Jacaerys Velaryon x wife!reader - House of the Dragon (spoilers for s3 ep1!!)
Summary: Jacaerys survives the Gullet, so naturally the maesters have opinions about what he should and should not be doing during his recovery. Unfortunately for them, Jace has opinions too.
A/N: this works as a standalone or sequel to Saltwater, except this fic is significantly less angsty and significantly more "what if jace spent a month trying to argue with medical professionals." :) must admit i cracked myself up a lil writing this and also PLEASE send in reqs im running out of ideas
MASTERLIST - REQUESTS (open) - WC: 4.0k
A month after the Gullet, the castle still smells faintly of medicines, as though the sea itself has followed Jacaerys home and settled in the stone with him.
You have grown so accustomed to it that you hardly notice anymore.
A month ago, you would have given anything to smell it. A month ago, there had been blood. So much blood. But now there are only maesters, all the time.
Three of them stand gathered around the table right now near the window, speaking in low, serious voices while Jace sits in a carved chair looking increasingly irritated with every minute.
Sunlight spills through the narrow panes behind him, catching in his dark curls and turning the edges of them gold, softening him in a way that makes him seem almost boyish despite everything he has endured in the last couple weeks.
His injuries have faded from terrifying to merely alarming. The worst of the bruising is gone, the cuts have begun to heal, and colour has returned to his face, though not yet enough for you to relax.
Unfortunately for everyone else, so has his stubbornness.
You stand beside him with one hand resting lightly on the back of his chair, partly affection but mostly precaution if you're being honest with yourself, because the prince has developed an unfortunate habit of forgetting that nearly dying is supposed to slow a person down.
"Your Grace is recovering admirably," Grand Maester Gerardys says at last.
Jace straightens immediately, as if the words themselves have restored him. Gerardys clears his throat with the patient air of a man who has spent his life delivering unwelcome truths to the powerful. "Recovering admirably, however, does not mean recovered."
Jace slumps back with all the theatrical suffering of a man condemned to the Wall. Gerardys continues as though he has not noticed the prince's offence.
"Your ribs are still mending. The wound to your side has not fully healed. The fever has passed, but weakness remains. Any unnecessary strain could set back his recovery considerably."
Jace folds his arms. "What strain?"
The three maesters exchange a glance, and you immediately become suspicious. Jace notices it too, his brows drawing together. "What strain?" he repeats, sharper this time.
Nobody answers.
The silence stretches, and stretches, and then stretches a little further, until finally the old maester clears his throat again, looking faintly pained. "This includes physical exertion."
Jace nods at once. "Yes, I gathered that, obviously."
"Excessive physical exertion."
"Yes."
"Particularly..." Gerardys pauses, and one of the younger maesters suddenly finds the floor fascinating. "...marital exertion."
The room falls completely silent.
For a single moment Jace simply stares at them. Then his face changes all at once, horror and outrage arriving together.
"I beg your pardon?"
You turn away quickly because you can already feel laughter rising in your throat and you know if you let it out now you will never stop. Beside you, Jace looks scandalised beyond measure. "What do you mean?"
"My Prince-"
"No." The word echoes off the stone walls. "Absolutely not. This is absurd and I refuse to accept it."
Gerardys remains maddeningly calm. "It is only temporary."
"Temporary?" Jace sounds personally betrayed. "You are forbidding me from bedding my own wife."
The younger maester goes slightly red. You stare very intently at the tapestry across the room, because if you look at Jace now you will lose whatever dignity you have left. He points an accusing finger at the entire collection of healers. "I survived a naval battle."
"Indeed."
"I was shot."
"Yes."
"I nearly drowned."
"Correct."
"And your conclusion is that my greatest threat is my wife?"
The maesters look vaguely embarrassed. Jace looks outraged. And suddenly, despite the lingering ache that still lives in your chest whenever you remember the sight of him bleeding on a bed, you feel lighter, because this is familiar. This is your Jace. He's alive enough to argue and complain. Alive enough to glare dramatically at innocent old men and be stubborn.
Your hand slips from the chair to his shoulder, and immediately he covers it with his own. Gerardys notices, and his expression gentles. "My Prince," he says, "the restriction is not punishment."
Jace groans. "I would beg to differ."
A few of the maesters smile despite themselves. Gerardys gathers his papers, "It is only another month."
Jace nearly chokes. "A whole month?"
"Perhaps less, if recovery continues."
"A month."
"You survived the Gullet. Surely you can survive a few more weeks."
Jace mutters something deeply disrespectful under his breath, and you squeeze his shoulder in warning and affection both. His fingers immediately tighten around yours as he looks up at you, exhaustion and frustration playing on his features.
You smile at him, and his expression softens immediately.
Then Gerardys speaks again, and the spell breaks at once. "And separate beds may also be advisable."
Jace's head snaps around, "No."
Silence settles over the chamber. Jace's hand remains wrapped around yours, firm and warm and immovable. "I nearly died, so I am not sleeping without my wife."
They exchange glances and then, wisely, surrender. "Very well."
You lower your head to hide your smile, because truly, there are battles even the maesters cannot win.
That evening the matter should have been settled, at least in theory.
The maesters had spoken, their instructions delivered and their warnings had been repeated no fewer than six times over supper, as though saying them often enough might somehow make Jace more inclined to obey.
Instead, he is attempting to negotiate, which is perhaps exactly what you should have expected from him and yet still feels faintly absurd when he is sitting there shirtless on the edge of the bed, looking incredibly offended by the very concept of restraint.
You sit beside him with a fresh roll of linen in your lap while he holds one arm lifted so you can reach the wound along his side.
The chamber is quiet except for the crackle of the fire and the distant, steady sound of waves striking the cliffs below; night has fully settled beyond the windows, leaving only darkness on the other side of the glass and the warm gold of candlelight within.
Carefully, you peel away the old bandage, and he hisses through his teeth at the movement. You glance up at once. “You are being dramatic.”
"Three arrows pierced my body.”
“A month ago.”
“It still counts.”
You make a skeptical sound and reach for the ointment, though you cannot quite keep the corner of your mouth from twitching. For a few moments silence settles between you. You smooth the salve across healing skin, studying the angry scar that is beginning to form there, the sight still makes something twist painfully in your chest.
There are moments when you look at him and see only Jace; your husband, your best friend, the boy who once raced you through castle corridors and stole lemon cakes from the kitchens with the shameless confidence of someone who had never once been told no in his life.
Then there are moments like this, when memory comes back all at once and with it the blood, the fever, the endless waiting, the terrible certainty, however brief, that you might lose him. Your fingers pause before you can stop them.
Immediately, his hand settles over yours.
He notices. Of course he does.
You lift your eyes, and his expression softens at once. “I am all right,” he says quietly.
“Mm.”
His thumb brushes slowly across your knuckles.
Then, because Jacaerys Velaryon possesses the survival instincts of an overconfident golden retriever, he says, “I still think the maesters are being unreasonable.”
You close your eyes for a brief, weary moment. You had been wondering how long it would take.
“You are recovering from grievous injuries.”
“I am recovering exceptionally well.”
“You still tire walking up stairs.”
“Well, I dislike those stairs.”
You begin wrapping the fresh bandage around his ribs. “They are not unusual stairs, Jace.”
"They are steeper than other stairs."
Despite yourself, you laugh, and his grin appears immediately. He tilts his head, thoughtful in the way that always makes you suspicious.
“What exactly constitutes marital exertion?”
You nearly drop the bandage. “Jacaerys.”
“It is a reasonable question.”
You finish tying the linen perhaps just a little tighter than necessary, and he winces. You feel no guilt whatsoever.
“They were quite vague,” he says after a moment.
“They were not vague. They were, in fact, extraordinarily clear.”
Jace considers this with the air of a man weighing evidence in a trial he has already decided to win. “Perhaps to you.”
“To everyone.”
“Not to me.” His smile widens, and you are suddenly struck by the realisation that the maesters should perhaps have prescribed confinement in separate castles.
“They said strain,” he says, as though he's continuing a perfectly sensible conversation.
“Yes.”
“And exertion.”
“Yes.”
“So theoretically-”
“No.”
“What if-”
“Jace.”
He stops, though only because he is laughing now, actually laughing, and the sound fills the room so easily that for a moment you forget everything else.
“You are impossible,” you inform him.
“I have been told.”
He reaches for your hand, and you let him take it. His fingers close around yours with a warmth that feels almost unbearably familiar, and when he speaks again his voice has lost its teasing edge. “Another month is a very long time.”
You shake your head, smiling softly, but before he can begin constructing another ridiculous argument, you lean forward and press a kiss to his mouth.
The effect is immediate. Jace falls silent, blessedly, wonderfully silent, and when you pull back he blinks once, then twice, as though he has forgotten every thought he was having.
A second kiss lands at the corner of his mouth, then another against his cheek, and with each one his smile grows slower, softer, warmer, until by the third he has entirely abandoned his campaign against the maesters.
You feel rather proud of yourself.
He grins and reaches for you, and you allow him to pull you nearer. The blankets shift around you both as you settle beside him carefully, because he is still healing and you are both painfully aware of it.
His arm slides around your waist. Your head finds its familiar place against his shoulder.
The first week after the maesters' decree is irritating.
The second becomes ridiculous.
By the third, it's infuriating.
Jacaerys Velaryon approaches recovery the way he approaches every obstacle in his life: by refusing to accept that it is truly an obstacle at all.
If the maesters insist upon restrictions, then he will simply find exceptions.
One evening, as you sit beside him on the bed with your book open in your lap, he glances over and says, almost casually, “I stand by my opinion that their instructions were imprecise.”
You do not look up. “No.”
“They never actually provided definitions.”
You turn a page. “They are maesters, Jace, not scholars debating philosophy.”
He sighs, long-suffering and theatrical, and shifts a little closer.
Recently, he has become fond of finding excuses to sit beside you, or hold your hand, or drape an arm around your shoulders, or rest his head in your lap while insisting he is 'too weak' to move despite having spent the entire afternoon arguing in council.
“What if,” he begins. You close your eyes.
“What if,” he repeats, undeterred, “the concern is specifically overexertion?”
“It is.”
“Then surely the solution is simply avoiding overexertion.”
At last you lower the book and look at him properly. His expression brightens at once, as though he has won something merely by drawing your attention.
“Jace.”
“Yes?”
“No.”
He groans, and you return to your book.
Three nights later, he appears to have developed a new argument. You discover this when he is sprawled across the bed with his head resting against your shoulder, warm and comfortable and entirely too pleased with himself.
“What if,” he says thoughtfully.
You nearly laugh. “Again?”
“I have had several days to refine my position on the issue.”
“Gods preserve me.”
“What if I simply did not move very much? You could do all the... moving... uh, like difficult parts.”
You lower your embroidery hoop and glance down at him. He looks entirely sincere, which somehow makes it worse.
“Jacaerys.”
“I am not going to do any part because we are not going to do anything.”
He studies the ceiling for a moment, then turns his head just enough to look at you. “I think you are dismissing my proposals too quickly.”
“I think you enjoy hearing yourself talk.”
“I enjoy talking to you.”
Oh, you hate how good he is at being charming.
His arm slips around your waist. “You know,” he says quietly, “I do understand why you’re worried.”
The humour fades a little. You look at him, but his gaze remains fixed on your joined hands.
“You frightened me,” you admit.
Something flashes behind his eyes. “I know.”
Silence settles between you, gentle and sad and comfortable all at once. Then, because he is incapable of allowing a serious conversation to remain serious for too long, he lifts his head and says, “So that is still a no?”
You stare at him.
Jace immediately begins laughing, and when you throw a cushion at his face he catches it easily, looking delighted by the rejection.
Which, unfortunately, only convinces you that recovery is proceeding exceptionally well.
One morning at the beginning of the fourth week you're standing at the edge of the bedchamber, the salt-laced wind moaning through the open shutters as the last embers in the hearth crackle low.
Jacaerys is desperate today, even more than usual
He lies propped against the pillows, his bare chest rising and falling with quick, restless breaths, the angry red scars along his ribs and hip still mapped in fresh pink, but they are scars now, nonetheless.
It's been two months since the Gullet.
To the naked eye he seems fully recovered — he partakes in council meetings, goes on long walks with you along the shore, is no longer winded by those particularly steep stairs — but the maesters’ edict remains iron.
No strain, no exertion, no touch that might tear what they say has barely knit. Yet here he is, dark eyes fixed on you with shameless hunger, voice low and frayed.
“Please,” he murmurs, the words thick with frustration, his hand extended, palm up, fingers flexing as if he can already feel the shape of your waist.
“I cannot do this, I’m not some broken thing anymore. I feel you every night in my dreams, and then I wake up and you won't even let me touch you properly. I need your hand, your mouth, anything. Just… let me feel you again.”
He sits up a little straighter, a small grin finding his lips, voice dropping to a growl. “You’re aching too, I know it. Two months without feeling how wet you get for me-"
"Jacaerys, stop being so crude, you cannot possibly think-" but he continues, completely disregarding your objections.
"Gods, I’d give anything to see you under me like I used to, but I won’t move. I swear it. Just you, I'll even lie still.”
Your fingers tighten on the bedpost, because you cannot dent he's right. You do miss him, painfully so. You miss the feel of his hands on you and the stretch of him inside you, but reluctance still coils tight in your chest.
You take one hesitant step closer.
The cool stone floor beneath your bare feet gives way to the softness of the mattress as you perch carefully at his uninjured side, your fingers brushing the edge of the linen without yet touching him.
“Jacaerys,” you whisper, “I cannot, the maesters said-” But the way his hips twitch, just once, desperate and involuntary, stops the protest on your tongue.
A soft, helpless sound escapes him, and something shifts inside you, because this, in a way, is also him in pain, except this time you actually have the power to help him.
Your hand drifts over the sheet, hovering just above the bulge you can just start to see emerging beneath the linen.
“You must promise me you’ll lie perfectly still,” you remind him, the words gentle but unyielding, “There are reasons they forbid it; you could open one of the wounds.”
His dark eyes flash, jaw tightening as if he might argue, but apparently the months of forced stillness have left him too raw, too aching, and he nods once, a bead of sweat tracing down his temple.
You smile then, small and maybe a little teasing, and let your fingertips graze the linen over the head of his cock.
Slowly you peel the sheet down, then work on the laces of his breeches before pulling them down and finally revealing him fully to the firelit air.
His cock thick and flushed dark, the vein along its length pulsing visibly as you wrap your fingers around the base with deliberate lightness, still not quite sure how this is going to go.
He groans, low and broken, head tipping back against the pillows, but he holds himself rigid as promised, muscles trembling with the effort.
You lean in, breath ghosting over the sensitive head, and press the softest kiss there, tasting the salt of him while your free hand rests lightly on his uninjured hip to remind him of the boundary.
“Only on my terms tonight, dearest husband,” you whisper against his skin, stroking him once, slow and torturous, savouring the way his breath hitches and his fingers clutch the bedding instead of reaching for you.
“I will give you this, you just lay there and let me take care you.”
You tighten your grip just enough to draw another shuddering groan from him, your thumb circling the slick head of his cock in slow, deliberate strokes that make his thighs tense against the sheets.
He’s so hard it must be painful, the heavy length twitching in your fist with every pass,
The sight of your big, strong husband, normally so commanding, now reduced to biting his lip to keep from thrusting stirs something warm and aching in your chest.
It feels like the biggest relief.
You still remember every moment of the last two months, watching him wince at every breath, lying awake beside his bandaged body while fear gnawed at you both, and now here he is, flushed and leaking for you, trying so hard to obey even as his hips give one tiny, involuntary roll.
It’s adorable, that stubborn flicker of dominance surfacing in the way he grits out your name, only for it to dissolve into a whimper when you lean down and drag your tongue along the underside of his shaft.
His fingers fist the bedding harder, knuckles white, and you can see the war in his eyes, the urge to grab your hair and guide you deeper warring with the maesters’ warnings and his own fragile healing.
“Fuck… just like that,” he rasps, voice cracking with need so raw it makes your own neglected body clench.
You take him deeper into your mouth, hollowing your cheeks with a soft suck that has him arching his head back.
It's as if you're watching him heal in real-time, because he’s becoming himself again, that fierce, passionate man who once pinned you laughing to the furs.
You hum around him, savouring the salt-bitter taste of him while your free hand strokes soothing circles over his tightening stomach.
You pull off just enough to murmur against the flushed skin, teasing the slit with the tip of your tongue until his breath stutters.
“Still, Jace.”
Then you resume your rhythm, slow, twisting strokes of your hand paired with wet, deliberate licks. He trembles beneath you, every suppressed sound proof of how desperately he’s craved your touch.
You quicken your pace with deliberate mercy, not seeing a point in dragging this out any longer than you have to, lips sealed tight around him as your tongue swirls and your hand pumps in steady rhythm, feeling the way his thighs quake despite his vow to stay still.
His voice breaks on your name, half-command and half-plea, while one of his hands finds your hair and grips tight, not that you mind at all.
Finally, he spills hot and pulsing across your tongue, thick spurts you swallow with a soft moan of your own. You keep stroking him through it, gentling your touch as the last tremors fade, watching the tension drain from his battered body until he lies boneless and breathless, dark eyes glassy.
For a long moment afterward, neither of you says anything.
The chamber is quiet except for the soft crackle of the fire and the distant rhythm of the sea beyond the windows. The candles have burned lower than either of you realised, leaving the room washed in warm gold and shadow.
Jace lies beside you with that same dazed, contented smile still lingering on his mouth, as though he has not quite remembered how to put it away.
You glance at him from the corner of your eye and shake your head. “What?”
His smile only deepens. “Nothing.”
“Mhmm.”
He gives a quiet, breathless laugh and reaches for your hand where it still rests atop his stomach, threading his fingers through yours. His thumb moves over your knuckles, warm and absentminded.
The sight of him like this, softened and unguarded, makes something in your chest loosen.
You fuss over him out of habit more than necessity, fetching a washcloth, straightening the blankets around his hips and making certain he is comfortable, searching his face and posture for any sign that he has overdone himself despite every promise he made.
Jace watches the whole business with open affection, his expression growing gentler by the moment.
“My darling,” he murmurs, though there is no real complaint in it. You ignore him. “You are checking on me.”
“Someone has to.”
His teasing fades then, leaving something softer in its place. For a moment he simply watches you, and when he lifts your joined hands and presses a kiss to your knuckles, the gesture is so familiar that it catches you off guard all the same.
“Thank you,” he says quietly.
You look up at him.
The words are not playful nor triumphant, not even particularly clever. Your chest aches unexpectedly, because beneath all the bargaining and persistence and impossible shamelessness, you know what this has really been about.
Weeks of fear. Weeks of recovery. Weeks of being careful. Weeks of wondering whether life would ever feel normal again.
You squeeze his hand, and his fingers tighten around yours at once.
“You do not need to thank me.”
“I do.”
His voice is gentle. “I know I was insufferable.”
You giggle softly. “Do you now?”
Without either of you needing to say anything, Jace opens his arm toward you. You move into it at once, as naturally as breathing, as though you have done it a thousand times before. Because you have. Your head settles against his shoulder, his arm folds around your waist, and the blankets shift around you both as you settle more comfortably together.
Eventually you feel his lips brush lightly against your hair, a sleepy, lingering kiss that makes you smile before you can stop yourself.
“Tired?” you murmur.
“A little.”
“You should sleep.”
“So should you.”
The waves continue their endless song beyond the walls.
somehow i ended up writing a several-thousand-word account of jace velaryon attempting to find loopholes in doctor's orders. i regret nothing <3 lemme know if you guys liked this, trying to decide wether to write more for jace or not.
summary: Ormund Hightower has been the guiding hand pushing you forward all your life. Teaching, shaping, and disciplining whenever necessary. His affections are unconventional and at times even violent, yet you cannot help but want his teeth in your heart anyway.
warnings: +18 mdni, explicit content, age gap, size difference, otk spanking, toxic relationship dynamics, reader is rhaenyra's daughter but has lived in oldtown for most of her life, power imbalances, could be said that reader is being groomed but she (like the writer) very much wants this evil man all on her own, light angst, mentions of canon typical violence, punishment, kneeling, begging, praise, sexual tension, clit stimulation, pillow humping, talk of maidenhood/virtue, bd/sm dynamics, ormund licks your tears, dry humping, oral sex f!receiving, possessive behavior, cruel devotion, discussion of marriage, jealousy, repressed feelings, body worship, virginity loss, dirty talk, face grabbing, scenting? girl idk, rough sex, multiple orgasm, creampie, collaring, lightly edited, images are purely for aesthetic purposes, reader has no physical description!
wc: 9.2k
note: if a single person asks for a part two………i may be….persuaded……..
[masterlist][AO3]
He's never liked you, that much was obvious in his stare alone.
You'd been sent to Oldtown with your uncle Daeron at your grandfather's request. Viserys had wanted it to be a sign of a united family. It had been done in a time of peace with pure intentions.
How would they have known of Ormund's hatred for Valyrian blood? How would they have known that a single look upon your face would have the man's jaw clenching and his hands curling?
For what it's worth, you truly believe he tried in the beginning. Tried not to allow his prejudice to cloud his judgment of you. But it was always there, like a curse held at the back of his throat. Too large to swallow, too cruel to speak.
He loved your uncle and treated Daeron as if he were born of his own blood. But though you were often found in the same trouble, Ormund's display of discipline was always a bit different when directed at you.
Not only a raised voice but a physical punishment, too.
A rough hand on the back of your neck. A lashing across your knuckles. Fingers curled tight around your jaw.
You'd let yourself believe that things would change when you became a woman grown. It is one thing to discipline a girl with the intent of guidance, but it is another thing to strike a lady.
The solution was to discipline in private.
Once, you'd gotten caught stealing wine from the kitchens in the dead of night. And when Ormund had been told of your transgression, he'd come to your bedchamber alone. Sat on the side of your mattress, fingers gentle as they stroked your cheek.
He shook you awake, and pretended at patience while you rubbed away the drunken stupor from your eyes.
And then he'd explain, "I am hard on you because I care. Because I see the potential beneath all your corruption. I understand it is not your fault you have such atrocity in your blood. I am only teaching you to overcome it. And you have much yet to learn, sweetling."
This is the first time Ormund takes you over his knee.
His palm lands sharp and hard across your bottom, five good times for each and every cup you'd stolen. He makes you count, and does not comment on the tears as they brim at the corners of your eyes.
The first time is the worst, because you hadn't expect it.
But by the tenth time it stops being a surprise and starts to become an expectation.
The routine is always the same. The sun will set, and he will slink into your chambers. Sometimes he doesn't even speak. He will simply stare down at you where you lay, head tilted, eyes dark, and you'll whisper apologies in the flickering candlelight.
He is meaner, you come to notice, when he is encumbered by duty. His strikes are harder and there are more of them. Sometimes he will spend hours in a day listening to petitions or dispersing soldiers or politicking with lords who come to him with future propositions.
On these nights, Ormund will groan low in his throat when you twist in his grasp, your legs flailing as you run from the impact of his tingling palm. But he will always wait for you to compose yourself, and then he'll lift his own leg over yours to bracket you in place, all before striking you again.
It is only after several months of this routine of discipline that you begin to wonder if it is less for your sake and more for his.
On one particular night, you're on strike eight out of ten, the number gritted through your teeth as you speak it aloud. Your breath comes fast and labored in your chest, lungs burning as you greedily drink up oxygen. Your muscles tire of pulling tight in anticipation only to melt in relief as the pain disperses across your skin.
It is later than usual, and you'd spent the day on horseback, and you're so exhausted that you fold your hands over one another and lay your head atop them. Face turned, you steal a glance up at Ormund to find his lips parted and his shoulders relaxed.
Posture far different than it had been when he'd closed your chamber door behind him.
You force your eyes to stay open as he hits you again, observing the look on his face.
Troublesome and argumentative woman you are, you're smart enough to recognize solace when you see it.
"Nine," you say, though it is more of a whisper than a fully spoken word.
Ormund notices.
His eyes find yours, gaze heavy and intense, as if he were seeing something inside of you that he could not put a name to if he tried.
This time, when his palm comes down against your cheek, it is hard enough that the sound echoes against the stone walls.
Your eyes squeeze shut and your ears ring and you can hear and feel and sense nothing but the heat of him beneath you and the pain he elicits. Breathing does not come easily. Each inhale is short and labored and choking.
"Count," Ormund says, the word low and demanding, the way he so often is.
You cannot catch your breath.
"Count, girl," he repeats. "Or we will begin again."
A spark of fear ignites in your chest, because you could not endure another ten lashes. Not like this, not knowing this is not even about the cruel words you'd spoken to your septa but rather for his own selfish respite.
"Ten!" The word is rushed. "Ten, ten, ten—!"
His hand smooths over your spine, as if to heal the ache he himself inflicted. "Very good," he whispers, shushing your cries. "You did so well."
The following morning, your flesh stings and bruises have already begun to form, but all you can think of is the way his praise had made your heart sing inside the cage of your ribs. The words echo in your mind, a mantra, a song, a poem.
The feeling is only because it is so rare to hear such things from his mouth, you tell yourself. It is not for desire. You could not desire a man like Ormund, could you? Who'd shaped you into the woman you are. Who saw such corruption in you and had spent the better half of your life trying to root it out.
But no matter how hard you try, you cannot shake the look you'd seen on his face. Like he'd enjoyed it.
And because you are stubborn and far too curious, you conduct an experiment to disprove your theory.
For weeks, you try very hard to be good. You go to your lessons without complaint, you listen to your septas, you pray to the seven and deny yourself excess in all forms.
You speak kindly. You cling tight to poise. You cast your eyes away when a man speaks to you and bow graciously instead of arguing or challenging a direction, no matter how stupid it may be.
You are perfect.
It is the longest you have gone without punishment in all your life.
But the stretch of time only lasts so long. And you wake late one night to find Ormund standing at your bedside, hovering.
Staring, with that same look he's leveled at you for years—not disgust, but something more complex. Something hotter. Searing.
You lift yourself up on an elbow and ask timidly, "Did I do something wrong?"
His jaw feathers as he clenches his teeth. "No."
Somehow, his answer is worse than if he had found a reason to punish you. Because this meant you were right, that his discipline was not only for you. It meant there was something else beneath it all.
It meant that this perverse craving in your chest that you have tried to fight off was not only yours. It was shared.
"If I've not done anything wrong, then what are you—?"
"Get up." He lifts his hand, motioning for you to remove yourself from the comfort of you linens, finally breaking the intensity of his stare.
And because you have been trained to heed his every beck and call, you do exactly as he says.
He sits at the edge of your bed, the way he always does. And you stand in front of him awaiting instruction, the way you always do.
Your heart feels suddenly too large, pushing against your bones.
He is supposed to say, kneel. He is supposed to say, over my knee. He is supposed to say, do you know what you've done?
Ormund does not.
Instead, he says, "Take off your gown."
You blink in surprise, unsure if perhaps this is a test. Maybe he's temping you, goading for a reason. Trying to get you to reveal yourself, to sacrifice your modesty so that he might prove you are just as wicked as he believes you to be.
"What?"
"Your gown," he says again, voice firmer now. "Take it off. Do not make me repeat myself."
You can hear the blood rushing in your ears and feel suddenly frozen. Afraid to move, afraid to say one thing when he truly means for you to do another, and—
Ormund stands suddenly and his hands are on you. Big and rough and mean, tearing the lace fabric over your chest so hard it leaves indents against your shoulder blades. Your nightclothes are thin and give so easily beneath his violence.
You do not stop him. You don't even try.
You don't want to.
Before you can fully process what's happening, you're standing completely bare before him, white fabric pooled at your feet. Your nipples harden beneath the night's cool air and your heart hammers in your ribcage.
He is not shameful in his assessment of you. His eyes are greedy and roaming, leaving no part of you untouched, starting at the curve of your throat and the the swell of your breasts, and eventually lower down to your navel and the space between your legs.
Ormund stares, and his lips part on a hollow sigh. His hand comes up to cup his jaw, squeezing hard, trying to rub the tension away.
You want so badly to hear the thoughts in his mind but know better than to ask.
Does he think you're beautiful? Does he like the shape of your body? Does he enjoy the softness of your skin, or the scent of honeysuckle oils at your pulse point? Are you womanly enough for him?
Does he want you? Does he think of you, the way you have him? Do you appear in his dreams, too?
He clears his throat, the sound masculine and powerful, startling you out of your reverie. And then he sits back down on the edge of your bed and says, "Kneel."
You do.
"Over my knee."
This instruction, too, you follow.
Warmth blooms low in your belly at the texture of his leather breeches against the top of your bare thighs.
He doesn't ask if you're aware of your transgressions, because there are none.
Ormund sets one hand on the small of your back, and the other comes to rest against the globe of your arse. His hands are calloused. Rough. Hardened from the weight of a sword.
And above all, they are…delightful. Delicious. "How—" you swallow thickly. "How many?"
His hands are gentle as they stroke your skin. Feather light and mistakenly devoted. Ormund leans forward, lips a breadth away from your ear as he answers, "As many as I'd like."
And then his hand comes down sharply, the sound of skin against skin a piercing echo.
A whine leaves you, and it takes a moment to gather yourself enough to choke out, "One."
He hits you again, and again, and again—and each time those delicate touches in between last just a bit longer. As if he is able to find peace in your punishment, granting him the gift of softness.
Everything feels hot. Your skin, your hands, the place between your legs. It throbs and aches and grows stickier by the minute.
You think he must see it. He must. Each strike has your spine arching, exposing you even more, the number more of a moan on your lips than a cry.
It is around number six that you begin to feel him harden beneath you.
The swell of his cock presses against your belly, right beside your navel. Growing larger with each loud echo.
He does not mention it, and neither do you. But your head feels fuzzy with the truth of it.
Ormund settles around strike fifteen. You are certain it will be painful to sit tomorrow, but you can't find yourself in it to care when he traces delicate patterns over your warmed flesh with the tips of his cool fingers.
The praise comes after some time, when your muscles relax in his hold, when you stop expecting one more strike to befall you.
"You always look so beautiful in the aftermath," he mutters. and you feel yourself smiling, despite your better impulses. "Pretty, obedient little girl."
His hands knead at your sore skin, squeezing the pillowy flesh and spreading you open. You look up to see him staring at your most intimate place, likely seeing the wetness that's gathered.
He then does one more thing you don't expect.
With only the pad of his thumb, Ormund slides his finger through your slit.
The touch is firm and so unforeseen that it sends a jolt straight to your heart. You let out a true cry this time, but not of pain.
Of pleasure.
You're so sensitive that your muscles clench at the contact, so lost in the feeling that you hardly hear the low groan that rumbles through his chest.
And then he's pushing you off of his lap onto your bed, and standing to his feet. He does not even spare you a parting glance over his shoulder as he says, "Enough for today."
You do not see him again for some time.
In fact, Ormund leaves Oldtown entirely the next morning and he takes Daeron with him. It is only from your septa's that you learn they've set on a quest to deliver goods to the Citadel.
Usually Ormund will mention as much to you over supper with your uncle, and you cannot help thinking the reason for his sudden and unannounced absence is due to what transpired between you the night before.
And to yourself only, you admit his absence has made you yearn for him.
You cannot quiet the thoughts in your mind each night, the longing for him, the hope that he will simply appear at your bedside with a heavy hand and that familiar stare.
But he never does, and left to your own devices with thoughts of his touch invading your every thought, it is not long before you try desperately to abate the need yourself.
In fact, you form a new routine of your own.
It starts as desperate rocking against nothing, but you learn rather quickly just how much better it feels with your linens wedged tight between your legs as you do.
The bulk of the fabric presses deliciously against your center, and each roll of your hips has your vision turning black around the edges. You can think only of Ormund—your mentor, your disciplinarian, the hand that shaped you.
You think of the force behind his strikes and of his low groans and of his sweet, sweet praise. You think of the darkness in his eyes and of his strong jaw and the way the muscles in his shoulders flex when he moves.
Even his gait makes your belly squeeze tight in desire—the surety in his steps, his confident posture and the way he towers over you. Always so big and hulking and intimidating.
Sleep only comes to you each night after you reach the peak of bliss. After a fog clouds your mind and your vision goes all starry.
You think if Ormund were to see the things you'd been up to in his absence, you don't believe fifteen strikes would be nearly enough.
He would tell you it is a sin to indulge lustful fantasies in this way. That your pleasure is reserved for your husband, meant to be given at his discretion.
But you've never been a perfect listener nor a rule follower. If there is anything in your life you are certain of, it is that.
You allow yourself to freely walk about the tower in his absence, too. The rookery and the kitchens, plucking fruit or cheese from nearby trays and sending ravens to your aunt Helaena in the Red Keep.
You visit the stables to pet the horses and even make friends with a bastard boy who'd recently come to Oldtown from Casterly Rock.
When Ormund does finally return, you're there to greet him in the great hall with a flicker of delight in your chest.
He looks the same as when he'd left. Strong, masculine, confident. His skin is maybe a bit more sun-kissed than before, and his normally polished leather boots are caked in mud.
Yet still, you cannot help but smile when you see him. You'd worn your most beautiful dress, a gown of emerald velvet and white lace, low cut with a jeweled bodice. He'd complimented you on it once, several moons ago, and it has been your favorite ever since.
When he comes to stand in front of you in greeting, you bow low. "My lord," you say. "I am grateful for your return."
His eyes stay glued to yours when you rise, his pert mouth turned up at the corners. "I am grateful to be back," he says, taking your hand in his and bringing your knuckles to his lips.
Ormund's kiss is chaste, but it feels anything but. The simple touch of his hand has your belly flipping and your face heating.
He does not linger long, though you wish he would. But there is much to tend to in the keep, things that have simply been awaiting his return.
The cooks prepare a feast that night. A massive spread for both Ormund and the knights that traveled with him.
Ormund sits at the head of the table and Daeron sits to his right. You are placed on the other side of your uncle, who spends most of the night recounting tales of the Citadel to you. Of the towering stacks of books and the tomes bigger than his head.
He tells you in a whispered tone just how old the Grand Maester truly looks. "Ancient," he explains. "With tufts of graying hair and eyes that no longer see."
You laugh and giggle together about it, indulging your childish whims that always manifest whenever you are near him.
Daeron tells you, too, about the ambush they'd suffered from raiders who's been lying in wait off the King's Road.
"Uncle Ormund nearly died from a stab wound," he whispers, and it makes your heart give a sudden lurch. "He fought bravely. Slashed the raider clean in two, if you'd believe it."
This makes you mirth fall. You have never considered his loss before this moment. Ormund has always been there, a steady presence in your life.
Just the thought of it—of losing him, it does not sit well in your gut. Though hated by him as you are, you could not imagine...you could not imagine.
Ormund does not speak to you, but you can feel his stare. Heavy and warm on the side of your face. You wonder silently if he'd missed you as you have him.
Had he been thinking of that night, too? Of how it had felt to be bared before him? Of the heat you saw in his gaze?
Had he thought of you with a blade pressed to his belly? Had it truly gotten that close?
Ormund makes a toast to his men near the end of supper. To their valiant efforts that contributed greatly to the trade and to their protection.
Your maidens ready you for bed that night and spend a little longer scrubbing you clean at your request. They dress you in white silk and by the time they leave, the fire in the hearth has dwindled to cinders. The excitement in your chest is a roaring flame, however.
But, Ormund does not come to you.
You toss and turn restlessly, hoping to hear the creak of your chamber door or footsteps on the stone just outside.
Yet, there is nothing. The night is still, as it has been for the last several weeks.
You lie there with a longing in your chest, an ache between your legs, and your head filled with a thousand questions.
The setting sun has long since given way to the moon by the time you leave your bed.
Ormund's chambers are on the other side of the Hightower, but you are more and more certain with every step you take.
Ser Roy of Oldtown stands guard outside his door, the way he does most nights. He bows low when he sees you, eyes cast away from the too thin fabric of your gown. "My lady."
"I wish to speak to him," you say, trying to muster the strength to keep your voice from wavering.
"He did request not to be disturbed lest there was an emergency," the knight tells you.
"I don't care," is your simple response, because it is true. "Please, ser, step aside so that I might—"
Ormund's door opens, the heavy weight of it daunting.
He looks at you and stares. Hard and knowing.
Your breath gives way at the precision attention, all the jumbled thoughts in your mind untangling like a pulled thread before promptly vanishing. There is…something new behind his ire for you. Something you might call intrigue, if you didn't know any better.
Ormund does not take his eyes off of you as he speaks. "Find something to busy yourself, Ser Roy," he says, eyes searching your face now, flickering from your nose to your cheeks and then to your mouth. "And do not come back," he adds to the knight.
Roy nods stiffly and doesn't argue. He, too, knows better.
The clang of his armor disappears down the corridor, and before long it is just you and the man who haunts your insides. Heart and head alike.
He smiles down at you. A true smile. Small, but real, and it weathers your resolve in an instant. Because it's a kindness he does not give freely or often, but he is here now, giving it to you—who you'd thought he'd hated.
But this doesn't feel like hatred to you in the slightest.
It's heavier. Sharper. Sweeter.
In the end, it is you who breaks the spell, pushing past him and into his chambers. You recall all your uncle had said about the journey to the Citadel. How blades had been drawn and blood had been spilled and the thought of it makes your eyes sting.
Ormund closes the chamber door behind you, but you face away from him. Staring into the crackling flames in the hearth, trying and failing to fight the tears that brim in your eyes. "Daeron told me there was an…altercation on the King's Road," you say. "He speaks tales of blood and death. Is this true?"
His heavy footfalls sound in your ears. Ormund nears you, yet you still do not turn to look at him. "It is," he answers simply. "These are dark times, as you well know. Darker yet to come."
The idea of it—of war, of famine, of the rot and loss that he speaks of, it makes you terrified. You've seen men die before, in jousts or tourneys, even on the way here to Oldtown. But thinking of Ormund in the middle of it all?
Finally, you turn to face him. He is closer than you'd expected. Only a single step away, focus narrowing as he sees the tears in your eyes. "You could have died."
"But I did not." His head tilts curiously. "Where do you place your ire?"
"In you!" You should not yell. You know this, and yet the venom in your mouth refuses to be washed out. "It is from someone else that I'd had to learn you'd been attacked on the way to the Citadel. From another I'd learned you'd taken a wound that very nearly could have put you in the grave. And even those details I'd had to overhear from one of your men when it should have come from you!"
He watches it unfold; your rage surfacing, all masks of poise absent. He does not stop you or speak a warning into existence, he only watches with curiosity on his face and something far more intense alongside it.
"I have longed for your return for weeks! You leave without a word and take my uncle with you, leaving me to sit all alone and wonder if perhaps I'd done something wrong or worse—disappointed you!" Your tears fall freely down your cheeks now, but you are far past the point of sparing yourself any embarrassment.
Ormund raises his hand to your face, cradling your head in his palm. His thumb strokes gently across your cheek, swiping your tears away. "Is it for me that you weep, sweetling?"
Yes, you want to say. Yes, of course it is. He is everything to you and has always been. "Do you have any idea how I would have mourned you?"
His eyes soften, and it soothes something inside of you to see it. Ormund leans forward slowly, carefully so as not to frighten you.
And you stand there, frozen in the gentle hold of his hands, as he licks the tears from your cheeks. His tongue is warm and soothing against your ruddy skin, and it feel so intimate that it makes you shiver.
He then kisses your eyelids. The left first, followed by the right. "I cannot promise to tell you of each of my wounds," he says, voice softer than it's ever been before. "But I can promise to warn you before I leave the tower again. I thought you'd be glad to be rid of me after all I've done, in truth."
"Glad?" The thought does not register in your mind. "I could never be glad of your absence. I confess, I…I hate it."
"Is that right?" Ormund takes a step back, and you see him inhale a shaking breath as he does. "More than you hate me?"
You wish you could deny the words, but you cannot. You've hated him all your life—the man who'd always looked at you as if your very blood was wrong, who'd never hesitated to raise a hand to you, who'd been cruel and rigid. The man who denied you the softness you've always craved unless you'd earned it.
You do hate him.
But yes, you hate his absence more.
"There is another matter," he says, not giving you time to answer his question.
Perhaps because he did not care to hear the answer, or perhaps because he could not bear it.
"I am told you'd been quite disruptive while I was away," Ormund says. "That you'd stolen and spoken with a sharp tongue. All things I could forgive, considering the worst of your misdeeds."
Your brows furrow. "And what was the worst?"
"I have told you a hundred times to stay away from the stables," he explains. "So, imagine how unexpected it was to hear that you'd been spending far too much time with a boy who works in the very same stables I've warned you against."
Your stomach twists at the sharp tone of his voice. A stark contrast to the way he'd spoken to you only moments ago. "He does magic tricks," you say. "We were not being inappropriate."
"Magic," he spits. "Is that what you'd sell your virtue for? Your maidenhood? Worth nothing but a few tricks?"
"What? No! I—!"
"It does not matter if you truly did it," Ormund interrupts. "All that matters is the way it might seem to the passing eye. A whisper in one ear turns to truth in the mouth of another."
"But I didn't do anything! There was another, in the stables," you argue. "An old woman mucking out the stalls. Ask her, she can attest we were simply brushing the mares and—!"
"He did not touch you?"
"No, my lord. On the seven above, I swear it."
You see something rigid relax in him as you say the words aloud. His posture softens, his hands unfurl. Ormund wets his lips and says, "There is still the matter of precedent. I told you not to do something, and you went ahead and did it anyway. On this much we can agree, yes?"
"Yes," you echo.
He nods thoughtfully, steps closer to his four poster bed, and says, "Come."
You do not know quite why, exactly, you feel your heart slow as he says it. The word is rehearsed and familiar and puts you at ease in all the places you've felt wound tight for weeks now. You stand in front of him and await further instruction, and Ormund does not hesitate to give it.
"Remove your dress."
That spark of excitement returns. You obey wordlessly, unlacing the fabric just enough to pull the silk over your shoulders. It falls down your body like water and pools at your feet.
And then, finally, he says, "Kneel."
You do.
Ormund does not sit on the edge of his bed for several moments. He simply exists in the space you've created, drinking up the power he holds over you. He's still fully clothed, wearing a black tunic and leather breaches, towering over your naked body that awaits his instruction.
When he does finally sit, he speaks a word you have not practiced before but it invokes something primal in you all the same.
"Crawl."
You do.
Ormund's chest heaves as you keep your eyes firmly on his, closing the space on all fours. And when you're close enough that you're right between his spread knees, you lay your cheek against the inside of his thigh.
He squeezes his eyes closed, whispering under his breath, so quiet you'd have missed the curse on the tip of his tongue had you not been paying attention.
His throat bobs as he swallows and exhales slowly. When his eyes find you again, there is something akin to wonder in them. "Over my knee."
You assume the practiced position and find yourself slick between your legs before he's even touched you. But you know he sees it, too, when he squeezes your flesh and spreads you open wide enough to feel to cool air touch your cunt.
"Ten," he says lowly. "Because I can see now that you were only acting out in response to my lack of thought for your isolation."
Ormund does not give a warning. He never does. He simply raises his hand and brings it down sharply against the swell of your cheek. The impact is painful and soothing all at the same time, and though your breathing stutters you feel your chest loosening.
You count each and every one in perfect succession, skin growing raised and warm to the touch. You cannot be sure if his hand comes down harder each time or if perhaps you've just grown more and more sensitive.
By the sixth strike, you're throbbing. Your hips move of their own accord, desperate for something to be wedged between them. Your toes curl and your feet cross at the ankles, thighs squeezed together as you try to abate the need.
By the eighth strike, you can feel Ormund's cock pressing against your belly, hard as stone. You cannot bear to look at him, not like this. Because you think you might lose all sense of self if you do, might kneel and beg for him to touch you. To violate you.
"Nine," you hiss, fingers curling in his sheets. You can feel everything, everywhere, all at once. Not just his hand and the way he hits you but his other, pressed firmly to the small of your back to keep you in place. You can feel the leather beneath you and his breath as it fans across your spine. You can feel the cool air that drifts in through the open window pane and the warm lick of the fire across the room.
You can feel your blood in your veins, the air in your lungs, the holiness in your body.
"One more," Ormund says. "Breathe, girl."
You obey, sucking in a slow breath of air and letting it fill your belly.
He strikes you on the exhale, and this time his hand stays against your tingling skin.
"Ten," you whimper. It feels as though your bones melt in his hold. The tension in your muscles dissipates, fading to nothing.
Just one touch would be enough. The pressure has become a mountain inside of you and it's on the verge of collapse.
"Are you…enjoying this?"
You cannot lie. Not to him. "Yes," you answer breathlessly.
He hums, a sound at the back of his throat that you're not sure is because he's pleased with you or because he's appalled. You half expect him to strike your backside again.
He does not.
Instead, his hands drift slowly down the back of your thighs. And as his thumbs move, they slide through your slick and your spine arches back of its own volition.
"Oh—" You grit your teeth, trying to hold back the moan that threatens. But it feels so good, better than anything else.
He lifts one hand, and you expect it to hurt when he touches you again. Ormund instead curls his fingers inwards, spreads your knees, and strokes his knuckles through your syrupy folds.
This time there is no chance at holding back your sound of pleasure. It rips through you, deep and heady, goosebumps spreading across your skin.
"So sensitive," he muses, more to himself than words spoken to you. "You've always been such a sensitive girl."
You press yourself backwards, chasing the sensation of his hand. He gently strokes you again, soft enough you'd convince yourself it's a touch of love if you believed he were capable of such a thing.
His knuckles graze over your clit and what was once warmth in your belly now spreads like wildfire beneath your skin.
"Please," you whimper. "More, please. I'll be good, I'll be—I'll be so good, I promise."
"Of course you will be," he says. "You're my perfect girl."
The word clangs around in your emptied mind. Perfect.
Perfect, perfect, perfect—
Ormund smooths his hand over your cunt, the pressure and roughness of his touch dizzying. He then presses his thumb directly to your clit and you feel all the blood in your body rush to your center. "Do you know what you're asking of me?"
"Yes," you answer truthfully. "I want it to be you. I need it to be. No one else…" You swallow.
"Speak, sweetling," he encourages.
"No one else makes me feel like this," you admit, turning your head to look up at him.
And what you see is catastrophic to your aching heart. Because you've known Ormund all your life, but you've never seen him look like that.
Despaired, hopeless, a slave to the thoughts that plague him. There is such longing in his eyes that it makes your stomach flip. But beneath it all there is understanding—like he relates far too well to your words to ever deny them.
"I could ask for your hand," he mutters. "Though your mother will likely deny me for my allegiance to my cousin and my house."
"So take me." The words come unbidden, a treason in their own right. "Steal me away. Hold me captive, a prisoner of a war not yet waged."
Something dark and searing flares behind his eyes when you speak.
"I am yours," you admit, and you think it may just be the truest thing you have ever said. "The way I have always been."
Ormund growls low, a frustrated sound at the bottom of his chest. He leans forward and presses his forehead to the space between your shoulder blades. "You are, aren't you."
Not a question.
He sighs, breathing in the scent of your skin deep into his lungs to soothe himself.
You are unsure of what comes next, once the truth of your feelings for him has been laid out in the open.
It feels raw. Like your chest has been cut and your ribcage cracked so he might see your very insides.
What happens next is a kiss upon your shoulder.
Gentle. Devoted. Faithful.
There is a deep crease between his brows, and you can feel evidence of hesitation in his hands.
"You are troubled," you observe aloud. "Is it because of me?"
He winces as if you'd struck him. As if the words were far more painful than anything he's ever done to you. Ormund's jaw feathers, and he breathes in deeply before saying, "Of course not. You have never…"
He shakes his head, swallows, and tries again.
"Understand this; my feelings for you do not come from a righteous place. I should feed you, guide you, protect you, and do nothing else. You should not be here now. I should not want this. Or—or you."
"But you…do?" It sounds mousy as you ask it, said with an unsure tongue.
"I do," he admits in a hoarse whisper.
There is pain in his eyes as he says it. As if this feeling has been sitting in the depths of him for some time, and only now does he allow himself to succumb to it.
You move. You are uncertain and cautious as you do, but you will strength into your limbs anyway. Climbing into his lap, straddling his hips, winding your hands around his shoulders and tugging gently at the hair at his nape. "You don't have to take," you say, so close now you're breathing in his air. "Not if I give."
His stare is heavy and dark. Full of more longing and lust than you have ever seen exist in a man before.
You close the distance. Ormund freezes, unmoving as you press your lips to his experimentally. He tastes of smoke and cedar, of steel and blood, of safety and familiarity.
He tastes of home.
When you pull back, his chest heaves and his hands curl into the sheets. The thought crosses your mind that he is angry with you—furious, even.
But Ormund does not shout or raise a hand to strike you.
He grabs you by the back of the neck and crushes his mouth to yours. Less experimental and less nervous than you were.
Ormund kisses you like he's starving.
His lips move against yours, soft and wanting. And when his tongue slips between them, he moans into your mouth as he tastes the inside of it.
It is a battle of a different kind. He bites and sucks and licks, and you try to meet his fervor. You are just as desperate, but Ormund is untamed. A feral dog let off its leash.
Your center throbs and you whimper, rolling your hips on top of him to abate the feeling. He is still fully dressed while you sit naked in his bruising grip, and you suddenly want nothing more than to feel his bare skin beneath your fingertips.
When you tug at the buttons of his tunic, Ormund's hands find yours to assist your clumsy movements. He is much faster than you are, and tugs the garment over his head the moment he is able.
There, along the left side of his abdomen, is a jagged wound.
You pause to press your fingers tenderly to the angry, red skin. His muscles are strong and hard beneath your touch. Though the stitches are removed now and the wound is mostly healed, he still winces at the pressure of your fingertips.
Without thinking, you lean forward and press a soft kiss to the scarred skin.
Ormund melts beneath your affection. And then he brackets his arms around your waist and turns you both, laying you flat against the mattress. He kneels between your legs, seeming so large and intimidating from the new angle.
His hands find your face, feeling your skin. They move slowly over your bones, down your neck, over the swell of your breasts, your navel, your hips. As if he were trying to memorize this particular moment by sight and touch alone.
"I have thought of this more times than I could ever say," Ormund tells you. He settles low, hovering over your body, pressing his mouth to the hollow of your throat.
His lips follows the same path as his hands, peppering wet kisses over your skin and leaving goosebumps in his wake.
"Your taste, you scent, your sweetness—I have dreamt of it," he continues. His tongue circles your navel once before moving further down. And when he kisses your pubic bone, Ormund pauses. Looks up at you through dark lashes, his stare soft but still no less intense. "Is this where you ache, sweetling?"
The words feel filthy and depraved and so delicious that you whine. "Yes," you tell him, squirming. "Will you kiss me there?"
A malevolent smirk forms on his pretty mouth. "More," he answers.
And with no warning at all, Ormund licks a stripe through your heat, tongue flat and soft and so very wet.
It sends you reeling. The sensation, the sensitivity—him. "Oh, gods, I—"
He does it again, this time licking back down as well. Ormund moans low and the vibration of the sound spreads through you mercilessly. Again, and again, and again, his tongue laves through your apex. You feel yourself clench, muscles pulled taut.
Your spine bends off the mattress and your hands come to his head, fingers twisting in his soft curls, pulling his mouth impossibly closer.
When he takes your clit between his lips and sucks gently, your vision blurs. Everything else in the world fades to nothing, every sensation muted apart from the pleasure his warm mouth brings.
Ormund is relentless. He doesn't stop, even when you're writhing and gasping for air. His face flushes and you can feel his stare on you even when you can no longer keep your eyes open.
It's far better than linens between your legs, far more intense. It doesn't take long before you become a trembling mess, legs shaking around his head, heels digging into his spine as you scramble to find some sort of purchase.
And then it happens—a searing pleasure, ripping through you mercilessly. Light flashes behind your eyes and your spine arches and your fingers tighten in his hair.
He licks and sucks you through it, making those sweet, rumbling groans all the while, as if this is more for his pleasure than yours.
The bliss is blinding and fizzles out slowly, leaving remnants of euphoria behind. Only then does he settle, tongue slowing as it slides through your wet heat with less pressure now.
When he finally pulls his mouth away, his cheeks are flushed and his lips are glossy with your arousal. "Better," Ormund whispers. "Far better than I ever could have dreamed."
You can hardly react to his praise, too lost in the feeling he'd given you. "I did not know it could be like that," you admit, breathless. "That it could be so…"
"Perfect," he finishes for you. And you think, yes. He is perfect.
Maybe not in everything, but for you.
Ormund crawls over you until you are face to face once more. He is heavy on top of you, muscles thick and smothering in the best way. His length presses against your hip, so hard now you can feel the pulse of it.
He kisses your mouth but this time it's slower. Softer. The taste of you lingers on his tongue, sweet and intoxicating.
His hands cradle your face far gentler than another ever has. It is dizzying, the way he can bring such pain and still grant such ease.
You wriggle your arm beneath his abdomen, reaching for the metal of his belt buckle.
Ormund groans, but you feel the way his lips turn up just slightly against yours. "Greedy girl," he says, pulling away to nuzzle your cheek with the tip of his nose. "I have warned you against overindulgence endlessly."
He speaks true, but you have never listened to his warnings. Have always bent the rules until they break, have retained a sharp tongue and a love for all that might destroy you.
Including him, you suppose.
"Will you deny me, then?"
"No." Ormund shakes his head. "Never in all my life."
It eases something in you to hear the response. To know this is a sin you share, a mirrored reflection of one another.
He leans backwards, just enough to unbuckle his breeches and remove them. His cock is larger than you'd anticipated. Thick and veiny and flushed at the tip, hanging heavy between his legs and decorated with a thatch of dark, coarse hair at the base.
Ormund kneels in front of you, staring hard, watching you take all of him in for the first time.
He's beautiful, you think. Strong and powerful and profound. Your mouth waters at the sight of him, your brain going fuzzy again, carnal impulses beginning to take hold.
"I can be gentle," he says. "If that is what you need."
But it's not gentle you want. You want him—with all his sharpness, with all his anger. The totality of it; his heart, his soul, his body. If it hurts, you think it is meant to. "What I need," you whisper, "is you."
He watches you for a moment, eyes searching your face, trying to find hesitance that doesn't exist. And then he nods, leans forward to kiss your temple, and says, "You will tell me if it becomes too much."
You swear to him that you will.
Ormund takes his cock in his hand and slides the head of it through your center, coating his length in your wetness. Each stroke of him over your clit has you sighing, hips canting towards the sensation.
He lines himself up at your entrance, and your attention is so focused on his movements between your legs that it startles you when he uses the other to grab your face.
Ormund's fingers curl tightly around your jaw, forcing your head back, forcing you to look at him. "Eyes here," he says, voice firm.
And then, gently, he begins to push in.
The stretch of him burns, but it is not terrible. It simply aches, and you whimper a distorted version of his name but he does not stop. He keeps going until he's fully seated inside of you, so deep you swear you can feel him in your belly.
All the while, he keeps his big hand around your jaw, squeezing so tightly it momentarily distracts from the throbbing of your cunt.
Ormund touches his forehead to yours, breathing in your air. He says, "You are so fucking perfect."
And it makes you moan.
He starts to move, slowly at first. Pulling out of you tenderly just to slide right back in. A few strokes, encouraging your endurance. Sweet and soft and loving.
"Feels so—so full," you say, whimpers falling from your lips.
Ormund pulls out again, nearly all the way this time. He still forces you to look at him, and you can see the desperation enter his eyes mere moments before he slams his cock in deep.
There is nothing soft about it. Nothing sweet.
Your vision goes blurry and the air vanishes from your lungs as if it'd never existed there in the first place. The force of it aches so deliciously you feel pressure begin to form behind your eyes. "Oh god—!"
He does it again, pulling out almost completely before slamming back into you. "My perfect girl," he mutters against your lips. "Does it hurt?"
"Yes." Your hands find his shoulders, fingernails digging into the thick muscle .
"Do you wish for me to stop?"
That familiar warmth spreads someplace deeper than before. Not just your belly but in your womb. "No, please don't—don't stop."
Ormund turns your head just enough to press his own against the side of your cheek. He inhales the scent of your skin and a low growl reverberates in his chest.
Finally, blessedly, he picks up the pace. Hips grinding hard against yours, finding a rhythm that feels somehow both satisfying and violent. He breathes shallowly against your cheek, pressing kisses to your jaw that feel so tender in comparison to the way he fucks you.
And when he reaches between your bodies with his free hand to find you clit, you think you might die. It's too much, too sensitive. Your toes curl and your spine arches, pressing your breasts against his chest. The only word you seem to have held onto in your bliss is, "Please. Please, please—oh god, please."
"You beg so prettily," he says. "Almost like you were made for it. Made to kneel before me. Made to be mine."
The possessiveness in his tone alone has you teetering on the precipice of release. You'd given yourself freely to him, willingly—but Ormund still manages to take. Your innocence, your purity, your heart.
You're falling. Bliss blinds you, thighs trembling, nerve endings coiled and white-hot. His name falls from your mouth and Ormund kisses you hard to swallow up the sound.
"Yeah," he murmurs. "There you go, sweetling. Give it to me. My perfect girl."
He doesn't stop, even when tremors rock through your body. He keeps fucking his cock into you without remorse, fingers moving over your clit in tight circles, ratcheting your pleasure higher and higher until you feel like you might burst with it.
The pace of his hips falters, and then he's groaning low against the curve of your neck and laying wet, open-mouthed kisses against your pulse. With his cock buried inside of you, he fills you with his release, painting your insides all sticky and white.
Ormund gives a couple of slow thrusts, chest heaving as he tries to catch his breath, before gently pulling out of you and rolling to his side.
It is not you who reaches for comfort first.
His arm wraps around your waist, hauling you across the mattress and into his warm embrace.
You nestle beneath his arm, head resting against his shoulder. He is so large and the heat of his skin is so comforting. Familiar in some ways, despite this being the first time you've ever been so close.
That same warmth that emanates from him seeps through your bones and touches your fast-beating heart. A delighted giggle escapes you, and you can feel Ormund's mouth turn up into a smile against your forehead.
He tilts your chin up so you're facing him. "What is it that you find so amusing?"
You shake your head. "Nothing, just...I am—I am happy."
His smile softens into something heavier, but no less pleased. You don't believe you've ever seen him look this way. So vulnerable. Benevolent, even.
Silence settles for some time. And you would be content to stay here, skin tingling in the aftermath of bliss, safe in his arms. But there is something weighing on him, and you can feel it in the stiffness of his hands that stroke gently over your hip.
When you can stand his distance no longer, you ask, "Is there something wrong?"
He doesn't answer right away, which frays the edges of your comfort. But then he says delicately, "I have something for you. A gift."
"A gift?" You prop yourself up on an elbow. "From the Citadel?"
"No," Ormund answers. "I'd had it made for you some time before my journey. But I—it is not a…kindness, exactly. More a token of my own grotesque worship of you."
Your brows furrow in confusion. "What is it?"
Ormund untangles himself from the sheets, unkempt and messy now below you. He crosses the chamber to his wardrobe and pulls open a drawer.
It is hard to see from so far away, but you watch as he takes something hesitantly in his hand before returning to the bedside.
"I…I sometimes believe that I have been shackled to you by the gods themselves," he begins. "Fated to bend my own morals in response to my longing for you. I am but a wolf coiled around a lamb and there will never be anything else, not for me."
You don't understand. It makes a million questions form in your mind, none easily answered.
Ormund swallows thickly. "I am a slave to your affection," he says. It makes your chest pull tight. "I do not deserve your softness but I will never turn it away so long as you continue to give it."
He extends his hand in front of you, opening his palm to display the prettiest necklace you've ever seen. Made of glittering emerald stones and a silken black ribbon.
You reach out to touch it on instinct, and Ormund lets you take it from him. But as you do, witnessing the lack of length, realization dawns on you. "This heralds a collar," you say.
Ormund nods slowly. "I only wished for you to be…possessed by me, the way I have been possessed by you."
A response does not come easily.
There is a part of you that knows this is not the way of things. A man should love his lady. Should be kind and respectful. He should certainly not place a collar around her neck as if she is owned property or a family pet.
But there is…something else, too. A part of you where desire sparks at the thought of being so wholly his, of surrendering to whatever fate may befall you so long as it is done by his own hand. There is peace in it. And certainty.
"I'd told myself to get rid of it a thousand times, but there has always been a hope within me that perhaps one day you might return my wretched affections," he says. "It is yours. But if you are to wear it, you must do so willingly."
The decision feels heavy. Weighted.
But you do not need long to decide.
You hand the necklace back to Ormund, who takes it hesitantly from your grasp.
And then you turn, facing away from him but looking over your shoulder to ask, "Will you tie it for me?"
He smiles, and there is something deeply fragile in it. Almost boyish, as if this is the first time in all his life he has ever felt truly loved by another.
Ormund kisses the back of your neck and sets the ribbon in place around your throat.
- gwayne hightower x wife!reader x ormund hightower
ser gwayne hightower may be known for his chivalry, but beneath his courtly smile is a man of steel and blood. vows have made you his lawfully wedded wife, and when his most peculiar cousin starts weaving his traps for you to fall into… you will see another side of him you have never seen before
genre/warnings:
18+ suggestive content—minors do not interact!—arranged marriage, lots of romance and fluff, hurt/comfort, sunshine!gwayne and grumpy!reader, ormund is his own warning, first time with gwayne (bc he lost it), targaryen!reader (reader is rhaenyra's younger sister)
notes:
gif by @/baelcrtargaryen and @/alysmond. part 2 of to court a princess but can also be read as a standalone. this brainrot has been brewing for a while and i love it :)) so i hope you will too!
“...and even when our bones return to dust, may I find your soul still sworn to mine.”
Before the Seven, as the great bells chimed, you and Gwayne Hightower pledged your vows, sealing them with the tenderest kiss.
The wedding between a princess of the blood and a noble knight of House Hightower was the liveliest celebration the realm had seen in a while. King Viserys was overjoyed, and even Queen Alicent wore a rare genuine smile for both you and her brother. Rhaenyra pulled you into a warm embrace, offering her heartfelt wishes with a glowing smile.
Yet… amidst the sea of well-wishers, there was one gaze that was heavy upon you.
“Many congratulations on this most auspicious union, cousin.”
Ormund Hightower stepped before you, looking impeccably sharp in his exquisite emerald doublet. His voice was cool and devoid of warmth.
While your new husband was kind-hearted, you had heard the future Lord of Oldtown was a Hightower of a different stripe—a true son of his father.
Then, Ormund turned his gaze to you, his lips curling into a crooked smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “And to you as well, Princess...”
His dark gaze wandered, raking down your face to your bust, before returning to meet your eyes unabashedly.
“The songs do you a disservice, Your Grace. You are a far lovelier sight than what they claim.”
There was something in the way he appraised you that made you uncomfortable. It was your first encounter with the infamous son of the Lord of Hightower, and yet you knew instantly what sort of viper he was.
Gwayne’s arm, still resting over your waist, tightened subtly—a silent warning for him, also a reassurance to you.
“She has my heart, Ormund, and my sword,” Gwayne replied smoothly, his eyes flashing with a protective warmth as he looked down at you. “The realm has never seen a more beautiful bride, and I am the luckiest man in the Seven Kingdoms.”
“Why, of course. You have done our house a great service today, Gwayne, and I’m certain you’ll make a fine husband,” he said with a careless shrug, his crooked smile not wavering. He raised his goblet in a mock toast. “May the Light of the Seven bless your union.”
With a final, lingering look at you, Ormund turned on his heel and melted back into the sea of lords and ladies.
“Don’t mind him,” Gwayne hissed under his breath.
The moment his cousin was out of sight, you leaned closer to your groom, noting the sharp clench of his jaw. Sensing your concern, however, he immediately masked his irritation and turned to you with a reassuring smile as he drew you securely against his side.
Yet, as the music surged back to life around you, you couldn’t deny the chill that still prickled your skin. Ormund Hightower would remain at court for the rest of your wedding festivities—
And you had a foreboding feeling you would soon see him again.
The first day of your wedding celebration finally drew to a close. With the feast over, the princess and her new husband were left in the confines of their marital chambers, and—
The time has come for this marriage to be consummated.
A nervous flutter stirred in your chest. Gwayne had given explicit instructions for your handmaidens to leave after removing your headpiece, saying he would take care of the rest.
And try you might to look away as a proper lady should, your eyes kept drifting towards him as he began to undress— all the while bracing yourself, expecting the shift from chivalrous knight to demanding husband.
“If you’re stealing glances at me like an innocent maiden does her first love,” he suddenly remarked with an amused grin, “you’re truly going to make me blush.”
Heat rushed to your cheeks, and you averted your gaze, suddenly finding everything more appealing than him.
Left in just his loose linen shirt, Gwayne had a meaningful smile on his face as he stepped behind you, his fingers reaching out to you to unlace the stiff bodice of your gown.
Oh, this is really happening, is it not?
“We...” You suddenly found it hard to breathe as the heavy layers of your dress came loose. “Are we—”
“Yes, darling?” he chuckled softly, his dimples deepening in the firelight. He clearly found satisfaction in how flustered you had become all of a sudden.
You merely looked down, biting your lip to keep yourself from stammering. Your face felt hot too as his large palm traced the contours of your body— from the line of your ribs to the curve of your waist, and the dip of your hips.
After all, you were inexperienced. You had heard stories of how hurt the first night could be— how rough the men liked it, and how comfort was the last thing a woman should expect.
As his arms circled your waist from behind, pinning you gently against him, you choked out:
“Could you be gentle... at least?”
“Hm?” he hummed, smiling against your skin, his breath warm as he pressed a kiss to your shoulder.
Who could have known that the stern princess could be so shy? Gwayne indulged himself, trailing a path of kisses up the sensitive nape of your neck, savoring the way you shivered beneath his touch.
Precious thing, she truly is.
With a knowing smile, he lifted you effortlessly into his arms, and you gasped, clinging to his shoulders.
He laid you down upon the silk sheets, climbing in above you, and leaned down— immediately pressing his lips to yours in a searing kiss that tasted faintly of sweet wine.
“Mmh...” His mouth moved against yours with hunger, tangling his fingers into the locks of your hair. He kissed you until you felt the room spin— each time he pulled back a fraction of an inch, it was only to catch his breath before leaning down to devour your lips again, deeper and more bruising than before.
His toned hips pressed down firmly against yours, pinning you into the silk sheets. Through your thin linen shift, you could feel the hard, growing length of his bulge pressing against your thigh.
A quiet moan caught in your throat as he started rolling his hips, the friction sending a wave of unfamiliar heat straight to your core. Your fingers grasped the nape of his neck, and he groaned, a low vibration that you felt as much as you heard.
“Do you even know—” he rasped against your lips, still grinding against you, his voice tinged with unbridled desire, “how badly I want you?”
Just as the tension stretched to a breaking point, Gwayne suddenly went still. With a ragged exhale, he pulled away, leaving your lips tingling. He leveled his dark gaze on you, watching you panting for breath.
Lowering his head to rest his forehead against yours, he made no move to strip away the rest of your linen shift. He simply anchored his weight against you.
“Ser Gwayne…?” You blinked up at him, confusion clouding your eyes.
He let out a low chuckle, his fingers tracing the curve of your jaw.
“We have just survived the court of vipers today, my darling. Both of you and I need rest, nothing more.”
“But—”
His eyes then crinkled, his smile softened, looking at you as if he knew clearly what were currently going through your mind.
“What did I vow to you before the Seven?”
Wide-eyed, spellbound, with swollen lips of his making. Gwayne found his princess bride really endearing. Looking at you as he would a treasure, he recited the words he had spoken before the High Septon:
“I pray that my days will be long at your side. May your hand be in mine, by sun and by night...”
His dark blue eyes bored into yours with sincerity that made your chest tighten.
“Let our breaths twine and our blood become one, and even when our bones return to dust... may I find your soul still sworn to mine.”
Once again, he caught your heart with his sweet devotion. The way he was pure in his affections for you made you almost tear up.
Is this what it feels like to feel completely safe?
“There is no rush.” He traced a finger on your lips. “My only desire is to cherish you. With me, you are free to speak your mind— and as I am yours, you are entirely mine.”
He flashed you another sweet smile before rolling onto his side. He reached down to grasp the velvet blankets, pulling the covers all the way up over you both to block out the chill—tucking you securely under his arm and pulling you against his chest.
When you clung to him, he let out a giddy laugh, his hold instinctively tightening around you.
“Thank you, husband,” you whispered against his broad chest, nuzzling your face closer to him.
You received a tender kiss on the crown of your head in return.
For the most part, you were the happiest bride in the Seven Kingdoms.
Everyone in the realm, from the lowly stableboys to nobles, had offered their felicitations, your knight’s devotion was absolute and his tenderness behind closed doors a sanctuary against the court.
Yet, you hadn’t missed the way Ormund Hightower, the heir of Oldtown and Gwayne’s cousin, had eyed you at each and every turn.
His morning greetings had felt entirely too personal for your comfort, and the way he boldly stared at you made your skin crawl. You hadn’t seen fit to tell your husband just yet, choosing instead to give his cousin the benefit of the doubt.
Now, with the last day of your wedding festivities concluded, the gates of Red Keep were open as the lords and ladies of the realm prepared their wheelhouses to leave King’s Landing. Seeking an escape from the noise, you ducked into a cloistered walkway near the Godswood.
But you weren’t alone.
A shadow fell over the stone floor, and before you could turn, Ormund stepped out from behind a carved pillar, blocking your path in the deserted corridor.
“Your Grace,” he greeted with a cold smile.
“Ser Ormund.” Your voice adopting the icy tone you had practiced for years, as you began to question what he was truly after. “Should you not prepare to return to Oldtown? I imagined you would want to be ready for the long journey back to the Reach.”
Ormund didn’t answer right away. He closed the distance between you, tilted his head, a patronizing smile touching his lips.
“Preparations can wait. I merely wanted a private moment to bid my farewell to you.”
“You have had seven days of feasts to bid your farewells,” you retorted.
His smile only deepened. Instead of moving away, he stepped closer, trapping you between his frame and the pillar.
“Now, Princess... You know it as well as I do that we play a less than pretty game here.”
His gaze dropping to your collarbone before lifting to pin yours, with a look of a man who knew how much you weighted before the Iron Throne.
“Everything you lack in birthright is amply compensated by that pretty face of yours.” His blue eyes narrowed. “With a face like that, you could bewitch knights and lords across the Seven Kingdoms. A tragic shame... If only the timing had been right, you could have chosen me instead.”
A wave of disgust rushed through you. “You would do well to remember yourself. You are already wed.”
“A man never knows,” he replied in a sultry whisper, “when he might find himself in need of another wife.”
Ormund chuckled at your horrified expression. He leaned in closer, his eyes boring into yours with a terrifyingly casual entitlement, and in that moment you caught a striking smell on him.
Incense? Pomander? It was a potent smell, but surprisingly and jarringly pleasant.
“Why him?” he sneered, placing both arms against the wall on either side of your head. “An easy prey, is he?”
“He is kind,” you spat, your gaze hardening with defiance, willing yourself not to tremble before him. “A kinder man than anyone could ever be. Now I command you to let me pass, as I will not suffer you insulting my lord husband, Ormund Hightower.”
“Kind, is he now...? My cousin is the very paragon of a gentleman, and you thought you could bend him to your will, no?”
He leaned even closer to your ear that you could feel his breath—his scent filling your being, his blue eyes narrowing and burning into you with cold certainty.
“A word of counsel,” Ormund warned, his voice dropping to a menacing purr. “Gwayne remains a Hightower. The blood of Oldtown runs thick in his veins, and whatever sweet words he whispers in your bed… In the end, he will never betray his own house.”
The words echoed in your mind, striking a sudden chord of doubt— before nausea and fury flared within you.
With a sudden surge of strength, you shoved hard against Ormund’s chest, breaking his hold and causing him to stagger.
Without giving him the satisfaction of another word, you spun on your heel and swept past him, leaving him alone in the shadows of the corridor.
Throughout the seven days and nights of your wedding festivities, Gwayne Hightower had been a man utterly besotted, and he wasn’t reluctant in showing it before the court.
These were, without a doubt, the best days of his life. A dizzying happiness bestowed upon him by the Gods.
And patience was a virtue he possessed and would gladly practice if it meant your comfort. He had no wish to rush you and would like to give you as much time as you wanted, because after all, he knew deep-seated worries a new bride had regarding the marriage bed.
To that end, he had been standing by the hearth for a while now, stoking the coals so the chamber would be warm. When the heavy oak door finally creaked open and you stepped inside, Gwayne turned, already expecting you.
“Well, hello again, darling,” he greeted, an easy smile instantly gracing his features. “Are you ready to retire for the night?”
“Oh—!”
A startled gasp escaped you, and you nearly jumped out of your skin, completely caught off guard to find him waiting. Even from across the room, he caught the rigid hunch of your shoulders and the panic in your eyes. It took only a second to realize how you were shaking.
His smile vanished, replaced by a sudden, sharp concern.
“You look unwell,” Gwayne noted, frowning. Immediately letting go of the poker, he stood and crossed the chamber to you.
However, you were always a quick thinker. Meeting his gaze, you forced a placating smile. “No— It is just the wind, husband, and I am weary. I shall summon my handmaiden to help me undress and get ready for bed.”
Now there really was an unsettling weight gnawing at his chest. It was something he realized recently, but you were actually a wretched liar when caught unprepared. And now, you looked fragile, as though you desperately needed comfort.
“Has something happened?” He closed the remaining distance, his hands sliding up to catch you gently by the arm, drawing you closer to him.
His first instinct was to unquestionably provide you that comfort, and he was just about to pull you into the safety of his arms when—
His nostrils flared as he caught the fragrance clinging to you— and the air left his lungs. It was a scent he loathed with a visceral hatred, yet one he recognized almost instantly.
Gwayne went rigid, the blood turning to ice in his veins. A dark, sickening realization settled over him in a matter of seconds.
How?
Just how close had you been... to carry his scent so clearly upon your skin?
His gentle demeanor hardened into a sudden steel, and his voice dropped:
“Were you with Ormund?”
. . .
You wanted nothing more than to collapse in his arms.
You were really going to when suddenly you noticed how his face darkened. Gwayne’s blue eyes locked onto yours, demanding the truth you were trying to hide.
“Why were you with him?”
That striking smell, you realized. “No, I wasn’t—” you stammered, the words catching in your throat as panic flared inside you.
But Gwayne was far from convinced. He immediately let go of you, stepping back as if your very touch burned him. The sudden loss of his warmth made your heart ache with a sharp pain.
He looked utterly lost now, unable to look you in the eye. And worst of all, he looked terribly hurt.
“Nothing happened between us!” you blurted, desperate to bridge the sudden chasm between you. “We just exchanged a few words—”
“Do not lie to me. Ormund has a certain pomander he prefers—a blasted scent I would know anywhere. To carry that scent, you must have been so near to each other, so close that...”
He couldn’t even finish the sentence. The compromising image of you and his cruel cousin choked the words right out of his throat, his jaw clenching as he fought back the raw betrayal burning in his chest.
You, however, wouldn’t allow him to believe the worst. You forcibly threw yourself into his arms, desperate to mend the fracture between you—
“Gwayne, I swear this upon my mother’s name: I would never hurt you in such manner.”
You wrapped your arms around him tightly, burying your face against him. In that moment, even you found a fleeting peace in his warmth and listening to his erratic heartbeat. At first, his entire frame went completely stiff under your touch.
But as your vow settled over him... the tension broke, and he melted into your embrace in surrender, holding onto you with a crushing grip.
Oh. Such a sweet man, he is. The clarity almost made you cry—even when he thought he was in his darkest moment, he silently chose to believe you.
The two of you stayed like that for a while until a sudden, dark terror seemed to occur to him. His eyes snapped back to yours, searching your face for any sign of ruin.
“Did he force himself upon you?” he asked then, his voice uneven, almost trembling with rage at the mere thought. “Because if he did— if he laid a single unwanted hand on you, I will—”
“No!” you fiercely rejected the notion. “Nothing happened! I— I might have incited his displeasure, yes, but nothing more!”
Gwayne let out a relieved sigh, cradling your face with both of his hands to anchor himself, looking down at you like a lovelorn man. The ache in his chest subsided somewhat, and for a moment, he contemplated hearing more.
Ormund was not a kind man. He knew that better than anyone, having spent his childhood under his whims. And Ormund was ruthless and cunning— so if he had approached you, he undoubtedly had a purpose.
It might prove him a fool, and it would cost him another piece of his soul, yet Gwayne chose faith. Just as he had done a hundred times before.
“Whatever transpired between you, I do not wish to hear of it.”
You blinked at him, only to find him staring back with a grave expression.
“Just do not come near him again,” he warned, his voice a low, commanding growl. “Can you do that?”
You barely nodded when Gwayne leaned down and captured your lips in a punishing kiss—one born of relief, jealousy, and a fierce need to erase every trace of his cousin from your skin.
His hands, usually so practiced in their courtesy, lost their gentleness as he crushed you against him. He groaned against your mouth, breaking the kiss only to drag his wet lips down your throat, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin over your pulse point just roughly enough to make you gasp.
The sounds of your mingled breaths and sensual sighs filled the room. Your thoughts burned away by the sudden, suffocating heat of him. He backed you towards the high, velvet-curtained bed, and then swept you off your feet—
“Oh! Ser Gwayne!”
Just like your first night together as man and wife, he laid you down on the marital bed, but this time, he came down over you—his hands tearing at the laces of your dress, his breath hot on your jaw.
“Princess, I can’t—” His voice broke into a growl as he lost it, capturing your lips in another senseless kiss.
Somewhere in the feverish haze, he shrugged off his own shirt, letting out a grunt when he felt the burning touch of your fingertips wandering across his bare skin.
With a single, fluid pull, he rid you of your dress, and only then did he draw back, his dark eyes wide and dilated as he drank the sight of your naked form.
Every inch of you... is dazzlingly woman. How had the heavens deemed him worthy of a wife so breathtaking?
A primal urge flared within him— he had to mark you, to write his name upon your skin. Every lord in the Seven Kingdoms should know that he alone was husband to the princess.
Gwayne buried his face in your chest, suckling your breasts, swirling his tongue around the aching peaks until you arched off the mattress, breathless.
Fuck patience.
He roughly parted your thighs next to devour your sweet cunt with his mouth and lips, making you squirm to hold back your lewd moans. Within minutes, the intense coil inside you burst, your fingertips clawing at the bedsheets as your climax tore through you.
Fuck virtues.
Your head were still spinning in a daze as he proved just how masterful he was in pleasuring you. Before you could properly recover, Gwayne parted your knees wider and settled his weight over you.
“Will it hurt?” your voice came in a whisper, laced with such raw innocence when you realized what was to come that it immediately softened him.
“The first time always is,” Gwayne answered truthfully. “Scratch me, bleed me, scream if you must. Tell me if the pain outweighs the pleasure, and I will stop.”
He aligned himself against your entrance and with a push, inched himself inside you. You winced, a sharp cry escaping your lips at the foreign intrusion, your nails digging into the skin of his back.
“Hush, darling... I have you,” he whispered thickly. He held you tight, anchoring you against the mattress as he drove himself deeper. You trembled beneath him, half in tears and choked by little gasps of pain, your body struggling to accommodate his sheer size.
So tight. Gwayne really was on the verge of losing it when he realized he had broken your maidenhead. Still a maid, and I have claimed her.
When he sheathed himself completely, your body stretched against an agonizing fullness and more tears fell from your eyes. Gwayne held himself perfectly still, giving your body a moment to adjust to his length, before pressing a tender kiss to your lips to soothe you and beginning to move.
As his hips drove into yours with bruising thrusts, the initial sting quickly melted away, replaced by a deep, rolling friction that felt incredibly good, drawing whimpers from the back of your throat.
You looked sinful beneath him. His hands slid up from the mattress to cup your face, his thumbs wiping away the stray tears at the corners of your eyes even as his lower body dictated a merciless pace.
There was only the heat, the slick friction binding you together, and a man utterly possessed.
“You are mine,” Gwayne rasped against your skin, his voice a ragged edge of pure devotion and dark triumph. “From this night... until my last.”
The pleasure wound tighter and tighter within you— until the dam broke, shattering you in a blinding release. You cried out his name, your body clamping tightly around his length.
Fuck.
The pulsing squeeze of your walls was the final blow to his restraints— your husband groaned aloud, as he thrusted into you one last time, before collapsing against you and spilling his seeds inside your womb.
You awoke before him.
With the morning light filtered through the velvet curtains, you observed your husband’s serene, sleeping face. Free from his courtly mask and the heat from the night before, Gwayne looked peaceful, almost like a boy.
Even in sleep, he had one arm on your waist. His red hair was a mess against the sheets, and the blanket barely covered him, exposing the impressive breadth of his back—and the faint red marks where your nails had scratched him last night.
Sweet man, and he’s all mine.
A wave of tenderness washed over you, a deep-seated realization sank that you were truly his woman now. Reaching out, you gently cupped his jaw, the pad of your thumb tracing his cheek.
At your touch, his eyelashes soon fluttered. His eyes blinked open, unfocused with sleep.
“Good morrow, husband,” you fixed a sweet smile, and he blinked blue eyes at you, staring at you in a hazy daze for a moment as his mind worked to bridge the gap between his dreams and reality.
Then, a soft sigh escaped him. He reached out, his strong arms wrapping around your waist to pull you against him, burying his face into the crook of your neck.
“Forgive me,” he murmured in a drawl, his voice muffled against your skin.
You blinked. “What for?”
“I have conducted myself in a manner entirely unbefitting of your husband.”
“Oh?”
“I was far from gentle with you,” he mumbled into your neck. “When you have asked it from me.”
He really thought that? A giggle bubbled up from your chest, the light sound causing him to curl into you even further, hiding his face like a guilty boy.
“I am perfectly well,” you laughed, hugging him close to your chest. “A bit sore, perhaps, but quite intact.”
You stroked his red hair, and he clung to you a little tighter, as if you were the only anchor he needed. However, you were in the mood of being mischievous.
“Although, I must confess, I never knew you had that side in you, husband.” Your lips curling into a smirk as you looked down at him. “I must admit I doubted its existence.”
Gwayne went utterly still in your embrace. Slowly, he pulled back, looking at you with an expression of pure despondence. Then as though he couldn’t bear to look at your face, he groaned, clenching his jaw.
“I am glad my utter lack of composure is a source of amusement for the princess.”
His cheeks had started to redden, and your heart swelled. Reaching out, you caught his jaw with one hand and stole a quick kiss, catching him off guard.
“Am I not your wife?” you teased. “What is there to be so flustered about?”
“Are you secretly a wanton?” Gwayne fired back, a dimpled, shy smile breaking through his lingering embarrassment. “You certainly seem fond of kissing me first.”
Would a man so devoted to you not choose you, when he is faced by the impossible choice between his wife and his house?
Mayhaps that was a question that would find its answer in the years to come.
“This is how you kiss, darling.”
And with that, he leaned in and captured your lips in a chaste yet deep kiss. The shyness that had flushed his cheeks moments ago vanished, replaced by the effortless grace of a man who knew exactly how to cherish his wife.
When he finally parted from you, he didn’t pull away far. He rested his forehead against yours, his breath mingling with your own as the early morning sun caught the rich blue of his eyes, and his grin was the sweetest as he gazed at you.
What is that light shining through the window? It matters less, because you are the sun, and you are in his arms.
tagging @luvweezer @j3ons4 @heavenlypuggs @salinaiacono6 @thelastemzy @meowingtotheoldies @violetrainbow412-blog @reading-it-all as per request <3
pairing: ormund hightower x targaryen-niece!reader (reader is alicent's daughter but no major descriptions given except hair)
warnings: dead dove do not eat. dark fic. non con. dub con. incest. (they're second cousins as reader is alicent's daughter) aged up characters. reader is twenty. faux incest. (reader was raised by ormund) . heavy manipulation. coercion. psychological abuse. alluding to grooming? (more so reader is brought up to think her targaryen heritage is shameful and also to follow the faith of the seven - no implication of him wanting reader as a child). drugging with aphrodisiacs. dacraphylia. choking kink (kinda). smut. virginty checking. murder and blood at the start. more book canon rhaenyra taking king's landing. reader thinks team black is evil but is brainwashed into believing so. 18+ MDNI
a/n: if you read the warnings and go ewww, no. leave and block me. if you read this, and go eww but yes pls, come and show me some love. this is almost 7k words guys but please enjoy. barely proofread im sorry guys it was so long and im tired.
you are responsible for the content you consume. make sure to read warnings before proceeding with any of my fics
It is quite the thing to never truly know one's father.
There was a time, you believe, when your wide eyes knew him, the white hair and the violet eyes. Days when you were a babe and the comfort of a voice you heard in the womb carried, and you felt a familiarity to him, a warmth when he held you.
But these are all assumptions you make.
You’ve never truly known Viserys Targaryen. You know the stories told to you by your governess, and on the odd occasion your grandsire tended to you in the years he resided in Oldtown, you heard of his greatness from him too.
Even sitting here, under the dim candlelight of the tavern, listening to the sweet melody the bard strums on his lute, you try to paint a picture of him.
Generous. Oh, kind.
These words have been shared by many, and even as the man sings them, as if speaking them into existence, you can’t picture the man he sings of. The man who sired you. The man that sent you away when you couldn’t even crawl out of your own cradle.
A man you only saw twice when you were brought back to King’s Landing. A man that only left the confinement of his chambers once in the three years you’d been at court. Only on the return of his eldest daughter, only to protect her claim to the Iron Throne. A man you barely recognised, grey strings of hair coming out in patches on his head, blackened teeth and a face eaten by disease. He looked like a man already dead, clinging to the last grips of life, decaying before everyone’s eyes.
For a second, you tried to picture him younger, you as a babe in his arms and your tiny hand wrapped around one of his fingers. Even then, sitting across from you, the picture could not come to mind. The mere mutter of the word father brings a different image, a man with short mahogany hair, loose curls and deep blue eyes. A statue cloaked in green, a sharp jawline and lips pressed together in a thin line.
Ormund Hightower, a man you haven’t seen for five long years, is the man you’ve pictured for as long as you can remember. The shape of him, standing over you, so vivid in your mind you’re sure you could picture him sitting across from you now.
You wonder how he’s changed.
Have the grey strands taken root in his hair? Have the lines on his face drawn deeper over time? Would he look at you the same? Would he remember the girl that clung to his leg as a child, or the teenager that revelled in his approval of curt nods and brief words? Would he see the woman you have grown into?
You never thought you’d see him again; the night before you left him, he told you so. You’ve thought about it often, the fat tears stinging your eyes and falling across your cheek. The sobs you desperately tried to fight back as you gritted your teeth, ones that broke through your chest and left you quivering as you threw yourself at him behind the closed doors of his studies.
Unbecoming of a woman, you knew that, especially one that was well versed in your faith. You thought he might disapprove of the way you acted, shake his head and tell you so. Yet he didn’t; he let your hands find his shoulders, nails dig into the tunic, piercing into the skin underneath with no complaint. His arms wrapped around you, one hand placed firmly at your back, rubbing soothing circles into the small of your back.
We always knew this day was coming; he reminded you before pulling you away, placing his hands on your cheeks to hold you from him. This is your duty, where mine is here.
You wish you had told him how you wanted to say— wish that in that moment you begged him to let you reside here if just for a few more years. But you have always been destined to return to court, to marry into a noble family and draw new alliances for your family.
Yet in your five years away from home, away from the only family you’ve ever really known, a marriage never came to fruition. Offers came, many were discussed, and one proposal sat over your head for a year, but then came the death of the King, Viserys, and the placement of your eldest brother on the Iron Throne, and House of Arynn decidedly didn’t want to align themselves with usurpers. You’d never say it out loud, but you’d been happy, even if it was only prolonging the inevitable.
Wars bring bountiful amounts of marriages. But wars also bring death, and while you always knew that, you’d never been privy to the sight of it. Not until over a fortnight ago, when you’d been yanked from your bed in the night, forced to leave the confines of the Redkeep with one trusted guardsman with you.
Blood paved your way through the streets of King’s Landing, the Goldcloaks turning on the King’s Guard, shoving their swords deep into their backs. Even at the dead of the night, and on the brink of winter, it had been awfully hot, sweat beading on your head, and at every glance in a different direction you could see why: the glow of a fire bright from above, around almost every corner. The streets of flea-bottom had been a battle to get through, and if it hadn’t been for Ser Ronard protecting you with his very life, it may have been your body bleeding out on the cobblestones.
You dread what they could have done to you. Stripped you, beaten you, and molested your dead body.
They are animals, Ormund’s voice rang in your head and even now as you remember, you feel the ghost of his fingers as they brush your hair behind your ear. Nothing like our common folk.
Don’t they even deserve the mercy of the Gods? You’d asked him.
That is for the Gods to decide.
Ser Ronard clears his throat from beside you, pushing the bowl of stew towards you.
“Eat,” he commands.
You don’t look up, shaking your head.
“My Lord will have my head on a stick if I bring you to him thin as bones,” he grunts out, fingers reaching out for your chin but you flinch out of reach. He points to the bowl once more. “Eat.”
Your hand reaches out for the spoon, stirring the slodge in the bowl. It doesn’t smell right but the last few days you’ve managed to stomach worse just to fill the pit in your stomach.
“It’s not so—” Ser Ronnard twists his head to the window, eyes pinching as if to concentrate.
You don’t hear it at first but the hooves trotting against the ground come quickly. Fast and many.
“Up.” Ser Ronnard is yanking you up by your elbow before you can think, pulling you towards him and charging through the tables towards the back of the tavern.
But the way becomes easily blocked, the townspeople turning against you within an instant, and then you feel it, the hood of your cloak being torn down and your thick locks being lifted for all to see.
“It’s her,” someone points, shouting from beside you. “They are after her.”
These rats are fast but Ser Ronnard is faster, unsheathing his sword within a moment, the sliding of metal being heard like a ringing in your ears and then a slice, the man’s hand falls from your head and onto the wooden floorboard.
“Go.” He tells you, shoving you away and placing his body between you and them.
Them. Vermin. Traitors to the crown. Supporters of Rhaenyra the cruel.
The thoughts are all you can think as you run into the open night, ducking out of the way of light from torches and taking for the trees.
Days and nights spent dressed in beaten-down cloaks and hopping between one town to the other just to keep yourself hidden could all be for nothing. Rhaenyra’s men had been at every town, every tavern, every nook and cranny you had come across. You’d been glad for your dark rouge hair, the thickness of it making it easy to hide the tuft of silver. Easier to blend in with the common people, the rats that swarm these towns.
They support her. You’re not safe with any of them. Ormund had taught you that, had reminded you of the enemy in his many letters. She who shares your blood and your father’s face is not to be trusted.
There’s an evilness in your eldest sister, and your uncle, a taint in the blood. It runs in you as well, but lucky for you, Ormund has been there to protect you from it.
But he’s not here now. He’s nowhere to be seen in the dead of the night as you hide between the bushes. Nowhere to be heard as Rhaenyra’s men surround you and whistle for you to come out. Nowhere to be felt as one of them drags you by your ankle to get you out.
All you feel is the damp ground underneath you, mud taking its root under the your fingernails as you desperately try to scramble away and the man’s hands as they fight against your kicking legs.
He had been right, they’re all savages, every single last one of them. All awful beasts that do not care for the likeness of your blood, not the ones that bow to the false Queen Rhaenyra.
“You wretched—” You try to scream, but his foot catches your ankle, throwing you over onto your front without so much as a struggle.
You kick back, and with your nails digging into the soil you try to crawl forward. But he doesn’t let you, and you feel your feeble attempt be stopped as you feel his hands now on your back.
He’s on top of you, weight pressing you down into muck and you hear it, the tearing of your clothes from behind you, loud as he fumbles with his trousers to release himself.
“No,” you plead, tears lodged at the back of your throat. Your hand falls out in front again, dragging your heavy body slightly before you’re pulled back again. “No, please.”
Savages. Worse than you could have ever imagined.
He groans, not out of pleasure and for a second you’re not sure why, as he becomes still behind you. But then you feel it, blood dripping onto your back, and the weight of him being pulled off before his lifeless body is dropped by your side.
“Up.”
The voice doesn’t quite register; it takes a second before it is piercing through the ringing in your ear, and even then your body can’t quite familiarise itself with it. But your body recognises those hands pulling you up, and the feel of the wide shoulders as they encase you. You don’t relax; you can’t, but your arms fall around him, gripping him with a tightness that borders on suffocating.
“I’m here,” his voice soothes you, lips caressing the shell of your ear, his warmth breath against your skin making you shiver. “I’ve got you, my love.”
In your years growing up in Oldtown, you rarely went a fortnight without seeing Ormund. As the years passed and you grew older, he became a prominent figure in your life. The man raised you, alongside your uncle Gwayne, so it’s no surprise the man was always present in your day-to-day life.
But since your arrival at Tumbleton, Ormund has not visited you once.
You hear him, though- the echoes of his voice travelling through the empty halls, and his footsteps in the dead of the night when he paces outside your room. You know the stress he’s under; while you may never quite understand the strategies of war, you can understand the position he’s in. Daeron only holds a small dragon, barely grown, and you yourself have never bonded with a dragon. His final hope resides in your brother, but since his abrupt departure in King’s Landing, you don’t know where he resides or where he will go next.
Ormund and his men are alone.
It’s something you come to make clarity with as the maids tend to you in the bath. This luxury is not promised; tomorrow it could be taken from underneath you.
You hiss when one of the maids’ hands drags the cloth against your bruised hip, twisting your head to look at her. Plain clothes and face, no striking features that remind you of the maids back home. She could be a traitor, you think. A pretender.
You snatch the cloth from her hands but your hand stops for a second, eyes flickering between the other maids that surround you.
You go to bark but swallow, cowering like a beaten dog. “I can tend to myself,” you tell them in a meek voice.
“Of course, my princess.” They all mutter, bowing before clearing out of the room at once.
They stop before the door, bowing once again before scuttering out.
Ormund.
You notice him, dressed in dark green breeches and a pale white tunic, so thin you can see the defined muscles of his chest, all the way to the dark trail of hairs that travel down—
You twist your head away, eyes closing as shame takes over your body.
“My Lord, I—”
“Did he touch you?” Ormund questions, and when you turn around, he’s stood over you.
“My Lord—” you shake your head, shifting forward in the water as if bracing to get out. “I—I don’t—”
“ —Did he touch you?” Ormund’s hands are clenched by his side, fists drawn so tight that they are white. He bends down, falling to his knees and hands coming to grab onto the wooden tub. “That—“ he clenches his jaw, and spits out the next words through gritted teeth. “Did that beast touch you?”
“He didn’t—“ your words get lodged into your throat and you can feel the sob stuck in the back of your throat, clawing to make its way out as you bite it down. “I swear it.”
His eyes darken, the blue irises almost fading to black as you look at them. It brings you back.
Memories of the man before you making you bow before the Maiden for forgiveness, to the Mother for mercy on your own soul.
It’s not your fault, he’d tell you, but you need to pray for mercy to not end up like your savage ancestors.
You’d weep, knees digging into the stone floor of the sept, his hand pressed against your shoulder to keep you down.
The words try to break free from your throat now, to explain but tears flood your vision and panic takes over. He didn’t touch me, I swear it, you wish to scream but your voice makes no sound.
“Keep still.”
You do exactly that as his eyes keep you transfixed to the spot, his cold gaze not allowing you to move an inch as his hand reaches underneath the water. You feel it, his soft hand against your knee, slow at first as they part your legs before making their way up between your thighs.
Like a good girl, you take it, biting on the inside of your cheek and keeping your cries to sniffles. His fingertips feel larger than they look, running along your inner thigh as they make their way up and up—
You gasp, and his hand stop against you, cupping your mound with his palm against the top and fingers reaching against your hole. Even with how much you want to, you keep your legs open, fighting against the urge to close your thighs against his hand.
“This is where he would have touched you,” he tells you, through a heavy breath. His finger reaches down and the tip aligns itself with your hole as he continues, “This is where that savage would have taken—“ His eyes fall close, and he lets out a strangled breath, a moment, before the tip of his finger breaches your hole, forcing it open.
You try to keep still but your hips fall back, hands bracing against the sides of the tub as if to escape. But his hand comes against your shoulder, pressing firmly down to hold you in place.
“I need to be sure.” His finger deepens then moves side to side while you hiss and cry at the feel.
“It hurts,” you whimper, scrunching your eyes closed. “Please, he didn’t—“
His finger pulls back, sliding out of your walls as he hushes you, “It’s okay.”
It doesn’t feel okay. His hand rests against your thigh once more, and you can’t help but squeeze your thighs together, trying to force him out.
“You did good.”
—And yet you’re trembling in the warm water, unable to open your wet eyes. Your hands grip onto the edge of the tub still, not sure whether to jump out or to force yourself back under the water.
“Look at me,” he commands, and you feel his wet fingers grip your chin.
You do.
“You did so good.” He smiles, a small proud grin as he wipes the tears that fall against your cheek. “You understand why I had to do that?”
You nod. Unlike your ancestors, you will not be ruined by your own savage tendencies.
“I missed you,” he whispers, face inches from yours, breath fanning against your face.
So close you could kiss him.
Your body goes rigid at the thought.
It’s your blood, you remind yourself, you can control it.
“Didn’t you miss me?” His eyebrows draw together, and his lips twist into a frown.
“Yes,” you let out on a choked sob. “I missed you. I missed home.”
“And home is?” He asks, voice soft and melodic.
“Home is Oldtown. Home is with you,” you tell him.
His hand shifts, cupping your cheek and his forehead falls to rest against yours. He’s close, so close, you hear him as he inhales deeply, breathing in your scent. “That’s my girl.”
A fortnight has passed and still no word from Aemond, and no sight of Aegon.
Disappointments, you hear Ormund scream from the other side of the hall. Idiots, all of them.
You’re not making it any better, not that you can help it. But for the last few nights you’d fallen with a strange fever, sweats pulling you from your sleep and your body burning for no reason at all. Sometimes you have an appetite, and other times none at all. None of the maesters can be sure of the reasoning for it, prescribing you tea at every hour and hoping it will pass. The tea does nothing, and another brew sits cold on your bedside.
They’ve pleaded with Ormund to keep his distance. Told him they don’t want whatever ailment has taken over you to pass to him. Not in the midst of a war. Not when your lives are on the line.
Yet he visits often, not trusting the maids that tend to your bedside or the maesters that have been appointed by his own deceased father. Not to look after you.
Ormund sits now, slouched against his wooden chair, legs spread wide with you perched by his feet, a cushion underneath you for comfort. Rage radiates off him; you can feel it in the way his thighs tighten underneath your head, and you try your best to stop from moving around. But you are restless, mind fogged and skin littered with bumps across your body. You can’t help it, lulling your head to the side to look up at him again.
He sighs, a large breath through his nose and his thighs tighten once again.
“I thought you were trying to sleep?”
You look up at him through wet lashes, fluttering as if to keep them open. You want to sleep, your mind clouded with a tiredness you’ve never felt before but your body is restless and you shift against him to find some sort of comfort.
“Hmm?”
You whine, head rolling around again till your forehead is pressed against the inside of his thigh. “I can’t.”
“I should ask the maesters to brew some tea.” One of his hands falls to the back of your head, fingers combing through the strands, and the feel of the tips of his fingers scratching against your scalp causes you to shiver.
“No more tea,” you mumble against his breeches.
“You barely drank the last.”
You hear a scuffle on the other side of the room, maids following his command you imagine.
You lift your head again, and it takes a second for your vision to clear and for you to fully see him.
“Please,” You whine, but he doesn’t listen— he doesn’t look down.
You want his attention— no, you need his attention. You need him to look down at you, to acknowledge your pleads.
Your hands drag themselves up from his knees, fingers running along his thick muscles before wrapping around the tops of his thighs. His muscles tighten, harder than before and he finally looks down at you, nostrils flared and jaw clenched.
“Amused?”
Your hands slide down, releasing your grip and you lean back slightly, dropping your head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what took over me. I—”
His face relaxes and his head lulls back as he takes another languid breath. “You can’t help it.”
You hum, tilting your head to the side.
“I hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”
You jump at the sound of the maid placing the tea pot down beside you, eyes falling to her as she pours a cup.
Ormund takes it from her, placing it out in front of you.
“Drink,” he commands, and the second you hesitate he presses the cup to your lips. “Drink.” The firm tone of his voice willing you to his command.
The heat of the tea is bearable, but still a tad too hot as it floods your mouth with its bitter taste. You imagine this is what dirt tastes like, but there's a hint of citrus that helps you swallow it down. You don’t want it, but he pours it into your mouth anyway, eyes glued to yours, eyebrows pinched together, telling you without words to obey him. You do, willing as much liquid as you can down before it comes too much, hot liquid burning your skin as it spills from the confines of your mouth.
He takes the cup away when you start to cough, pushing the cup back into the maid’s hand before giving her a curt nod to leave.
You try to push off him, giving yourself space as you choke on the last bits of liquid that have become trapped in your throat, but his hands come around your arms, keeping you locked in place.
“Breathe.”
You try, letting out a shaky breath, willing the tickle in your throat to dissipate. Eventually it does and you blink back the tears that have swarmed your waterline.
“Good girl,” he whispers, hands pulling you towards him. “Come.”
“I shouldn’t,” you tell him, but your body betrays you, crawling upwards until your head is resting against his shoulder and your legs are perched over his. “The maesters—” the words become muffled as you bury your head in the crevice of his neck. “ —you’ll get sick.”
“That’s my burden to bear.” His voice is soft, and his hand gentle as it falls against your thigh. “You are my burden.”
“Yes,” you answer him, not out of your own volition but a certain pull deep inside of you that speaks to him— that heeds his call.
His hand moves, trailing up your thigh and back down again, the material of your cotton gown following his slow movements. You hum, unbeknownst to you and another sound follows, a low rumble from the back of your throat you can’t place, but you know isn’t right.
“I’m sorry— I—” the next noise is louder, a desperate whimper and you feel a wave of heat flush over your body, dampening your skin.
Everything feels strange so suddenly. The material of your gown feels uncomfortable, almost scratching your skin every time you shift about. His hand— You’ve become deeply aware of Ormund’s hand pressed against you, heavier than before and almost soothing as it glides up the back of your thigh.
You want more, that you’re sure of, but you’re not sure of yourself or the words to ask for it.
What is it you want? These clothes off your body. His hand higher. His hand against your bare skin. Your thighs clamp together at that thought and you feel slick oozing from you as you rub your legs together.
He grasps the back of your hair, detaching you from his neck and forcing you to look up at him. His brows furrow together, but his expression is kinder than before. But it changes, eyes hardening and his muscles becoming stiff underneath you as his eyes trail down your body. Your chest rising and falling, your nipples pebbled underneath your gown, the way the material becomes almost transparent from your wet skin.
A part of you grasps, his darkened gaze and the way his mouth parts as you try to steady your rapid breathing.
Sinful girl, he must think, poisoned by your own blood.
“It’s exactly as I thought,” he states, eyes dragging themselves back up to your face.
“It’s my blood, isn’t it?” Just like your sister. Your elder brothers. Your ancestors. Ormund had been right all along. “Am I going to die?”
He pauses, his hand on your lower thigh tugs your skirts up, allowing the chill of the night air to touch your skin. It feels good, a sort of relief, but only temporary.
Your body freezes when the material reaches higher, lifting over your ankles, shins and then towards the middle of your thighs.
“I think I know a way to help you.” He swallows, and you watch as the bulge in his throat protrudes. “But—” his hand falls against your sweat-covered skin and you let out a small gasp, your skin burning under his touch. “—you need to understand.”
“Please,” you let out between a broken cry. “Please. Please. Please.” You repeat until the words jumble together.
The tip of his fingers slides beneath the material of your gown, and your hand darts out towards it. To stop it, or to push it away, you’re not entirely sure.
The air has shifted; you sense it completely now as you look up at Ormund. The man that raised you, that took care of you as his own, is touching you— his fingers drifting up to a place the septas taught you was for only your husband.
“Your blood craves its own,” he tells you, and you can’t quite understand what he speaks of “But if I’m right—” he bites down on his words, the tips of his fingers hovering up your thighs and over your stomach. “If I’m right, I can help you.”
How? You think to question him but the word doesn’t reach your lips. “Please,” is all you have him, the single word taking over your senses and your mind.
“Your blood…” his eyes widen, and his brows raise as he speaks. “…it wants its own.”
Your mind reels and his teachings ring in your head.
Incestuous savages.
It makes sense. Your body’s call for kin. Your brother and your sister married. Your elder sister and uncle. Even your father married his cousin.
Blood magic and curses, your ancestors have forsaken you.
Your eyes flutter up at him, tears flooding your vision at the thoughts. You can feel it, that very affliction that runs through your veins. Your senses are heightened and your body is burning for a touch of another.
“I may not have Targaryen blood,” he whispers, and his hand drops, landing on your breast, fingers splayed over it. “But you and I share the same blood. I think it could work.”
Your body freezes, his eyes falling to his finger as it moves flicking over your hardened nipple.
The man who raised you. A man you see is more akin to you than your own father, own mother, own brothers and sisters.
“You’re married,” you grit out through clenched teeth. Like that would make it any worse.
His hand shifts from your hair, wrapping around your neck before pulling you dangerously close. You could kiss him, or he could kiss you. As if sensing your thoughts his grip tightens and you find yourself wheezing for breath.
“Or—“ you gasp, hand reaching for his.
He looks down at you, lips frowning and jaw clenching once again into an almost pained expression. “I’d do this for you. Forsake my honour, for you.”
Fat tears slide down your cheeks in sheer horror but your body reacts in a different way, thighs clenching when his finger flicks over your nipple again.
“I could save you.”
He’s right. Every part of you reacts to him like some bitch in heat, craving his touch. Even if your teachings from the seven tell you different. They don’t understand this, they couldn’t possibly grasp the idea of this. Neither could you. It’s only here seeing the way your body trembles and bucks into his touch do you see how right he is.
You don’t want to die.
“Please save me,” you ask him only loud enough for him to hear.
“My girl.”
The words travel through you and you can’t help but shiver against him.
You close your eyes, bracing for the impact of his lips against yours at any moment but it doesn’t come. Only when your eyes open, do you feel his nose against your throat, inhaling your scent like he’s gasping for it.
His lips come after, grazing against your neck, just under your chin where his hand doesn’t cover and then upwards till they finally meet your lips.
It’s not at all how you expect it —but then again you never had much time to imagine much —he’s tender at first, his lips caressing yours, taking his time as he moves against your mouth. Open-mouthed pecks to the corner of your lips, and then your bottom lip until his lips meld into yours and you forget to breathe.
He pulls away, his hand sliding from your throat and his thumb finding your bottom lip, pulling it apart from the top.
“Let me help you.”
He dives forward this time, not so kind as his lips find yours for a second time. Your lips move, not with his but almost against him, intending to push him away. It doesn’t work and your lips part as you feel his teeth nipping at your skin— to speak, only for his tongue to shove against yours, forcing your words into a whine.
What would you have said anyway? No, don’t do this. A part of you still screams, your hand falling against his own as he gropes your breast. But then your thighs shift and you find yourself melting into his body.
Wouldn’t it be easier to forget. Wouldn’t it be safer to let him take care of you?
Ormund’s arm comes underneath you, hoisting you up and himself with you, never once allowing his lips to leave your own. It feels good— dangerously good as his saliva drips into your mouth and his tongue slides against yours. Is this how your ancestors felt the first time they lay with their own blood?
Your back hits silk sheets and cushions as Ormund places you down, breaking apart from you. You lift yourself, hazy eyes searching to find him, only to freeze when you see him undressing himself at the end of your bed.
You fall backwards, letting your eyes fall closed for a moment.
Better to not look. Better not to think.
You feel the weight of the bed dip by your feet, and your body moves on autopilot, heels digging in to push yourself further up the sheets. You’re stopped though, one hand finding your ankle yanking you right back down.
He tuts, and you feel the weight of him over you, crawling till he’s hovering directly above you. His hand lifts your skirt, throwing the material up until it’s bunched around your waist.
“Do you think I want to do this?” He questions, and you feel his breath against your face. “Hmm?”
You shake your head.
“Look at me when I’m speaking to you,” his voice stern as his forehead presses against your own. “Look at me.”
Your eyes open to a blackened gaze peering down at yours.
“Do you think I want to do this?”
“No,” you answer, tears clawing at the back of your throat. “You don’t want to do this.”
“I’m doing this to help you,” he whispers, lips pressing against yours again. “I’m doing this to save you.”
He lowers himself against you, and you realise how bare he is as you feel his harness against your inner thigh. You’re not sure how you pictured it, but the length of it against your thigh brings fear to your mind.
“Let’s get this off.”
You feel the gown being torn from your skin, and you find yourself lifting your body off the bed for him to pull it off your shoulders.
You don’t even have time to think before you’re being shoved down, lips finding your own and thighs being pried open. His body falls between your legs, hips pressing down against yours and you feel him there. Hard, thick and leaking.
But you also feel yourself. Slick covered thighs that fall around his hips and a drenched cunt that oozes with the feel of him sliding against it.
He was right, he’s always right.
Your hips buck up to him, and you can’t help the way your body reacts, your hole clenching around nothing as the tip of him catches your entrance. Your body wants this, it’s leaking all over him and when he pulls away, you let out a pathetic whimper.
“Hush,” he whispers against you, breaking his lips away from your own. “You’ll get what you desire.”
Then you feel it, his tip sliding against your folds with precision, slowly and then even slower over your sensitive nub. Your body reacts literally, mouth falling open into a whine or a moan, you’re not certain you can separate the two but it makes him smile. You feel it, lips widening against your cheek and it leaves you confused, opening your eyes to be sure it’s true.
Your lips fall open to speak, to question him but the words die on your tongue as he lines himself up against you before sliding in with one full thrust.
His lips fall open on yours, a sigh escaping him while a cry escapes you.
It hurts. Your walls feel like they’ve been forced open and the wetness does nothing to prepare you for him. Tears kiss your cheeks and your teeth grind against each other, forcing the sobs down.
He moves, dragging his dick out your walls before he’s shoving himself in.
“It hurts,” you let out through a choked sob, your whole body freezing underneath him. Your hands find his shoulders, pushing him back but his torso is like a stone wall that won’t let up —except from his hips that roll as he slowly slides in and out of you.
“Shhh.” His lips press into your cheek, then the corner of your parted lips. “It’ll feel better soon. I swear it.”
—So, you try to keep quiet, sucking in harsh breaths and letting out shaky sobs that have your body frozen against him. It hurts, and you feel like your walls are being torn open from the inside and he keeps going.
In. Out.
In and then out.
Your breathing steadies and your chest begins to settle. The pain is still there, but it’s faded and when his cock drags against your walls, you feel yourself tighten around him.
“See,” you hear his voice in your ear, and his lips follow, settling below and kissing the delicate skin there.
“It feels—”
“I know,” he replies, his voice different— grittier. “Told you didn’t I?” —and you hear it again, caught in a groan, coming from the back of his throat. “Making you feel better?”
You nod, a sick moan spilling from your lips is the only answer you can give. Slick is pouring out of you again, and you forget that it was ever painful to begin with and you also realise when he speaks once again, it does something to you, nipples becoming oddly more sensitive and cunt squeezing him.
It does something to him too, you feel it in the way he changes his pace, and his hands fall down to your hips to keep you glued to the bed. He’s only doing this for your own good, you remind yourself but the way his thrusts become faster has you thinking differently.
“Please,” you plead with him, legs falling around his hips, hooking behind them. “My Lord, plea—”
“Sire,” he snaps, teeth pressing against your skin. “Please, sire.”
His hand comes around your throat, and he presses his forehead against yours, lips parting.
“Please, what?”
“Please—” your words get caught as he delivers a nasty thrust against you.
“I didn’t hear you.”
“Please, sire.”
You let the words out between a gasp, before he’s shoving your thighs down further, his cock reaching a point so deep inside you that you swear you can feel him in your stomach.
“Please,” you beg between strangled sobs. “Please, sire. Please. Please…”
“My good girl.”
Your walls tighten and you’re sure if your body could have its way it’d keep him there, his shaft stuck inside you, every ridge and vein imprinted into your very walls. You should feel ashamed at the thoughts, and maybe when you recover from your sickness you will, but right now all you want is to break underneath him.
—And some part of you does, a tension in your stomach snapping and a body-numbing feeling taking over you. Blood rushes to your head, and your vision becomes cloudy as you look up at him. You think you’re saying something, lips open and tongue moving. Maybe not even words, maybe a string of sounds that blur into one.
Then relief.
A relief washing over you that you haven't felt in days, all while his cock continues to rut into you with a vigour that borders on cruel.
It’s him giving you this relief, his cock spilling inside of you, letting out steady ropes of his seed until you’re full of him. It feels good and your restless body relaxes underneath him, taking everything he has to offer you. Every bit of him until your moans turn to gentle sighs and there’s nothing left for him to give.
“You feel better, don’t you.”
He doesn’t ask, he states it like he already knows like he can read the expression on your face. You wonder what you look like right now, hair tangled and face covered in a mix of dried tears and sweat.
You nod, and your eyes close for a second.
“Yes,” you answer him. “Better.”
And you think that’s it, the end of it.
But as the seconds pass you become acutely aware of how he’s still buried inside of you and how hips, even though they turned into an almost slow drag, haven't stopped moving for even a moment.
“We should keep going then,” he says, and his weight becomes heavier, more relaxed as it falls on top of you, trapping you completely underneath him. “Keep going till you’re cured.”
You open your mouth to speak, to protest—
“ —Till we are certain.” His hips shove into yours, rougher than before and you feel his seed drip out your walls and over his cock. “We want to be certain, don’t we?”
Your lips close, words you were about to say becoming a distant memory as you nod in agreement.
Because Ormund is right. He’s always right and your walls leaking out all over him proves it.
Better to be certain, then to wake up craving more.
content tags are extreme diabolical yearning, fluff, canonical views of gender and marriage, canon divergence, reader uses she/her pronouns, discussions of sex but no smut, pet names, reader walks him like a dog, no physical description of reader, this is my first time writing for gwayne so i hope you like it :) thanks for reading <3 update: part 2 is here part 3 is here
Marriage was duty. Marriage was merely a political strategy. An arrangement to be struck between families; marriage had no place for matters of the heart. That is what Gwayne Hightower told himself before he met you, his betrothed. He told himself it did not matter if he found you beautiful or not. It only mattered to produce viable heirs and that you become a capable Lady of House Hightower.
He corresponded with you via raven weeks before your wedding day. In your letters, he found you were friendly, a little erratic in your sentence structure, but prompt in your replies. He wrote to assure you that he intended to give you a good life as Lady Hightower. You would be well cared for in Oldtown; the Reach would offer a climate that you would find very enjoyable. He promised that he would not rush you into marriage consummation, or sharing a marital bed, since you were only meeting for the first time on your wedding day. He wanted to make sure you were comfortable in your new life, as he could hardly imagine being in your shoes. He hoped you were pretty, or at least kind, but did not let himself hope for much. Marriage was duty, nothing more.
Standing at the alter in the Starry Sept, Gwayne mentally cursed and kicked himself a thousand times over. When he lifted your veil, he was met with the most dazzling girl he'd ever seen. Your bright eyes shone under the candlelight, the air around you seemed to sparkle, aided by the twinkling jewels pinned in your hair. Your mouth quipped into a half, nervous smile, that made is knees turn to jelly. He could tell you were accessing him back, brow furrowed in concentration. The crinkle that formed between your eyebrows was downright adorable. And with your wide eyes blinking up at him, you reminded him of a deer wandering a forest. When the Septon asked Gwayne to repeat the sacred words And I take you for my lady and wife, his mouth felt impossibly dry and disconnected from his body. He tore his eyes away from you, to look at the Septon instead, so he could concentrate. "And I t-take you for my lady and w-wife" Maybe he had been wrong about marriage before.
Honor? Duty? Where did it get him? Now, it seemed like those things, once upheld in his family's name, had doomed him. Gwayne had already put you at an arm's length by telling you that he did not expect you to share his bed. So all he could do was be a kind, doting husband, hoping that eventually you would feel comfortable enough to desire him the way he already did.
Gwayne observed you and helped you as you settled into life at the Oldtown. You were acclimating well, greeting everyone you met with a warm smile. You made an effort to learn each servant's name, offering genuine compliments on their work. Gwayne decided that he adored your smile, and you were as beautiful as the Mother, herself. Before he met you, he had faintly hoped that you were beautiful. But now, he wasn't sure if your beauty was a blessing to his eyes, or a curse that he had suffer to look upon you at a respectful distance. You were practically skipping through the corridors. Gwyane noticed you always moved so quickly, never simply walking, always seeming to be in a hurry to get to the next place. Suddenly, the ribbon tying your hair back slipped free and onto the floor. You bent down to pick up the ribbon, the fabric of your dress straining against the swell of your breasts. He’d always thought that a woman’s thighs were the asset he favored the most. But when he noticed the curve of your breasts, he wanted nothing more than to squeeze them, knead them, commit the softness to memory. Your nimble fingers twirled the ribbon, hands so petite and pretty. Perhaps one day they would intertwine with his? He could hold your hand and guide it along his cock, showing you how to stroke it and-
Then you were gone. Scurrying away and out of sight. Only the aroma of your rose scented soap was left for him to bask in, and replay over and over the time he had written that you were not expected to share his bed, and hate himself for it.
The day you came into his solar to show him your new dress, a part of him died inside. He was scribbling a letter to his father when you entered. When he looked up at the disturbance and saw it was you, he stood up so fast he almost sent his chair falling backwards. "My dear wife. What do I owe this pleasure?"
"So formal" you tease, your twinkling laugh lighting up the dim room "I just came to show you this!" You hold out your arms to display your attire, causing Gwayne's breath to hitch in his throat. You were wearing a rich green gown, with gold beading and embroidery all down the length. The design curled around your hips and torso, clinging to all your curves. The candlelight reflected off the gold shimmer, making you look like an angel dripping in Hightower colors.
"Do you like it?" You step closer to Gwayne, always on tip toe, and quickly, like a graceful doe. “Do I look comely?”
Your husband chokes on the words, watching you move closer to him- closer to his grasp. You are so near, he can count each if your eyelashes. “Come-? Comely?” Gwayne’s ears burn red at his misunderstanding. A feeble cough, then he manages to speak. “Yes. Very.”
"The seamstresses fastened the dress itself, but I did most of the embroidery work. See?"
Tentatively, he reaches out to graze his fingers over your hard work. He brushes the gold embroidery at your hip. You're babbling about the time that it look, and the technique you practiced, but Gwayne is zoning out. Only focusing on the warmth of your skin he can feel under the velvet. Your backside, that he had admittedly gawked at whenever you walked in front of him, was under his hand, splayed over your hip.
Your voice fades into the background as his hand, on it's own accord, moves up to your elbow, your shoulder, then brushes against the ends of your hair ever so slightly. It was so much softer than he thought possible. And when he brushes the tips of your hair, the smell of your rose soap wafts up to his nostrils. He watches in anticipation as his hand, seemingly pulled by an invisible force, moves to rest on the small of your back. You do not falter or pull away. In fact, you don't react at all. You just continue smiling, talking about your dress. Then you hold up the fabric of your skirt.
"Here, feel." You instruct, and Gwayne tentatively runs his hand over the gold beads. "I stayed up half the night to finish it. But I think it's worth the trouble." You laugh softly. "What do you think?"
"It's beautiful." He swallows, and meets your eye. "Like you."
Playfully, you roll your huge, doe eyes and there it is again - that laugh that makes his heart flip inside his chest cavity. Your lips brush his cheek so quickly, he thought he might have imagined it. But it was real. You kissed him. The dampness of your lips leave the irrefutable proof on his skin. Just as soon as you entered, you are moving away, towards the door, and out of his reach. "I think I will lay down to rest now. I am weary after staying up so late."
Gwayne must be unwell. He must see a maester. He feels unsteady on his feet and his heartbeat pounds mercilessly in his ears. Because after you leave his solar, his legs jerkily pull his body towards the door. You're fast. Much more agile than a young lady should be. Because you're leagues ahead of him, already out of sight down the castle corridors. He walks in a trance, following the trail of rose, stumbling after you. His cock jerks in his pants, half hard simply from touching you and the green fabric of your damned dress. Feverishly, his skin burns hot under his clothes. You're ill, you're reverting back to being a green boy, he tells himself. He wills himself to gain some sense, and stop following you like a lunatic, but his legs still carry him the way to your bed chambers.
When he arrives at your chambers, he enters without ceremony. He falls against the door and stumbles inside. It looks like you are getting ready to leave, having changed into a simple grey dress, and clutching your prayer book with a startled look on your face.
“Gwayne? Are you alright?” You ask, concerned for your husband’s current state- looking dazed in the middle of your bedchambers.
He does not answer your question. “I thought you were going to lie down and rest.” He blurts.
You were supposed to be getting ready to rest, he thinks, wearing your soft nightgown that I know you own because I've seen the servants filling your closet with clothes before you moved here. And you're supposed to be rubbing your eyes, sleepy and soft. I know you get like that when you're tired because once we dined together early in the morning. And I adored how you looked, one foot still in slumber, the other in wakefulness.
You smile, helpful, but so infuriatingly oblivious to his torment. “I was, yes, but then I remembered I am meeting the Septons this afternoon. We are discussing aid for the poor.” A pause. “Are you alright?” you ask again.
A broken sound emanates from your husband. A mixture of a groan and whine. He falls to his knees in front of you, hands clambering, pulling at your skirt. Gwayne knows he is a knight of the realm, but in this moment he does not care. He is a beggar at your feet. “Sweet girl. My sweet wife, please. Please do not leave.” His fingers fist tighter on your skirt.
Oof. You grunt, tugged off balance by your imploring husband. “I must go. I am new to my duties as Lady Hightower. And I can’t be seen shirking them so soon.” You rake your fingers through his auburn hair, as he presses his face firmly into the junction of your thighs. Gwayne’s hands have lost all restraint, pawing at your arse, tugging your cunt even closer into his face. With every trace of your fingers through his hair, his cock grows stiffer, straining uncomfortably into his pants. This surprises him, the reaction to your touch in his hair. All these new discoveries, particularly the unlimited bounds of his yearning, has his mind reeling.
You sigh. "By the seven, I really am late." You thread your fingers at the top of his head, and pull his gaze up to meet yours. "Oh Gwayne, what am I going to do with you?"
He strains, gazing up at you with watery eyes, "Oh dove, I-"
"Later." You tighten your hold on his long hair, secretly enjoying how much there is to tug on and manipulate in your small hand. You could feel his hot breath against your cunt, panting, building on the dampness that already gathered the moment he fell to his knees. You smile, giggling at the second whine that escapes his lips, "Have some propriety, husband." What were you going to do with him?
{Daemon Targaryen x f!Reader}
You find yourself held for ransom by a minor lord and his idiot son, and the only thing worse than your current situation is the knowledge that your husband probably won't even notice you're gone...
♡ dragon daddy is back on my screen and so I'm back writing ~xo ♡
8.4k words - Warnings: smuttt, kidnapping, blood and gore, captivity, threats of sexual assault {not carried out}, cliche heroic rescue, descriptions of violence, daemon being daemon, caraxes lil squeaks, && dragon riding in more ways than one...
You probably shouldn't have wandered off, but you were bored. The Red Keep was dreadful and you had long since run out of places to explore. So you took a secret little stroll outside and hoped you would be back before anyone noticed. Your husband certainly wasn't going to miss you, he was too busy whoring and gambling off in some far distant city. Doing whatever deplorable thing suited his fancy that day.
And now you were sitting at a dingy table, in a castle that was so run down it was more like a ruin, being held for ransom by a bunch of morons. They seemed to think they were getting some great prize by holding you hostage. As if your husband would ever lift a finger to get you back.
The chains around your wrists and ankles were heavy and uncomfortable, your skin chafing from their weight. It was difficult to lift your goblet of wine to your lips, your hand shaking from the effort.
"Drink up, Princess." Lord Byrch said from across the table, chewing on a turkey leg with the sort of vile gluttony that would make even a pig nauseous. "I won't have the Prince thinking I've mistreated you."
Your hair was tangled and your dress torn and dirty, your face bruised and bloody from the initial fight. You hadn't let them take you easily, and you were quite proud of the fact that you had managed to scratch Lord Byrch's son right across his ugly face.
You raised your goblet towards him, lifting it as high as you could, keeping your eyes locked on his before you poured it all over the floor. He watched you in silence, chewing, chewing, chewing, until a slow smile spread across his lips.
"Fiery." He commented and you narrowed your eyes, "I see why the Prince married you."
He married me because his brother and my father told him he had to. You didn't say it out loud. You wouldn't give Byrch the satisfaction of hearing your marriage reduced to its ugly, political truth. Instead, you leaned back in your chair as far as the chains would allow and let your lips curl into something cruel.
"My husband will come for me," you said, your voice surprisingly steady and confident. "And when he does, he will kill every last one of you. He'll feed your entrails to his dragon and string up what remains as a warning to any other fool who thinks they can touch what belongs to him."
Inside you only had doubts. Will he, though?
You remembered how excited you had been when the betrothal was announced. The Rogue Prince. The most dangerous man in the Seven Kingdoms, and he was to be yours. You used to dream of him sweeping you off your feet, of dragon rides and passionate nights, of a love story that would make the bards weep. You thought of your wedding night, the way his body had felt, so warm and firm, pressing you into the bed. How he had been so gentle with you, so tender. How he had called you wife and kissed your mouth as if he were trying to drink you down and drown in you.
You actually thought, for a brief, beautiful moment, that the fairy tale was real. But a year of marriage had shown you a very different side of your husband. One that was cruel and cold. One that cared only for himself.
But Byrch didn't know that, so you were satisfied when a flash of fear crossed his features and he put that bloody turkey leg down.
"Father."
Byrch's son strode in behind you, you looked over your shoulder to see the scratch you gave him still looking a little swollen, raw, and definitely not healing well…You quickly turned to face his father again before he could see you smile. But it didn't matter, the son’s hand came down hard across the back of your head. The force of the blow made stars burst across your vision, a cry tearing from your throat.
The son chuckled as he walked past you and towards his father, clapping a hand on the back of his own chair. "What have you learned?" Lord Byrch asked, gesturing for him to sit.
"King Viserys has responded to our ransom demand. He's willing to pay. Fifty thousand gold, just as we asked. He's sending envoys to negotiate the exchange."
Your stomach dropped.
Viserys. Not Daemon. Of course.
"Your good-brother is a reasonable man," Byrch said, taking another bite of his turkey leg. "He understands that gold is cheaper than blood... I knew Daemon wouldn't risk open war with his brother over a woman." He tilted his head, enjoying your silence. "You see, my lady? Your husband is on a leash, just as I predicted."
The son's smirk widened. "From what I hear, the Prince has been in Pentos this past week."
Pentos. Fucking Pentos. Of course he was in fucking Pentos. Probably so deep in his cups he forgot his own name let alone yours.
Some small, foolish part of you had hoped. But you knew better, you had always known better. It was always going to be Viserys, probably by the urging of your father... And of course the reputation of the Targaryen name. It was his duty to try and bring you back. He would pay, and send the envoys. Perhaps you would get to wear some of the better royal jewels at the next public event, a consolation prize for your suffering.
Lord Byrch waved a hand. "Take her back to her cell. No point letting her sour the wine."
The son grabbed your arm, his fingers digging into the bruises already blooming there, hauling you to your feet. You stumbled on the chains, but he didn't slow. He dragged you down a cold stone corridor with a rough hand, until he reached the heavy wooden door of your cell.
He shoved you inside and you hit the damp stone floor hard, the impact jarring through your knees and wrists, the chains clinking loudly. The door didn't close behind you, instead a shadow fell over you, the son's boots crossing the threshold, his foot landing dangerously close to your head.
"I'd watch that mouth, if I were you." He crouched down and grabbed your chin, forcing your gaze upward. His thumb pressed into the bruise on your jaw, and you bit back a hiss. "I'm sure the gold is coming," he murmured, almost thoughtfully. "But if it doesn't..." He smiled. "Father said I get to fuck you first. Might even scratch up your pretty face to match mine. Would you like that?"
Your stomach turned to ice at his words, but you didn't give him the satisfaction of a reply. Instead you held his gaze, you wouldn't look away. Wouldn't give him an inch of your fear.
He squeezed your jaw tight enough that tears welled in the corners of your eyes. "No? You don't look so pretty anymore, anyway. Not much a man would want."
He shoved your head down, pushing you into the ground before turning and walking out. The lock clicked heavily in the quiet.
You lay there for a long moment, face pressed into the floor, the taste of blood and dirt on your tongue. The son's words echoed in your mind and your whole body began to shake.
Slowly, you pushed yourself up and leaned against the wall. Your wrists were raw. Your head throbbed. And somewhere deep in your chest, a sob was building.
Daemon wasn't coming. Daemon was in Pentos, drunk, probably with a whore on each arm. And these men were going to-
You pressed your palms to your eyes and bit down on your lip until you tasted copper. You couldn't cry. You wouldn't. You were stronger than that.
But the tears came anyway, hot and humiliating, the kind you hadn't cried since you were a girl. You curled in on yourself, forehead to your knees, and let them fall. You cried for the girl who had dreamed of a gallant dragon prince. You cried for the wife who had once reached for her husband in the dark and found only cold sheets. You cried because he had been gentle once, and you had been stupid enough to believe it meant something.
He's not coming.
The thought was a cold stone in your gut.
He's not coming. He was never going to come.
Your honor and safety would be traded for gold and Daemon Targaryen would continue to forget he ever had a wife at all.
You cried until your throat was raw and your eyes burned, until you were shivering and weak.
Finally, you took a shaky breath and looked up at the small, barred window. The sky was darkening, the sun sinking beyond the distant hills. You were exhausted, the weight of your chains a terrible burden, your eyes drooping and heavy.
Sleep took you before you could think to fight it. Your head fell back against the stone.
You didn't see the small black dot that appeared on the horizon. So small one might mistake it for a distant bird. But it grew. Larger. Faster. Until the beating of wings echoed through the walls.
And the screams began.
Flames. Everywhere. But they didn't burn. They cradled you, lapped at your skin like warm water. Is this what dying feels like? It wasn't so bad. Not as bad as what Byrch's son had promised.
Screams.
You stirred. The dream flickered.
Screams. Real ones.
Your eyes cracked open. Smoke stung your throat. The cell was awash in orange light. Outside the small window, the world was nothing but flame. The castle was on fire.
And then you heard it. A sound you would know anywhere; a long, stretched-out shriek that was half roar and half scream, and yet all dragon.
Caraxes.
Something like relief washed through you, even as your heart beat faster. If the castle was on fire and Caraxes was outside, then that could only mean-
Footsteps. Heavy. Unhurried.
You scrambled backward, pressing yourself against the far wall. The lock scraped, the mechanism groaning, and you held your breath as the door swung open.
Byrch's son filled the frame. His face was streaked with soot and blood, his eyes wild. The smug cruelty from before was gone, burned away by fear. Fear of dragonfire and its vicious rider.
"You-" His voice was high and shaky as he grabbed a fistful of your tangled hair, yanking you to your feet. "You're coming with me. Now. H-he'll gut me if he finds me, but I'll make sure you-"
His words stopped, because the tip of a blade punched through the front of his throat.
He released you. Stumbled. His hands flew to his neck, but the blood was already pouring, too fast, too much, and his eyes went wide. Confused. Then dim. Then he collapsed at your feet. The last thing he ever heard was you screaming at the sight of his throat gaping open.
You stood there, shaking, staring down at the body in shock. He had been threatening you a heartbeat ago. Now he was just meat.
And then you saw him.
Daemon stood in the threshold, his dark armor was slick with crimson, his face streaked with ash. His pale hair was braided and he held a dagger in one hand, blood dripping from its edge.
For a moment, neither of you moved. Your gaze locked. The crackle of flames and distant screams filled the silence.
"Wife."
He sheathed the dagger and crossed to you in three quick strides. You couldn't speak, couldn't move, but you let him take your face in his hands. His fingers were gentle as he tilted your chin this way and that, inspecting the cuts and bruises, a muscle in his jaw jumping as he did.
You lifted your wrists to show him the heavy shackles. He stepped back and unsheathed his sword and brought it down upon the chains. They fell from your limbs and clattered to the ground.
"I thought you were in Pentos," you managed, your voice hoarse and raw.
He tilted his head. "Why would I be in Pentos?"
"They told me-"
He chuckled, low and humorless, and reached up to push a loose lock of hair from your face. "Pentos?"
You opened your mouth to yell at him. To demand he tell you where he'd been and why you'd spent days believing he'd abandoned you. But a shout echoed from the corridor, followed by the clash of steel.
Daemon's hand found your wrist. "Stay behind me."
He pulled you through the doorway, and the corridor was chaos. Smoke billowed, thick and choking. Two of Byrch's guards rounded the corner, swords drawn, their faces twisted with panic as they laid eyes on your husband.
Daemon moved before you could breathe.
He met the first guard head-on, his sword singing as it caught the man's blade, disarming him in a single twisting motion. The second guard lunged, aiming for Daemon's exposed side, but Daemon spun, driving his elbow into the man's face, then burying his blade in his chest before he could fall.
The first guard tried to scramble for his fallen blade, but Daemon's boot came down on his wrist, and the crack of bone made you feel sick. Then Daemon swung and the guard's head rolled away.
It took seconds. Less.
"Come." He didn't look back, just reached out his arm for you to grab.
There were three more guards in the next passage. Daemon didn't slow. He shoved you backwards, his body a wall between you and the attackers, and then he struck them like a viper. His blade was a blur. Parrying, slashing, driving through armor like it was parchment. One man fell with a gurgle. Another dropped his sword and tried to run; Daemon's dagger found the back of his head. The third lunged, aiming for you, and Daemon caught him by the throat as he tried to rush past him, lifting him off the ground, driving his sword through the man's gut before letting him crumple.
The corridor was slick with blood. Daemon's chest heaved as he retrieved his dagger from the guards head. Then he stalked towards the exit.
"Keep moving."
You stumbled after him, past bodies, past flames licking at tapestries and wooden beams. The heat was suffocating, but Daemon's pace was relentless. He kicked open a side door and more guards spilled out and Daemon carved through them without hesitation.
And then he pulled you onward.
Finally, the great doors to the courtyard loomed ahead. Daemon didn't slow. He raised his boot and kicked them open.
The smell outside hit you like a wall. Fire raged across the courtyard walls, and the air was thick with smoke and the stench of burning flesh.
But the fighting was over.
Byrch's men were on their knees.
Dozens of them. Lines of them, forced onto the cobblestones with gold cloaks behind them, swords at their throats. Targaryen household guards stood at attention, their armor black and red, their faces hard and grim. And above it all, perched on the broken walls like a god of old, was Caraxes. His long neck craned toward the sky, and when he opened his maw, a plume of flame burst forth.
The heat made the air shimmer. Byrch's men flinched. Some wept.
Daemon walked you through them.
His hand wrapped around yours, and he led you past the kneeling men with a slow, deliberate stride. He wanted them to see. He wanted them to know. That the prince's wife was alive. That he had come for her. That this wreckage, this blood, this brutality; was the price of touching what belonged to him.
Your bare feet left bloody prints on the stone. Your dress was torn, your hair tangled, your face bruised. But you walked with your chin held high, because Daemon was holding your hand, and you would not let these men see you break.
At the center of the courtyard, Byrch knelt alone. His face was pale, streaked with sweat and ash, and his hands were bound behind him. Two gold cloaks held him in place.
"Byrch."
Your husband's voice was like silk, calm and smooth, his arm came around your waist and pulled you against his side. He kissed your temple gently before letting you go, gently guiding you to a waiting gold cloak. The guard wrapped you in a clean cloak, the targaryen sigil stitched into the fine material. It struck you in that moment, that this was all for you. His men. His dragon. The blood on his hands. Every corpse in this courtyard was a gift laid at your feet.
The lord's head snapped up. His eyes darted to you, then back to Daemon. "Mercy, my Prince. Please. You've already taken everything. Mercy."
Daemon cocked his head. "Everything?"
"Mercy," Byrch begged again. "I beg you-"
"Begging," Daemon said, chuckling to himself before he placed the point of his blade against Byrch's throat.
Byrch's eyes were wide, his breath coming in short, desperate gasps.
Daemon leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Why should I show you mercy?"
"Because I- because-"
"What's done is done," Daemon smiled, and it was the cruellest thing you'd ever seen.
Then he drew his sword back. And plunged it straight down Byrch's throat.
The gurgle was wet, horrible. Daemon pushed the blade deeper, through flesh and bone, until the tip emerged from the back of Byrch's neck. He held it there for a long moment, staring into the lord's empty eyes, before he wrenched the sword free.
Byrch's body slumped. Daemon wiped the blade clean on the dead man's clothes.
Byrch's remaining men cried out. Some begging, some cursing, a few trying to rise. The gold cloaks drove them back down to their knees.
Daemon looked at the prisoners, then at his men. He nodded once.
A flash of steel. A spray of blood. And without a single word, one by one, the kneeling men fell.
You watched, frozen, as the courtyard became a slaughterhouse. It was over in moments. Dozens of bodies lay sprawled across the cobblestones, their blood pooling together, running in dark rivulets between the cracks.
Daemon turned to you.
He crossed the distance to you in an instant, his hand finding yours again. His fingers were slick with blood, but you didn't pull away. He lifted your hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to your knuckles.
"Burn it," he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "I want no trace left of this place. Take everything of value and bring it to Dragonstone."
"Yes, my Prince." His men shouted out in unison.
He pulled you away, past the bodies and towards where Caraxes waited. And that's when you saw the way he was favoring his right leg, barely, but you saw it.
"You're hurt," you breathed.
He didn't slow. Didn't respond. But you knew he heard you.
You wanted to argue, to grab his arm and make him stop; but then you were at Caraxes's side, and the dragon's heat washed over you, and your words died in your throat.
A sudden base instinct to flee gripped you, the sight of the great red dragon enough to freeze your limbs. But Daemon's grip was firm, his pace steady, and before you could process what was happening, he was lifting you up onto the dragon's back.
He climbed up behind you, a grunt escaping him as he swung his leg over. His arms came around your waist, and you felt the warmth of him, solid and real.
"Sovès" Daemon yelled.
Caraxes roared, a long, high sound, and lifted his wings. For a brief, terrifying moment, you were weightless.
And then the dragon launched itself into the air.
You didn't scream, didn't even cry out. You couldn't. Your mind was still catching up, your thoughts a jumble. Your mouth fell open, and your hands grasped at the saddle, your fingers digging in so hard your knuckles turned white.
The air rushed past, and you looked down, and the sight made you dizzy. The castle shrank beneath you, the bodies, the smoke, the flame. Everything was so small. The world was vast and the sky was endless and you were soaring.
A laugh bubbled up, the thrill of it filling your lungs. Then tears. Tears because you were safe and Daemon had come for you and it wasn't a dream and your chest was so tight and you were gasping for air-
You leaned back against your husband and sobbed, tears streaking down your cheeks, the sound swallowed by the wind.
Daemon's arms tightened around you, and the feeling of him there, his heartbeat against your spine, made you cry harder.
"Paghā" he whispered against your ear, the word rumbling through his chest. You didn't know Valyrian, but the tone was clear.
It was alright.
You were safe.
At first you thought you were going to Dragonstone, you could smell the salt in the air, the tang of the sea.
But no, Caraxes moved south, along the coast leading to Dorne. Daemon kept a firm grip on the reins, his arms wrapped tight around your waist. He was silent.
Your sobs faded as you flew over the waves, and you settled in, watching the water, and the horizon, the sky painted in shades of red, orange and purple as the sun sank beyond the distant peaks.
Finally, Caraxes began to descend. He landed gracefully near a stone tower that looked out over the ocean, his body shuddering and his claws digging deep into the ground.
Your heart was still beating wildly, and you were grateful when Daemon slid down first and offered his hand. You took it, his warm touch bringing you back to earth, and let him guide you down.
Caraxes snorted and shook his wings, the gust of wind nearly knocking you off your feet. Daemon chuckled, pulling you against his side as the dragon's tail swished and he launched himself into the air, his huge wings beating so hard that dust billowed.
"Where are we?" you asked.
"A place I keep," he said, already moving past you toward the tower door.
You followed, watching the way he favored his right leg, the slight hitch in his stride he was trying to hide. He shouldered open the door and held it open, gesturing for you to enter.
The tower was not what you expected. Not the cold, damp ruin it looked to be from the outside. It was well furnished, with a large bed in the corner piled high with furs and pillows, a table bearing wine, bread wrapped in cloth, a basin of clean water. The hearth was cold, but fresh wood was laid and waiting.
This wasn't some abandoned hole he used for hunting. This was meant for something far more intimate.
"Is this where you bring your whores?" You didn't mean to say it, but the words escaped anyway, the bitterness in them a surprise.
"Why would I do that?" He crossed the room and grabbed a flagon, filling a cup with wine.
"Because they're easier than a wife," you snapped.
He laughed, and you bristled, but didn't respond. You watched him let out a quiet groan of pain as he knelt in front of the fire. It made something twist in your chest. He grabbed the wood and flint, struck a spark, and coaxed the flames to life. You watched as the flames licked up the dry wood, slowly consuming it.
"Your leg," you said, when he didn't speak.
"It's fine."
"No, it isn't."
He didn't answer. He was staring into the flames.
"Daemon."
He glanced over his shoulder at you, and then rose to his full height, turning to face you fully. He looked tired. Dark shadows hung under his eyes , and there was a pallor to his skin beneath the ash and blood. You hadn't noticed it before, when you'd seen him in the castle. He must have been riding all day, flying, killing...and he hadn't stopped. Not for rest, not for food, not until he had you back.
"I'll live," he said. "Sit."
You stayed standing. "Let me at least help you with your armor."
His lips twitched, but he nodded, sitting down heavily next to the table. You crossed to him, your hands reaching for the buckles of his pauldrons before you could second-guess yourself. He watched you, silent, his eyes tracking your movements as you worked the leather straps free.
The first piece of armor clattered to the floor. Then the second. Each buckle you loosened revealed more of him. The sweat-dampened tunic beneath, the way his shoulders sagged slightly without the weight of the steel.
"Did they hurt you badly?" he asked, his voice a soft rasp.
"They wanted to," you replied. "They said a lot of things."
You weren't sure why you told him. Perhaps because you wanted him to know what had happened. What might have happened if he hadn't come. Or maybe you simply needed to say it. To put the words into the air.
He reached up to where your hand was struggling with a strap at the back of his shoulder. He wrapped his fingers around yours, stilling them for just a moment before he helped you work the rest of the buckles free.
"I should have killed them slower."
"And more creatively." You smiled despite yourself.
He returned the smile, but it didn't reach his eyes.
You stepped back as he rose and began stripping the rest of his armor. Greaves, gauntlets, bracers, until finally he was free. His white underclothes were stained red, blood seeping from the wound in his thigh.
"That needs stitching."
"I'm not some green knight who needs tending." He pulled a dagger from his belt and cut the fabric away, revealing a jagged cut down the outside of his thigh, the edges dark with blood. "See? It's not deep. It'll heal."
"Fine." You threw up your hands and turned away, anger simmering beneath your skin.
You could hear him moving, and you imagined him grabbing his sword and leaving. You wouldn't care. Let him leave. Let him go fly off wherever the hell he pleased.
But he didn't. Instead, his hands came around your waist, his warm breath tickling the shell of your ear.
"Paghā," he whispered, his voice low and soothing.
"What does that mean?"
"It means," he murmured, kissing your shoulder gently, "breathe."
"Breathe," you repeated.
"Aye, you're shaking."
You hadn't noticed, not until his hands slid over yours and took hold, his chest warm against your back. He brought one of your hands to his mouth, pressing his lips to your knuckles, looking over the raw flesh around your wrists.
"You look to be the one who needs tending," he said.
"I'm fine," you echoed his own words.
"Not yet." He led you over to the basin and guided you to sit on the bed, and then he dipped a cloth into the water, and began to clean the wounds.
His touch was gentle, the water soothing. You watched him in silence, your gaze tracing the line of his brow, the sharp angles of his face. Flashes of him fighting Byrch's men filled your mind. You'd never seen a man kill before.
"Why did you come for me?" you asked.
He paused, before dripping the cloth into the bowl.
"Because you're my wife."
"Am I?" You couldn't keep the bitterness from your voice.
"Do you think I'd have gone through the trouble otherwise?"
You didn't know what to say to that.
He finished cleaning the last of the wounds, then wrapped a bandage around each wrist, the feeling of his fingers on your skin sending a shiver through you.
"It doesn't mean anything," you said. "Being your wife."
"Make meaning then."
He rose and crossed the room, his movements stiff, and filled another cup with wine. He drank it quickly, then refilled the cup and came back to where you sat.
"Drink."
You took the cup, and sipped. The wine was rich and sweet, and after a few swallows you felt warm. You let out a slow breath and met his gaze.
"I didn't think you would come."
He said nothing.
"They told me Viserys was to pay a ransom," you went on. "I thought-"
"I'd let my brother handle the responsibility of saving my wife?" He smirked.
You looked away. The room was warm now, the fire roaring and the heat suffocating. You rose and went to the door, opening it, and the cool air rushed over you, making you sigh.
The sun was nearly gone, the stars bright in the sky, and the waves lapped gently against the cliffs below. It was beautiful, and quiet. It made the fear of the past days feel distant.
"If I matter so much, why have I not seen you since our wedding night?" You kept your gaze on the horizon, too afraid to look at him, all the pent up emotions you'd held inside threatening to spill over.
He let out a quiet laugh, a short, derisive sound, and rose, coming to stand beside you. He leaned against the door frame and looked out at the night sky.
"What do you want me to say?" he asked.
"The truth."
"You won't like it."
"That doesn't change it." You finally turned to look at him, a sudden surge of anger rising.
"I don't know how to be a husband." He said simply, his jaw tense. "I didn't want a wife. I didn't choose this. So, what should I have done? Made empty promises? Made you think you were special? That I was besotted? What was the point?"
He pushed off the doorframe and walked down the steps, and you stood frozen, staring at his back.
"You are right," he called over his shoulder. "This is where I bring my whores."
He kept walking. Away from the tower, down the path towards the shore.
Your heart was pounding. Anger, pain, frustration, relief; they were all warring inside you, and it made your head spin. Your feet carried you after him, the grass soft beneath them, the path winding down to the sand.
By the time you reached the beach, he had already stopped at the water's edge. He didn't turn around. Didn't acknowledge you. He just reached for the hem of his tunic and pulled it over his head in one fluid motion, the fabric stained dark with blood and ash. His boots followed, then his breeches, until he stood bare in the moonlight, the waves lapping at his feet.
He walked into the sea without a word.
You stood frozen on the sand, watching him wade deeper until the water reached his waist. He stopped there, facing the horizon, letting the surf wash over him. The cold didn't seem to bother him, or if it did, he didn't show it. He just stood there, washing the gore from his body.
You should have let him be. Should have turned around and gone back to the tower, wrapped yourself in furs, and waited for him to return... or not return. But something in you refused to let him walk away again.
You reached back and worked loose the ties of your dress, letting the fabric pool at your feet, the night air raising goosebumps across your bare skin. The shift followed a moment later.
The cold hit you like a slap as you stepped into the surf, the water shocking and sharp against your cuts. You hissed through your teeth but kept going, wading out until you were beside him, the water lapping just below your ribs. He still didn't turn, but you saw his jaw tighten.
The waves rolled in, cold and rhythmic, pulling at your legs. Neither of you spoke for a long moment. Just the sound of the sea and the distant cry of gulls.
"What was your plan?" you asked finally. "To come, rescue me, and then ignore me again? Go back to drinking, fighting and whoring?"
"Something like that."
You crossed your arms over your chest, though it did little to ward off the cold. You weren't sure what to say. He had given you no false promises, no declaration of love. But your wedding night was etched in your mind, a memory you couldn't let go.
"Then why did you treat me so kindly on our wedding night? Why were you..." You trailed off, your face suddenly warm despite the cold.
He laughed, a short, loud bark that echoed across the water. "Would you rather I have hurt you? Is that what you're asking?"
"No!" You scowled, feeling foolish. "I mean...you were gentle."
He finally turned to face you, the moonlight catching the sharp lines of his face. "What would you have preferred? A whore's treatment?"
"Shut up."
He laughed again, a rich, deep sound that made your stomach flip. His hand came up, brushing a lock of hair from your cheek.
"If it makes you feel better, my wife," he said, his voice dropping lower, "I enjoyed our wedding night very much." He shifted closer, his hand sliding around your waist, pulling you against the warmth of his chest. "Maybe I'll enjoy it again tonight."
You shoved his shoulders, but you were smiling despite yourself. "I don't even like you."
"I just saved your life. I'd say you should start liking me."
"You are a terrible husband."
"I'm the worst." He kissed your jaw, his mouth moving along the line of your neck, his breath warm against your cold skin. "Tell me how terrible."
You let him kiss along your skin, a soft sigh escaping.
"You're selfish."
"And?"
"A cheater."
"Keep going."
"Infuriating."
"More."
"Unkind."
"Very."
He tilted your chin up, and you let him, his lips were a breath from yours, and then you turned your face away. Not hard. Just away.
He went still. The water lapped against your ribs. You felt his breath on your cheek, unsteady. His hand didn't leave your jaw, but he didn't force you back.
"So what am I, then? Just another whore you'll leave in the morning?" you asked, the question quiet in the night. You weren't sure you wanted an answer. You were already regretting the words. They made you feel weak, desperate. But they were the truth.
He slowly let go of your chin, letting his hand drop back into the water. He looked at you, really looked at you, and you saw something there in the moonlight, something raw and unguarded.
"A cage," he said. "My brother. Your father. This marriage."
He paused, then reached up, his thumb brushing over the bruise on your cheekbone. "And you," he added, softly. "It was-" He broke off, looking away across the water. When he spoke again, his voice was rough, almost angry. "It was good. And I didn't want it to be."
You stared at him.
He turned back to you, and his eyes were dark, unreadable. "I don't get given things."
"Well this might surprise you," you said, a sudden surge of boldness washing over you. "But I am not a thing."
He looked at you for a long moment, then let out a short, sharp laugh. "I'm aware." His gaze dropped to your lips. "That's the problem."
"You've never once asked me what I want."
He tilted his head. "What do you want?"
You didn't know what to say, your mind was racing. The answer was on the tip of your tongue, but you were scared to say it. Scared he'd laugh, or worse, agree. But you were tired of being scared. And you were standing naked in the sea with your husband who had just slaughtered a castle for you.
"I want a husband who doesn't ignore me," you said, your voice barely a whisper. "One who maybe, occasionally, eats dinner with me. I want to not feel so alone in my own chambers."
You paused, gathering your courage. "And I... I want you to stop being a stranger to me."
"Anything else?" he asked, and you couldn't tell if he was mocking you.
You took a shaky breath. "I don't know... I didn't hate that ride on Caraxes... It was thrilling."
A slow, genuine smile spread across his lips. "No?"
You shook your head, a small smile of your own. "Perhaps the occasional dragon ride."
"I can arrange that," he said, pulling you close again. His hands were on your waist, and yours rested on his chest, feeling the steady rhythm of his heart. "Is that all, wife?"
"I'm freezing," you admitted, shivering now as the cold seeped into your bones.
He let out a soft chuckle, his arms wrapping around you, lifting you effortlessly. You wrapped your legs around his waist, your arms around his neck, and he started wading back to the shore.
You should have protested. You should have told him to put you down, that he was still wounded, that you could walk. But his eyes were fixed on yours, and you were in his arms, and all you could think was how safe he made you feel.
"Better?" he asked, his mouth close to your ear.
"Getting warmer," you murmured.
He carried you back up the path, into the warmth of the tower, and set you gently on the bed. The furs were soft, and you sighed, letting your body sink into them. A real bed. Clean. Safe. The feeling was so overwhelming that for a moment you just lay there, eyes closed, breathing.
When you opened them, Daemon was kneeling by the hearth, feeding logs to the fire. You watched him through the haze of your exhaustion. The broad plane of his back, the way the firelight caught the edges of old scars, the careful way he stacked the wood.
He rose, and you saw him favor his right leg again. A hitch he smoothed over almost instantly. Almost.
"How's your leg?"
"You will probably be a widow by morning," he deadpanned.
"I doubt that." You couldn't hide your smile, and his answering grin sent a flush of warmth through you.
He crossed to the bed and sat on the edge, not touching you, just… there… and you realized he was waiting. For you to sleep. For you to speak. For something. He didn't know what to do with a woman in his bed who wasn't there for his pleasure.
You propped yourself up on your elbows, the furs pooling around your waist. The fire had warmed the room enough that the air no longer bit at your bare skin. You were acutely aware that you were both still naked, but the awareness didn't feel urgent. It just felt… present.
"You're very far away," you said.
He glanced down at the small space between you. "This is far?"
"For a man who just saved my life and carried me naked up a cliff…yes."
His lips twitched. "I was giving you room to breathe."
"How considerate."
"I have my moments."
You shifted, sitting up fully, letting the furs fall away. He watched you move, his gaze steady but unhurried. He wasn't going to reach for you. You understood, suddenly, that he was waiting for you to decide. If you wanted him, you'd have to give him something. The realization was terrifying and thrilling in equal measure.
You reached out and pressed your palm flat against his chest. His skin was warm from the fire. You felt his heartbeat, steady and slow, under your hand.
"What are you doing?" he asked, his voice low.
"I don't know," you admitted. "I've never done this before."
"Done what?"
"Take what I want."
Something flickered in his eyes. Surprise, maybe. Interest. His hand came up and covered yours, pressing it more firmly against his chest. "And what is it you want?"
You swallowed. "I'm figuring it out."
He laughed, short and rough and utterly charmed. "Take your time, then."
You moved before you could talk yourself out of it, shifting onto your knees and then, carefully, deliberately, climbing into his lap. It wasn't graceful. Your knee caught his injured thigh and he grunted, but his hands came up to your hips anyway, steadying you.
"What's all this for?" he murmured.
"Because I want to."
"Not because I rescued you?"
"No." You met his eyes. "Though… you are owed thanks."
His grin was slow and sharp. "And you want to thank me with your-"
You pressed your fingers to his mouth before he could finish. "Do not say it."
He kissed your fingertips.
"I don’t like crude words. I am a lady."
"You are a lady who is currently sitting naked in my lap."
"Then stop talking and let me concentrate."
He leaned back on his hands, the picture of obedience, his eyes dancing. "By all means."
You glared at him, but it was hard to maintain, with the way he was looking at you like you were the most entertaining thing he'd seen in years. You were suddenly, acutely aware of your nakedness. The way your thighs bracketed his hips, the heat of him, the fact that you had no idea what to do next.
Your cheeks flushed.
His smile turned knowing. "I recall how shy you were on our wedding night."
"I recall you being rather drunk."
"That, I was." He sat up, his chest now a breath from yours, one hand coming up to brush the hair from your shoulder. "You were prettier than I expected."
"Is that meant to be a compliment?"
"It's the truth."
You looked at him, the sharp lines of his face, the pale lashes, the mouth that had just confessed more in the sea than you'd heard him say in a year. He was still a stranger in so many ways. But he was yours. And he was here. And he wasn't running.
"You're still too far away," you said.
"I'm right here."
"Then kiss me."
His eyes held yours for a long moment, searching. Then, slowly, he leaned in and brushed his lips against yours. It was deep and unhurried and certain, his mouth slanting over yours like he'd been waiting for you to ask. His hands slid into your hair, tilting your head back, and you made a sound against his lips, a soft, needy thing you didn't recognize as your own.
When he finally pulled back, you were breathing harder than you wanted to admit. He looked far too pleased with himself.
"You're very good at that," you said, a little accusatory.
"Years of practice," he smirked.
You shoved at his shoulder, but you were smiling.
"I don't want to hear about your practice."
"Then don't ask."
You wound your arms around his neck, pulling him closer, your hands tangling in the soft hair at his nape. "I want to be the only practice."
His smirk faded. His gaze was serious now, searching your face. Something in your chest tightened, an old, familiar fear. You'd said too much. But then he was kissing you again, and this kiss was different. Deeper. Possessive. It wasn't a question or an answer; it was a statement. Mine.
Your body responded before your mind could catch up. You shifted in his lap, trying to find a better angle, and the movement brought your bodies flush together. He was half-hard beneath you, the heat of him pressing against your thigh, and the contact made you gasp against his mouth. You'd done that. The thought sent a sharp, unfamiliar thrill through you.
His hand slid down your chest, over the swell of your breast, the pad of his thumb brushing against your nipple, which pebbled instantly at the contact. He moved lower, tracing the curve of your hip, the dip of your waist, until his fingers found the heat between your legs. He paused there, a feather-light touch against your seam, and you held your breath.
"Daemon," you whispered, the name a plea against his lips.
He answered you with a touch, a slow, deliberate glide of his fingers through your wetness. Your hips jerked, a moan escaping your lips. He found the small, hidden spot at the apex of your thighs and circled it once, twice, a gentle pressure that made your toes curl. He was watching your face, absorbing every flicker of pleasure that crossed your features, and the intensity of his gaze was almost as intoxicating as the pleasure itself.
You tried to kiss him again, needing the anchor of his mouth, but he pulled back slightly, his focus entirely on the movement of his hand. He slid one finger inside you, a slow, deliberate intrusion that stretched you, filled you. Your head fell back, your neck arching as he began to move, a steady, maddening rhythm that had you rocking against his hand. He let you move with him, let you find a pace that built the tension in your core, a hot, tightening coil. You were losing yourself, the world narrowing to the sensation of him touching you. The sounds you made were uninhibited, wanton, and you didn't care.
Just as you felt the precipice of your release, he pulled away. You made a sound of protest, your eyes flying open to meet his. He was smirking, that infuriating, handsome smirk that made you want to hit him and kiss him in equal measure.
"Why did you stop?" you demanded, your voice embarrassingly breathless.
"Impatient," he chuckled, not ungently. He shifted you in his lap, adjusting your position until you were straddling him, your knees on either side of his hips, your core flush against his hard length. "I thought you wanted to be in charge."
Your breath hitched. The reality of him, hot and heavy against your most sensitive flesh, was a shock. You could feel your own wetness slicking him. The power was yours to take.
"I am," you said, though the claim felt less certain than you wanted it to be. Your hands on his shoulders trembled.
"Then take what you want, wife."
The challenge was clear in his eyes. You braced yourself, your hands flat on his chest, and lifted your hips. He held himself steady for you, one hand gripping the base of his cock, guiding the head to your entrance. The slow press as you began to lower yourself was a sweet, aching stretch. Your body welcomed him, a familiar, perfect fit that you remembered from your wedding night, but it felt different now. More intense.
When you'd taken him to the hilt, you paused, adjusting to the feeling of him. He was breathing hard, his eyes locked on where your bodies joined, the muscles in his neck taut. His self-control was admirable, and you wondered what would happen if you pushed it.
You started to move. Tentative, at first, just a slow roll of your hips that made you both gasp. You found a rhythm, unpracticed and a little unsteady, but it was yours. His hands stayed on your hips, but he let you lead, his head falling back slightly, his fingers digging into you tighter and tighter. The sight of him undone beneath you sent a surge of confidence through your veins.
"Does that feel good, husband?" you asked, and the word came out teasing.
His laugh was half groan. "You're a fast learner."
Your pace quickened, your thighs burning with the effort, but the pleasure was building again, that tight coil low in your belly. His thumb found that spot once more, pressing in time with your movements, and the combination shattered your rhythm. You cried out, your nails raking down his chest, and he sat up suddenly, one arm banding around your waist to keep you steady as you came apart around him.
He let you ride it out, your face buried in his neck, your body shuddering. Then, gently, he shifted. You felt yourself being lowered onto your back, the furs soft beneath you, his weight a warm, solid anchor, his forearms braced on either side of your head.
"Look at me."
His voice was rough. You opened your eyes, and the firelight caught the sharp lines of his face, the vulnerability he was letting you see. His thrusts stayed slow, deliberate, his gaze never leaving yours.
"You're beautiful."
The words were whispered against your lips, and for a moment you thought you imagined them. But he said it again, and again, each repetition timed with a deep, rolling thrust, until the pleasure crested and broke and you were falling apart beneath him, his name a broken cry on your lips.
He followed moments later, a low groan tearing from his throat as he spilled inside you, his forehead pressing to yours. For a long moment, neither of you moved. The fire crackled. The sea whispered against the cliffs below.
He pulled out gently and rolled to his side, but he didn't let you go. He pulled you against his chest, tucking your head beneath his chin, and you felt his lips brush your hair.
"Still hate me?" he asked, and you could hear the smirk in his voice without needing to see it.
"A little less," you whispered, running your hand down the side of his face. He caught it and pressed a kiss to your palm.
It should have felt strange to lie naked in the arms of a man who had, up until this afternoon, been little more than a stranger. But instead it felt comfortable. Safe. Like something that had been waiting for you both to stop running.
"Perhaps I was hasty," you mumbled, the words slurred and soft with exhaustion.
"In what regard?" His voice rumbled under your ear.
"I do think you could be a good husband, after all."
His arm tightened around your waist. "I can try."
"You'll be here when I wake? You won't run off?" You murmured sleepily. "If you're going to run, just tell me now."
"I'll be here, little wife. Sleep."
Sleep took hold before you could say more. Your last conscious thoughts were of how safe you felt, in this man's arms, in this strange little tower on the edge of the sea. And the strange realization that he was no longer a stranger. He was yours, and you were his.
He was still there in the morning, wrapped in furs and snoring softly beside you, your legs tangled with his. You smiled against his chest. It was a good beginning.
summary: sent to oldtown as a ward beneath your cousin lord ormund hightower's protection, you learn there are some vows that are easier to preach than to keep.
pairing: ormund hightower x targtower!reader
content/warnings: 18+ (mdni), icky guardian/ward relationship, canon-typical incest (cousins), age gap (~20 years), grooming, religious abuse and religious guilt, emotional manipulation, coercive control, possessiveness, severe power imbalance, forced declarations of affection, physical intimidation/rough handling, parental abandonment, references to childhood neglect, implied sexualized ritual, canon-typical misogyny, canon divergent, no use of y/n
word count: 6.8k
A/N: i need psychological help for how badly i need this man fr. originally had this planned as a oneshot, but i kept writing more...and more...and more...and felt like i was going to rush through the material if i tried to fit it all in one, so now we have a three-part series that i am very excited for you all to read :) hope you guys enjoy this freak of a man AND to see how freaked out i make these two hehehe! and excited for you all to see what ormund means when he reminds reader it is the seventh day...hmm...wonder what he has in store... also, fun drinking game: take a shot every time reader says "yes, my lord"
MASTERLIST
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The other side of the bed was empty when you awoke, though the sheets remained warm and rumpled. Eyes still heavy from the lingering seeds of sleep, your hand reached across the mattress, patting until it found the warm hollow of where his body had lain. Ormund was almost always up before dawn.
“Idleness is as plain a sin as vanity or greed,” he liked to say. “It begets indulgence, indulgence begets excess, and excess begets unfaithfulness.”
Unfaithfulness, of course, was inexcusable.
The bedchamber was still dim, with only the first suggestion of morning creeping beneath the shutters. Beyond the walls of the Hightower, you could hear the bells of the Citadel begin their first tolls.
Ormund, as expected, was already kneeling before the small altar in the corner of the room. He wore only his linen sleeping shirt and breeches, and though his back was turned to you, you could see one hand slowly turning the pages of his weathered copy of The Seven-Pointed Star and hear the low murmur of passages he had committed to memory.
In all the years you had lived in Oldtown, never once had Ormund deviated from this morning ritual. You remember the first time you had seen it. You had been a small child then, prone to wandering from your own chambers in the middle of the night into this one, back when it had belonged to the late Lady Hightower as much as it did her husband. She had always been kind to you. Like a true mother, when your own was so far away.
Whenever sleep would not come, or the young Hightower boys had filled your head with tales of monsters lurking beneath the floor, you would creep from your bed and patter barefoot down the stone passage. You would ease open the heavy, creaking door and stand silently at the foot of the canopied bed until Lady Hightower stirred. She would always lift the blankets for you. From his side of the bed, Ormund would grumble some half-hearted objection about indulgence and the necessity of teaching you independence, but Lady Hightower paid him little mind. She would draw you into the warmth between them and promise that no monster in Oldtown would dare pass through their chamber door.
Even after she died, you did not cease coming.
It hurt, at first. To lie in the bed where she had once held you, the space now empty without her. Ormund never objected to your staying. Though he remained stoic and stony throughout his own grief, perhaps there was comfort for him, too, in not being left to sleep alone. When you wept silently into her old pillow, he would smooth your hair back from your face and say nothing.
The habit endured long after your tears had dried and the black mourning clothes had been packed away. Some nights, you would attempt an honest effort at remaining in your own chambers, only to find yourself once again padding down the candlelit passage towards his.
Ormund never turned you away. Now it was his hand that lifted the blankets for you to crawl beneath. Now it was his arm that pulled you in, wrapped around your waist in the night, his face that pressed into your hair, his body whose warmth you sought beneath the covers.
The servants of the Hightower knew that your own chambers were little more than a formality, so seldom occupied that dust gathered upon the bed. You slept in your cousin Ormund’s chambers, you bathed there, you dressed there. Nearly every trace of your daily life had migrated into his rooms, until there was little left in your own to suggest they had ever belonged to you.
It was only natural. After Lady Hightower’s death, the keeping of the household had fallen into your hands. It was you who approved the servants’ schedules, arranged the seating at feasts, and received the wives and daughters of visiting noble houses. Some might have found it strange that Ormund’s ward should occupy so much of his late wife’s place while remaining neither wed nor formally mistress of his household. Stranger still, perhaps, that if anyone entered Lord Ormund’s chambers before the sunrise, they would find him curled around his ward– Queen Alicent’s youngest daughter– his body arranged in the shape a husband’s would make.
If they did find it strange, no one within Oldtown had the courage to remark upon it.
“You’re awake.”
You propped yourself up on your elbows to watch as Ormund closed the prayer book and rose from the altar.
“Yes,” you answered as he crossed the chamber to the washstand. He dipped his hands into the porcelain basin and brought the water to his face. “I heard you praying.”
Ormund hummed as he dried himself with the folded linen cloth laid fresh each morning beside the ewer. “It would serve you well to join me in morning prayer.”
You ducked your head. “Yes, my lord.”
“I think only of your soul. One burdened by the sins of your…Targaryen…forefathers should labor all the more harder to absolve herself of them.”
“Yes, my lord.”
You waited for him to chide you further, or launch into one of his soliloquies on how faithfulness did not sleep merely because the sun had yet to rise. Ormund did none of that.
Instead, he made his way to the bed and lowered himself onto the edge beside you, his weight dipping the mattress. Ormund lifted one hand to cup your cheek and ran his thumb gently beneath your eye. You nuzzled into his touch without a thought.
“We will have visitors from the Reach in the Hightower later today. In particular, Lord Godric Ashford will call upon me this morning in my solar,” he said, as casually as if he were discussing the day’s weather.
Your brows rose. You knew that several noble houses from across the Reach were expected at the Hightower in the coming days for discussions of taxes, grain, and the season’s feasts. Hosting them was hardly unusual. Nor was it unusual for one of their unmarried sons to request a private audience with your guardian. “Lord Robert’s son?”
“Yes, unfortunately,” Ormund mused, seemingly more occupied with gently stroking his thumb back and forth over your cheekbone. “I assume he intends to ask for your hand in marriage.”
Your stomach twisted in a mixture of dread and excitement. Lowering your eyes, you worried at a stray thread in the coverlet. “Do you…do you think he might be suitable?”
The thumb on your cheek stopped. Ormund’s face tightened slightly, as though some rancid smell had entered the room. “That, my dear, remains to be seen.”
He stood from the bed, and you instantly missed the warmth of his touch. You watched him cross to the wardrobe and pull open the carved doors, retrieving his clothes for the day.
“But you will still hear him, yes?”
“That is what I have agreed to,” Ormund answered with obvious reluctance, stepping into his breeches. “And I suppose I must keep my word. I will hear his presentation, just as I have heard the others before him.”
He slipped his arms into the doublet, turning to you as he began buttoning it. “You will not concern yourself with the meeting. You were entrusted to me for good reason. Namely, my rectitude and discernment in such matters. You would not want to be betrothed to some ignorant oaf, would you?”
“No, my lord.”
“And you know that I have only your best interests at heart, including the question of what sort of man you should be given to. Correct?”
“Yes, my lord.”
Ormund smiled affectionately. “Good girl.”
Your heart squeezed at the praise. It had always been that way with Ormund, desperately seeking any type of reassurance that you were saved. That you were obedient. That you were wanted. That you were good.
The sound of light footsteps and swishing skirts echoed under the chamber’s door. Your servants, no doubt, waiting to be beckoned in by the Lord Hightower to serve upon his ward.
Ormund made his way back over to you, but this time stayed standing, looking down upon you. “You will attend the sept this morning. When Lord Ashford has finished his proposition, you will come to me in the solar. This evening, we will receive our guests for supper in the Great Hall.”
You bowed your head obediently, just as he taught you. “Yes, my lord.”
Ormund turned to the door as if he meant to call the servants in, and then paused. He slowly turned back to you, his blue eyes swimming with a feeling you had become quite familiar with. Determination, and something weightier under it. Something you had never been able to name, but knew intimately.
“It is the seventh day,” he stated, his voice low. You knew that. You knew by now not to recognize the day by name, but by its count. “You will come straight to this chamber after supper. Bathe first.”
Silently, you nodded. His face twisted in disapproval. “Your words, please.”
“Y-yes, my lord.”
He exhaled, a small measure of satisfaction returning to his face. “Good. Very good.”
Ormund laid one hand over yours where it rested atop the coverlet, looking suddenly very serious. “And do tell your women never use to that horrid citrus oil on you again like they did last week. It taints you.”
“I will.”
He squeezed your hand in appreciation, then straightened himself and turned towards the door. “You may enter.”
The door opened at once, like your women had been waiting. They filed into the chamber with lowered eyes, none appearing surprised to find you sitting in Lord Ormund’s bed. He did not bother to look at them, his gaze fixed on you as he spoke.
“See that she is properly dressed to receive visitors.”
The girls spoke in unison, eyes still fixed on the ground. “Yes, Lord Hightower.”
Ormund nodded at you once. An unspoken acknowledgement passed between the two of you. The seventh day. What the night would hold. Then he departed, leaving the chamber door open behind him.
Your women moved quickly and efficiently, drawing back the blankets and settling a robe over your shoulders as they began the familiar work of preparing you for the day. There was no time to dally. Before long, your hair had been pinned, your gown laced tightly in Hightower green, and your throat and wrists adorned with jewels Ormund had gifted you on namedays and holy days.
One of the girls uncorked the vial of citrus oil and reached for your neck. You grabbed her hand, stopping her.
“Lord Ormund,” was all you had to say.
She bowed her head in immediate understanding and exchanged it for another perfumed oil he had shipped from Lys for you.
Soon, you looked as a proper Hightower woman ought to look. And by the next tolling of the bells, you had entered the sept of the Citadel.
The seven-walled chamber appeared much as it had when you first arrived in Oldtown– or, at least, as it had in your earliest memories once you had gone from a crawling babe to a waddling child. Damp clung to the stone floors. At the center stood an altar crowded with pools of hardened wax and burning candles, while bejeweled likenesses of the Seven watched from alcoves set into each wall. Your attendants lingered behind you like silent shadows as you moved through the sept, a veil drawn over your hair.
You walked as Ormund had always instructed you to walk: head bowed, hands clasped, each step quiet. The very picture of piety in a woman.
Stopping at the Maiden, you thought once more of the late Lady Hightower. You often served as her little companion to the sept on mornings like this, following closely behind as she knelt and prayed before each altar. You could feel the memory clearly: the whisper of her skirts against the stone, the warmth of her hand around your smaller one, the patient way she corrected your prayers when your childish tongue stumbled over the words.
The truth was that you had no memories before ones such as these, ones of Oldtown.
You were just a babe when your father, King Viserys, sent you south to be fostered among your Hightower kin. Ormund had always said that, for all the sins of your parents, they had at least possessed the wisdom to recognize Oldtown was where you belonged.
The explanation for your immediate exile from King’s Landing had always been a convoluted one.
On some days, you had been sent away because court was dangerous. On others, because King’s Landing was steeped in pride and your father wished for you to be raised in the piety of your mother’s kin. Lady Hightower had longed for a daughter. Your health was fragile as a babe, Oldtown’s air was better for a delicate infant. Alicent had a difficult birth and needed time to rest. The reasons always shifted depending upon who offered them.
The clearest explanation, though it was the one that had always gone unspoken, was that you had simply not been wanted.
At first glance, there was nothing about you that suggested descent from Old Valyria. You possessed neither silver hair nor amethyst eyes. Beautiful, certainly, but not plainly Targaryen. You bore none of the unmistakable marks of your father’s house.
More importantly, you had no dragon.
Ormund refused to speak of that last matter. You did not know whether an egg had been placed in your cradle according to custom, whether it had failed to hatch, whether the hatchling had died, or whether no egg had ever been given to you at all. Whatever the circumstances, it seemed the Seven had determined that you were not to be a Targaryen, but a Hightower.
“A blessing,” Ormund often called it, standing behind you, watching intently as you brushed your hair in the evenings. “That your appearance was not marred by the stain of inbreeding. You should be grateful the gods favored you enough to preserve your beauty from such impurity.”
What he really meant was, “You should be grateful the gods gave you to me”.
And you were. Your childhood in Oldtown had been a happy one. Ormund and Lady Hightower’s sons took to you as a true sister, including you in their games no matter how often you ran weeping to their mother after they shoved you into the mud. You received the finest education the Citadel’s maesters could provide and were thoroughly instructed in histories, languages, scripture, and the workings of court. Ormund instilled in you the virtues expected of a holy and pious woman. Lady Hightower taught you kindness. You wanted for nothing. You were cared for completely.
Being cared for, however, was not the same as being wanted.
One by one, the boys grew into men. They departed to serve in other courts, took wives, and established households of their own. You remained behind. After Lady Hightower’s death, the question of where you belonged began to trouble you even more.
You searched everywhere for some reflection of yourself. In histories and poems. In portraits, tapestries, and family trees. You studied every face and name, hoping one might reveal why you had been born in the first place.
Though Ormund preferred that you remain ignorant to the fact, you knew you were a Targaryen.
He contradicted himself often in that regard. He insisted that you were a Hightower whenever you longed for King’s Landing, yet invoked the sins of your Valyrian predecessors whenever you displeased him. As a child, the inconsistency had deeply confused you. Now, though, you knew better to question it.
The histories did not speak of Targaryens as aliens deserving only shame. On the contrary, they praised them. Aegon the Conqueror had crossed the Narrow Sea and conquered Westeros, his lineage sitting upon the Iron Throne from then until the end of time. They had bound themselves to mighty beasts that would bow to no other riders. Why should you not wish to be one of them? Why should you be ashamed?
Perhaps that was why, during one of your rare visits to King’s Landing, you became determined to find some way of securing your place within your own bloodline. Ormund had permitted you, after much begging on your part and great reluctance on his, to attend the wedding of your brother Aegon to your sister Helaena. You had still been young enough to think yourself a girl, though womanhood waited only just around the corner, and through that haze of youth the wedding had seemed beautiful.
Now, of course, memory revealed what you had been too young to recognize then: the discomfort across Helaena’s face, the uninterested ambivalence with which Aegon accepted the ceremony, the celebration disguising a union neither seemed to really desire. But that morning, surrounded by jewels and music and flowers, by feasts and speeches proclaiming the strength of their union, you had understood only one thing.
If your appearance could not prove you a Targaryen, perhaps marriage could.
When you returned to Oldtown, full of courtly notions and girlish fancy, you announced to Ormund that you would marry your brother Aemond– who had scarcely looked your way throughout the entire visit. Ormund had been seated behind the desk in his solar, writing upon a sheet of parchment. At your declaration, the quill froze between his fingers.
With deliberate care, he set the quill aside and lifted his eyes to you with a dreadful stillness. “You will do no such thing.”
Your smile slowly faded. “But…Aegon married Helaena. That is what Targaryens do.”
Ormund rose suddenly from behind the desk, his chair scraping harshly across the stone floor. You remembered how the sound had frightened you.
“The Targaryens– your father’s family– are incestuous barbarians,” he had declared. “Their minds are so corrupted by generations of inbreeding that they no longer possess the sense to recognize depravity. Your mother whored herself to a Targaryen. I will not give you to your own brother. I will not allow you to repeat her sins and bring further shame upon the Hightower name.”
By then, he had crossed the solar and taken your chin firmly in his hand, his fingers dimpling the skin of your cheeks. You had begun to cry, though you could not tell whether it was from fear, shame, or the sudden loneliness of knowing you might never truly belong anywhere.
“But then I could live with Father and Mother,” you whispered, tears slipping down your cheeks. “I could go home.”
Ormund bent until his face was close to yours, his breath hot against your skin. His grip tightened beneath your chin. “This is your home.”
The memory faded as you reached for a candle from the basket beneath the Maiden’s altar. You held its wick to one of the burning flames and watched a bead of wax gather at the tip before slipping towards your fingers.
Aemond had been the first man Ormund refused you. He had not been the last.
Among Ormund’s duties as your guardian was the arrangement of your eventual betrothal. Ormund approached that responsibility as he approached all others: with severe discretion, particular judgment, and standards so high that no man alive seemed capable of meeting them.
There had never been a shortage of suitors. You were young, unmarried, and beautiful– and whatever Ormund might say of your father’s house, the hand of a Targaryen princess remained a prize few sensible men would dismiss.
As you grew older, the procession became a lengthy one.
The first man to formally inquire after you had been Ser Joldwin Mormont. You remembered him quite clearly. He had been nearer Ormund’s age than your own, tall and broad as most Northmen seemed to be, with a rough face that was not altogether unpleasant. He was steady in temperament and remained remarkably calm beneath Ormund’s inquisitions. He had even brought you a gift: a beautiful velvet cloak trimmed in bear fur. You had thought he resembled the carved likenesses of the Warrior found in the sept. He would make a good husband, you had decided.
Ormund had not agreed.
He had no shortage of qualms. Men of the North were ignorant, uncivilized, and hardly better than an illiterate barbarian dragging around a club in Ormund’s opinion. Bear Island was remote, bitterly cold, and impoverished. Worst of all, the Mormonts possessed a peculiar habit of treating their women as though they were equals.
It was not a place, he decided, where you belonged.
Ormund had declared Joldwin entirely unsuitable, and forced you to toss the beautiful cloak into the fireplace of the Great Hall. He said it smelt of bear shit.
After that, the list of suitors started to blend together.
There was a Martell, handsome enough to make you blush with warm brown eyes, who winked at you across the hall. Ormund reacted as though the man had attempted to bed you in the middle of the Hightower. The Dornish were lecherous and tried to “fuck anything that walked”, he told you.
There was a young Rowan who stuttered frequently and spoke so softly that you had to lean closer to hear him. Ormund dismissed him as weak and unfit for a wife.
A ruddy-cheeked and quite cheerful Redwyne heir sent you summerwine and a song composed in praise of your beauty. Ormund called him frivolous.
One man lived too far from Oldtown. Another lived so near that Ormund questioned whether he sought your hand only to gain influence within the city. One possessed too many ambitions. Another had none. One was too young to govern you properly, while another was so old that Ormund expressed outrage at the very notion of subjecting you to him.
There was always some defect. Too proud. Too timid. Too wealthy. Too poor. Too worldly. Too sheltered. Too handsome. Too plain.
Ormund’s standards contradicted one another so thoroughly that, had all his preferences been gathered together, the perfect husband would have needed to be commanding without controlling you, gentle without indulging you, wealthy without greed, devout without presumption, and situated near enough that you might never truly leave the Hightower.
Such a man had yet to present himself.
Perhaps, you thought as you placed your candle down before the Maiden’s altar and bowed your head, Lord Godric Ashford would be different. Perhaps today would finally be the day Ormund found a suitable match for you. Perhaps today was the day you would understand what fate had intended for your life. Perhaps you would finally be chosen.
You set your candle upon the Maiden’s altar and prayed for love, for a fruitful marriage, and for a husband who chose you with a pure heart. You tried to imagine such a life with Godric, though you did not yet know his face.
You hoped he was strong, like Ormund. Tall, like Ormund. Handsome, like Ormund.
You hoped that he might be enough like Ormund to earn his approval. You hoped, without really understanding why, that he was like Ormund.
By the time you returned to the Hightower, Lord Ashford had already been shown into Ormund’s solar and begun his proposition.
Ormund had never permitted you to be present for such conversations, of course. Serious matters, he insisted, were to be muddled by girlish sentiment. Over the years, you had therefore found other ways to learn what decisions were being made about your future without you. Some time ago, you had discovered a narrow passage running behind the rear wall of Ormund’s solar– an old servants’ entrance, long forgotten, its doorway boarded over and concealed behind a heavy tapestry.
And so, upon returning to the Hightower, you dismissed your ladies with the excuse that you wished to pray alone in your chambers (surely the gods would forgive the lie, given the good reason for it). Once they had gone, you slipped behind the tapestry and crept down the cobwebbed corridor until you reached the boarded door. Pressing your ear to the weathered planks, you heard the low murmur of men’s voices.
“...and I would never seek to separate her from Oldtown, Lord Hightower,” an unfamiliar voice spoke. You leaned closer. It was firm but polite, young but not imprudent. Lord Godric Ashford. He sounded kind. “I understand the princess is quite close with you, and I would ensure she could visit the Hightower as often as she wished. Family is of the utmost importance to me.”
You heard Ormund’s chair squeak. You could imagine he had leaned back in it, hands clasped in front of him, assessing Lord Ashford as he did all things brought before his judgement. “That seems to me an indulgence. She would be your wife, would she not? You would not want her with you in Ashford?”
“Of course, my lord. But I would not be so cruel as to forbid her from visiting the man that raised her. My own mother was a Caswell, and she visited my grandsire at Bitterbridge at every turning of the season.”
“And if she wished to visit more often than you considered appropriate?”
There was a brief pause. “I would speak with her, as husband and wife should.”
“Hmm. And if speaking did not bring her around to your judgement?”
There was another lull, longer this time, before Lord Godric gave an uneasy chuckle. “Well, I would hope my wife did not need to be disciplined as a child would.”
“Hopes are not the same as reality,” Ormund replied easily. “Particularly where Targaryen blood is concerned. They are a willful and proud people. Very resistant to correction.”
“I-I have heard no such things of the princess, my lord.”
“No? Then what have you heard of her?”
“Every account has described her as the very image of what a noblewoman ought to be: beautiful, gracious, and demure. I’ve been told she is quite pious, as well.”
A thoughtful silence settled over the solar. You wished desperately you could see Ormund’s face. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet.
“She is.”
Your heart swelled and instinctively, you pressed yourself closer to the boards. You were a good girl.
“But do not mistake her nurture for nature, Lord Godric. She did not arrive in Oldtown so.”
“My lord, I did not mean to suggest–”
“Every virtue you have heard praised in her was cultivated beneath my hand. Her modesty, her devotion. The weeds of Targaryen pride had to be pulled, one by one. A garden does not become handsome just because a flower has good intentions. It becomes handsome because a gardener has the discipline to attend to it every single day and cut away what ought not grow.”
Lord Godric hesitated in his answer. “And…you believe a husband must continue that work? Pull the weeds from her?”
“I believe,” Ormund answered slowly, “that any man who means to take her from me must be capable of preserving what I have made.”
What he had made.
You drew a shaky breath, your fingernails pressing into the weathered boards.
Perhaps it was true. Ormund had spent years teaching you the faults of your father’s house. They were blasphemous, unnatural. Incestuous and violent. An abomination before the Seven. His lessons were so ingrained within you that even the faintest reminder of your Valyrian blood could fill you with shame.
You had not chosen that blood. You had not asked to be born into it. You had only ever wanted to be good. And if Targaryens were innately wicked, perhaps you truly did owe everything virtuous within you to Ormund.
As a child, you had often wondered what sort of creature you might have become without his guidance. If he were true, which he often was, you would be a terrible creature malformed by sin. The thought frightened you still. But another more terrible one followed suit: without his guidance, you would not have had him.
No arms around your waist in the night. No hand smoothing your hair. No voice telling you what was right, what was wrong, what was safe. A life without Ormund. You tried to imagine it and found only emptiness. Would such a life truly be worth living?
And yet…you wanted to be chosen.
Your own mother and father had decided they had no need of you in King’s Landing, though they kept their other children close. You had been sent to Oldtown, where you doubted Ormund and Lady Hightower had been given much choice in whether they would receive you. No one had ever truly chosen you.
That was what made the suitors difficult to dismiss. They came before Ormund willingly, they asked for your hand because they wanted you. You liked that more than you wished to admit.
And though the thought of leaving Ormund filled your stomach with dread, it had become increasingly difficult not to resent him for refusing every man who tried to choose you.
“I believe I have heard all I need,” Ormund said suddenly, his voice decisive. Your heart faltered. You knew what that meant.
“...My lord?” You could hear Godric shift closer to the desk. “I hope I have not caused offense of any sort. I only meant that, should the princess become my wife, I would do all within my power to–”
“I said I have heard enough.” Something heavy was placed on the desk with a thud. A wine cup, presumably.
You wanted desperately for Godric to protest. You wanted him to declare his love to you, though he had never once seen your face. You wanted him to insist that perhaps the choice of whom you married ought to belong, at least in part, to you. You wanted him to accuse Ormund of cruelty for denying you the right to a husband.
The last thought filled you with immediate shame. You whispered a hurried prayer under your breath to the Father, begging forgiveness for having judged the man who had only ever sought to protect you.
Godric did none of that. Instead, he simply uttered with cool restraint, “As you will, Lord Hightower.”
A chair scraped across the floor and heavy footsteps crossed the solar, followed by the opening and closing of its main door. You withdrew from the boarded door slowly, blinking as tears began to brim at your eyes.
Usually, disappointment was all you felt when another suitor was refused. A dull ache in your heart followed by the acceptance that Ormund must have seen some defect you had overlooked. He knew the nature of men and the dangers of the world in ways you did not.
This time felt…different.
Godric had spoken respectfully. He had promised not to sever you from Oldtown. He had regarded your devotion and gentleness, and when Ormund questioned whether he could govern you, Godric had not boasted of cruelty or correction. His only failure had been suggesting that you ought to be treated as a wife rather than a child.
By the time you emerged from behind the tapestry, Lord Ashford was gone. The corridor stood empty, save for the guard outside the solar, offering no glimpse of the man who had come to ask for your hand and been dismissed before you could even see his face.
Ormund had instructed you to come to him once the proposition concluded. Usually, you obeyed quickly. Now, though, you lingered outside the solar door with your hand raised to knock, struggling to understand the feelings swimming in your mind. Confusion, disappointment. And something dangerously close to anger.
You knocked anyways.
“You may enter,” Ormund called.
You opened the door and stepped inside, carefully pulling it shut behind you. Ormund had moved from the desk to the window and stood peering down at the city below. The shutters had been opened. He turned at the sound of the door closing, looked you over once, and– apparently finding no objections with your appearance– gestured towards the carved chairs near his desk.
“Sit.”
You did.
Ormund remained beside the window and drew a long breath through his nose. His face tightened with mild disgust. “Lord Ashford seems, from his smell, to possess a great fondness for horses.”
You sniffed discreetly. There was nothing in the air besides parchment and the dried florals Ormund preferred to keep throughout his rooms. “Perhaps he rode in this morning.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps the men of Ashford prefer to sleep in stables.” Ormund reached into the pocket of his breeches and withdrew the ornate pomander he carried. He held it beneath his nose and inhaled deeply. Only once he appeared satisfied that every trace of Lord Ashford had been driven from his nostrils did he return it to his pocket. Then he turned to you, settling against the window ledge with his hands clasped before him. “You attended the sept this morning?”
You stared down at your hands, folded in your lap. “Yes, my lord.”
“And for whom did you light a candle for today?”
You chewed on your lower lip. “The Maiden.”
Ormund nodded in consideration, crossing his arms over his chest. “And why did you choose the Maiden today?”
“I…I wanted to pray for your meeting with Lord Ashford to go well.”
“You prayed for Lord Ashford?”
Your palms had begun to feel sweaty. “Y-yes, my lord.”
“You prayed to marry him?"
“...yes, my lord.”
The muscle under Ormund’s eye twitched. He pushed himself away from the window and approached you slowly. Rounding the corner of the desk, he stopped beside your chair. Then, tugging at the fabric of his breeches over his thighs, he lowered himself until he was kneeling at eye level with you. You kept your gaze fixed on your lap.
“You wish to leave Oldtown so badly,” he said softly, so quietly it was barely a whisper, “that you would pray to marry a man who you have never met?”
“M-my lord, I did not–”
“Look at me.”
Trembling, you raised your gaze to meet his. Ormund’s face had gone still, though the blue of his eyes had turned icy. Your stomach lurched.
“I have risked much to raise you,” Ormund began, leaning in closer to you. “I have shielded you from those at court who question why King Viserys cast his youngest daughter out of King’s Landing. I have protected you from men who would use your blood and name for their own advancement. I have purged you of the evils of Valyria and shaped you into a proper woman. And now, now you hate me enough that would you leave my bed for a stranger?”
Heat burned at your cheeks, hearing Ormund speak like that. Like your shared bed was something…you could not finish the thought. “No, Ormund, please, I don’t–”
“You hate me enough that you would question my judgement?” he pressed, voice lowering to a gravelly hum. “You believe you know better than I? That I am ignorant?”
Hot tears had begun to spill over, wetting your lashes and blurring your vision. “I don’t, my lord, I don’t know b-better than you, I only wanted–”
“Tell me, then.” Ormund seized your face in one hand, his rings digging into your cheeks as he forced your chin upward. “Tell me that you do not wish to leave me.”
“I-I do not wish to leave you, my lord,” you choked, sobbing fully now.
“Tell me that no man could care for you as I have.”
“No man could c-care for me as you have!”
His hand tightened enough around your chin that your cheeks squished together. His face, though, had shifted, a diseased softness bleeding into it. “Now, you must tell me what you have forgotten to say.”
Shame and something hotter burned low in your gut. He always made you say the words like this. When you had no option but to force the truth out of you.
“I…” your breath shuddered. “I love you.”
Ormund’s grip refused to loosen. “Again, please.”
The words caught in your throat, scraping like sand. “I love you, Ormund.”
Finally, his face eased, and so did his hold.
“There,” he murmured, sickeningly tender as he wiped his thumb across your cheek, catching one of your stray tears. “Was that so difficult to say?”
You shook your head quickly. You did not trust your voice.
Seemingly satisfied, Ormund rose from where he was crouched, dusting off his breeches. The matter was finished. He returned to his desk, lowering himself in his chair, no trace of the man who had just seconds ago demanded the sick truth of your devotion. You remained frozen, unable to move, cheeks wet and burning. You suddenly were conscious of how horrible you must look, swollen eyes and shaking hands.
Ormund glanced up from his papers. “You will go and ready yourself for the evening’s feast now.”
Numb, you stared at him. He raised one brow in question. Ormund did not like to repeat himself.
“Y-yes, my lord,” you stuttered.
“Wear the blue silk. The one with the square neckline,” he dipped his quill into the ink, already moved on from the excitement and back to his usual self. He glanced up once more, eyes moving across your face. “And…have the women repair your face. It would be quite unbecoming to our guests to see you have upset yourself.”
You were thoroughly humiliated. “Yes, my lord.”
Legs shaking slightly, you rose and smoothed your skirts.
“And, one more thing,” Ormund spoke, though he continued reading the parchment he held. “You will not speak with Lord Ashford this evening.”
You paused. Was this a trap? “Would it…would it not appear discourteous if I refused to–”
“The matter has already been decided, my girl. You have no need to encourage him further.”
“I…I understand.” You bowed, trying not to trip over your still unsteady feet, and then turned towards the door. You had just put your hand on the latch when Ormund spoke again.
“Have you forgotten something?”
You paused, and then looked back in the solar. Ormund had finally lifted his eyes from the parchment and was leaning back in his seat. He tapped one finger against his cheek.
Your cheeks grew hotter, though you had done this hundreds of times before. Thousands, perhaps. You crossed the solar to where Ormund sat, his expression completely neutral. Heart beating in your throat, you bent carefully and pressed your lips briefly to his cheek. He caught your wrist before you could retreat.
“Once more, properly this time,” he commanded.
You swallowed and kissed him again, lingering this time until you felt the faint scrape of where he had shaved that morning and breathed in the familiar fragrance of his pomander.
Ormund released his grip on you, mouth curled in a smile. “Good girl. You may go now.”
You bowed, lower this time, and left the solar with the warm and humiliating feeling you had become accustomed to now living in the very place Ormund had hollowed out inside you over years and years.
As you walked down the halls of Hightower, face lowered so any passerbys would not catch a glimpse of your reddened cheeks and puffy eyes, you wondered why you felt the way you did.
Lord Ashford would be at the feast that evening, and though Ormund had forbidden you from speaking to him, you knew that you would search for him among the gathered faces. For what, you could not say. To prove something, perhaps. But what, exactly?
That Ormund was right? Or that he was wrong?
And afterward…no matter the excitement from the day, you had not forgotten Ormund’s reminder that morning.
“It is the seventh day.”
You dreaded the fact, but not for the ritual that awaited you, but rather the shameful fact it made you excited.
It seemed this was to be a day of contradictions.
You wanted Lord Ashford to see you, and you hoped he never appeared so that you might obey Ormund without temptation. You wanted Ormund to loosen his hold upon you, and you wanted him to swear that he would never allow you to belong to anyone else.
How could both desires live in the same body? The same heart? You did not know.
You knew only that, by the end of the night, Ormund would decide which desire you were permitted to keep.
