Yandere House of the dragon x ModernReborn!Reader
Summarized:In the devastating aftermath of her discovery with Jacaerys, (your name) faces the brutal consequences orchestrated by Queen Alicent. A public execution, built on a lie, cements her disgrace and leads to her sentencing: exile to Oldtown under Aemond's watch. While confined, she is visited by a manipulative Jacaerys, who offers a dangerous escape to Dragonstone, and haunted by prophetic dreams that culminate in a terrifying encounter with a witch. This confrontation unveils a shocking truth about (Y/N)'s own origin and delivers a dire prophecy about King Viserys's imminent death, plunging her into a crisis far greater than her personal scandal on the eve of her departure.
Warnings: Graphic violence (public execution), extreme emotional and psychological manipulation, parental abuse (physical and emotional), forced confinement, sexual coercion and attempted non-consensual intimacy, intense possessive jealousy, major character death (implied and prophesied), themes of guilt and trauma, supernatural elements (prophetic dreams/visions), and revelations of existential crisis (transmigration/isekai).
<< Pt. 4 — masterlist — Pt. 6 >> (Coming Soon)
The ghost of Aegon’s smirk seemed etched into the very air of the courtyard. Your lungs burned as if you’d been running, though you’d barely moved. The taste of Jacaerys—of desperation, salt, and betrayal—was a brand on your mouth. Shame was a cold sweat sheening your skin, but terror was the icy fist closing around your throat. Alicent. Aemond. Your Father. The titles cycled like a death knell in your mind.
“I have to… I must go,” you choked out, staggering back from Jacaerys, your voice barely a whisper. Your only coherent thought was the desperate, animal need for the false sanctuary of your chambers. To hide. To disappear.
Jacaerys’s hand shot out, fingers closing around your forearm. “(your name), stop! We must—"
You wrenched your arm free with a strength born of pure panic, not even hearing the rest of his plea. You turned and fled, the soft soles of your shoes silent on the flagstones as you bolted for the arched entrance to the Keep.
You had barely passed from the cool night air into the torch-smoked gloom of the corridor when an iron grip seized your upper arm, yanking you sideways into the deep shadow of a stone buttress. You cried out, the sound stifled against a familiar leather jerkin.
Alaric’s face loomed inches from yours. All the charming softness, the boyish humour, was gone. In the flickering light, his features were a stark landscape of devastation and a fury so deep it seemed to bleed from his pores. His eyes, usually bright with mischief, were black pits of betrayal.
“I saw,” he rasped, his voice scraped raw. “I came to beg your forgiveness for being late, to explain… and I saw you. Letting him touch you. Letting that bastard prince put his hands on what is mine.”
“Alaric, please, it wasn’t—” The lie died, pathetic.
“Wasn’t?” he snarled, his composure shattering. His free hand came up to grip your jaw, his fingers pressing painfully into your flesh. “I saw his mouth on you. I saw you kiss him back. After everything… after all my promises, my plans for us…” His voice broke, and the fracture seemed to unleash something wild and dangerous. “No more explanations. You’re coming with me.”
He didn’t ask. He dragged you, his hold on your arm vicelike, down a narrow, disused servant’s passage. Your protests were feeble, lost in the roar of your own guilt. He was taking you to the library—the heart of your shared secret, now to be the chapel of his furious reckoning.
He kicked the heavy door open, the boom echoing in the vast, silent space, and hauled you inside. The door slammed shut, the lock engaging with a final, metallic clunk that sealed your fate.
He turned on you. The man before you was a stranger, stripped bare of all pretence of courtly love. “All your sighs, your distance,” he seethed, advancing. “Was I just a diversion? A practice run for a real prince? Am I not dangerous enough for you? Not noble enough?” His hands flew up, tangling in your hair, not to caress, but to hold you still, to force you to meet his gaze. “Tell me. What does he have that I lack? His name? His blood? The thrill of his fucking claim?”
You tried to shake your head, tears springing to your eyes. “You don’t understand—”
“I understand perfectly!”
His mouth crashed onto yours. It was nothing like the tender, exploratory kisses you’d once shared. This was a conquest, a violation. It was hard, punishing, all teeth and desperate tongue, a furious attempt to scour the taste of Jacaerys from your lips. You whimpered, pushing against his chest, but he was immovable, a wall of armoured muscle and rage. One arm locked like a steel band around your lower back, crushing you against him so tightly you could scarcely breathe.
When he tore his mouth away, you were gasping. “You. Are. Mine,” he growled, each word a hammer blow. “You made me believe it. You don’t get to revoke it.”
Then his hands were everywhere, moving with a frantic, clumsy aggression that held none of his former practised seduction. The laces at the back of your gown snapped under his brutal tugging. The delicate fabric of your sleeve tore with a sickening rip. Cool air assaulted your skin, followed by the scorching, possessive heat of his palms. He was mapping your body not with reverence, but with a frantic urgency, as if trying to imprint himself over the ghost of Jacaerys’s touch.
“He will never have you like this,” Alaric muttered against your throat, his breath hot and ragged. “Never. This is mine. You are mine.”
He backed you roughly against the unforgiving edge of a heavy oak reading table. A cascade of scrolls and a thick, leather-bound tome crashed to the floor. The world narrowed to the painful dig of the wood into your spine, the harsh rasp of his breathing, the overwhelming, suffocating sense of your own catastrophic folly. His touch, once the source of thrilling secret warmth, now felt alien, rough, and tainted with a bitter anger. A treacherous, shameful heat began to coil low in your belly, a visceral reaction warring with your revulsion. His hand shoved your skirts up, his fingers—calloused from swordplay—digging into the soft skin of your thigh with a possessiveness that bordered on cruelty.
“See?” he panted, his movements growing more frantic, less controlled. “You see? This is what you wanted. This is what you chose.”
You were teetering on a terrifying precipice, the unwanted, guilty tension winding tighter within you, a scream trapped in your throat. He was fumbling with the laces of his own breeches, his eyes glazed with a mix of heartbreak and furious need.
And then, the library doors exploded inwards.
Not a opening, but a violent splintering of wood as they were struck with tremendous force from the outside. The cacophony was apocalyptic in the silence.
You froze. Alaric jerked back, his body instinctively twisting to shield yours in a last, futile gesture of protection.
Framed in the ruined doorway, illuminated by the blazing torches of the corridor behind her, stood Queen Alicent.
She was a vision of apocalyptic wrath. Her usually pristine posture was rigid, every line of her body vibrating with a fury so absolute it seemed to chill the air. Her gaze, like a lance of ice, swept over the scene: your torn dress, your exposed skin, your dishevelled hair, Alaric in his state of undress. The expression that settled on her face was not mere anger. It was a profound, cataclysmic contempt that promised annihilation.
Time seemed to fracture. She moved.
Her stride was swift, silent, and deadly. You had no time to speak, to cover yourself, to even draw breath. Her arm, powered by a lifetime of stifled rage and bitter disappointment, drew back and swung forward.
The slap connected with your cheek with a sound like a cracking whip. The force was staggering. Your head snapped sideways, a constellation of white pain bursting across your vision. The metallic taste of blood bloomed on your tongue where your teeth had cut the inside of your cheek. The physical pain was a mere spark compared to the inferno of dread that engulfed you.
Before you could even register the blow, her voice cut through the ringing in your ears, low, venomous, and trembling with intensity.
“You filthy, witless slut.”
She didn’t spare Alaric a glance. She raised her voice, and it was no longer that of a queen but of a general on a battlefield. “GUARDS! TO ME!”
They flooded in—not just two, but four, in the green of House Hightower, led by the hulking form of Ser Rickard Thorne. Alicent pointed a single, unwavering finger at Alaric, who stood paralysed, his face ashen with the sudden, absolute understanding of his doom.
“That creature has assaulted the royal person. Drag him to the black cells. Now.”
“Your Grace, I beg you—” Alaric began, taking a step forward.
Ser Rickard’s fist, encased in steel, drove into his stomach with a dull, sickening thud. Alaric collapsed to his knees, retching, all air driven from his lungs. He was hauled up like a sack of grain, his arms wrenched behind his back and bound with coarse rope that bit into his wrists.
It was then that two more figures appeared in the shattered doorway, drawn by the commotion.
Aemond took in the scene with a single, sweeping glance—your state, your mother’s fury, the subdued knight. His single eye narrowed, the pupil contracting to a pinprick of cold, satisfied fury. A grim, cruel smile touched his lips. He had warned you. He had known.
Aegon, leaning against the broken doorframe, let out a low, appreciative whistle. “Seven hells,” he murmured, a grin spreading across his face. “I leave for a few moments and miss the main performance. And here I thought my evening couldn’t get any better.”
“Enough, Aegon,” Alicent spat, without looking at him. Her gaze was fixed on Alaric as the guards began to drag him away. As they passed her, she stopped them with a raised hand. She leaned close to Alaric’s ear, her words meant only for him, but the library’s acoustics carried her icy whisper to all.
“You touched what was not yours. You thought to soil a daughter of the dragon with your base hands. You will learn the price of such arrogance. You will not see another sunrise.”
Alaric’s eyes, wide with terror, found yours for one last, fleeting moment—a look of utter despair—before he was jerked forward and vanished into the dark corridor, his muted pleas fading into nothing.
Alicent then turned her terrifying focus back to you. “Cover your disgrace,” she commanded, her voice like the scraping of stone on stone.
With shaking, numb fingers, you clutched the torn fabric of your gown to your chest, unable to meet anyone’s eyes.
“Did you think yourself clever?” she began, her tone deceptively quiet now, which was infinitely worse. “Rumours of your little… dalliance… have been whispered to me for weeks. I dismissed them. I told myself my daughter had more sense, more pride, more worth than to grovel in the dirt with a landless knight.” Her voice rose, sharpening like a blade. “But this? To be caught not just in a tryst, but in a state of animal defilement? To be seen rutting in a library like a common whore?”
She closed the distance between you in two swift steps. Her hand flashed out again, not to slap, but to entangle itself in the hair at the nape of your neck. She twisted her fist, yanking your head back so you were forced to look up at her, the pain sharp and humiliating.
“You are an imbecile,” she hissed, her face inches from yours. “A vain, thoughtless, puerile fool. Every lesson, every warning, every effort I have poured into you—wasted! You have made yourself cheap. You have handed Rhaenyra a blade to hold at the throat of your own brothers, your own sister!”
She began to walk, dragging you by the hair alongside her as if you were a disobedient pet. You stumbled, a cry of pain escaping you as you scrambled to keep pace, your feet tangling in your skirts. Aemond watched, his expression inscrutable, a silent sentinel of judgement. Aegon chuckled softly from the doorway.
Through the halls they marched, this grotesque procession. Servants scurried out of sight. Guards averted their eyes. Your scalp screamed, tears of pain and shame streaming down your stinging cheek, but you dared not make another sound.
When you reached your chambers, she did not release you. She shoved the door open with her free hand and, with a final, brutal yank, propelled you inside. You sprawled onto the cold floor, gasping.
She stood over you, her chest heaving, a towering figure of maternal wrath. “You will remain in this room until I decide what is to be done with the ruin you have made of yourself. You will see no one. You will speak to no one. Your food will be passed through the door. Consider this not a punishment, but a quarantine for your shame.”
She turned to leave, then paused at the threshold, looking back at you curled on the floor. Her voice dropped to a lethal whisper. “Pray, daughter. Pray that the knight dies quickly in the night. Pray that this sordid little tale can be buried with him. And pray that I can find some remnant of the girl I thought I raised, because the creature I saw tonight is nothing to me but a threat to this family.”
She stepped out. The heavy door slammed shut. The distinct, final sounds of a key turning and a heavy bolt being thrown on the outside echoed with a dreadful finality.
Then, from beyond the thick wood, Aemond’s voice, cold and clear, reached you. “Sleep well, sister.”
Aegon’s laughter, bright and mocking, followed. “Sweet dreams!”
You were alone. The phantom sensations of Alaric’s rough hands, the burning imprint of your mother’s slap, the taste of Jacaerys’s kiss, and the echoing taunts of your brothers swirled in the dark, suffocating silence. The luxurious fabrics, the soft bed, the gilded walls—all of it was now just the opulent lining of your tomb.
The night in your chambers was an eternity of silent, chilling dread. You did not sleep. You sat on the cold floor, your back against the ornate bed, listening to the fortress breathe around you. The phantom sensations of the evening—the bruising grip on your arm, the searing slap, the tearing of fabric—replayed in a relentless loop. The luxurious tapestries seemed to leer at you, the gilded dragons on the walls now looking less like symbols of power and more like silent judges.
Just before dawn, the heavy bolt scraped back with a sound that shot through you like a blade. The door swung open to reveal Queen Alicent, already dressed in severe, high-necked black velvet, her hair covered by a delicate but imposing gossamer veil. She looked as if she had been carved from obsidian, her eyes holding the cold, unforgiving light of a settled verdict.
“On your feet,” she commanded, her voice allowing no dissent. “Wash your face. Put this on.” A silent handmaid slipped past her, laying a gown of unadorned charcoal grey wool on the bed—the colour of hearth-ash and penitence.
You moved like an automaton, your limbs heavy with a fatigue that went bone-deep. As you changed, Alicent watched, a silent warden. When you were done, she stepped forward, her fingers cold as they grasped your chin, tilting your face towards the grey light seeping through the window. The mark on your cheek, now a livid purple bloom, met her inspection.
“Good,” she stated flatly. “Let the court see the evidence of his villainy.”
She took your arm, her grip a circlet of unyielding pressure, and led you into the corridor. The Red Keep was shrouded in an unnatural, solemn hush. Servants melted into doorways, courtiers bowed their heads as if in the presence of a funeral bier. Word had spread.
She did not lead you to her solar or the throne room. Her destination was the main inner bailey. As you approached the archway leading outside, the murmur of a gathered crowd reached your ears—a low, expectant hum.
The scene that greeted you was meticulously staged. The entire court seemed to be in attendance, arrayed in a wide semicircle around the cobbled yard. It was a grim tableau of power and punishment.
At the forefront of the spectators stood your family.
King Viserys was there, supported by a Kingsguard and his cupbearer. He looked terribly frail, his face pale and pained, propped up in a cushioned chair brought out for the occasion. His milky eyes held a deep sorrow, but also a profound weariness. He believed he was here to witness justice for his wronged daughter, to lend the weight of the crown to her protection.
Beside him, a deliberate space between them, stood Rhaenyra. She was clad in Targaryen black and red, her expression unreadable, a mask of royal composure. But her eyes, as they found yours, were sharp and assessing, missing nothing—your dishevelled state, the bruise, your mother’s possessive grip. Jacaerys stood just behind her shoulder, his face ashen. His hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides, his gaze darting from your bruised cheek to the centre of the yard and back, a storm of helpless rage and guilt twisting his features. Lucerys stood beside him, wide-eyed and confused by the grim adult theatre.
And then there were your brothers. Aemond was positioned slightly apart, a sentinel of cold approval. He stood perfectly still, his single eye fixed not on you, but on the centre of the yard, his lips set in a thin, satisfied line. Aegon, in contrast, looked around with detached amusement, as if calculating the odds on some macabre wager. Helaena was not present. You were grateful for that small mercy.
In the centre of it all, on his knees before a rough-hewn wooden block, was Alaric.
He was barely recognisable. Stripped of his white cloak and fine clothes, he wore a coarse, sack-like tunic. His face was a map of fresh bruises, one eye swollen shut, his lip split and caked with dried blood. He trembled, not from the morning chill, but from a terror so absolute it seemed to radiate from him. As you were paraded to the front of the crowd, his one good eye found you. All the defiance, the jealousy, the passion was gone, scoured away by fear. What remained was a raw, silent plea—a desperate, final appeal to a connection he still, foolishly, believed in.
Your stomach lurched violently. You tried to recoil, a strangled sound escaping your throat, but Alicent’s hand tightened like a manacle, her nails biting through the wool of your sleeve.
“You will watch,” she whispered, her voice a venomous thread meant for your ear alone. “You will understand the cost of filth. This is the cleaning of your mistake.”
The Lord Confessor stepped forward, his voice cutting through the murmur like a cleaver.
“Ser Alaric, of no notable house,” he began, his tone dismissive, ensuring everyone understood the vast gulf between the accused and the royal house he had allegedly affronted. “You stand convicted of the most heinous crimes: the obsessive, unwelcome pursuit of Her Royal Highness, the Princess (your name); the attempted defilement of her royal person, against her express will and virtue; and the act of striking her in your rage when she, in her courage, resisted your base advances.”
A ripple went through the crowd. All eyes swivelled to your face, to the undeniable, lurid evidence of the blow. Viserys let out a pained sigh, shifting in his chair. “Monstrous,” he muttered, his voice thin but carrying. “To raise a hand to a princess…”
Rhaenyra’s gaze remained analytical, but Jacaerys flinched as if struck himself, a muscle jumping in his jaw. He knew. He knew the truth of that mark, and the knowledge was a torture.
“No!” Alaric’s voice was a raw croak, struggling against his bonds. He looked directly at you, his words tumbling out in a desperate rush. “Princess, please! Tell them! You know it wasn’t— I would never strike you! You know why I was there! Tell them the truth!”
His plea was met with a sharp crack as the guardsman beside him drove a gauntleted fist into his kidney. Alaric crumpled forward with a gasp, the air driven from him.
The Confessor continued, unimpeded. “The evidence is incontrovertible. The Princess’s distress and her injury speak louder than the lies of a condemned man. For crimes against the royal blood, the sentence is death. May the gods judge you more mercifully than the Crown.”
Alicent leaned in, her breath cold against your ear. “That,” she hissed, “is the sound of your stupidity dying. Remember it.”
The headsman, a mountain of a man in a leather apron, stepped forward. Alaric was hauled up and forced back onto his knees, his neck positioned over the dark-stained wood. His frantic, weeping search found your eyes one last time. In that final, shattered glance, there was no knight, no lover, no conspirator. There was only a boy, terrified and betrayed, seeing the author of his ruin.
The axe rose, a high arc of polished steel against the leaden sky.
The sound was wet, final, profoundly physical. You jerked violently, a full-body spasm, but Alicent’s hold was iron, keeping you upright, forcing you to be a part of the spectacle. The head rolled, the body slumped, a crimson tide spreading across the grey cobbles.
A collective, shuddering inhalation swept the crowd. Aegon clicked his tongue softly. Aemond gave a single, slow, deliberate nod. Viserys looked away, his face etched with sorrowful relief. Rhaenyra remained impassive, though you saw her hand tighten slightly on Jace’s shoulder, a silent command for him to stay still. Jacaerys had gone a sickly shade of grey, his eyes wide with a horror that mirrored your own but was laced with a furious, impotent guilt.
Before you could vomit or faint, Alicent was turning you, marching you back inside, away from the gore and the staring eyes. The walk to her solar was a blur of stone and shadow.
Once inside the sanctum, with the door closed, the public façade shattered. She released you, and you stumbled against her heavy desk.
“You see?” she spat, the regal mask gone, replaced by the furious, betrayed mother. “That is the rubbish your poor judgement consorts with! That is what becomes of those who dare to smudge the brightness of this house!”
The horror congealed into a hard, sharp knot of rebellion in your chest. You straightened, your voice trembling but clear with a defiance born of despair. “You lied! To all of them! You told them he struck me! You told them I refused him! It was your hand! You did this! He didn’t… it wasn’t like that!”
Alicent stared at you, momentarily stunned by the outburst. Then her face darkened with a renewed, scorching fury. She crossed the space between you in two strides.
“You will hold your tongue!” The command was a whip-crack that echoed off the stone walls. “What was spoken in that yard is the truth! It is the truth that will be recorded in the White Book, the truth that will preserve the last shreds of your honour and this family’s security! Do you think the actual sordid little tale matters? That anyone would pity a princess who played at love with a guardsman? They would scorn you! They would call you a gullible slut and him an ambitious climber! This lie is the armour I have forged for you!”
She seized your shoulders, her fingers like talons. “This is the reality of power, you foolish girl! I have taken a messy, shameful little tragedy and turned it into a clean, noble narrative of attempted assault and royal resilience! That is what a Queen does! That is what a mother must do to salvage something from the wreckage her child has made!”
Tears of rage and helplessness burned tracks down your cheeks. “You killed him for a story!”
“I saved you with a story!” she roared, shaking you once. “And you are still too much of a mewling infant to see the gift you’ve been given! A quick death for him, a chance at a life for you. But you are a liability here now. The stink of this scandal, even neatly packaged, will linger. Your judgement is proven to be ashes.”
She shoved you away, turning to pace before the cold hearth. “You will leave King’s Landing. You will go to Oldtown, to the Hightower. Your uncle will host you. You will reflect, you will relearn discipline and duty, and you will be kept far from the… distractions of this court.”
Oldtown. Exile. Banishment to the ancestral seat, a gilded cage under the watchful, pious eyes of the Hightowers. The sentence was a new kind of death.
“No… please, not…” you stammered, the thought of that cold, unfamiliar fortress closing in around you.
“It is decided,” Alicent said, her voice final. She walked to the door and opened it. Outside, in the antechamber, Viserys was being helped into the room by a servant, his breathing laboured. He must have followed, seeking to offer comfort.
“Father…” you whispered, a last, desperate hope.
Viserys looked at you, his eyes clouded with pain and sympathy. “My dear child,” he wheezed, reaching a trembling hand towards your bruised cheek but not touching it. “To suffer such a vile attack… in the very heart of our home. Your mother has acted with… with necessary strength. The beast is gone. You are safe now.”
He believed it. Every word. The lie had been tailor-made for a kind, weary king who wanted only to protect his daughter. The truth would have broken him. Alicent had calculated that, too.
“The Princess,” Alicent interjected, her voice softening into a convincing blend of maternal concern and regal duty, “needs time to heal, Your Grace. The memory of this place… it is too fresh, too painful. The whispers of court will not aid her recovery. I propose she convalesce in Oldtown. The air is cleaner there. The guidance of my family will be wholesome. Aemond can escort her—his presence will ensure her safety on the journey and be a comfort.”
Viserys nodded slowly, the motion seeming to cost him great effort. “Yes… yes, a sensible course. A respite. Aemond is a steadfast lad.” He looked at you with rheumy affection. “Fifteen days. Rest, my child. Gather your strength. Then go to Oldtown. It will be good for you.”
Fifteen days. Not tonight. A small, bitter mercy. Two weeks in this gilded prison, with the ghost of Alaric haunting the halls and the knowledge of your impending exile hanging over you.
Alicent’s gaze met yours over the King’s bowed head. In it was no triumph, only cold, absolute victory. She had orchestrated it all: the narrative, the execution, the exile, and even the King’s blessing. You were checkmated.
“Thank you, Father,” you heard yourself say, the words ash in your mouth.
As Viserys was led away, murmuring about justice being served, Alicent turned her final, merciless decree on you. “You have your reprieve. Use it wisely. Reflect on the consequences of passion without purpose. Aemond will be informed of his duty. You will not speak to anyone of this matter again. Is that understood?”
You could only nod, the fight utterly drained from you.
“Return to your chambers. You will be confined there until the journey. Your lessons in what it means to be a Princess of the Blood are now your only occupation.”
You walked back to your room alone, the echoing corridors now feeling like the hollow bones of a beast that had just consumed a part of you. The court had seen a justice performed. Viserys saw a daughter protected. Rhaenyra and Jacaerys saw a masterful, brutal political play. Aemond saw a problem being efficiently removed to his custody. Aegon saw a fine morning’s entertainment.
And you saw the ruthless machinery of your mother’s love, oiled with the blood of a boy who loved you, ready to grind you into the shape she required. Oldtown awaited, a shining tower at the end of a road you would travel under the cold, watchful eye of a brother who saw your punishment not as a burden, but as his rightful due.
The fifteen days allotted before your exile to Oldtown stretched before you like a sentence within a sentence. Your chambers, once a sanctuary, had become a palatial cage. The world beyond your door was a muted echo—the distant clatter of the yard, the faint strains of courtly music from far-off halls, all serving as reminders of a life from which you were now utterly severed. Time lost its meaning, measured only in the trays of bland food passed through the door by silent servants and the slow march of shadows across your floor.
The ghost of Alaric was your constant companion. Not the passionate, jealous lover of the library, but the broken, terrified boy in the yard, his one good eye holding yours in that final, pleading moment before the axe fell. You saw it when you closed your eyes. You saw it in the pattern of the rug, in the dancing flames of the hearth. The metallic scent of blood seemed to have permeated the very stone, a phantom smell that haunted your every breath. Your mother’s lie was a shroud you were forced to wear, and its weight was crushing.
It was on the fourth night, deep in the silent hour when the Keep truly slept, that the faintest of scrapes sounded at your balcony door.
You sat bolt upright in bed, heart hammering. It couldn’t be a guard; they were posted at your main door. The scraping came again, followed by the soft, strained groan of the latticed door being inched open against its frame.
A figure slipped through, silhouetted against the indigo night sky. Tall, lithe, moving with a predatory grace you knew instantly. Jacaerys.
He closed the door silently and turned. In the dim glow of the single, guttering candle you kept lit, his face was a tapestry of conflict. The handsome, earnest features were strained, shadows pooling under his eyes. There was anger there, a simmering, jealous fury you could feel radiating from him across the room. But layered over it was something else—a desperate concern, a painful longing, and a calculating intensity that made your skin prickle.
“(Your name),” he breathed, the single word laden with a world of emotion.
You pulled the bedcovers tighter around yourself, a feeble defence. “Jacaerys. You shouldn’t be here. If my mother or Aemond—”
“Do you think I care about them right now?” he interrupted, his voice low but fervent. He took a step closer, then another, stopping at the foot of your bed. His gaze travelled over you—your rumpled nightclothes, your unbound hair, the fading bruise on your cheek that was now a sickly yellow-green. The sight of it made his jaw tighten, but his eyes softened with what looked like genuine pain.
“I saw it all,” he said, his voice rough. “In the yard. I had to stand there and watch that… that farce. Watch you be used as a prop in your mother’s play.” He ran a hand through his dark hair, the gesture agitated. “That mark… they said he did it. But I know, (Y/N). I saw you that night, just before. I know whose hand that truly came from.”
He knew. The truth of it was a secret shared, a dangerous, intimate thread between you. You looked away, shame heating your cheeks. “It doesn’t matter. He’s dead because of me. Because of my… stupidity.” The word your mother had used felt like ground glass in your mouth.
“Don’t,” Jacaerys said sharply, moving to sit on the edge of the bed, just out of reach. “Don’t say that. Don’t take her words into yourself.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped tightly. “What happened with that knight… it was a mistake. A terrible, tragic mistake. But it was born from being trapped, from being suffocated! Can’t you see that?”
His words were a balm and a poison. They acknowledged your guilt but reframed it as a consequence, not a flaw. It was what you desperately wanted to believe.
“He wanted to run away,” you whispered, the confession torn from you. “He wanted me to steal my family’s jewels to pay for it.”
Jacaerys’s eyes flashed with a dark, vindicated anger. “Of course he did,” he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush. “He saw a princess and thought of what he could take. He was never worthy of you, (Y/N). Not for a moment. His feelings, his ‘love’… it was just another kind of possession, baser than my uncle’s, but possession all the same.”
He was weaving a narrative, subtle as a spider’s silk, aligning himself with your pain, separating himself from the other men who sought to claim you. He made it sound as if his own obsession was of a purer, more understanding kind.
“And now she’s sending you away,” he continued, his voice thick with a frustration that seemed to border on heartbreak. “To Oldtown. To rot under the gaze of those pious Hightowers and under Aemond’s thumb. It’s not exile, it’s an execution of the spirit. She’s killing the vibrant, beautiful girl I… the girl I know you to be, and replacing her with a silent, obedient statue.”
A tear escaped, tracing a hot path down your cheek. He saw it, and his own expression crumpled for a moment, the mask of the shrewd prince slipping to reveal the raw, jealous, longing boy beneath.
“I was so angry with you,” he admitted, the words forced out as if painful. “When I saw you with him in the gardens. When I saw you kiss him back in the courtyard. It felt like you’d carved out my heart. I thought… I thought after everything, after the connection we’ve always had, you would see me.” He reached out, slowly, giving you time to pull away. When you didn’t, his fingers brushed the tear from your cheek, his touch feather-light. “But seeing you like this… broken under the weight of their lies and their punishments… my anger is for them. For what they’ve done to you.”
His thumb stroked your cheekbone, near but not touching the fading bruise. His proximity was intoxicating, a dangerous warmth in the cold isolation of your prison. He smelled of leather and night air, a scent of freedom.
“You don’t have to go to Oldtown,” he murmured, his eyes holding yours, a deep, compelling ocean of earnest intent. “Come to Dragonstone with me. With us. It’s a place of strength, not stifling piety. The air is clean and sharp. You could breathe there. You could be yourself. Not a perfect Hightower princess, not a problem to be shipped away… just (your name).”
The offer was a lifeline thrown into the stormy sea of your despair. Dragonstone. The ancient seat of House Targaryen. A place beyond your mother’s reach, beyond Aemond’s watchful eye. An escape.
The image shimmered before you—black sand beaches, the roar of the sea, the cries of dragons—but as quickly as it formed, it shattered against the memory of a rolling head and a spreading pool of crimson. You flinched, pulling back from his touch.
“I can’t,” you choked out. “Jace, I… Alaric… he’s dead. Because of choices I made. If I run with you now, it would be the same. Another reckless choice, another person hurt because of me. I carry his blood on my hands. I can’t… I can’t just fly away from that. It would haunt me. It does haunt me.”
The frustration you saw flash in his eyes was genuine, a spark of the anger he was trying so hard to suppress. He wanted you to say yes. He needed your compliance, your willing flight, to complete his own narrative of rescue and possession. Your guilt was an inconvenient obstacle.
He mastered it quickly, his expression softening into one of profound, patient sorrow. He cupped your face with both hands now, forcing you to look at him.
“That guilt,” he said, his voice achingly tender, “is a testament to your heart. To the goodness in you that he exploited, that your mother is trying to stamp out. Don’t let them use it as a chain to bind you. Come to Dragonstone, and we can bear that weight together. I will help you carry it. We can start anew.”
He leaned in closer, his breath mingling with yours. The space between you crackled with all the unsaid things, the stolen kiss in the dark, the years of shared glances, the rivalry and the strange, twisted affection. “You are not what happened in that library or that yard. You are so much more. Let me show you.”
It was not like the angry, desperate kiss in the courtyard. This was different. It was slow, deep, and devastatingly persuasive. It was a kiss that promised understanding, refuge, and a love that saw past your sins. It was a physical argument, a seduction of the soul. His hands slid from your face to tangle in your hair, pulling you gently closer. You felt yourself responding, a part of you yearning to lose yourself in this fantasy of rescue, to let him convince you that your guilt could be absolved in his arms.
For a long, breathless moment, you were adrift in it.
But as his kiss deepened, as one hand slid to the small of your back to draw you firmly against him, the phantom scent of blood seemed to rise again. The face of Alaric, not jealous but terrified, superimposed itself behind your closed eyelids.
You broke the kiss with a ragged gasp, turning your head away. “I can’t, Jace. I want to… gods, I want to believe you. But I can’t run. Not now. Not like this. The guilt would follow me. It would poison everything.”
The mask of the patient suitor faltered. A flicker of that raw, impatient anger returned to his eyes, a flash of the prince who was not used to being denied, especially not after offering what he saw as salvation. He took a deep, controlled breath, the muscles in his jaw working.
He stood up abruptly, putting distance between you, running a hand through his hair again. He turned his back to you for a moment, gathering himself. When he turned back, the expression was one of pained, noble resignation—a carefully constructed pose.
“I see,” he said, his voice quieter, laced with a sorrow that felt both real and performative. “Your heart is too burdened. Your conscience, too kind.” He approached the bed once more, but did not sit. He looked down at you, a prince in the shadows, his offer formally rejected but not withdrawn.
“Then I will wait,” he declared, the words a vow that sounded both romantic and ominously final. “I will wait for the chains of this guilt to loosen. I will wait for you to see that you deserve more than a life sentence in a Hightower tower for a crime you did not commit.” He leaned down, his hand brushing a strand of hair from your forehead in a gesture that was painfully intimate. “Dragonstone will be there. I will be there. When you are ready. When you can finally see that your place is not in the shadows of Oldtown, but in the fire and salt of your true heritage. With me.”
He straightened, his gaze lingering on you, imprinting the moment. “Remember this, (your name). Remember that when all others cast you out or locked you away, I offered you a throne by the sea. The offer stands. For as long as it takes.”
With one last, long look that was a mixture of yearning, frustration, and unwavering determination, he turned and slipped back out onto the balcony, disappearing into the night as silently as he had come.
You were left alone, the ghost of his kiss on your lips, the phantom of Alaric’s blood on your hands, and the echoing promise of a prince who would wait—a promise that felt less like hope and more like another, more gilded, cage being built around you, its door held open by a hand you were too afraid and too guilty to take.
The five days following Jacaerys’s secret visit passed in a suffocating limbo. Word filtered through the servants that Prince Jacaerys, along with his mother and brothers, had departed King’s Landing for Dragonstone. Their leaving was quiet, almost hurried, a strategic retreat from a court still buzzing with the after-shocks of the execution. His absence should have felt like a relief, the closing of a door on a dangerous temptation. Instead, it felt like the severing of the last fragile tether to a version of yourself that still dared to want something. The promise of Dragonstone now hung in the air of your chamber like a fading perfume—sweet, haunting, and utterly unreachable.
It was on the first night after his departure that the dreams began.
You were walking through a forest of bone-white trees, their branches clawing at a twilight sky. In a clearing stood a woman. She was young, no older than you, with hair the colour of tarnished silver and eyes that held the gleam of deep, still water. She was beautiful, but her beauty was cold, alien. On her wrist, she wore a simple bracelet of woven iron and what looked like dried blossoms. She raised her other hand, her fingers hovering over the clasp.
“See,” she whispered, though her lips did not move. The voice was inside your skull.
She unclasped the bracelet. It fell to the mossy ground.
And before your eyes, she… unfolded. It was not a transformation of magic, but a horrifying acceleration of time. Smooth skin puckered and drew tight over sharpening bones. The silver hair bleached to a brittle white, then thinned. The straight spine curved. The bright eyes clouded with milky cataracts. In the span of a single, shuddering breath, the maiden became a crone, hunched and ancient, leaning on a staff of gnarled blackwood.
The crone’s clouded eyes fixed on you, seeing through the dream. “You walk in two streams,” she croaked, her voice the sound of dry leaves scraping stone. “One is here. The other… is an echo of a world that sang a different song.”
You woke with a gasp, your heart hammering, the image of the decaying woman seared onto the backs of your eyelids. The guilt, a constant companion, immediately supplied an explanation. Alaric. It was a message. A warning from beyond the grave, his spirit angry, showing you the decay your actions had wrought. You spent the day jumpy and pale, starting at shadows, jumping at every sound from the corridor.
The next night, the dream returned. The same bone-wood forest. The same young woman. This time, she did not wait. She tore the bracelet from her wrist the moment she saw you. The violent aging was even faster, more grotesque. The crone stood amidst a shower of her own falling hair.
“You are seen,” the crone hissed, pointing a gnarled, trembling finger. “By eyes that are not of this earth. Your soul bears a fingerprint from another forge. You are a graft on this tree of time, princess.”
You woke drenched in a cold sweat, a silent scream locked in your throat. It was him. It had to be. Alaric was haunting you, showing you the rot at your core, the foreign, wrong thing you were. The guilt metastasised, becoming a physical sickness. You could barely eat.
On the third night, the eve of your departure to Oldtown, the dream did not wait for sleep.
You were staring into the low fire, trying to banish the images, when the air in your chamber grew suddenly, piercingly cold. The flames in the hearth guttered and died, not with a sigh, but as if snuffed by an unseen hand. In the sudden, profound darkness, a figure coalesced by the window—not the young woman, nor the crone from the woods, but the ancient hag herself, standing in your very chamber. She was translucent, like smoke, but her presence was a physical weight, pressing the air from your lungs.
“No more dreams,” the spectre rasped. “The veil is thin. He is near.”
Your blood froze. He. She confirmed it. Alaric’s spirit was near, restless, communicating through this phantom. You had to know. You had to understand his final message, to beg his forgiveness, to make the visions stop.
A reckless, desperate energy, born of terror and a crushing need for absolution, surged through you. The guards were at your main door. But the balcony… Jacaerys had used it. Could you?
As if reading your thought, the spectral crone raised her staff and pointed not at you, but at the intricate lattice of your balcony door. With a sound like cracking ice, the lock splintered. The door drifted open an inch, inviting the night.
You didn’t think. You acted. Slipping from your bed, you threw the simplest, darkest cloak you had over your nightgown. With one last look at the ghostly figure—who merely watched with those terrible, knowing eyes—you slipped out onto the cold balcony. The climb down was a blur of sheer terror and animal instinct, using the thick, ancient vines that clung to the Keep’s stone as a perilous ladder. You scraped your hands and knees, but you felt no pain, only the desperate drive to follow this apparition, to find the source of the haunting and silence it.
You dropped the last few feet into a shadowed courtyard, your breath coming in ragged gasps. The spectre was ahead, floating just at the edge of your vision, a wisp of darker shadow leading you through a maze of servant’s passages and forgotten gates at the base of the city walls. You were leaving the Keep, descending into the belly of King’s Landing itself, into the Warrens, where the stench of the city was thick and the only light came from guttering tallow candles in windows.
Finally, in a dead-end alley that reeked of stale urine and decay, the spectre stopped before a crooked door. It turned its head, the movement unnaturally stiff, and flowed through the wood.
You were alone in the stinking dark. This was madness. But the need for answers, for an end to the torment, was greater than your fear. You pushed the door. It swung open silently.
Inside was a single room, lit by a single, sickly green flame dancing in a crude brazier. The air was thick with the smell of strange herbs and old earth. And there, seated on a stool, was the crone from your dreams. She was flesh and blood now, solid, the most real thing in the room. Her milky eyes fixed on you.
“You came,” she said, her voice no longer a dream-whisper but a dry, papery reality. “Good. The pulled thread often seeks its needle.”
“What are you?” you demanded, your voice trembling but loud in the small space. “Are you… are you his messenger? Alaric’s? What does he want from me? I’m sorry! Tell him I’m so sorry!”
The crone’s head tilted, a grotesque parody of curiosity. “The dead knight? His spirit is gone. Fled to whatever peace or torment awaits. No, girl. This is not about him. This is about the stain on your soul. The one you were born with.”
She gestured with a claw-like hand, and the green flame in the brazier flared violently. Within its heart, images swirled—not of Alaric, but of you.
You saw yourself in a world of impossible things—gleaming metal carriages that moved without horses, tiny glowing slabs in people’s hands showing moving pictures, towers of glass that scraped a smog-choked sky. You saw yourself laughing with people in strange clothes, in a small room lit by a harsh, steady light. You felt a pang of recognition so profound it was a physical ache, followed immediately by a wave of nausea and disorientation. The memories were not memories; they were ghosts of a life that had never happened, yet they felt more real than the silk of your gown.
Then you saw the end. A blinding light, a screech of tearing metal, a moment of searing pain… and then darkness.
And then… a squalling infant in a grand bed, a worried man with a pinched face (Otto Hightower) looking on, and a young, exhausted Alicent holding a newborn with your eyes.
“You died,” the crone stated flatly, as the visions vanished, leaving you staggering, gripping the grimy wall for support. “In that other-song world. And you were born again, here. A soul displaced. A ripple in the pond of fate. You do not belong. Your very presence here… it warps the stream.”
The world tilted on its axis. The constant feeling of being an outsider, of never quite fitting the mould your mother demanded, the strange thoughts and instincts you could never explain… it wasn’t madness. It wasn’t a flaw. It was a truth far more terrifying.
You were not just a failed princess. You were a ghost in a living girl’s skin. A mistake of the cosmos.
“Why?” you whispered, the word barely audible. “Why show me this?”
“Because the warp is tightening,” the crone said, leaning forward, her scent of dust and grave-earth filling your nostrils. “Your displacement has consequences. It has woven new threads into the tapestry of this realm. Bloodier threads. A war is coming. A war of fire and blood that will crack the very spine of Westeros. And your existence… is part of its kindling.”
The Dance. The whispers you’d heard, the tension between your mother and Rhaenyra, the glares between your brothers and your nephews… it wasn’t just rivalry. It was a countdown to annihilation.
“When?” you breathed, the horror a cold stone in your gut. “When does it start?”
The crone’s milky eyes seemed to look through you, into a future only she could see. “The first true spark flies tonight,” she croaked. “The old king, the weary lion who holds the pride together… his time ends. With his last breath, the chain that holds the beasts snaps. You have time, perhaps, to say farewell. To look upon the face of the peace that dies with him.”
Father. King Viserys. He was to die. Tonight.
The information hit you with the force of a physical blow. This was no vague prophecy. It was specific, immediate, and horrifying. The kind, weary man who had believed a lie to protect you… was living his final hours.
You stared at the crone, the last vestiges of the ‘Alaric haunting’ theory crumbling to ash. This was infinitely bigger than your guilt, your shame, your doomed romance. This was about the fate of kingdoms, and you, a relic of another world, were somehow caught in the heart of the storm.
Without another word, you turned and fled from the foul little room, from the bearer of impossible truths. You had to get back. You had to see him. The ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of your existence were questions for another time, drowning in the tidal wave of a single, crushing certainty: your father was going to die, and hell was going to follow.
You ran through the stinking alleys, the climb back up the vines a frantic, graceless scramble. You slipped back into your chamber just as the first, faint hint of grey touched the eastern sky. You stood there, shivering in your muddy nightclothes, no longer a princess imprisoned for a scandal, but a secret oracle carrying the weight of a doomed future, the taste of another world’s death and this world’s impending birth of fire on your tongue.
The journey to Oldtown, Aemond’s cold custody, your mother’s disappointed wrath—all of it shrank into insignificance. A greater clock was ticking, its hands closing on the hour of the king’s last breath, and you were perhaps the only soul in the Red Keep who knew the true, cataclysmic significance of the bell about to toll.
Author’s note: Hello, everyone. I hope you're well. First and foremost, my sincerest apologies for the significant delay. I had several pressing commitments with my university, alongside a few minor personal matters to attend to. Thankfully, everything has settled down now.
I truly hope you enjoyed this latest instalment. Please don't worry—the sixth chapter will be with you very soon.
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