forcing you to still so he can rest his forehead against yours, his lips still tantalisingly close.
“I am a selfish man,” He declares with a rough whisper, his eyes closed, as if looking upon you might damn him forever. It feels like cruelty when he brushes his nose against yours, teasing you with his closeness.
“Baelor, please-”
“I have struggled, in vain.” He continues. “I have done everything to stay away from you, and I have failed, time and time again.”
His lips brush against yours again, a ghost of a touch, barely there and then gone before you can blink.
“Marrying you might be the most selfish thing I have ever done.” He says it like a confession. “I am a knight. I swore before the Gods to uphold honour, and yet honour means nothing to me when it keeps me from you. You have ruined me, my love.”
A laugh escapes you, quiet and light, far too light for the situation, making his eyes reopen and harden. “This is humorous to you, then?”
“Yes, my Prince,” You admit easily. “I have you right where I wanted you.”
His lip curls, half-sneer, half-smile, and you are given no time to react when he reaches down, his hands moving away from your face, to your waist, to the back of your skirt before lifting you and carrying you to his desk.
“You said a moon’s turn was not too long to wait,” You tease, still smiling.
“I lied.” Then he smears his mouth against yours again.
Your legs part instinctually around him, far too focused on his lips being back on yours to resist when he lifts your skirts. You cannot part from him, even as his hands trail from your stocking-clad calves to the bare skin of your upper thighs, drawing a gasp from you. Your arms come up to wrap around his neck, pulling him closer, your hand settling at his nape, fingers trailing through the cropped hair there.
You would have kept him right there forever, if you could — it’s he that breaks the kiss again, ignoring the disappointed noise you make as he lowers himself to his knees, and brings yours to rest on his shoulders. He keeps his eyes on you, that same heated look in them, as he pushes your skirts up further, giving you plenty of time to protest before the fabric is ruched up to your waist. His gaze falls then, to the space between your legs, and it does not stray as he leans in to press a feather-light kiss to the inside of your thigh. You cannot hide the gasp that escapes you at his touch, and you cannot bring yourself to look away from him. One of your hands leaves his head, coming to rest on the desk behind you, balancing you as you lean back to watch him.
His pace is slow as he explores your soft skin, pressing his lips to every inch of it, savouring the feel of it and leaving a burning trail simmering wherever he wanders. The mere heat of his steady eyes on the core of you is enough to make you squirm in place.
“I have never seen anything so divine,” His voice is low, just for you to hear. He leans closer to you, close enough that you can feel his breath right where you need him most, and takes a deep inhale of your scent, a low groan brewing in his throat upon exhale. “As you, bare and soaked for me.”
“Baelor.. Wh- what are you-” And then his mouth is on you, cutting you off with your own gasp.
Your eyes screw shut, suddenly unable to bear the thought of opening them, of seeing what he’s doing to you. The tales that you heard of this, whispered between women in scandalous confession, could never have prepared you for what you felt. The heat of his mouth on you, his tongue kissing and lapping at where you’re wettest for him, steals your ability to breathe. It is too much, too quickly, white-hot pleasure flowing through you and fogging your head until he has to squeeze your thigh to break you out of it.
“Breathe,” He reminds you, but you shake your head.
“I can’t!”
“You must,” He pulls away, till you can no longer feel his warmth on your skin. “Or I will be forced to stop.”
“Dont!” The plea comes without hesitation. “Please, please, don’t stop, I want-”
“Breathe for me, then.” He takes a deep breath in, and you follow him, stuttering air filling your lungs once more. Satisfied, he leans back into you. “That’s it. In… and out… in-”
His tongue dips through your folds again, turning your exhales into pleasured sighs. The sound is too obscene to bear. The slick, wet sound of his lips wrapping around the crest of your sex and sucking, pulsing rhythmically around the sensitive bundle there. The hand that had settled behind you on the desk now provides you an anchor, keeping you grounded as you match his rhythm with cants of your hips, chasing the pressure that builds low in your belly.
“Yes, my love, just like that.” He says, reverent, watching as you give in to him fully, only able to answer with soft moans and muttered nonsense.
His finger is much thicker than yours, stretching you more than you ever could as it presses into the tight ring of your entrance, just as you’d hoped. The metal of his ring, brushing against you every time he pumps the digit in, only adds to your pleasure, the cold-hard shock of it on your soft folds making you gasp with every movement.
Baelor works you like he knows your body already, guided by every pleasured noise you make, every mindless moan of his name. When they turn high and uncontrollable, your head tilted back, rocking yourself against his mouth more insistently, desperately, he knows you’re close. A second finger joins the first, the pace just a touch faster, pulling you towards the edge at his will.
The subtle press of his fingers upwards turns your moan into a soft cry, and it hits you all at once, the pleasure cresting and then washing over you. His mouth doesn’t leave you once, doesn’t stop his open-mouthed kisses at the top of your sex, sending pulses through your body till you’re pushing at his forehead, even as you continue to press your hips into him.
He comes away with an awed, dumb smile on his face, drunk on the taste of you, his beard damp with it. He rises from his knees and leans over you, wrapping an arm around your middle to pull you up, and you’re too loose-limbed to do anything but go with him as he kisses you again.
You can feel his hand between you, shifting against your stomach, and you part from the kiss to find him grasping himself through his trousers, pulsing squeezes around his stiff cock. Quiet grunts fall from his lips with every press of his hand, and for a moment you simply watch, mesmerised.
Then your hand lands over his, hesitant. Unsure. “I want… I want to watch.”
A pained groan fills your ear as his forehead drops against yours. He makes quick work of the laces on his trousers, and you pull down his breeches with equal fervor, freeing his cock from the fabric.
His member is thicker than it is long — you can feel the burn of him stretching you already, distantly, making you clench around nothing at the mere thought. The tip of him is a flushed, ruddy hue, dripping with a clear liquid that you dare to feel at, gathering the slick on your thumb just to see. Baelor’s breathing is laboured as he watches you bring your thumb to your lips and lick, a pleased hum escaping you at the flavour.
“Fuck,” He growls, his hand finding his shaft again immediately, enveloping it like he can barely stop himself as he licks into your mouth, desperate to taste himself on you.
His mouth slows against yours when you reach down again, resting your hand over his fist. He pants against your lips as he lets your hand replace his, guiding your fist over him in measured, hard strokes.
He’s hard under your touch, hot and firm and slick with pre-cum already. Your cheeks burn as you realize just how much you like it, the heaviness of him against your palm, the moans you pull from him just with your touch. His lips move against your own, and he begins to rut into the tight circle of your intertwined hands, fucking your fist like- like-
The realisation, that this will be what he does to you, is breathtaking. He’ll move against you just like this, but he’ll be inside you, working his way into you till you fit perfectly around his cock, and you feel that ache of desire between your legs once again. You moan his name softly, absentmindedly, as you move to guide him towards your entrance, spreading your thighs and shuffling closer to him.
The hand covering your own stills, forcing you to stop.
“Not yet, my love.” You whine in disappointment, but he hushes you gently. “We must be patient.”
“Please, Baelor.” You are begging, you realise. Something you’ve never done before in your life.
“We cannot,” He insists, still denying you, even as he moves closer to the edge of the desk, and slots his hips against yours. It feels like he’s branded you from the mere brush of his cock against your inner thigh, teasing you with how near you are to what you’ve begged him for. He’s infuriatingly gentle as he removes your hand from his shaft, shifting his hips and then thrusting himself between your folds.
Your mouth falls open on a cry as the tip of him slides against the crest of your sex, the most sensitive part of him nudging against the most sensitive part of you. He draws his hips back, then forward again, gliding against you instead of inside you, careful not to enter you as he does.
At first, you cannot protest, not when the pace of his hips rutting against you leaves you senseless, unable to do anything but clutch at his shoulders and let him give you a rough feign of a fuck. Anyone who walked by his study now would never know that he isn’t deflowering you, from the sound of your skin slapping against his, your moans mixing with his. So close to what you want- need-
“Please, please, just the tip, my love, it won’t-” You find yourself pleading with him again, through desperate whimpers and pants every time his cock brings you another shock of pleasure, shooting up your spine and settling in your belly, building you towards sweet release. But he ignores you, the hand that’s not splayed across your back coming to bunch in your wrinkled skirts, fisting the fabric and pulling you against him, nearly lifting you off the desk to meet his thrusts.
His eyebrows are drawn together as he stares down at you, unbreaking even as he chokes on his own air, looking mad with hunger for you. He’s unbelievable like this, restraining himself from taking you as he should, as he has every right to, divulging his urges while still leaving both of you wanting, aching for each other.
He makes a sound like he’s wounded, then, his head dipping to rest on your shoulder before his teeth set hard on your neck, drawing a shocked cry from you as his punishing pace stutters, grows uneven and desperate. His hips bunch against yours once more and then you feel it, his release spurting onto your heated skin, spilling onto your sex and your thighs.
You both remain still, panting together, for a moment. You cannot find it in you to loosen the grip you have on him, even as he lifts his head, pulling his hips away from yours just an inch so he can see the mess he’s made of you. The moan that leaves him is awed, his grip on you tightening at the sight of his spend all over you, dripping obscenely.
“There will be no bedding ceremony,” He states, suddenly, drawing your unfocused stare back to him. “No one else is allowed to see you like this. I won’t have it. But the Lords will need their proof of our consummation.”
His hand comes to feel at your sex, causing you to jolt in his arms, a pained whine spilling from you. “That’s why I cannot fuck you the way I want to, not yet. When I take you on our wedding night, they will see it plainly on the sheets. They will finally know you’re mine, Princess.”
“‘M not a princess yet.” You find it in you to say, quietly, unable to raise your voice quite yet.
Baelor simply shakes his head, still looking down at where he’s marked you with his seed. “You are mine, now. In every way that matters.”
Teeth of my lover
Aerion Targaryen x Wife Reader
same universe - The fight
In which Aerion’s wife is the opposite of him in all aspects, her gentle nature is less of something to break, but rather protect. Like a dragon guarding his plunder.
word count: 1,366
cw: 18+ mdni, talks of toxic relationships (not readers), consented biting, this is just pure fluff, sexual themes, characters are adults always - YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONTENT AND MEDIA THAT YOU CHOOSE TO CONSUME
Ashford tourney was supposed to be for mending long lasting alliances with the houses of the Reach. Instead, your father-by-law had lost two of his son’s on the journey, and the one that remained had managed to kill a horse during his first and now only joust. He had been banned from competing for fear the small-folk would try and pelt him to death with stones in the arena. You had been there all of three days, and you were all as sick of it as the people were of you.
Therefore when the evening jousts commenced at sunset, you had urged your husband to join you on a walk in the meadows. No one else will venture there you had said, they are preoccupied with the tournament.
And your words rang true, the meadow was deserted. Insects flew freely, birds sung loudly, an orange glow cast across the entire scene. It was picturesque. Utterly beautiful. That’s where you led amongst the flowers of the field, your head resting in your husband’s lap as his fingers fell idly through your hair.
“You are going to get filthy led down there.” He uttered, fingers tangling several strands together in a pattern which slightly resembled that of a plait. “You worry too much about things that do not matter my dragon.” You reached up a hand, pressing your two central fingers against his lips as he parted them, welcoming their taste against his tongue before biting down lightly. A pout fell across your face as you yanked your hand back, little red crescents bled across your fingers from the rawness of his touch. Biting was a known affection of your husband. He did it playfully, he did it endearingly, he did it in bed, he did it when he thought you needed a reminder of to whom you belong. You had grown used to it being a silent form of I love you, this makes you mine.
In retaliation to his brute touch you kissed his palm tenderly, pressing his fingers flat against your cheek as your lips caressed his callous hands. “You do not always have to be so gentle.” He murmured, his unused hand resuming its place at the crown of your head, massaging gently. “I do not seek to hurt you, husband.” It was true, did his immature actions like killing a horse in a friendly tourney make you want to suffocate him with your pillow? Yes. Would you ever do such a thing? No. Because you maintained impulse control, something your husband feverishly lacked. “People talk of our marriage you know.” It felt like a confession from his lips, he desired to be feared but he hated the whispers that carried pity in your direction, that he would dare lay a hand to his own wife, he would sooner cut it off himself than do such a thing to you. He was rough when he knew it brought you pleasure only, never would he strike you down for merely existing, why would he have taken you to wed if your thoughts and feelings deserved to be silenced at his hand? But he knew what people thought, he was publicly careless in his actions, he hurt others without thinking twice. They pitied you publicly, his own family even contributed.
The Mad Prince’s Poor Wife
Brightflames caged dove
The living ghost of Summerhall
They truly believed you to be so unseen. Sure you were quieter than most, but your husband was devoted to your every need. They did not see his affection, they had not earned it. You had never had to, but to hear the whispers on the wind of their blatant pity was painful. You were not ignored, far from it. But in Summerhall there was few that made good company, you often found yourself wandering the halls late at night when sleep would not find you, resulting in the living ghost becoming an unwanted nickname - because the servants truly believed you were wandering due to the fact your husband was bedding whores in your shared bedchamber, another misconception, he just snores very fucking loud.
“I know of what they say.” You looked up to meet his eyes lightly, his contrasted your own heavily “but again, it does not concern me for they do not know me.” He scoffed, untangling his fingers from your hair “Yes but maybe it should, they speak as if I hate you, I bed whores in our shared bed, I make you suffer when I do bed you.”
“Maybe they think that because you make me scream.” You giggled, you caught the amusement flash across his face in a subtly proud smirk before he shook his head “That is absolutely beside the point. Do not be so vulgar, it is not befitting of a Lady.” He was teasing, abundantly so, he lowered his face until he was inches from your own, upside down from your perspective. The tip of his nose brushed against the bridge of your own, however in his distraction you placed several kisses to his taught jaw. His eyes fell shut with a hum, you tangled your hands in his hair, pulling his face as close as you could get it to your own, kissing his forehead to his cheek tenderly, before releasing him and turning onto your stomach, resting your arms in his lap. You were propped up that way, giving him better access to the entirety of your face. He seized the opportunity to entwine his hands with your hair full, locking them at the base of your scalp so that you were forced to maintain eye contact with him. “Look at this dress. Have you any idea the coin I spent on it?” He tutted, the once flush pink skirts were saddled with marks of dusty mud - it would undoubtedly brush off but he enjoyed the game of making a fuss. “Probably more than was necessary.” You smiled, meeting his lips in a devastating kiss as he groaned into your mouth.
“It is growing late, we should return to bed.” He pulled away ever so slightly but you chased his lips with your own, “I do not wish to depart yet! No need to stay in that dreary place when this is the view.” He groaned against your lips before he was silenced by your tongue fighting its way back into his mouth. You settled yourself into his lap now, allowing you a better reach to his face as he chuckled quietly at your desperation for closeness.
“Do not laugh at me.” You whined, his hands settled to your hips in an attempt to settle your dispute. “You are desperate.” He titled his head, a lazy smile planted onto his face, such a vast separation from the brute man that held his own on a tourney field. “I am allowed to be desperate you are my husband.”
“Yes well, if you would come with me to bed I would be able to satisfy your desires.” He raised an eyebrow, a kiss pressed to the side of your face. “I desire your company and your affection and I want it here in this field.” You demanded, maybe it did sound a bit desperate in hindsight but you didn’t have the care for it. He only laughed louder as you pouted at him, “you sound childish. Lose the attitude my flame it does not best suit you.”
“Childish! How dare you!”
“Oh how dare I? Gods I do forget myself.” His lips joined to your neck in a flurry of hurried kisses that only forced your laughter to join with his. “There, is my wife now satisfied?”
A hazy smile joined your face, you adored your husband more than anything because to you this was who he was. It brought you pain more often than not to know how those around you viewed your relationship. They did not see his affection, they saw your withdrawal from public affection. You did not hold hands, you did not kiss or even touch where others could see. Because it was not for them to have. What you shared was gentle and sacred and entirely your own.
A/N: shorter and entirely out of character for aerion i know, but i couldn’t resist. sometimes i forget im literally writing fanfiction and i can write whatever i want however i want so yes this is not who aerion is as a character but i had a lot of fun so i hope you all enjoyed.
as always: likes, comments, reblogs + any interactions at all are always always appreciated - take care everyone!!
DISCLAIMER: All themes, plot, images used in general and characters from A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms + elsewhere belong to the rightful owners, I hold no rights to the original media - but my writing belongs to me.
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How to Train Your Raven
Pairing: Brynden Rivers x f!reader
Summary: A noble lady from a disgraced house that supported Blackfyres is married off to Lord Bloodraven as a reward for his loyalty and prowess in battle. But he prefers to occupy his time with duties as the Hand of the King. Comfortable but lonely, she befriends one of his ravens. Warnings: arranged marriage, yearning, angst, fluff, Westeros politics, Shiera.
The raven was a greedy, ungrateful beast, and you loved it dearly.
You had named him Pebble, for no greater reason than the smooth grey of his breast feathers, which reminded you of the stones along the Mander where you had played as a child. He came to your windowsill each morning, croaking his hoarse demands, and you obliged him with crumbs of bread and shreds of cold meat saved from your supper. In return, he permitted you to stroke the ruff of his neck and mutter your foolish secrets into the space between his blinking black eyes. It was a small, pitiful comfort.
The Tower of the Hand was a cold place, despite the braziers that burned in every chamber. You had been given rooms near the top, close enough to the Hand’s own solar that you might, in theory, encounter your husband on the winding stair. In practice, you saw his servants more often: the silent men in their grey wool cloaks, the Raven’s Teeth who guarded his door with bows strung across their backs. They nodded to you when you passed, respectful but distant, as though you were a ghost they had been instructed not to disturb.
You were a ghost, in a way. A shade drifting through the Red Keep in your pale gowns, your House’s green and gold folded away in chests because wearing them felt like a provocation. Oakheart. The name sat heavy on your tongue these days, a fruit gone bitter on the branch. Your father had played his double game during the rebellion and lost, and you were the price of his redemption, a trueborn daughter gifted to a legitimized bastard, a man who had not wanted you, who had asked for another woman’s hand a thousand times and been refused, and who had accepted you as a lord might accept a parcel of land he had no intention of farming.
You tried not to think of Shiera Seastar. It was impossible.
Her name was everywhere in the Red Keep, whispered by serving girls and sung by minstrels, painted in miniature on ivory pendants that his paramours wore at their throats. The most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms, they called her, and when they said it in your hearing, their eyes would dart to you with something between pity and amusement. See the Oakheart girl, their glances said. See how plain she looks beside the memory of Seastar’s shimmer.
Back in the Reach, you had been called beautiful. You had believed it. Here, you were a candle held up against the sun. Back in the Reach, you were praised as a proper lady, and Shiera was called a shameless whore with nothing more than derision. But King's Landing valued influence, the ability to captivate and draw interest, which Shiera had in abundance.
You did not hate her. Hatred required energy you did not possess. But you feared her. You feared the day she would return to court, trailing silk and scandal behind her, and you would have to stand beside your husband and watch his single eye follow her across the hall. You feared the quiet, courteous dismissal that would surely follow. You had married a man who loved another woman. It was a common enough fate for highborn ladies, you knew, but knowing it did not make your marriage bed any warmer.
You spent your days wandering. The gardens, with their rose trellises and marble fountains, their sharp-scented herbs and imported lemon trees shivering in the sea wind. The library, where you read histories of the Seven Kingdoms until the words blurred before your eyes. The sept, where you knelt before the Maiden and asked for guidance that never came. And the stairway that spiraled up to the Hand’s solar, where you would sometimes sit on the cold stone steps with a book open on your lap, close enough to hear the murmur of voices beyond the iron-banded door, the scratch of a quill, the rustle of parchment. You never knocked. You were too afraid of being turned away.
It was on one of those steps, three moons into your marriage, that Brynden Rivers finally spoke to you about the raven.
You had Pebble on your knee, feeding him strips of roasted capon you had wrapped in a napkin and smuggled from the kitchens. The bird was growing stout, you could see it in the way his breast swelled over his claws, the way he waddled rather than hopped when he moved along the windowsill. You had noticed but you had not cared. You had to keep feeding him so he wouldn't leave you as well.
“What am I doing, Pebble?” you whispered. “What am I doing here? My husband does not want me. The court does not see me. My family’s name is a jest and a warning both. I am a wife in name only, and I do not know how to become anything more. I was not taught how to be a wife to a man like him. I was taught how to be a wife to a lord who wanted a gentle lady to manage his household and bear his children. But Lord Bloodraven has a household that manages itself and no desire for children of his body, or so they say.” You paused, your fingers stilling on the raven’s feathers. “Perhaps he would want children if they were Shiera’s.”
The raven croaked.
You stroked the raven’s feathers again, and your voice cracked. “I am even afraid that you will leave me, Pebble. You are the only friend I have in this place. Please do not fly away.”
The door to the solar opened. You scrambled to your feet, the napkin falling from your lap, capon scattering across the stone. Pebble let out an indignant caw and flapped onto the windowsill, his wings laboring under his weight.
Lord Bloodraven stood in the doorway.
His hair, silver-white, fell straight to his shoulders, and his skin was so pale it seemed to drink the light. The red birthmark that crept up his neck and cheek, the source of his name, was vivid as a splash of wine against snow. He wore black, and the eye that fixed on you now was the deep, unsettling red of dying embers.
The other eye was gone. A pale, smooth scar ran from brow to cheekbone, and beneath it, a dark hollow that seemed to see more than any living eye could.
“My lady wife,” he said. His voice was quiet, precise, each word placed as carefully as a stone on a cyvasse board.
“My lord.” You dropped into a curtsy, your heart hammering. You had not expected him to emerge. He rarely did before the hour of the bat. “Forgive me, I did not mean to disturb you. I was only...”
His gaze had moved past you to the raven. Pebble was worrying at a shred of capon, his beak tearing at the meat with smug contentment. Bloodraven’s expression did not change, but the air shifted, a faint tightening like the pause before a thunderclap.
“That is my raven,” he said.
“Yes, my lord. I hope you do not mind. He comes to my window, and I...”
“He is fat.”
The words fell like a stone into still water. You felt heat rise to your cheeks, the familiar burn of mortification. Your fingers twisted in the folds of your skirt, a pale lavender silk, pretty and demure. Here in the grey light of the tower it seemed washed-out and childish. You were a woman grown, a wife, and yet you felt like a girl being scolded by her septa for some minor transgression.
“I have been feeding him,” you admitted in a small voice.
Bloodraven stepped forward. His movements were unsettlingly smooth. He lifted one long-fingered hand, and the raven, your Pebble, your greedy, ungrateful Pebble, fluttered up to perch on his wrist without the slightest hesitation, as though you had never existed.
“A raven of the Tower must be lean,” Bloodraven said, stroking the bird’s breast with one pale thumb. Pebble closed his eyes in bliss. “He must fly swiftly over distances that would exhaust a lesser bird. He must carry messages through weather that would kill a hawk. He must be quick, clever, and sharp as a blade.”
He turned that burning red eye back to you.
“You have made him useless.”
The words struck harder than they should have. You had not thought yourself capable of tears, you had not wept when leaving the Reach, not at your wedding, not on your wedding night when your husband failed to come to your bed, but now your throat tightened and your vision swam. You blinked rapidly, fighting it down, but a single tear escaped and traced a burning path down your cheek.
You ducked your head, hoping he had not seen. The silence stretched, unbearable.
“I am sorry,” you whispered. “I did not know. He came to me. He seemed friendly. I only offered him kindness.”
“Friendly.” He said the word as if it were a foreign concept. His blood-eye seemed to gleam in the half-light, and for a moment you could have sworn you saw the raven’s reflection in it, a dark bird within a darker pool. “Ravens are tools, my lady. They are not pets. This one has been made useless by your kindness.”
The word useless stung again. You dropped your gaze to the floor again, studying the worn flagstones beneath your slippers. “I apologise. I will not feed it anymore.”
You did not wait for a response. You gathered your skirts and fled down the winding stair, your slippers slapping against the stone, your breath coming in short, hitching gasps. You did not stop until you reached your chambers, where you threw yourself onto the great empty bed and buried your face in the pillows and wept until there was nothing left inside you.
You did not go to the Tower the next day, nor the day after that. You kept to your rooms, claiming a headache when your maids inquired. You took your meals alone, the food tasteless on your tongue. You did not open your shutters, though you heard the scratch of claws on the sill more than once. You could not bear to see Pebble, to see the raven who had abandoned you as easily as breathing, who had flown to his master’s hand without a backward glance.
It was on the third day that a servant knocked at your door and informed you that the Hand of the King required your presence in his solar.
You dressed carefully, your hands trembling on the laces of your gown. You chose a dress of pale green, the color of new leaves, the closest you dared come to the Oakheart colors. You pinned your hair up in a simple coil. You looked, you thought, like a woman preparing for an execution.
The solar was warm, lit by a fire in the great hearth and by candles in iron holders. Books lined the walls, more books than you had ever seen in a private chamber, their spines cracked and worn from use. Maps and charts covered a long table, and in the corner, a perch held three ravens, their heads tucked under their wings.
Bloodraven sat behind a desk of dark oak, a quill in his hand. He did not rise when you entered, but he set the quill down and gestured to a chair across from him.
“Sit,” he said.
You sat. Your hands folded in your lap, the picture of a well-bred lady. You had been trained for this, after all: to be still, to be silent, to be pleasing. It was the only weapon you had ever been given.
Bloodraven regarded you for a long moment. In the firelight, the port-wine stain on his cheek seemed to shift and writhe like something alive. His eye, that terrible red eye, seemed to see straight through you, past the careful composure and the pretty dress and into the hollow ache at your center.
“You have not been to the Tower,” he said.
“I did not wish to disturb you, my lord.”
“You have not been to the gardens, either. Nor the library. Nor the sept.” He leaned back in his chair, steepling his long fingers. “My birds tell me things.”
Your heart lurched. The ravens. Of course. You had forgotten, in your misery, the whispers that surrounded your husband like a cloak of shadows. He could see through the eyes of his birds, they said. He could watch the whole of the Seven Kingdoms from his Tower, and nothing escaped his notice. You had thought it a fanciful tale, a legend spun to explain the unerring accuracy of his spy network. But the way he looked at you now made you wonder.
“I have been tired,” you said, which was not entirely a lie.
“You have been crying.”
The words were blunt, without softening. You flinched, your gaze dropping to your hands.
“My lady,” Bloodraven said, his tone had shifted. It was not kind, you did not think kindness was in his nature, but it was less cold than before. “Look at me.”
You raised your eyes.
“The raven,” he said. “You named him.”
It was not a question. You nodded anyway.
“Pebble,” you said, your voice barely above a whisper. “Because of his breast feathers. They reminded me of home.”
Bloodraven was silent for a moment. Then he rose from his chair and crossed to the window, his back to you, his silver hair catching the firelight.
“I have had many ravens,” he said. “Hundreds, over the years. I breed them in the Tower, train them, dispatch them across the realm. They are tools, nothing more. I have never given one a name.”
He turned, his single eye finding you again.
“No one has ever named one of my ravens before.”
You did not know what to say. You sat frozen, your heart beating a nervous rhythm against your ribs.
“He is not useless,” Bloodraven said, and there was something akin to curiosity in his voice. “I examined him this morning. He is plump, yes, but he is healthy. His plumage is glossy. His eyes are bright. He is more docile than the others, more accustomed to human touch. There are uses for such a raven.”
He took a step toward you, then another, until he stood before your chair, looking down at you with an expression you could not read.
“I have been a poor husband,” he said.
Your mouth opened but no sound came out.
“I did not ask for this marriage,” he continued, “and neither did you. We were both bound by the king’s will, and I have not made the binding easier for you. I have been…absent. Preoccupied.” He paused. “Unkind.”
“My lord, you have been...”
“Do not,” he said, lifting a hand to stop your protest, “be polite. I am surrounded by polite people. I find it exhausting.”
You closed your mouth.
Bloodraven lowered his hand. “I loved Shiera,” he said, and the name was a blade between your ribs. “For many years. I asked for her hand more times than I can count. She always refused. Perhaps she was wise.” His jaw tightened, a flicker of old pain crossing his pale features. “But she is not my wife. You are.”
He reached down, and before you could react, his fingers closed around your hand. His skin was cool, dry. But his grip was steady.
“I cannot promise you love,” he said. “I am not a man given to tender feeling. The whispers about me are not all false. I am a sorcerer, of a kind. I do see through the eyes of my ravens. I have done things that would make you flinch to hear, and I will likely do more before I am through. I have little patience for the courtly games that fill the days of most highborn ladies.”
He paused, and his thumb brushed once across your knuckles.
“But I am not cruel without cause. I do not take pleasure in suffering. And I have watched you these three moons, my lady. Through the eyes of my ravens, yes. I have seen you in the gardens, sitting alone on the stone benches. I have seen you in the library, reading the same page over and over because your mind is elsewhere. I have seen you feeding my raven, speaking to him as though he were a friend, because you had no one else to speak to.”
Your face was burning. You wanted to look away, to hide, but his eye held you as surely as a pin holds a butterfly.
“I did not intend to spy,” he said, and there was a note in his voice that might have been regret. “At first, I was merely curious. Then I was...concerned. You are withering, my lady. Like a flower deprived of light. And I am the one who has kept you in the dark.”
He released your hand and stepped back.
“I would like to propose a truce,” he said. “A beginning. I will not pretend to be something I am not. I will always be busy with the affairs of the realm, always be strange, secretive and perhaps a little frightening for your liking. But I will make an effort to be present. To speak with you. To…know you.” He tilted his head, a gesture eerily reminiscent of his ravens. “If you will permit it.”
You stared at him, your heart pounding so loudly you were certain he could hear it. This was not what you had expected. This was not the cold dismissal, the polite abandonment, the quiet return to separate lives. This was an opening, a crack in the armor.
“I would like that,” your voice came out steadier than you had hoped. “My lord.”
“Brynden,” he corrected. “If we are to attempt this, you may as well use my name.”
You swallowed. “Brynden.”
The corners of his mouth twitched, the barest suggestion of a smile. “See? Not so difficult.”
He returned to his desk and picked up his quill, but he did not dismiss you. Instead, he gestured toward a smaller table near the fire, where a tray of fruit and cheese and a pitcher of wine had been laid out.
“Stay,” he said. “Eat. You have been hiding in your rooms for three days, and I suspect you have not been eating properly.”
You rose from your chair, your legs unsteady beneath you. As you crossed to the table, you saw a perch near the window, separate from the others. On it sat Pebble, his head cocked, his black eyes fixed on you with reproach.
“He has been sulking,” Brynden said, not looking up from his parchment. “He does not understand why you stopped coming.”
You reached out a trembling hand and stroked the raven’s breast. Pebble made a soft sound and pressed his head against your fingers.
“I am sorry,” you murmured to him. “I am here now.”
Behind you, you heard the scratch of the quill pause for just a moment, and then resume.
From that day, you took your evening meals in the solar with Brynden, sitting at the small table by the fire while he worked at his desk. He did not speak much, but he answered when you asked questions, and sometimes he would pause in his writing to ask one of his own. Small things at first: how you found the Red Keep, whether the sea air agreed with you, what books you had been reading. You answered honestly, and he listened with a focus that was almost unnerving, his eye fixed on you as though every word you spoke were a piece of intelligence to be filed away.
Then he started inquiring about your life, so you told him. Your father had pledged fealty to both King Daeron and Daemon Blackfyre, sending one gold and the other men. King Daeron had kept his crown, and House Oakheart's reputation had suffered. Instead of emerging unscathed either way, as Lord Oakheart had intended, the King inflicted punishments on him. His eldest son, your older brother, was assigned to become a Kingsguard. He had to refute his title, land and future of marriage and instead serve as a guard to the same King he had fought against. You, the eldest daughter, were given to Hand of the King as a reward he didn't ask for. A legitimate lady to solidify his standing. Your mother had acted as if everything was fine, which you suspected was for your sake, although you didn't want such strained treatment. And you scarcely saw your brother since arriving in King's Landing, even though you both lived at the Red Keep.
You learned things about him in return. He had been born with the birthmark, with hair already white, and his mother had wept when she first saw him. He had been a poor swordsman as a boy, too thin and frail, so he had turned to the bow out of desperation. He loved his Blackwood sisters. He did not sleep well. He never had.
One evening, a fortnight after your conversation in the solar, you gathered your courage and asked the question that had been burning in your throat since the day you arrived.
“Do you wish I were her?”
The quill stopped. The fire crackled in the silence. Pebble, perched on the back of your chair, shifted his weight from one claw to the other.
Brynden set the quill down slowly. “That is a foolish question.”
“I am not afraid of the answer.” You were, of course. You were terrified. But you had spent months living in the shadow of a ghost and you could not do it any longer.
He rose from his desk and came to stand before the fire. The flames cast his face in red and gold, the birthmark nearly invisible against the glow. His back was to you.
“I wished for many things,” he said at last. “I wished for her to love me. I wished for her to choose me, just once, over all the others. I wished for a great many foolish things that a wiser man would have let go long ago.” He turned to look at you. “But I do not wish you were her. You are not her. You are nothing like her, and that is…not a bad thing.”
“I have heard she is the most beautiful woman in the Seven Kingdoms,” you said, and you hated the smallness of your voice, the jealousy that crept in despite your best efforts.
“She is,” Brynden said, and your heart sank. “But beauty is a strange thing. Shiera’s beauty is like wildfire: brilliant, consuming, and utterly indifferent to what it destroys. I spent years burning in it, and I have the scars to show. You are different. Your beauty is like…” He paused, searching for the word. “Like the first green shoots after winter. Blooming. Steady. Something that grows rather than blazes.”
You did not know what to say. Your face felt hot.
“I am not good at this,” Brynden said with a flicker of frustration in his voice. “I am no poet. I do not know how to court my own wife.”
A laugh bubbled up in your throat, unexpected and slightly hysterical. You pressed your hand to your mouth, trying to stifle it, but it escaped anyway, a small, surprised sound that made Brynden’s eye widen a fraction.
“I do not know how to be courted,” you admitted. “I was taught to be a lady, not a wife. No one ever told me what to do with a husband who did not want a wife.”
“I never said I did not want a wife.” He took a step toward you. “I said I did not ask for this marriage. There is a difference.”
“Is there?”
Another step. He was close enough that you could smell the faint scent of ink and old parchment that clung to his clothes. Close enough that you could see the tiredness around his eye.
“I am learning,” he murmured, “that I may have wanted something I did not know I did.”
His hand rose, and this time, he did not stop at your fingers. His cool palm cupped your cheek, his thumb brushing the corner of your mouth with a gentleness that contradicted everything you had heard about him: the cold sorcerer, the ruthless spymaster, the man who had killed Daemon Blackfyre and his sons with arrows guided by dark magic. In this moment, he was only a man, touching his wife’s face for the first time.
“You are trembling,” he said.
“I am afraid.”
“Of me?”
“Of this ending.” Your voice cracked. “Of Shiera returning. Of waking up tomorrow and finding that you have remembered you do not want me after all.”
His eye searched your face. You had the unsettling sensation that he was seeing more than your skin and bone, more than the fear in your eyes. Seeing into you, the way he saw through the eyes of his ravens.
“Shiera is in Lys,” he said. “She left months ago, before our wedding. She may return someday, she always does, but she is not here now, and she has no claim on me. Whatever I felt for her, it is done. I have been a fool for her long enough.”
He leaned closer, his forehead nearly touching yours.
“As for waking up tomorrow,” he murmured, “that is simple. You shall wake up in my bed.”
Your breath caught.
“The bedding ceremony was waived,” he continued, “because I requested it. I did not think it fair to subject you to the court’s crude jests when we were strangers. But we are not strangers now. Not entirely. And I find that I am tired of sleeping alone in my cold solar while my wife sleeps alone in her cold tower.”
His thumb traced the line of your jaw.
“If you are willing,” he added, and the hesitation in his voice, the faint uncertainty, undid you completely.
“I am willing,” you whispered.
He kissed you. His lips were cool, like his hands. The kiss was cautious, almost experimental, as though he were tasting a new wine and trying to decide if he liked the vintage. But it deepened, slowly, his hand slid from your cheek to the back of your neck. You felt a knot of tension loosen in your chest.
When he pulled back, his breathing was slightly unsteady.
“You will not be alone.” He took your hand again, this time, he laced his fingers through yours. “I have a thousand eyes. Some of them will always be watching over you.”
It was perhaps the strangest declaration of affection any woman had ever received. But you found yourself smiling anyway, a real smile, the first you had worn since leaving the Reach.
That night, you did not return to your lonely tower rooms. You slept in the Hand’s bed, in the Hand’s arms, and though he did not sleep, he had told you he rarely did, he held you in the darkness, his fingers tracing idle patterns on your shoulder.
In the morning, you woke to find him already dressed, standing at the window with the pale dawn light on his hair. He turned when he heard you stir.
“Good morning, my lady.”
“Good morning, Brynden.”
He crossed to the bed and sat on its edge. From behind his back, he produced a single winter rose, its petals white as fresh snow, its center a deep, vivid blue.
“There are no winter roses in King’s Landing,” you said, taking it with trembling fingers. “How did you...?”
“I have my ways,” he said, the faint smile on his lips was no longer tentative. It was the smile of a man who had unraveled a mystery and found the answer rather pleasing.
You lifted the rose to your nose and breathed in its sweet, cold scent. Through the window, you saw a raven circling against the pale sky, not Pebble but another, its black wings cutting the air with swift precision. It was returning home, carrying something in its beak.
“What is he bringing?” you asked.
“A letter,” Brynden said. “From the Arbor. Lord Redwyne is plotting something tedious involving wine tariffs.” He paused. “Would you like to watch me unravel it?”
“Yes,” you said. “I would like that very much.”
He offered you his hand, you took it.
Pebble, watching from his perch, let out a satisfied croak and followed you and your husband up the winding stair to the solar.
Part 2: see here
a/n: Please don't let this flop guys, I have an entire series planned out.
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Seedbed
HOTD: Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen x dragonseed!reader
Rating: Mature (MDNI)
WC 5.0k
HOTD Masterlist
Tags/Warnings: a smidge of Targcest (Rhaenyra and reader are cousins), more plot than porn, reader claims Silverwing, WLW, mentions of sex work, body worship, nipple play, biting, fingering, oral, dragon bond, no use of y/n, Ulf is not a complete dolt in this, implied that reader has Valyrian features, but they aren't described in detail, no beta we die like Luke :(
A/n: Just in time for Season 3, WE FIGHT FOR OUR DRAGON QUEEN! I love Rhaenyra. Comments, reblogs, and likes are always appreciated. Let me know if you'd like to be tagged for future works
Summary: Mysaria beckons you to Dragonstone to answer Queen Rhaenyra's call for dragonseeds.
Madam Sylvi discreetly pressed the letter into your hand before moving about her business. You had heard the stirrings, the whispers in the streets of the Black Queen calling those to aid her with the promise of claiming a dragon. Bastards of dragon blood. Dragonseeds. The ones who filled the streets of Flea Bottom, filled the pleasure houses in the Streek of Silk, or who simply blended in with the commonborn despite their silvery hair. Cursed by being born out of wedlock, yet now they were worthy of a bigger cause. One that not many would ever dream of.
The letter had come from Mysaria, a woman who had cared for you for most of your life. You knew who your father was, and his coin allowed Mysaria to keep you in comfort, or at the very least clothed and fed. You remember receiving a few fond pats on the head from time to time, and a few gifts here and there, but you knew you would never be his. He had left for Pentos shortly after taking Lady Laena Velaryon to wife, fathering two legitimate daughters. Something you would never be.
Coin arrived in a timely manner to help Mysaria clothe and feed you. She was generous when she did not need to be; she could have turned you out onto the street and kept his money. But she, too, knew what it was like to be burned by Daemon Targaryen and to be abandoned by a father. You lived with her in the brothels, and she kept her promise to protect you from that world for as long as she could, training you in the ways of dancing and letting you assist in weaving her web of spies. When she was ready to flee King's Landing, she left the brothel to you and Sylvi, trusting the two of you to look after things and each other, but you knew the day would soon come when you could no longer put off the inevitable. You would soon have to learn the art of spreading your legs to survive.
Mysaria, still wishing to spare you such a life, urged you to journey to Dragonstone and make the attempt.
The daughter of Daemon Targaryen deserves a dragon. Come and claim your inheritance. Serve the rightful heir.
You read her words thrice before tossing the parchments into the fire. Perhaps you would never fully win your father's love, attention, and respect, but perhaps you could find such in your queen and cousin. So the next day, you went to the shores of Blackwater Bay to board the small fishing boats taking people to Dragonstone. Your dark gray cloak billowed in the breeze as you stepped onto the rocking boat. Smoke clung around the isle, an almost foreboding feeling in the air. This was a place of magic; you could smell it. Ash, fire, and blood. All of you were given entrance into the castle, provided with food and drink before being escorted to the gantry, which led to the dragonmont.
Queen Rhaenyra descended the stairs, giving a rousing speech as she passed her gaze over those who had gathered. A sea of silver hair. Her gaze locked on you, head cocking curiously as she studied you. Did she see Daemon in your face? Would she recognize her own blood before her? She made her way through the bodies, silently gauging the bastards, and once again her gaze lingered on you. Her fingers twitched, something about you calling to her and she resisted the urge to touch you. She could not play favorites, for many would not survive this attempt.
"Naejot māzīs, Vermitos." You had heard your father speak this tongue before, charming the whores and his lickspittles.
You watched as the enormous bronze beast emerged from the purple smoky shadows. It was hard not to feel in awe as the ancient beast once ridden by King Jaehaerys stood there, plain as day. The beast snorted, gray wisps curling from his massive nostrils.
"Lykirī, Lykirī," Rhaenyra cooed, reaching to rest her hand on the dragon's giant muzzle. He calmed from her touch. "Dohaeras."
"Who among you will be first? I have nothing more to tell you; it must be the dragon who speaks."
As a young man stepped forward in an attempt, you heard a phantom song filling your head. Beckoning you, guiding you. You had never stepped foot here before, yet you seemed to know where to place them, following the path downward and further into the mont. Rhaenyra's ever observant amethyst eyes never left you, and she followed behind like a silent silver shadow. You didn't even notice as you made your way deeper into the volcano. The song grew louder the closer you came.
Māzīs ynot, Māzīs ynot (come to me, come to me)
Jumban syt aō (I am waiting for you)
Unsure of what awaited you. You found yourself in a cave, a thin stream of sun shining through, and it took a moment before you saw her. She blended in almost seamlessly with the rocks surrounding you. She was smaller and more slender compared to her counterpart looming overhead.
The breath the silver beast exhaled shook your body, and heat coated you. She lowered her elegant silver head, and tentatively, you reached out to press your hand to the dragon's muzzle, emulating Rhaenyra's movements just moments earlier.
"Hello," you smiled.
"You have found Silverwing." Rhaenyra's voice trailed behind you.
You whipped around to face her, giving a bow. "Your Grace. I…heard her singing to me."
"It seems she has chosen you; she has not been ridden since my great-grandmother," Rhaenyra said kindly as she stepped closer. Screams echoed through the caves. The smell of burnt flesh. "See if she will let you mount her."
Silverwing stepped closer, her claws dragging through the muck as she lowered her head once again to sniff you before letting out a soft bray. "Lykirī," you whispered, stroking her before she was in a position where you could attempt to get in her saddle. It took effort and strength, but soon you were situated in the saddle, hand gripping the pommel.
"If you wish to fly, Sōvēs is the command," Rhaenyra instructed.
"Sōvēs, Silverwing," you called out, voice wavering slightly.
You gasped, holding on tightly as she walked through the cave and slithered out the opening before taking to the skies. Even though your stomach lurched, you opened your eyes and let the wind whip through your hair. It was a powerful feeling, as if you could fly higher than the clouds and touch the Gods themselves. Silverwing was experienced, swift, and elegant as her wings sliced through the misty clouds. She did two laps around Dragonstone before swooping back toward the mont. The bronze beast had emerged with a male rider on its back. She landed next to him, tucking her head beneath Vermithor's jaw and nuzzling him.
"They are mates, I think," you called out to the man.
"So the stories go. I'm Hugh," he introduced, and you told him your name.
Suddenly, a pale mist of the dragon emerged from an opening, its rider letting out a loud whoop and hanging on for dear life.
"Did many die in there?" you asked Hugh, remembering the screams from earlier.
"It was quite vicious," Hugh admitted. "Many were lost, but we were warned."
As the excitement settled down, the dragonkeepers came to help guide the dragons back into the caves, and you and the others were shown to separate quarters in the castle. Fresh, clean black-and-red clothing was laid out for you, and a celebratory feast awaited. As you gathered around the table, your gaze fell on Lady Baela, your half sister. She was a true beauty with an air of confidence about her. Prince Jacaerys looked rather sour, and you learned of the other riders. Your fellow dragonseeds. Hugh the Hammer, you had met earlier, and there was Addam of Hull and Ulf the White. Queen Rhaenyra raised her cup in a toast to honor the four of you.
Ulf was delighted by the food, tearing into the quails and devouring them like the man had never eaten a meal before. You took your time savoring every bite, especially the fresh oysters, and each sip of rich red wine. You learned that Seasmoke had chased Addam down in Spicetown, Hugh's bravery as he stood eye to eye with The Bronze Fury, and the shy, allusive dragon who crawled out from deep within the mountain to bond with his boisterous rider. As the evening wound down, people excused themselves for bed.
"It is good to have another woman riding for our cause," Baela smiled at you, gently touching your shoulder before departing.
"Might I have a private word?" Rhaenyra requested softly.
"Yes, Your Grace."
You followed her through flame lit halls, the flickering orange glow bathing the stones and you noticed the glyphs embedded in them. The guards followed behind, armor clanking until you reached what you assumed were her chambers. They took position outside her door.
"You look just like him," she mused, a smile tugging at her lips as she poured two glasses of wine.
"So I've been told, Your Grace," you replied. There was no use dancing around the truth.
She placed a cup in your hands. "It is almost eerie in a way. I wonder…if my daughter had lived, would she have looked like you, perhaps?" Her palm curved gently over your cheek.
"Prettier, I would think, Your Grace."
"Do not disparage your beauty. You caught my eye immediately."
"You flatter me, Your Grace," you said, taking a sip of the sweet red wine, reminding you of plums, which were your favorite.
"Merely speak the truth. I am glad you answered. Mysaria assured me that you would."
"She knows me better than anyone else. Still seeks to protect me."
"She is a clever woman, or so I am learning."
"She will serve you well, Your Grace, as will I," you assured her.
"Come, let me fix your hair. You will find it best to have it braided while flying." She motioned to the chair, and you sat.
"Surely, you have better things to do than tend to my hair, You Grace," you jested softly.
"At this moment, I do not," she chuckled before gently dragging the brush through your mussed curls.
It was comforting, a warm, fuzzy feeling that crept over you and slithered down your shoulders. She took her time braiding your hair.
"I hope I am not overstepping, but I would like you to train alongside Lady Baela. She is a skilled dragonrider with a crossbow. I wish for all my riders to have some combat training. You will be fitted for armor as well."
"I can work alongside Lady Baela with no issue, Your Grace, thank you."
"Sleep well, you will have long days ahead of you."
But you were ready to prove your worth.
The days were indeed long and filled with dragon riding, Valyrian lessons, and combat skills training. Mostly, you practiced alongside Baela, repeatedly hitting targets with crossbows. Addam, Hugh, and Ulf worked with the Master of Arms, learning the sword and mace.
"Seems unfair,' you mumbled.
"I agree," Baela grinned before taking aim and releasing the arrow. "Why can't we learn the sword as well?" You enjoyed being in her company, often growing exhausted by Ulf's constant oafishness. Hugh was kind enough, yet guarded. You found an ally in Addam, at least, as he too wished to prove himself and was eager to serve Rhaenyra. The two of you took the skies together on your respective mounts.
You gave her a soft smile. "I mean no offense, my lady."
"You find none with me," she assured you. "Fire and blood are in our veins. Did not Queen Visenya wield Dark Sister? The very sword my father now possesses."
Our father.
You supped alone in your chambers, muscles aching and in no mood for conversation. The doors parted, and Ser Lorant stepped in.
"Queen Rhaenyra," he announced, and you quickly stood to your feet.
She stepped inside, golden crown perched on her head, with her silver hair in three intricate braids all woven together. There was a brief glimpse of nervousness as she twisted the rings around her finger.
"I have a mission that I would like to send you on," she stated.
"What would the mission be, Your Grace?"
"I wish for you to fly over King's Landing in an attempt to lure the Prince Regent to Dragonstone so he may see the force we now hold," she explained. "Silverwing is swift, and you are skilled with her. I would send Addam to be close behind should danger unfold."
You nodded. "Yes, Your Grace." You were eager to fulfill this duty, even if the thought of Aemond chasing you on Vhagar nearly made you shit your breeches.
The time arrived, and you were dressed in your riding leathers, hair braided, and mounted on Silverwing. A kiss from your queen lingered on your cheek. Addam was on Seasmoke, and you both awaited Rhaenyra's command. Once it was given, you took off on Silverwing with Addam following five clicks behind. Having grown up in the Street of Silk, you knew the layout of the city well. You had even been brought in to dance for Prince Aegon once before. Silverwing glided with such ease, and you kept her low, away from the Scorpions. You maneuvered her by the window where Rhaenyra said the small council sat. The plan had worked, and Prince Aemond's attention was gained.
You lingered away from the Red Keep, needing him on your tail. Vhagar's roars shook through the city and you urged Silverwing forward. Vhagar was large, but not as fast. Addam flew just ahead on Seasmoke as the two of you made way to Dragonstone, where Rhaenyra waited with Syrax, Vermithor, and Grey-Ghost. A hot blast of dragonfire filled the air, and you dipped Silverwing toward Blackwater Bay, her wings skimming the water. Blood rushed to your head, whooshing in your ears and making you taste your pulse on your tongue. You hadn't realized that you'd been holding your breath until Silverwing landed next to Syrax, when you finally released it and gasped. Aemond did not venture closer, turning Vhagar around and heading back for King's Landing. Rhaenyra held a proud smirk on her face and reached up to stroke Syrax's muzzle.
"Well done," she told you and Addam. It was becoming clear she had a soft spot for the two of you.
The weeks passed, and Rhaenyra continued to draw you under her wing. The dragon queen, they began to call her. Thought you came to think of her as the mother of dragons. The tides began to turn further in her favor as the tensions of the starving smallfolk grew in King's Landing. You weren't completely naive; you understood that Rhaenyra played her own games to garner support. Highborn games, Mysaria had told you. She had given you some distance upon your arrival, allowing you the time to cultivate your talents and carve out a space, but you could feel her lingering in the shadows with her dark eyes always upon you.
"You have done very well, but I never doubted," she hummed one evening when you found her stowed away in your rooms. You were relieved to see a hot bath waiting for you. The heat had been almost agonizing today as the smog had lifted, allowing the bright, hot sun to permeate through. Rhaenyra had given you and Baela her support in expanding your combat skills, and since you were the only two females, you sparred with each other. Both of you were drenched in sweat by day's end.
"Thank you for writing to me," you said, peeling out of your sparring padding and the rest of your damp clothing.
"The queen needs to be surrounded by those who truly believe in her," Mysaria reasoned, extending a hand to help you into the bath. "I can see the adoration in your eyes."
"She is easy to love, easier than Aegon the Pretender, and certainly more so than Aemond. The smallfolk hate the Prince Regent," you sighed, sinking further into the steaming water. "King Viserys, for all his faults, never starved them and never dragged them into needless wars." The commonborn cared not who sat on the throne; it mattered not whether it was Aegon or Rhaenyra; they would live through many kings and queens, but they preferred those who did not bring further hardship upon them. Even better if they were allowed to thrive.
"You are learning well," Mysaria smiled, sitting and helping to wash your back and hair.
"I see you have earned a spot beside her," you commented, sliding a wooden pick under your nails to clean them. Dirt never matted much to you before, but now that you served under the Dragon Queen, you wished to be more presentable.
"So long as we continue to prove our worth, we both will be." A lesson you remembered well. So long as you were valuable, your life remained safe.
You wrapped up in a red robe and sat to comb out your hair when a Queensguard entered.
"Queen Rhaenyra has requested your presence for dinner. I am to escort you once you're ready," he said.
"Best not keep her waiting," Mysaria said and helped you to dress. It was a simple black frock, and she twisted your wet hair into an updo, securing it with pearl pins.
You followed the guard to Rhaenyra's chambers, and he announced your presence before you entered.
"Your Grace," you smiled, lowering into a small curtsey. You felt rather plain in her presence as she was swathed in crimson silk, golden rings, and rubies glittering on her ears, complete with the golden crown. Though she wore her hair loose, cascading in soft waves down her shoulders. She was utterly breathtaking, and you yearned to drink her silvery beauty until you were sick.
"I thought you might be hungry after your training session today. I must admit how impressed I am by you and Baela," Rhaenyra smiled, motioning for you to sit.
"You should join us, Your Grace. I'm certain you could wield a sword expertly."
"You flatter me," Rhaenyra chuckled as a servant poured wine while another served the overflowing dishes of food.
"I only speak the truth. You should not hold yourself back."
"I will consider your words."
You tried not to rip through the duck like a famished beast, instead forcing yourself to take small bites and savor it. The food was delicious, filling your belly pleasantly, and the wine was equally divine. That amethyst gaze was upon you once again.
"Forgive me, Your Grace, but you stare at me quite a bit."
A flush colored her cheeks. "I do," she admitted.
"May I ask why? Is it because I look so much like him?"
"Mayhaps, or mayhaps there is a simple allure about you which captivates me."
"An allure? From me?" You couldn't help but laugh, shaking your head.
"Is that so unbelievable?"
"Considering I'm but a mere dragonseed, yes. I find it a bit hard to believe."
"Dragonseeds still have Targaryen blood," she pointed out.
"Yes, if only we were born from a true union and not left sullied as bastards," you scoffed, and she fixed you with a stern look. "Apologies, Your Grace, I overstepped.
"Tis alright. It has become clear that a dragon cares not for the nobility of birth, and I am grateful to the dragonseeds who answered my call."
"I'm very happy to be here and to serve you. There is a matter I wish to discuss with you."
"Go on, but carefully."
"You sent the ships with food to the smallfolk in King's Landing, yet Prince Aemond has stopped that. You might garner more favor by letting a ship through the blockade, but make it known it was your doing. A bit of mercy goes a long way, and I know we are but common born, but peace with the smallfolk should be a goal in mind."
Rhaenyra sat back in her chair, taking a deep drink of her wine. "I will discuss the matter with my small council. I do not wish my subjects to starve. They never did when my father was king."
"He was beloved by the smallfolk simply for letting them live in peace and with their bellies fed. He was also wise to make his council perform the dirty work. They never had much love for Otto Hightower."
Rhaenyra laughed. "You are truly Mysaria's protégé."
"She taught me well and looked out for me even if she did not have to. I'm very grateful to her."
"She is special, but I see something equally as special in you."
"I suppose that is the Targaryen blood," you said cheekily.
You spent most of the night talking with her and drinking wine. You loved how her mouth stretched when she laughed, and the little crinkles around her eyes. It was nice to see a more relaxed side of her. A glimpse of the girl they once called the Realm's Delight. She taught you a tile game and a few more words in High Valyrian.
"You are quite good at this," she said, sliding the tiles across the table.
"Learned to play in the brothels, I would hide pieces up my sleeve, Your Grace."
"Ah, devious."
"I preferred it to the fan dancing or the warming of laps."
"I cannot fault you for that night."
"I should leave, Your Grace, get some sleep," you murmured before draining the remnants of your wine.
"Of course, it was a long day for you. I thank you again for your service; you are proving quite invaluable to me."
"'Tis my pleasure, Your Grace." You stood, and she moved alongside you to the door.
Perhaps it was the wine, perhaps it was the way the silvery moonlight caressed the contours of her face, or perhaps it was the adrenaline still pulsing through your system from training. It mattered not. The only truth was that your lips pressed against hers, feeling their rose petal softness and craving more. Yearning to run your fingers through her silver hair, to draw a peaked nipple between your lips, and to discover what she tasted like. She did not pull away, but closer, sliding her arms around your waist. The kiss deepened, your tongue sliding into the warm cavern of her mouth and tangled with hers. You sensed her hesitation before her commanding nature took over. Pink bloomed over her cheeks, mouth swollen and rosy, and those amethyst eyes seemed to glow. Perhaps in that moment, she saw more of Daemon in you than you had wished. You wanted her to see you.
"Is that what you wish for?" she breathed, sliding her fingers down your neck while giving you ample opportunity to decide. To give the choice to leave. She had no desire to force you.
"Please, Your Grace."
"Rhaenyra. You may call me Rhaenyra in my chambers."
The two of you moved in a languid dance, shedding clothing along the way. Your toes slipped across the smooth stones as you circled around her before pressing your mouth to her shoulder, hands skimming her hips. She let forth a throaty moan as she pressed against your body. You wondered if it was Silverwing you felt in the moment as your teeth yearned to sink into her tender, milky flesh. The dragonkeepers told you the bond could be strong and overwhelming at times. Rhaenyra seemed to sense your desire.
"Go on," she purred, and your teeth sank into her flesh, tasting salt and sweetness while your hands cupped her full breasts. Heat boiled through you.
With her hands in yours, you drew her close to the bed, pulling her down with you in a mess of tangled limbs. She was soft, smooth, smelling of roses and smoke. Her skin like heated embers, drawing you in. Across her belly and hips were elongated pink and white marks, ones that all mothers bore. Her arms and thighs were strong, no doubt from all the dragon riding. Sparse silvery curls clung between her thighs, and your fingertips slid through the downy hair before running further down her cunt. While Mysaria had kept you from whoring, you were not inexperienced. The other women liked to practice on each other, and there were moments you volunteered, savoring their touch and the skill they possessed.
You continued to stroke her while suckling on her nipples, while her fingers had loosened your damp hair and were now tangled in it. One finger slipped inside her, feeling her muscles flutter around you. A second soon followed, and you set a steady pace with them. There was a powerful feeling in making the queen crumble beneath your ministrations. The way her face twisted with pleasure, the delicious O of her parted lips, and the rose petal stain on her high, carved cheekbones. Sweat glistened over her collarbone, a few droplets beading over her forehead, and a lone one rolling down the slope of that perfect aquiline nose. It pooled over her upper lip while your thumb grazed over her swollen pearl. She mewled with delight before soaking your fingers. You loomed over her, watching her completely fall apart with pleasure.
"I thought you were but a dancer," she panted, flushed chest heaving as the perspiration gave her body an ethereal shimmer.
"I indulged in pleasures, but not for pay," you whispered in her ear.
"Hmm," she hummed before pouncing and pinning you beneath you.
You grinned, letting her ravage your throat and the apex of your shoulder. Her thumb pressed against your chin, gazing down at you and closing her eyes briefly. That look on your face was far too familiar. Perhaps that was part of your allure. Dragon blood always managed to find each other. Some hidden attraction woven in the DNA. Her silken mouth moved over your breasts, down your stomach, before her head disappeared between your thighs. You spread your legs wider, getting a glimpse of her pink tongue burying in your cunt. Perspiration clung to your shoulders while your fingers moved through her moonlit hair. A queen worshipping between your thighs.
Her fingers soon filled you while her mouth wrapped around your swollen pearl. The neediest whimper escaped, and your stomach clenched. A precise curl, a gentle trace of her tongue, soon had you spilling into a sweet release. Tears dribbled down your cheeks, glistening like glass.
"I shall take these as a compliment," Rhaenyra grinned, your aftermath glistening on her mouth as she leaned down to kiss you. The taste of you dancing on your tongue. After the fervid kiss, she lapped each glassy tear away before pressing her forehead against yours. "My little dragonseed."
And you were hers from that very night forth. Tucked beneath her wing, nurtured and made to grow. Private Valyrian lessons and flights with her on Syrax and you on Silverwing. Burst of gold and silver against the misty, purple skies. Your flourished. Vines springing from the seed, wrapping tightly around you until you emerged with dragon scales of your own.
You rubbed off on her as well. With the support of her small council, Lord Corlys allowed two ships through the blockade and paid them to fly Rhaenya's banners. She did not hold the Iron Throne, yet she tended to the smallfolk. There were small riots, and the Greens were secluded in the Red Keep. You suspected Aemond wished to burn them all with Vhagar, but that would do no good and paint him a monster. One afternoon, she joined you and Baela in training, and she looked enigmatic with a sword in her hand.
Upon Daemon's return from Harrenhal, Rhaenyra had him knight her dragonseeds. His lilac eyes passed over you, ready to sheath his sword. You wondered if he recognized you.
"Her as well, Daemon," Rhaenyra instructed, and Addam gave you a small smile.
"She may have the title, but she cannot take the oath. None would recognize her," he replied nonchalantly.
"I wish for her to have the title," Rhaenyra stated evenly.
"She has earned it, Your Grace," Hugh volunteered respectfully.
"Aye, she's full of fire this one. Brave too," Ulf piped up, giving you a wink.
"Your Grace," Daemon reminded him tersely.
"Your Grace," Ulf quipped, giving an almost comical bow.
"If he will not, Your Grace, I will do so. I believe that is a power bestowed on knights? Any knight can make a knight," Addam said, addressing Rhaenyra directly.
"Indeed, it is," Rhaenyra smiled.
Your cheeks flushed, feeling pride as your fellow dragonseeds defended you. Even Ulf had grown on you. There was an unbreakable bond between the four of you now.
An amused look crossed Daemon's face as he lifted Dark Sister into the air. "Kneel."
You knelt in your chainmail as the flat edge of the sword landed on your right shoulder and then your left.
"Arise." It was hard to ignore the disinterest in his voice, but it mattered not. You no longer yearned for the approval of a father who abandoned you to the Street of Silk for his paramour to raise. You had the approval of the queen and the friendship of your fellow dragonseeds. She promised all four of you legitimation once she held King's Landing. No longer a dragonseed, no longer a Waters; you would be a Targaryen. Victory tasted delicious in your mouth. How far you had climbed out of the Street of Silk. Clawed from the bottom of Rhaenys's Hill to become a dragon.
You stood, feeling giddy, and while it might be only in title, it was special to you. In two days' time, a siege would fall on King's Landing, and you would get the Dragon Queen her rightful throne.
